a man amidst mankind: back again to dasein

Francis Fukuyama & the Perils of Identity
Peter Benson critiques a liberal but nationalistic brand of identity politics.

What some will insist that, in a No God universe, is the best of all possible worlds: moderation, negotiation and compromise. In other words, democracy and the rule of law.

Here in fact even the moral objectivists can accept a belief that through elections they and their own political ideals can be voted in or out. They truly do believe that being on the left or the right wing of the political spectrum is more rational. And they hope that through elections they can persuade the voters to see things as they do. But if another party wins they become the “loyal opposition” and prepare for the next election cycle.

At least in your kid’s civics textbook. In reality, of course, given the existence of political economy, wealth and power will almost always prevail. Either in the form of crony capitalism in the West, or, in nations like Russia and China, state capitalism. Here it all comes down to just how cynical any particular individual has become given the existence of one or another rendition of the “deep state”. I have mine, you may have yours.

But my main suggestion here always revolves around dasein. That there is no ideal political system but only a complex intertwining of right makes might, might make right and moderation, negotiation and compromise. And that any particular individual’s frame of mind is derived more from his or her actual experiences in life than from sitting down, thinking it all through [like Plato thinking up the Republic] and coming up [philosophically] with the most rational political system of all.

One man’s opinion of course. Me, I’m as critical of identity politics as I need to be. From my frame of mind, “I” is shaped and molded as as existential fabrication, ceaselessly refabricated as new circumstances demand. And, let’s face it, to the extent that the reactionaries among us insist of sustaining their own political stereotypes and prejudices about skin color and gender and sexual preference and ethnicity and all the other ways in which they divide up the world between “one of us” and “one of them”, those they go after are likely to seek out each other if only to sustain what they are able to given safety in numbers. That’s often the thing that critics of identity politics refuse to acknowledge — the extent to which their own biases help to create it in the first place.

Francis Fukuyama & the Perils of Identity
Peter Benson critiques a liberal but nationalistic brand of identity politics.

That’s basically what I am trying to convey to Maia. But until she is more willing to accept that this has less to do with nature and the Goddess and more to do with how the very life that she lived predisposed her to think about nature and the Goddess as she does, I’m not likely to have a breakthrough. And, let’s face it, most of us think about ourselves only to reinforce the comfort and security we sustain believing that, however we describe it, we are on own true path.

Of course she is no doubt thinking the same thing about me. I put too much emphasis on dasein and not enough on nature. So, she suspects, she’s not likely to have a breakthrough either.

Concepts and theories? Nope, I’m still far more intent on prompting those who embrace either one in regard to their own sense of identity to “test” it with respect to the components of my own assumptions, given sets of circumstances we are both familiar with. Human nature evolving over time historically and culturally and experientially.

Thus…

Yes, in medieval times a person might have thought any number of things that people today are unlikely to. And people in medieval times in Europe were likely to think things that people in Asia or Africa or the Americas around the same time were unlikely to think. Then there’s what people thought before and after Freud. Or Jung or Marx or Nietzsche. Only today “overlapping identities” can explode because in the age of the Internet there are countless opportunities to come upon whole other ways to think about yourself. The boundaries between “I” and “we” [and for some “them”] can become increasingly blurred. Which perhaps explains why for the objectivists among us it becomes all that more important to anchor their precious Self in one or another either/or font.

But not you, right?

Francis Fukuyama & the Perils of Identity
Peter Benson critiques a liberal but nationalistic brand of identity politics.

From my frame of mind, without focusing in on a particular context in which actual extant individuals living in actual extant communities contend with conflicting goods, it’s futile to take this up into the intellectual clouds and discuss individual/universal rights versus group rights “theoretically”.

But, sure, if that’s where you want to go “first”, as some insist – defining terms – go ahead. When you settle on these technically correct meanings, bring them down to Earth and integrate them into sets of circumstances where “I” and “we” and “they” actually go about the business of creating rules of behaviors and laws.

There are clearly things that in fact are universally true for all of us. First and foremost the fact that before we can divide ourselves up into “us” and “them” groups, our very existence itself needs to be sustained. Each of us as individuals in and out of groups. The stuff Marx talked about. The means of production providing us with food, water, clothing, shelter. The capacity to defend ourselves. The capacity to create an environment conducive to reproducing the community.

And since resources here can be [or become] scarce one of the reasons found to divide ourselves up in to “us” and “them” is to insure that “we” get the bulk of them. And even within more or less homogenous groups some will make sure that they get the bulk of the bulk itself.

Only this does not all unfold in some simple black and white, either/or interactions. There are just too many variables and too many ways to react to them [and not always consciously] to make any of this…simple.

Let alone objective.

This thread is what substitutes as philosophy Biggums style. :evilfun: :banana-angel: :banana-blonde: :banana-explosion: :banana-dreads: :banana-explosion: :banana-fingers: :banana-guitar: :banana-jumprope: :banana-linedance: :banana-ninja: :banana-linedance: :banana-jumprope: :banana-guitar: :banana-gotpics: :banana-fingers: :banana-explosion: :banana-dreads: :banana-blonde: :banana-angel:

Nietzsche’s Analysis of Nihilism
by Vered Arnon
At the The World Is On Fire website

Well, from my frame of mind [and you know what’s coming], that depends entirely on how “fractured and fragmented” you become. And that is predicated largely on the extent to which you come to view your own moral values as the embodiment of this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

In other words, you may come to distance yourself from the ideals of the past but you have no new ideals to put in their place. Other than one or another rendition of the Uberman: that your value judgments however fractured and fragmented – nihilistic – they might be must prevail over the scriptures embraced by the bleating sheep.

Then this distinction again…

Of course there are those who argue that the Nazis used their own “transitional stage” to mount, among other things, the “final solution”. National socialism as the “active” nihilism. So, as nihilism goes, which is the least dangerous kind…passive or active?

In any event, this part where “all is meaningless” pertains only to the assumption that, in a No God world, there does not appear to be a “transcending font” for any essential – ontological, teleological – meaning.

And even here any particular nihilist is no more able to demonstrate that than those claiming that their own font establishes that their own essentially meaningful take on human existence is the One True Path.

Their very own Coalition Of Truth.

Let’s just say that this…

nytimes.com/2021/09/16/opin … avior.html

…comes closer to my own understanding of dasein than anything you you are likely to come across from the objectivists here.

[b]'Is Self-Awareness a Mirage?

One of the most unsettling findings of modern psychology is that we often don’t know why we do what we do. You can ask somebody: Why’d you choose that house? Or why’d you marry that person? Or why’d you go to graduate school? People will concoct some plausible story, but often they really have no idea why they chose what they did.

We have a conscious self, of course, the voice in our head, but this conscious self has little access to the parts of the brain that are the actual sources of judgment, problem-solving and emotion. We know what we’re feeling, just not how and why we got there.

But we also don’t want to admit how little we know about ourselves, so we make up some story, or confabulation. As Will Storr writes in his excellent book “The Science of Storytelling”: “We don’t know why we do what we do, or feel what we feel. We confabulate when theorizing as to why we’re depressed, we confabulate when justifying our moral convictions and we confabulate when explaining why a piece of music moves us.”

Or as Nicholas Epley puts it in his equally excellent “Mindwise,” “No psychologist asks people to explain the causes of their own thoughts or behavior anymore unless they’re interested in understanding storytelling.”'[/b]

The extent to which “I” is a mirage – or just a story we tell ourselves – depends in large part on how close to or far away from you get in regard to the either/or world.

In regard to moral and political value judgments – or to our likes and dislikes re music and the arts – it seems clearly more an existential “confabulation” than anything the objectivists here will cling to. Some no doubt all the way to the grave.

Even those like Maia who take pride in not being an objectivist are really not all that far removed from the psychological comfort and consolation they derive from being on their very own One True Path. Their precious Self able to anchor them to a “spiritual” essence that allows them to call themselves “a moral person”. No less just their own subjective “story” of course but then that’s all it has to be, right?

Of course, Brooks then needs to put this part in perspective:

[b]"Maybe we can’t know ourselves through the process we call introspection. But we can gain pretty good self-awareness by extrospection, by closely observing behavior. Epley stressed that we can attain true wisdom and pretty good self-awareness by looking at behavior and reality in the face to create more accurate narratives.

Maybe the dignity in being human is not being Achilles, the bold, thoughtless actor. Maybe the great human accomplishment is being Homer, the wise storyteller. In telling ever more accurate stories about ourselves, we send different beliefs, values and expectations down into the complex nether reaches of our minds, and — in ways we may never understand — that leads to better desires, better decision-making and more gracious living."[/b]

Sure, that’s part of “I” here as well.

And that’s why we need to explore actual contexts in order to examine how each part comes into play in regard to our own value judgments.

Francis Fukuyama & the Perils of Identity
Peter Benson critiques a liberal but nationalistic brand of identity politics.

Indeed, “one of us” vs. “one of them” when linked to our own account of “personal identity” and “group loyalties” can and will have enormous consequences in regard to such things as climate change.

Only here “personal identity” is often subsumed by many in the capitalist ethos that revolves far more around “show me the money” and “what’s in it for me?” and “I’ve got mine, Jack”.

Philosophy? Ethics? Dasein? Those who run the global “political economy” may not call themselves moral nihilists but for all practical purposes that’s what sustains the global economy. And has now for centuries. “National identity” for the ruling class in America and Russia and China and all the other big players means three things:

1] markets
2] natural resources
3] cheap labor

Or are you still duped by those in the West who claim it is all about the pursuit of democracy and freedom and human rights?

Where things do get genuinely tricky here is when political economy relating to the bottom line at home and foreign policy abroad gives way to any number of “social issues”. From abortion to gender roles to sexual preferences to animal rights to the ownership of guns, the “one of us” vs. “one of them” mentality can become very real “social” conflagrations such that how you think of your own identity and the extent to which you pledge allegiance to “group loyalties” can transcend political economy per se.

That’s the part where you get closer to [i]I[/i] as the objectivists understand it or closer to “I” as those like me understand it.

How scary it might seem not to believe that your own personal identity here is rock solid only because it must be in order to sustain one or another rendition of the “psychology of objectivism”.

Francis Fukuyama & the Perils of Identity
Peter Benson critiques a liberal but nationalistic brand of identity politics.

What he means of course is that some anchor their sense of self to particular political prejudices that they acquire out in particular worlds understood in particular ways.

On the other hand, to the extent that the objectivists among us cling to their prejudices in regard to things like race and gender and ethnicity and sexual orientation and conflicting goods there is no getting around the fact that those they target will be nudged propelled or compelled to seek out those who are like them.

I merely suggest that by “self-chosen” there are any number of aspects that make up one’s identity that are rooted in dasein such that, depending on how far you take it, you can end up as more or less “fractured and fragmented”.

That and the extent to which those like Fukuyama [and his equivalent on the left] come to propose that in regard to particular moral or political issues, those such as liberals or conservatives have created the most rational or virtuous identity. That’s when my own arguments come into play.

Socrates, meet iambiguous?

Only, for me, that crucial distinction between those things about myself that I am – that I can be – definite about: all the actual facts about myself that are anchored to the either/or world.

And then all those those things I seem unable to be definite about. “I” in the is/ought world. Not to mention any number of things that those like Plato seemed definite about.

The Metaphysics of Groundhog Day
Lawrence Crocker says it’s about time, and personal identity, and free will.

Time and identity. One take from Hollywood.

As you might imagine, my own subjective “take” on Groundhog Day revolved precisely around the manner in which Phil Connors learns to become a decent human being rather than a narcissistic scumbag. The plot was preposterous but how difficult is it to imagine that out in the real world a series of very similar events experienced over time might prompt you to reconsider the way you think about yourself and the behaviors that you choose.

Then we can argue about whether all rational men and women are obligated morally to be decent human beings rather than narcissistic scumbags.

And, given particular contexts, what it means to be a decent human being when confronted with contexts that swirl around, say, conflicting goods?

Also, the film Timecrimes. Although in these films [as I recall] there is not nearly as much emphasis placed on identity given the manner in which I construe it pertaining to the question, “how ought one to live”?

Groundhog Day is more about the transformation of Phil from a man who at first is bent mainly on merely taking advantage of the time loops, to someone who as a result of these experiences finds himself actually becoming the man he pretends to be. From merely wanting to get Rita in bed he comes to the realization that he really cares about her. A new man.

Identity in that sense.

The Metaphysics of Groundhog Day
Lawrence Crocker says it’s about time, and personal identity, and free will.

Except that as Phil becomes more and more cognizant of supertime, he starts to deal with whether his supertime resides in what existentially he has become – the narcissistic scumbag – or can in fact actually begin to reconfigure into a supertime that is more in sync with what some/many/most would construe to be the supertime that reflects a more essential goodness. That’s the Hollywood ending in a nutshell. There’s who you think you are and there’s how you ought to be instead.

Then all we need is the context.

It’s not that Phil learns something about himself [in or out of supertime] but how existentially given the life that we live all of us come to learn what we do in being predisposed to learn this instead of that. This and the ever crucial question that some ask: what ought we to have learned about ourselves to be construed – by philosophers? ethicists? Hollywood producers? – as rational and virtuous human beings.

On The Soul
Mark Goldblatt gets animated about his self.

On the other hand, there are any number of us here who speak of their own self as though that were preposterous. Why? Because they have a soul. All that problematic existential stuff rooted in the many changes that can unfold over the course of their lives, bringing them to make many different assumptions about themselves is no match for that. After all, the majority of them will insist, that part of them comes from God. We are born with a soul. And, in fact, when our physical body is rotting in the grave, our soul will already be doing its thing in Heaven.

Not unlike conjectures regarding God Himself. And, without God, what can a soul be linked to? Some cosmological entity pantheists allude to that from my own frame of mind never comes to be other than the vaguest of things. Especially given how utterly, utterly vast we now know the universe to be. My soul given all of that?! Even God Himself becomes more bewildering. If He does exists what possessed Him to make the cosmos so gigantic?

Of course here we find ourselves wondering what other tricks the brain might be playing on us. Forget the soul. “I” itself might well be just a…a domino? This domino typing these words autonomically so that the domino that you are can autonomically read them.

And that’s almost as spooky as the soul itself.

On The Soul
Mark Goldblatt gets animated about his self.

Hmm…

For the first time, this point has actually prompted me to think about the fact that I can hear my own voice “in my head”. What exactly to make of that? As though “I” am in there somewhere giving voice to my own conscious thoughts.

Or is it all just another mental molehill that signifies practically nothing at all.

Also, it doesn’t make my thinking about dasein go away. If there is a soul it is no less shaped and molded by any number of events and variables in my life I only have so much understanding of and control over.

Not at all unlike you.

Okay, but let’s assume instead that the soul does consist of an “immaterial essence”. Try to imagine it interacting with other souls – with God – in Heaven. Instead, most probably assume that somehow this immaterial essence manages to acquire the material substance that we equate with things like angels. We imagine that – presto – “I” becomes more or less like I am now. And I interact with loved ones who had in turn died in much the same manner as though I hadn’t died at all. As much as the human body is the source of all manner of dismay “down here”, “up there” we’ll need it again as a container for the soul in order to imagine Paradise as at least somewhat the same as the lives we live now.

Like for example, the coon hunting episode from the Twilight Zone: youtu.be/kLBTTIf7EzA

Or, instead, have some believers in the soul as an immaterial essence actually given some thought to how exactly a soul would function beyond the Pearly Gates.

On the other hand, come on, what does it really mean to insist that, even to a limited extent, the mind-body problem has been solved. We may be closer to a more definitive understanding of it but who here doubts that a 100 years from now we might actually be a lot closer still.

But will it ever be resolved?

Still the part where consciousness – the self – itself can be profoundly impacted by such things as diseases, injuries, drugs etc., has to give one pause regarding how much control we do have over deciding who we are.

On The Soul
Mark Goldblatt gets animated about his self.

Really, actually think about that. Here you are certain that you know who you are. Soul or no soul. Then one day you do get whacked in the head, or a tumor sprouts, or the brain becomes diseased. The chemical and neurological interactions begin to come closer to “I” in a dream world. The autonomous I [in a free will world] undergoes any number of transformations. All more or less completely beyond your grasp…and control. Even in the either/or world your identity slips further beyond your command. Dasein is still around…only shoved back all that much more on the back burner.

Soul or no soul.

All the more reason to cling to the belief that you do have a soul. After all, the soul is that part of your identity connected directly to God. The soul is the Me-ness that the whack and the tumor and the disease can’t touch. God may have had His reasons for turning your sense of identity upside down on this side of the grave but the soul itself is transported to salvation – to Paradise – on the other side.

Only how many convinced that they do have a soul ever will “really, actually think about this”?

I simply suggest this is rooted more in their need to believe in the soul than in any serious attempt to grapple with it in a philosophy venue.

On The Soul
Mark Goldblatt gets animated about his self.

Again, a wholly concocted spiritual contraption. You think to yourself, “it’s important to have a soul. That is what links all the changes I go through in my life to the Me. Also to God.”

It’s the platform you need. So all the proof of its existence you need is a consciousness able to think it up. The perfect coincidence.

And in order to confirm it all “in your head” you can create a sequence of assumptions like this:

Or maybe the soul is a material thing but the neuroscientists just haven’t pinned this part down yet. Maybe it’s intertwined in all that QM stuff or in that mysterious “dark matter” and “dark energy” that astrophysicists grope to understand.

But that’s the beauty of it. All one need do is to believe in it. After all, those who scoff at its existence have yet to prove it does not exist. Anymore then they have established that God does not exist.

The part that, once you die and and your soul goes to Heaven [or its equivalent in other religions] will all become much, much clearer. If only because the soul is all that will remain of “I” anyway.

Hate to break our deal but although deals are not made to be broken, my empathetic journey places me in a very subtly balanced situation, almost corresponding to Yours, but with a damning twist that spells out either you will or will not.

That is to say I do not engage because of this or any other forum’s irresolvingly frustrating enpass, but because strange to hear, for excellance that one loves strawberry’s but does not eat them. Or I can get out of a fractured state, like mine, to go outside and meet people but simply won’t or as I was won’t to say at times, I can’t.

Nevertheless , that type of behavior mirrors the soul within, and that soul not nurtured will eventually wither and due.

Would you believe that I am really a retroactive bum at heart, retrograded to Petrarc and those immobile who held luminance above punishment by the gods?

But then Hobbes comes along with his raging bullish attack mode?

Can you not go back into earlier friezes such as the rape of Europa and not see some conflicted
beginnings to the continental divide?

You know, if dasein had a “condition”.

Dasein is conditional:

"How does Dasein disclose itself to itself?

Dasein has, in the first instance, fallen away from itself as an authentic potentiality for Being its Self, and has fallen into the ‘world’. … Idle talk discloses to Dasein a Being towards its world, towards Others, and towards itself—a Being in which these are understood, but in a mode of groundless floating."

It’s this groundless floating, that causes concern, inter alia, and such concern progresses toward the condition of it’s own existential dread.

That’s a pretty universal proposition, so we, you, i, and lot’s of others included.

Where boundary between ‘being’ fractured’ as a subjective aspect of a singular life, and a universal conditioning of masses of people
Is tenuous, with the gap progressively widening as the deconstructing elevator descend from greater to lesser heights, toward newer formed revisions of what we dogs designate as reality.
Can one, anyone argue this point?

After due consideration I notibly.re-accept the deal, of appearing as if, taste was merely in my mouth.

Again, biggy, abrasiveness is not one of my worst qualities.

You really are a good guy. Impressions aside.

Alan Sokal to meno:

If we weren’t both compelled by the laws of nature to be entirely different people even I couldn’t tell us apart. I understand you as Sokal even less than I understand myself as you.

So, is it a “condition”? I’m pretty sure with me it’s not.

Ok. that’s understandeable , but I posed something similar in the ‘determination’ post and someone stopped me cold in something in some other context.

He said ‘petty good’ and i’m quite sure he meant ‘pretty good’

So when you say the you are pretty sure that it’s not your condition, that may be a bit off from saying you’re absolutely sure.

As far as I am concerned and all the stuff I said in various half baked forums, i am as well torn by seeking not to exclude myself from either posituation.

So at this point in my life, and actually at any point from birth uupward to the present time, I could not make enemies, even if I wanted to

So yes, I am fragmented somewhat like you , maybe more or less, but really we are not running a competition of sorts or are we able to approximate it.

But got to tell you one thing, whenever I come to your defense when you are assailed by some differing opinionated interpretation, I am ready to jump to your defense, therefore invoking the wrath of assailants.

So whoever I am typically or architypically, nature or Alan, you or just being myself , it really does not phase the source or the destination which I may or not identify through mine,or your, or anyone particular understanding

I hope that my will to overcome the direction of powerless individual distinctive perceptions that anyone could misapprehend.

Again, with my earnest hope of not willing or able to push this envelope any further then mutually limited by conditions beyond my or your control.