It appears to me that we sapiens need a “North Star” upon which to fix our voyage. We need a reference point upon which we can focus our attention when trying to determine what of value we can and should do in life.
Religion, or God, serves as the compass for some people; for others it is nationalism; for others the guiding value is to own as much good stuff as possible; to others it is power; for some it is family; and I guess there are many other such ultimate values.
I have tried to examine my inner voices to determine just what my primary value is and does it need to be changed. I have determined that, by some turn of events, perhaps completely willy-nilly, my value North Star is life on this planet. My guidance for fixing value is ultimately dependent upon its aiding or hindering life on this planet.
I often speculate that human life is a hindrance to maximizing the ‘good life’, of all life, on this planet. I often speculate that if all life on this planet were given a vote in this matter that they would throw sapiens overboard.
I think as far as life on planet is concerned, human life is irrelevant (and all that humans do is also irrelevant). On evolutionary time scale, our being on this planet is very very short. I also don’t think that we are “hurting” the planet or Life. Earth does not need our saving her, nor does she care if we are destroying her. You could look at human destructive activity as yet another force that evolution will work around (like the action of comets, or change of atmosphere, or volcanoes in the past). Some life forms will die out, while others will adapt and become more dominant. After we are done (and I think we will finish ourselves soon) the evolution of life on the planet will march on, even if we manage to destroy the most of it.
George Santayana says that “all values must be ultimately intrinsic”. He adds that the good, i.e. that which is desired, is good because of its consequences.
Aesthetics is about the perception of values. Aesthetic judgments “are mainly positive, that is, perceptions of good, moral judgments are mainly and fundamentally negative, or perceptions of evil…in the perception of beauty, our judgment is necessarily intrinsic and based on the character of the immediate experience, and never consciously on the idea of an eventual utility in the object, judgments about moral worth, on the contrary, are always based, when they are positive, upon the consciousness of benefits probably involved.”
“Morality is a means and not an end; that it is the price of human non-adaptation, and the consequence of the original sin of unfitness. It is the compression of human conduct within the narrow limits of the safe and possible. Remove danger, remove pain, remove the occasion of pity, and the need of morality is gone. To say “thou shalt not” would then be impertinence.”
If we think about it we can see herein why our moral consciousness recedes as our luxuries increase, and we can see why caring for another is more the characteristic of those who have little and is of lesser value to those who have much.
Quotes from [i]The Sense of Beauty: Being The Outlines of Aesthetic Theory[i] by George Santayana
