How does philosophy engage with us as a way of life?
An example of this is the gay/trans issue…
we are told it is immoral" and that it destroys
the society/state…
but we actually have two questions there… one is
the allege immorality of being gay/trans and the second
issue is the threat that somehow, gays and trans people
are a threat to society/the state…
when ask, how is being gay/or trans, being immoral?
you never actually get an answer about this… it is assumed
that gays and trans people are immoral, but we aren’t actually told
how that is immoral… on what standards do we base the
statement that gays/trans people are immoral?
how do we decide that gays/trans people are immoral?
what justification would I use to claim that gays/trans people
are immoral? Would I use historical, or political, or social or
philosophical grounds to justify thinking that gays/trans people
are immoral?
I don’t know because the allege immorality of gays/trans people
is just assumed, it is not actually worked out how gays and trans
people are immoral… assumed…
and the second question is, how do gays/trans people
threaten society/state? Once again, that is assumed, not
actually worked out… I would argue that accepting gays
and trans people actually strengthens society and the state,
and it doesn’t “destroy” either the society or the state…
This is one example of how we use philosophy as a way of life…
by examining the values and beliefs of a society/state to see
on what basis do we hold certain beliefs…
I am seeking what values, love, peace, charity, hope among
the possibilities of values that we should follow…
among the failed values of the right wing is the deep
devotion the right has to violence… they support violence
in their love of guns, which is not about protection but about
promoting violence… and the right loves their wars…
and they promote martial/military values…
if not, why do they promote the “sacrifice of the military”
so much?
even a cursory examination of values such as promoted by the right,
the value of violence, we can see that violence cannot produce positive
values of love, peace, hope… only by promoting values that
have positive values can we hope to do as the founding fathers
stated,
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union,
established justice, insure domestic tranquility…”
seeking violent values such as being promoted by the right,
the love of wars, violence, of guns, the military…
that is the legacy of the right wing… and violence only
begats violence… if you wants peace, you have to seek peace,
not violence or guns or martial values… which are values
of being hostile, combative, belligerence…
and so we engage in philosophy in order for us to see that if
we want peace, we must actually engage in peaceful values…
we must work at hard at peace as we do to war/violence…
let us engage in our values as a way of life and then see
what actually happens if we were to take our values
as a way of life… what if we were to accept peace and love
as our way of life, as our values… then we must reject war,
violence, guns, the death penalty…among other things we must
reject if we are to embrace our values of peace…
if we were to accept, as a way of life, violence,
guns, death… then we don’t actually have to do much…
simply vote GOP/MAGA… and you will receive the values
of hate, violence, war and death…that is the way of life
that the right wing offers us…
what I am actually saying is this… act upon the values
that each side promotes and you will see the right
wing love of violence and hate…
and the left attempting to seek peace and non-violence…
for what does the left advocate for? education, peace,
advancement of all… justice for all… and justice is simply
the use of equality for everyone…
so, what values do you use as a way of life?
Kropotkin