Perhaps, but it still comes down to how these temperments and tendencies are hard-wired into any particular individual’s genetic code; and then the extent to which the four points I raise above become rooted [in turn] in a particular memetic sequence.
As opposed to a “serious philosopher” grappling with all that and still managing somehow to define/deduce one or another deontological assessment into existence in regard to one or another set of conflicting goods.
“I” can achieve a measure of comfort and consolation “in the momment”. In other words, embedded in one or another of my distractions. But in regards to morality on this side of the grave and immortality/salvation on the other side it’s beyond my reach.
Some kind of salvation would be nice. Me, I don’t need an objective morality for consolation. I am not even sure it would be one. Some people present it that way, but they seem at least as split and bothered as any nihilist I know, if not more so.
We’re still stuck on “me” though. Yes, this is how your “I” thinks and feels about these relationships here and now. But, if my own assessment of dasein as an existential contraption is reasonable, that’s only a predisposition rooted in the variables I note above. Some people this, some people that. I argue this is largely embedded in the profoundly problematic nature of “I” here with respect to value judgments of this sort. In other words, the extent to which, psychologically and emotionally, “I” here is never really within reach of something approaching the so-called “real me”.
This part
All I note here is that this “works” for you and then you bump into others who do not approve of the behaviors that you choose. They insist that you stop doing them. Or that you choose their behaviors. You explain to them why you chose your own behaviors, and that may or may not be good enough. You work out some compromise perhaps. With me though, I would need to acknowledge to them that I may well have come to choose their own behaviors in turn. And that in any event either set of behaviors can be rationalized as the right thing to do given a conflicting sets of assumptions about the human condition.
OK, I suppose I might do that too, but very, very rarely. I don’t think it will help me or them or anything. Apart from it just seeming like I am fucking with them, or nuts, or being sneaky in some way they do not understand or lacking in self respect…and so on, I see very little liklihood of it helping us somewhere.
Indeed, it doesn’t “help” me when confronting conflicting goods at the intersection of “I” and “political economy”. But there I am still anyway. At least until I can reconfigure my thinking about these things.
Your “gut” is no less an existential contraption to me. It may just be closer to the part about genes. And here in a philosophy venue, I am not concerned with “fucking” with people or being thought of as “nuts”. I’m curious instead to see if others have come up with a way of dealing with conflicting goods such that they feel a less fractured and fragmented “I”.
And the bottom line here will always revolve more around what “works” for someone. At least until someone presents me with an argument that denotes how all rational people are obligated to think about these things.
It’s the part about the things you “will not do” that separates your “I” here from mine. For me, the things you once did, do now or will do are no less existential contraptions. From my frame of mind, you simply can’t know for certain what you might do in the future given all the times that you have changed the behaviors that you once did in the past. Given that you have no way of knowing for sure what new experiences, relationships and ideas you might come upon in the future.
Can’t know for certain, sure.
And there we are. Your frame of mind was predisposed to go in one direction given the constellation of existential variables that came together in a particular way. Mine in another way. That is when I tap the theologians, philosphers, scientists, ethicists etc., on the shoulder and ask for their advice.
And all of this often depends upon the extent to which your life unfolds in relatively stable times. Let something [or some things] of significance happen and the new turbulence can send “I” flying in any number of new directions.
Well, I just went through ten years of challenges unlike anything I ever faced. The trials of Job one friend commented. And yes, I sure changed. My days are quite different, I hate myself much less, I can express myself more openly, during that time I faced a lot of things I regret doing, blah, blah.
We just think about interactions of this sort differently then. Things turned out better for you. That’s great. I merely point out that another sequence of variables might have unfolded such that you ended up a lot worse. But since there is no way for you to really communicate to others the “reality” that you experienced over the past ten years, how close are they going to come to understanding it? I merely suggest that even with respect to your own sense of “reality” here, there are just too many variables either beyond your understanding or control, to enable you yourself to grasp definitively “what happened”.
Let alone in speculating on how, in the best of all possible worlds, things ought to have happened.
Well, here’s the thing. To the extent that you “follow the news” and find yourself confronting the staggering human pain and suffering embedded in these turbulent political conflicts, is [often] the extent to which you might long for an objective moral foundation that all reasonable and virtuous men and women can embrace.
See, that feels like you thinking I am either, ignorant or immoral. I should be like you, but perhaps I am just not paying attention.
I was just reacting to the manner in which I construed your reaction to my search for an objective morality. As though I should just accept that there almost certainly isn’t one and move on to one or another more “pragmatic” agenda.
Sure, that’s one possible alternative. But it still doesn’t make the horrors that I see “on the news” go away. And my own “grim reality” here revolves more around my having convinced myself that “I” here might just as easily have had the opposite reaction. Hell, my life might have been such that I was even contributing to that pain and suffering. Indeed, in many ways I certainly did so as a child raised in the belly of the white working class beast.
I do not see me arriving at the objective morals as reducing the world pain. You seem to think that objective morals ADD to the pain.
It’s not a matter of reducing the pain, but of anchoring “I” in some measure of consolation. Some [many] have convinced themselves that the pain itself exists only is as a result of the behaviors chosen by “one of them”.
And, to the extent that one or anther God or political ideology or objectivist philosophy becomes the foundation for one or another authoritarian governing contraption, the pain is often inflicted on those not construed to be “one of us”.
And yet over and again I acknowledge that the nihilism embedded in the amoral political agendas that fuel the global economy [in today’s world] almost certainly bring about even more human pain and suffering.
You believe in a magically power set of words, a kind of word based magic. Yes, yes, I know, you don’t think it exists, it’s just that for all you know it might AND you build your life around this technical possibility from your perspective.
I don’t think that would help me or others, if I pursued it.
If you think that makes you better than me, I think you are confused.
If you don’t think it makes you better than me, then there is no need to assume I am ignorant or immoral. Remeber your whole position is based on people being different.I react differenty than you do.
No, this is basically what you believe that I believe. On the other hand, how on earth could you not believe what you think I believe? That’s the nature of exchanges of this sort pertaining to “I” in the is/ought world.
And, again, it’s not what “helps” us, but the extent to which a particular frame of mind makes “I” feel more or less fractured and fragmented in a world teeming with conflicted goods embedded in an endless onslaught of contingency, chance and change.
But here the actual social, political and economic permutations gernerated historically, culturally, existentially for any particular “I” will vary in a staggering number of different ways.
“I” think of that one way, “you” in another.
It’s you who keeps suggesting that I rank the narratives others here as either better or worse than mine.
And even if I were able to convince myself that my frame of mind here is in fact a more reasoanble assessment it doesn’t change this: that it is a really, really shitty way in which to gtrapple with the parts both before and after the grave.
Thus:
We’ll just have acknowledge here that in relationship to experiences such as this we understand “I” in different ways. In any experience there is always going to be all of the variables that came to constitute “I” nudging [or propelling or even seemingly compelling] you to do one thing rather than another. Then it comes down to the extent to which “I” wrestles with the option of doing something else instead. And, in particular, the extent to which “I” comes to wrestle with what one ought to do.
Well, it seems like you think the best shot at feeling less fractures is if you found a way to return to an irrefutable objectivism.
No, “in the moment” what works best for me is this capacity I have for sinking down into one or another “distraction”. “I” become wholly engaged in doing something – listening to music, watching a movie, doing anacrostics – that takes me away from a fractured self.
But given how certain I once felt that an objective morality – re God or Reason – was within reach, there’s no way I can make that part of “me” just “go away”. Psychologically, it’s locked inside my head. A true existential contraption. So, sure, why not go looking for it again? Really, what do I have to lose here compared to [however remote the chance of success] what I have to gain?
It’s a no-brainer for me.
Sure, there will always only be “degrees of communication” in exchanges of this sort. But, then, that bascially revolves around my whole point about “I” here. There are things about the lives that we live rooted in particular facts. Things that are true about us for everyone.
For me, though, however much “effort, time and expertise” one puts into grappling with these relationships, there are just far too many variables either beyond our understanding or control. And, many times, both.
You spend a great deal of time calling pretty much everything an existential contraption. You also see communication and unity and certainty also as fallible or non-existent. Let’s look at your perspectives as qualites that make you more or less appropriate for certain tasks. And also let’s look at certain tasks as being more or less suited to who you are now.
No, I focus on “I” as an “existential contraption” only out in an is/ought world awash in conflicting goods.
On the other hand, regarding the overwhelming preponderence of our interactions with others from day to day, it doesn’t seem applicable to me at all.
And, no, I don’t see “communication and unity and certainty…as fallible or non-existent.” Again, with respect to most of what we do with or around others from day to day, these things are all patently obvious. Where that communication, unity and certainty appear to break down however is when someone takes exception to a behavior of yours because 1] it interferes with a behavior of his or 2] it is deemed to be an immoral behavior that must be confronted.