You’re quoting me out of context. My double question particularly referred to this:
[size=95]Platonism is no longer viable: “God is dead.” The most viable alternatives are:
- Letting modernity run riot. Computers and robots–or cyborgs–may then well surpass humanity in creative intelligence and even bigness of “heart”, but why would that be bad?
- Steering humanity toward a cataclysm that decimates it and all of its creations. Humanity would then have to start over and might take several millennia to arrive at this modern crisis again.[/size]
In this scenario, there’s no more safety in the past than in the future, and no more “excitement” in the future than in the past. Option 2 would be extremely precarious, with humanity possibly being reduced to two people, a man and a woman (I didn’t necessarily mean “decimate” literally); in any case it would have to be a small, scattered amount of people having to toil to survive; and let’s not forget tribal warfare (as in Homeric times) and religious fanaticism (as in Platonic times). And as for option 1, well, that’s just a continuation of our Machiavellian age–which was in the first place valued inasmuch as it furthered safety, but has become valued more and more inasmuch as it furthers excitement (for when one has safety, one can permit oneself excitement).
I find it interesting, by the way, that you would specifically mention safety and excitement. Safety and excitement are actually the core values of the two lowest natural classes of men I discern: Keirsey’s “Guardians” and “Artisans”, respectively. Of the two higher classes, the core values are knowledge and personality. (Keirsey does not use these precise terms. He distinguishes between what one values to be, what one values to trust in, what one values to yearn for, to seek, to prize, and to aspire to. And he says that Guardians value seeking security (not safety) and that Artisans value seeking stimulation (but that they value being excited). He says that Idealists value seeking identity, but value being enthusiastic. Identity and enthusiasm are united in the concept of the mask, the persona–hence my term “personality”–:
[size=95]“We know from many primitive religions and from a plethora of Greek accounts [or witnesses] what the mask signifies. The wearer of the mask is no longer himself; rather, the mask transfers onto its wearer the power and the properties which he manifests. Thus the mask is able to conjure [up] the invisible entity which it manifests through this manifestation.” (Georg Picht, Nietzsche, page 233, my translation.)[/size]
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=enthusiasm)
Now personality can be understood as a spiritual form of security, and knowledge as a spiritual form of excitement! For the knowledge arrived at by the philosophers is not reassuring, certain knowledge, but the knowledge that, as Socrates put it, one “knows nothing”; knowledge of the aporia of time… It is the knowledge that all being is probably eros or will-to-power, which is not only dangerous, but remains forever mysterious.
For more on the four natural classes of men I discern, see http://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=187916
In James’ words, Value Ontology is the theory “wherein the universe is perceived as all things merely valuing themselves and [valuing] everything else relative to themselves”. In my words, it’s the theory according to which “Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.” For more information, I suggest you read or ask Fixed Cross, as this thread is not about what Value Ontology itself is but about what it’s benefits (and dangers) are, if any. Anyway, if you want to hear more about it in my words, read my posts on this page, starting from the one linked to: http://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2542715#p2542715
Some excepts on how it makes a difference:
[size=95][T]he notion of selfhood or Being is lacking in “Willing to power”. It seems that only a self or a being could will. The specific notion of selfhood or Being as power is lacking, and therefore Heidegger said the doctrine of the will to power only answered the guiding question of metaphysics–the question what beings are–, and not its grounding question–the question what Being is. Value Metaphysics (as I call it) makes this step, by not speaking of Willing power but of Willing selfhood–Willing Being.
Nietzsche, when explicating his doctrine in terms of “subjects that will” (which Kaufmann translates as “active subjects”), said “[t]he subject alone is demonstrable” (WP 569); and even when most vehemently questioning the notion of a “subject”, he said: “Nonetheless: opposites, obstacles are needed; therefore, relatively, encroaching unit(ie)s…” It is at this point, methinks, that Fixed Cross has gone deeper into the subject matter (no pun intended) than Nietzsche.[/size]
However, if you want to know how–if at all–it makes a difference for you, you should probably try seeing yourself as a self-valuing. You may then experience the meaning of the saying “the truth will set you free”. If you’re asking whether such freedom is good, though–well…
[size=95]“We must be destroyers!----
I cognized that the state of dissolution, in which individual entities can perfect themselves as never before–is an image and individual case of existence in general. Theory of coincidence, the soul [conceived as] a selective and self-nourishing entity[,] extremely shrewd and creative continuously (this creative force [is] usually overlooked! [The soul is usually] conceived only as ‘passive’)
I cognized the active force[,] the creative in the midst of the coincidental
–coincidence is itself only the clashing of creative impulses
Against the paralyzing sense of general dissolution and incompleteness I posed the eternal recurrence!” (Nietzsche, Nachlass Winter 1883-1884 24 [28], my translation.)[/size]
