I do believe that many objectivists are wrong and silly. Also, that if they get into a position of power over others they can be quite dangerous. Often with the best of intentions.
But I don’t predicate that on Science or Philosophy or God. Or on something said to be Rationally or Metaphysically or Objectively true. Instead, I offer folks my own subjective understanding of myself “out in the world” from the perspective of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
Knowing full well that in the past I believed something other than I do now; and knowing that I might come upon a new experience or meet someone new or even read the next post here at ilp and come to believe something else.
But, in part, it is because I still believe what I do now that I have choosen to disengage from others by and large. In other words for the reason I noted above.
But I have no illusions about my “progressive” ideas. They are deeply embedded existentially in my past experiences, relationships, and sources of information. But others who embrace more conservative narratives think much the same of their own behaviors.
It then only comes down to the extent to which they think as they do because they are able to convince themselves that what they think necessarily conveys the most rational [ethical] manner in which to think about these things.
Well, I don’t have access to this point of view anymore.
And if someone thinks those who still do embrace it have the potential to be dangerous if they take their political values and reconfigure them into some sort of ideological Truth…then they think like I do.
It seems to me you have not really tried believing your position all the time. Mull over what this would be like and the reasons you do not actually do this.
What “in the world” does that mean though? I live what I believe by, in part, disengaging from the world of political interaction. I now often feel profoundly fractured and fragmented in reacting to the news from day to day. I see all the different arguments from all the different sides…and I filter them through dasein and conflicting goods.
Then [again] this:
How can I think like I do and interact with others at all? 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 everytime I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might just as well have gone in the other direction instead…Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it together at all. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
This is what I believe here and now.
And this is what I believe others do not want to believe about themselves. They want some sort of objective moral and political Truth they can attach “I” to. Thus objectivism [to me] becomes more and more embodied in human psychology.