it has been said that philosophy is the drive toward
the ‘‘truth’’… but as I have shown, there doesn’t seem to be
a universal, one size fits all truth that engages everyone…
and if there were a one size fits all truth, how would we know?
a universal truth must by its very definition, fit everyone…
and what truth do you know is universal, fits everyone,
everywhere, at all times? I do not know of such a truth that
would fit everyone, everywhere, at all times… for that is the
definition of a universal truth…
as we cannot find a truth that fits everyone, everywhere, at all times,
that means we are living in an ‘‘ad hoc’’ universe…
an example of this ‘‘ad hoc’’ universe we live in, in the bible,
it says, and it is not written in ambiguous language,
‘‘thou shall not kill’’ it is fairly clear and pretty straight forward…
and yet, there are dozens of ‘‘ad hoc’’ additions to this fairly
straightforward commandment…
Thou shall not kill…unless it is for one’s own self protection,
or that shall not kill, unless it in the defense of one’s country…
One shall not kill, and under that guise, people defend
ending abortions, and yet, those exact same people who use
thou shall not kill, also have proposed to kill abortion doctors
and women who commit abortions… those two exceptions
are nothing more than ‘‘ad hoc’’ of the moment choices…
this question really revolves around the real question, which
is under what authority do we choose for or against abortions?
and this question lies under for everything that ILP is engaged with
right now… the question of the moment is homosexuality…
and under what authority do we accept or ban homosexuality?
Now, quite often the authority listed in banning homosexuality is
history… that is the authority we list in attempts to ban homosexuality…
(or one of the authorities used today, there are others, but we will let
them be for the moment)
and there is a real problem in using history to base our judgements
on, using history is a lot like using the bible to make judgements,
in that we can almost always find exceptions to every single rule,
both in the bible and within history… ‘‘thou shall not kill’’
there are literarily dozens of exceptions to the ‘‘rule of god’’
and I have listed a few of them…and these exceptions are
really ‘‘ad hoc’’ rules… and one of the other problems with
using history, is that you can find exceptions to every single
rule in history… one might say, there has never been a
homosexual society, and yet, for example, the Sparta society/state
did seem to have a very strong homosexual aspect to it…
the law didn’t punish homosexuals because it was expected
within that society/state… and it keep up the laws that expected
men to also engage with women in procreation…
it was, quite literarily a dual society/state… homosexuals
had a very clear role within the Sparta society/state, but
procreation was also demanded…
so, within history itself, we can find justification for virtually
every single act of human behavior… for example, a society
based on human sacrifice and bloodletting was the Aztecs…
the number of people they sacrificed totaled into the millions…
is that the society/state we are basing our own society/state on?
History is a lie we used to justify our own actions to ourselves…
and within history, we can find/justify virtually every single action
we make… both collectively and individually…
you say tomato, and I say potato and historically, we
both be right… and that is both the beauty and curse of
history… virtually every single behavior can be justified
by the use of history… it just depends on whose history
we decide to use… if we use the authority of Sparta,
then we can easily justify homosexual behavior within
the state, if we use another source, then we can justify it
that way, but that leaves us the question of why this source
of history we can use, but not that source? why do we choose
this version of history as opposed to that source of history?
Why do we select this spiritual history, which is the bible,
opposed to another source of spiritual history, the Veda’s
of India? What makes one right and the other wrong?
and that answer is ‘‘ad hoc’’ of the moment.. because
there is virtually no way we can decide what spiritual history
is the right one and what spiritual history is the wrong one…
one might say, well, this is a Christian nation and thus
we should be using Christian sources, and yet, we can find
in the bible vast number of actions that can be interpretated
a number of different ways… for example, the bible
clearly advocates for incest… and it show us in different ways,
for example, lot’s daughters, get him drunk and have sex with him
by which they create the Moabites and the Ammonite Nations…
and King David’s son, Amnon rapes his half-sister… are these
the actions we should be basing our own lives on? we simply
pick and choose what actions are applauded and which actions
are condemned… which are ‘‘ad hoc’’ choices…
the question here is which authority are we using to judge or
advocate for certain beliefs or actions? we don’t seem to be able
to use the bible as it has very contractionary beliefs and actions,
as does history… and where does that leave us?
One might suggest, exactly as HOA use it, community standards…
and yet, that too is flawed…mind you, I live in an HOA community,
and their only concern is to hold up and increase the value of the
condo’s… that is the final arbiter of HOA decisions…
How much can I sell my condo for? there are no
other factors that an HOA uses… so, according to HOAs,
the final judge of community standards is money…
what a sad commentary, the use of standards is that
standards are tied into money…
So, it seems that our use of standards, the means we make
judgements, is deeply flawed because we have no means
of knowing which standards are the ‘‘right’’ standards…
Which standards are the one we choose or which standards
we deny…
So, another popular topic currently on ILP, is homosexuality…
it is considered to be wrong or immoral, but which
standard are we to use? community standards, which
community? On historical standards, again, which historical
standards are we using? on standards based on authority?
which authority are we using and why that authority and not
another authority? We can certainly cherry pick standards
such as the bible and come up with a solution that we approve of,
but it is clearly not a universal, one size fits all standards…
You have one value and I have another, so, which authority
do we use to judge who is right? as there is no universal, one
size fits all standards, therein lies the problem… we cannot
trust this way of using authority because we can just as easily
find justifications for any standards we can speak about…
So, what is our authorities within philosophy? Do we use
Plato or Socrates or Augustine, or Kant or Hegel or Kropotkin?
and why that authority and not another…
Kropotkin
