That “long view” focuses too far away. It has lost all the details.
It matters to a dog if it gets kicked.
Racism, “police brutality”, COVID, …
These things truly matter.
Well, stuff matters to me. To detach, as you say, in general, is sort of like cutting off a piece of myself to stop suffering. My hand hurts, so I cut it off. I know this is hard for people to get, and there are so many traditions that encourage detachment, but it’s not for me. Of course I may find that I no longer care so much about X, but that’s different.
I guess I find active to be a part of who I am. Again, it would be like cutting off an piece of my. Judging my desires and goals and loves.
Or one could just get it over quickly with a hand gun.
But oddly not accepting your own nature, which is active, connecting and connected, has desires and loves and things matter to it.
I see it as quite the opposite: as not accepting yourself, many parts and facets and urges and loves.
Of course, peace is great. I don’t want peace all the time. IOW I also like challenges and excitement. Perhaps there is some sea creature that looks a bit like seaweed and it enjoys a peaceful passiveness only. But then, that’s not me. I am working on accepting me. Rather than accepting ‘the way things are’. If I can’t accept me, how could I possibly, honestly accept others, for example. Since they have desires and loves and goals and yearnings. I am this kind of social mammal, with a love of intimacy and also passion and also urges to accomplish and so on.
It sounds lovely, in a way: acceptance. But if one looks a tiny bit deeper, it is actually a lack of acceptance. Accept what is outside you, but do not accept what is inside you. That is what detachment is. Because we are not detached (as a rule). We are engaged, connected, intimate and/or seeking it, passionate, desiring, emotional creatures. And that is what is closest to me. If can’t accept that I am not detached, all further acceptance is tainted.
You’re not wrong, the answers are not readily available…
But you gotta keep in mind that outside the scope and scale of the interpersonal… we are, as individuals, virtually powerless.
Consequently the conversion rate of you sacrificing an interpersonal good, for a grand scale societal or even global good, is atrocious.
So unless your efforts are part of a grander alliance where the sum total pays off in the end, you’re just spitting on forest fire hoping to making it rain…
I’ve found those who dismiss answers to questions without first considering them, tend to be quite arrogant, categorically refusing to believe anyone else could solve or avoid a problem that they could not.
I don’t think identity politics is going to provide a solution to the problem of identity politics. It may help different identity groups to gain or lose power, however. And that can result in a redistribution of identity group satisfactions and resentments. Whether the net result reduces intergroup conflict is indeed questionable.
On a local level I observe that relations between the races though far from perfect have never been better. Which is not to say that police abuses don’t happen where I live.
Like many revolutions in the past the present one began with technological change. The black lives matter revolution wouldn’t be possible without the broad access to cell phones with cameras by ordinary people on the street.
I support the revolution not based on guilt about white privilege but based on human rights and belief in the concept of the equal justice under the law.
As per usual with me, I am never quite sure what it is exactly that you are trying to get across to me.
Only that in some way it involves me doing something wrong.
Look, for the longest of time, I was one or another psychologically grounded objectivist. Both God and No God. And it was tough to reconfigure my “self” into a nihilist that had thought himself into believing that his very own human existence was essentially meaningless.
But: along the way I had accumulated any number of things I came to love. Things, in other words, that existentially were meaningful and gratifying and fulfilling. And now the abyss looms larger than ever in taking all of that over the edge into oblivion.
So, sure, for a few hours a day I come into places like this in order to encounter folks who, like me, connect the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then. Only very, very differently. After all, I have little to lose and a lot to gain if someone manages to tuck me in another direction.
Besides, as a polemicist, I have always enjoyed jousting with words. And, now, in waiting for godot, that becomes just one more distraction.
But, come on, it’s here, at ILP. It’s not like anything we exchange is going to have an impact much beyond our own infinitesimally tiny internet community.
Still, I respect the intelligence of many who do participate here and it’s not out of the question that someone will “break through” and actually spark in me some semblance of…hope?
Sure, there’s always that.
But all I can do here is to think back on the days when I really did believe that I was in sync with the “real me”. In sync further, moral and politically, with “the right thing to do”. And while it was often brutal in witnessing first hand the “Sixties” reconfiguring into the “Eighties” – and look at us now! – that was nothing compared to losing my grip on all that sustained me by way of feeling comforted and consoled in the self-righteous conviction that only objectivism can provide. Or, rather, did in fact provide me.
But, again, that’s just by own personal narrative. No less an existential contraption. Only now it is construed all that much more precariously given the profoundly problematic sense of reality that “I” sustain now.
From my frame of mind, being more or less “at ease” is derived largely from the existential juncture that is one’s “philosophy of life” and one’s “set of circumstances”. Ever and always: Here and now. And that is certainly the case in regard to racism in America. One is either more or less politically idealistic. One is either more or less optimistic. One is either more or less impacted by actual racism in their lives.
Each of us is embedded in our own “situation”. Out in a particular world derived from actual lived experiences that we may or may not be able to communicate to others. I’ve just become considerably more cynical in regard to resolutions.
And my own focus [here in a philosophy venue] is less on whether that makes me feel “too unpleasant” and more on the extent to which, given my own take on the human condition encompassed in my signature threads, it still seem to be a reasonable way in which to construe the world around me.
this fits what I tend to do. I suppose sometimes I can enjoy spitting on a nefarious product or company also. But then, that is not a sacrifice.
The nice thing about your posts, is that no one need bother to refute them. You refute yourself. Then you suggest that others might want to think like you. I haven’t seen you offer a compelling reason why anyone should. Finally you often include the caveat “or so it seems to me.” And so, I suppose, it does. ; )
Well, given our history, I can sympathize with that interpretation. Actually here I was saying you were doing something with greater ease than one might think if one read your core position. And that that ease with which you used the term ‘tough’ might be something that you could allow in more of your beliefs. It wasn’t an attack, though obviously I have attacked many a time. I’m not really in the mood to attack. Life is hell for me right now.
Who knows? I remain unconvinced by Western causality. And then even in Western causality there is ‘the butterfly effect’, of course that could cut any number of ways. We might cause what we don’t want, even with a good argument. Western science has a default that things are disconnected unless proven otherwise. That’s just a default, a bias. Might be a good one, might not be.
Maybe I’m just selfish. And then also, while I certainly connected better with one political team, I found it very hard to be on that team. Always. I mean, I don’t like protests. Regardless of how much I agree. Maybe I never could quite identify, even if my values matched or came close. I think I also had the feeling it was all to facile. I don’t really associate the ‘real me’ with my political beliefs. That seems, hm…anyway, not my idea of the real me. Not that my politics have nothing to do with me, it’s just not my focus. The real me has to do more with interpersonal dynamics, emotions, my interests. And I see moving towards what feels more like me is more an elimination rather than gathering. Certainly not a gatheringof beliefs,right or otherwise. It’s not about finding the right poliitics, not much anyway. It certainly not about finding the right arguments. But about moving away from guilt and self-hate (I shudder to think of how you will take that). I certainly hope if I stop hating myself and stop confusing guilt with love, I will not be a monster. But I don’t start from the position ‘ok find the moal rules that make one less likely to be a monster.’ Thatdemands fragmentation as far as I can tell,once you believe something.
I suppose I am focused not on solving problems by finding the right position on things, or the right beliefs, but rather, feeling better or more myself, which includes care for others because I am connected to them,a nd even nature. Perhaps compared to you I never experienced the ‘luxury’ of a seemingly unified self aligned with one of the labels out there. I do feel more unified than I used to. But I did not have a golden age which I lost.
Sure, I think there should be more space for noticing problems with real humility about not knowing solutions. I think Marx had some excellent criticisms of capitalism. His solutions seem pretty damn naive in retrospect. ‘You can’t complain if you don’t have a solution’. I don’t agree. (you haven’t said this, but it’s common, explicitly or implicitly)
At the
risk of seeming to say you are wrong, here I think we are different. Of course I’d like to have a reasonable way to construe the world around me. But it’s not quite how I come at things. If I focused on coming up with a reasonable way to construe things, I think it would be mostly in the thinky wordy brainpan. IOW if I made it my project to come up with a reasonable way to construe things, my main project, I would get new words in my head to live up to. Like a ticker tape of correctness. With the rest of me, the bulk of me, in a mess despite the perfect little thoughts. So, I try to focus on the mess and coming together and being less of a mess, as I experience it. This might very well increase my construing reasonably. But that’d be a side effect. AGain, makes me think I am more selfish thought nto necessarily in a pejorative sense. I seem to be able to move towards greater unity over time in my life and if not unity than collaboration between my parts. Compared to younger versions of me. That is my experience over time. Finding right answers and convincing arguments has produced very little as far as I can tell, for me.
I can imagine you asking how do you know you are less a mess or how can I demonstrate to all rational people this is a realer more unified me. Well, good question. But that’s not my goal. To demonstrate it to others. I’d like to experience it. I think the best I can manage is to follow what seems to lead me there and it isn’t perfect arguments, or the right political party, or first construing reality correctly then aligning the rest of myself with that. That all I experience as rather shallow. In me at least. I could have the best beliefs about women but treat them like shit, in sublte ways or not so subtle ways. Beliefs, shmeifs.
You’re an old guy like me. Gestalt therapy was one early approach, where fragmentation is presumed, at least on the surface. One has parts and they don’t get along or form allegiances and have tiffs. Let them have at it. The process is not trying to figure out if the part of you that hates your mother is wrong and the part that feels sympthy is right. The point is getting them to BOTH freely express and over time there can be a merging. You have to experience this. It cannot be proved to you and all rational people and I am sure many rational people would not find enough to like fast enough to want to continue. For me it felt right. And in a weird way, I enjoyed it. I liked making internal fights explicit. Everybody in me got to have their say with great passion. Rather than my frontal lobes trying to figure out which one was right and them demanding the others, who never even got to express themselves, do the right thing.
And please don’t take this as me thinking you should do gestalt therapy. I am just contrasting us. I seem not to have wanted to step outside myself, figure out what my self should be then try to enforce that. That’s fragmentation and every objectivist is entrenched in fragmentation. Most have no process to integrate their own diversity. None. Split, in secret, against themselves. Then they treat others like they treat their own ids.
I know this may be hard to understand. Please ask specific questions about parts you did not follow. If you’re interested. Not so that i can convince you to do gestalt therapy, which I don’t really do anymore. But rather so I can perhaps make it clear where we differ and how. I don’t think you’re interested in what I do, as far as you taking it up. Fair enough. But perhaps there might be something useful in understanding the difference.
In the context of the thread, I would certainly prefer to not be racist. But there are parts in me, or ‘parts’, that are. I could suppress them, hate myself for them, or I can let them express, in private, and see what lies underneath. In a sense accept the parts, but see what is driving them. And the antiracist in me can also have things driving it. and these can be problematic, even if the belief or intention is good. The right virtue signals in its own way, which they don’t seem to notice, but I think that term is actually a spot on one for many patterns on the left. It doesn’t make their beliefs wrong, but they can be really rather fucked up at the same time. Even racist underneath while espousing their antiracism much of the time.
The goal can be to be good or to be yourself. yes, there are grarly epistemological issues around both of those goals. But the second one is experiential, not didactic.
Karpel,
I have a very straight forward sentence for you about your experientialism psychology/inclination.
Anti-reasoning is not a part of my being. There’s nothing in me there to “express itself in quiet”. That this is true for you, means that you’re drawn to iambiguous because this is a “part of you” that needs to express itself in the innocuous context of a message board. Part of you, like iambiguous, is always arguing that your arguments never mean anything (anti-reason), but you still post them anyways, just like iambiguous —— and that causes self hatred.
I understand why people try to rationalize anti-rationality —— life has denied them in cruel ways, and everyone deserves the best. You’re making an alliance with your captor (Stockholm syndrome)
No, I don’t refute them. I merely acknowledge that “I” in the is/ought world grappling with such value judgments as racism and privilege in any particular community in any particular historical, cultural and experiential context is the embodiment of dasein.
“I” as an existential contraption embodied in a particular subjective/subjunctive narrative interacting with others intersubjectively by way of accumulating particular political prejudices.
Intellectually, the antithesis of objectivism.
In the OP you asked, “as a white male should I feel guilty because I enjoy white privilege?”
I responded:
To which you responded…
Uh-oh, I thought, he’s back to being a “stooge” again!
And my main intention here is not to suggest that others ought to think like I do. After all, why on earth would anyone want to?! Why would someone actually choose to feel “fractured and fragmented” in what they have come to construe to be an essentially meaningless existence that, in accumulating any number of cherished existential relationships is then faced with the obliteration of all that he has come to know and love by way of tumbling over into the abyss that is nothingness?
That I take to be a self-refutation. You think life is meaningless, therefore any meaning you argue for is refuted, including the proposition that life is meaningless as an absolute. Therefore you insinuate your position for others rather than argue for it directly. But there’s no logical necessity for them to do that since you’ve already refuted yourself.
The way I see it, you are simply denying the meaning in which you are embedded by virtue of being a human and all that that implies including its tragedy which you inadvertently affirm with your lamentation of approaching Oblivion.
This has been answered. Many people will accept all sorts of things (true or not) even though they are horrible, if they help them avoid things that scare them more. And note: people can have illogical fears. It might seem like someone could not fear what you described less than something else, but they can. This may not apply in your case. But you ask this rhetorical question as if it must be the case that no one would chose an extremely pain set of beliefs. But people do this all the time.
Perhaps you wouldn’t, but others choose such things. I mean, there are plenty of people who have, within Christianity ended up believing they are going to Hell for their sins. And on no evidence that you would accept as evidence.
So you’re claim here is wrong.
You might not, but others might and many do choose or find themselves having really quite horrendous beliefs that they then suffer immensely based on little or no evidence.
And often people will belief things to avoid stuff that seems logically less aweful.
Right. Total annihilation would be better than eternal torture in hell. And to suppose that nothingness entails suffering is illogical. One must exist to suffer.
And around and around we go. Over and again, I attempt to explain the manner in which I distinguish between meaning in the either/or world [meaning that we all share because it is clearly demonstrable] and meaning in the is/ought world [meaning derived more from the manner in which I construe a “self” as derived from dasein].
And I challenge you to note where I have ever argued that “life is meaningless as an absolute”.
Huh?!
What on earth is that supposed to mean? Again, in regard to white privilege, you will either note how this is applicable to your life or you won’t. Then when I react to this more substantive description, you can note what you mean by the above.
To me, just more intellectual gibberish.
Note to others:
In the context of white privilege, what do you think he is accusing me of here? What meaning am I denying in regard to my reaction to the question he posed in the OP?
And, in regard to oblivion, what ever and always concerns me is in how my own attitude pertaining to white privilege may or may not be judged such that on the day that I die there is a possibility that oblivion itself reconfigures into one or another rendition of immortality and salvation.
That’s always been my “thing” here at ILP in regard to value judgments.
What, because someone provides me with an answer…that settles it? No, what happens here at ILP is that we react to the answers that others give us. Some will seem more reasonable/sensible than others. But when it comes to conflicting value judgments revolving around things like race and privilege, my suggestion is that the answers we all give are derived more from the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein than in anything that philosophers have been providing us now for thousands of years.
And what frightens me here is that whatever particular political prejudices “I” espouse in regard to race and privilege “here and now”, it doesn’t change the fact that this is just another manifestation of my belief that my own existence itself is essentially meaningless and that whatever existential meaning I have been able to ascribe to the things I love dearly inches closer and closer to the abyss that is nothingness.
Or, rather, as some seem able to take comfort in, all the way back to “star stuff”?
Given the gap between what “I” think I know about all of this and all that can be known about it going back to a complete understanding of existence itself, what does it even mean to speak of a logical or an illogical fear? All I can do is to hear out those who say that they fear it less than I do. And when I ask them how and why maybe they can provide me with an answer that tugs me closer to their own frame of mind.
Again, my thing here is always zeroing in not on what someone claims to believe or to think or to know, but on the extent to which they are able to convincingly demonstrate how and why I should believe and think and know the same thing. Especially if it manages to yank me up out of the hole that I have dug for myself.
And it’s your own rendition of my “claim” that you insist makes me “wrong”.
Look, there either is or there is not a God, the God.
And, if there is, He will be the Judge and the Jury in regard to one’s fate on the other side of the grave given how one behaved on this side of the grave in regard to race and privilege.
But I cannot pin this God down. Or not anymore. So how on earth would/could I realistically pin down in turn whether nothingness or eternal damnation is preferable? I suspect this too would be embodied in dasein.
And what frightens most of us about oblivion in a No God world, is not the part about not suffering “for all of eternity”, but of losing all of the things that we have come to know and love “for all of eternity”.
We exist here and now. And for each of us as individuals we have accumulated those things that bring us satisfaction and fulfillment; and those things that bring us misery and travail. What could possibly be more existential than that?
And, sure, for any particular one of us, there may come a point where the pain and the suffering begins to dwarf all that brings us pleasure. We may reach the point where the agony becomes so unbearable that we plead to die. And then nothingness would surely be preferable to Hell.
Though I suspect thinking “logically” here would hardly enter into it at all.
double
.
No, but it has been answered and you never countered it. In other words you as a rhetorical question which is a statement. But it has been responded to before, and you never bothered to refute or try to that answer. But you continue to assert it anyway. IOW you act as if what you said has been determined to be true. You appealed to incredulity. That appeal to incredulity has been answered before. And you never even try to refute it. So I said ‘that has been answered’. This is a common pattern of yours. Just like when you accuse people of not giving concrete examples, when they have. There are many other examples of this behavior.
In this specific case you act like what you quoted had to do with racism and priviledge…
That issue, the one you quoted above, that I responded to with ‘it has been answered’ has nothing to do with race and priviledge.
This kind of not responding is part of why you find people attacking you. You waste people’s time.
You actually quoted it. You actually quoted your own writing and my response, and then you go off on a tangent as if what you are writing about is relevent.
I responded to a specific assertion you made in the form of a rhetorical question.
Then you continue not responding with…
But that is precisely what you did and which I pointed out. You were saying it would make no sense for someone to take on the beliefs you have about the meaninglessness of life, etc. since they are unpleasant and lead to fractureness and fragmentedness. And I responded there and in earlier posts that people do take on unpleasant beliefs with regularity despite them being unpleasant, often to avoid something. You made an assertion in a rhetorical question that people (why would someone etc…) take on an unpleasant belief. That is you assuming in a rhetorical question that no one would.
You did it. Ask yourself why, not me. It may very well not fit with your philosophy. But you did it. People contradict themselves. You can’t deny saying something by saying ‘but I believe X’
You’re a waste of a interlocuter. Done. You’re no better than Ecmandu.
A couple of solipsists. Him functionally, you it seems literally.
You’ve started early on oblivion
I’ve been down that rabbit hole with you a few times before, it’s a dead end.
You don’t even know what God is.