Being or Having: The Pathology of Normalcy
What do you think of the following quote: I do not only see the rose, the rose also sees me.
The homo consumens culture, that dynamic ideology where everything becomes an object for consumption including yourself, has symbolically become a cure for our alienation. The narcissistic and selfish qualities inherent to those that believe in this ideology peculiarly stems from a type of hatred for themselves or quiet desperation, an insecurity and lack of self-esteem.
Consciously, however, they are not bored neither isolated considering the vast social options that enables a network of communication to help compensate for the subjective feeling of alienation and anxiety. If you dress a certain way, have a lot of likes on your Instagram photo, speak and behave in a manner that is pleasant, while pretending to individuality they have 'sold' themselves in and amongst the hundreds of millions of others doing the exact same thing. This requires constancy, a continuity that forces the person' existential experiences to remain static, superficial and without substance. Such a person is vain.
One is therefore replicated in this machine, an empty object because in the mind of the masses, if one does what everyone else is doing, simultaneously everyone is cured from this isolation; there is a symbolic unity. What that means is that we have a feeling of anxiety or depression that is unconscious, and this feeling is an emptiness or a void that we attempt to fill, adding things symbolically into it in an attempt to fill it and so cure this alienation.
This is an illness. It is a symptom of the pathology of normalcy.
So, as an example, if we assume that a 'normal' family is a man and a woman with 2.5 children in a suburban home with a picket fence, if we experience a divorce then perceptually we become 'abnormal' because we are different. We usually understand an illness when one is obviously 'more' sick; if someone has a cold or flu and is bed ridden, they are obviously more sick than a healthy person. Epistemically, our understanding or language is formed through contrast, but when everyone has the same symptoms of this social disease?
The mode of being, or the being mode of existence is a productive relatedness in human experience, a realisation of the potentialities inherent within and to communicate that through action. The having mode of existence manifests itself through a destructiveness to this inherent qualities within and compensates the boredom and absence of an inner life through the continuity of consumerism.
What do you think of the following quote?
The homo consumens culture, that dynamic ideology where everything becomes an object for consumption including yourself, has symbolically become a cure for our alienation. The narcissistic and selfish qualities inherent to those that believe in this ideology peculiarly stems from a type of hatred for themselves or quiet desperation, an insecurity and lack of self-esteem.
Erich Fromm:Unconsciously, this new type of person is a passive, empty, anxious, isolated person for whom life has no meaning and who is profoundly alienated and bored.
Consciously, however, they are not bored neither isolated considering the vast social options that enables a network of communication to help compensate for the subjective feeling of alienation and anxiety. If you dress a certain way, have a lot of likes on your Instagram photo, speak and behave in a manner that is pleasant, while pretending to individuality they have 'sold' themselves in and amongst the hundreds of millions of others doing the exact same thing. This requires constancy, a continuity that forces the person' existential experiences to remain static, superficial and without substance. Such a person is vain.
One is therefore replicated in this machine, an empty object because in the mind of the masses, if one does what everyone else is doing, simultaneously everyone is cured from this isolation; there is a symbolic unity. What that means is that we have a feeling of anxiety or depression that is unconscious, and this feeling is an emptiness or a void that we attempt to fill, adding things symbolically into it in an attempt to fill it and so cure this alienation.
This is an illness. It is a symptom of the pathology of normalcy.
So, as an example, if we assume that a 'normal' family is a man and a woman with 2.5 children in a suburban home with a picket fence, if we experience a divorce then perceptually we become 'abnormal' because we are different. We usually understand an illness when one is obviously 'more' sick; if someone has a cold or flu and is bed ridden, they are obviously more sick than a healthy person. Epistemically, our understanding or language is formed through contrast, but when everyone has the same symptoms of this social disease?
The mode of being, or the being mode of existence is a productive relatedness in human experience, a realisation of the potentialities inherent within and to communicate that through action. The having mode of existence manifests itself through a destructiveness to this inherent qualities within and compensates the boredom and absence of an inner life through the continuity of consumerism.
What do you think of the following quote?
Instead of being related, being in touch with love, with hate, with fear, with doubt, with all of the basic experiences of man, we all are rather detached. We are related to an abstraction, that is to say we are not related at all. We live in a vacuum and fill the vacuum, fill the gap with words, with abstract signs of values...
The reason for this is the ambiguous character of our social reality. In mastering this reality, we develop our faculties of observation, intelligence, and reason; but we are also stultified by incessant propaganda, threats, ideologies, and cultural 'noise' that paralyze some of our most precious intellectual and moral functions.
Comments (143)
Sounds like the whining of someone with some agenda they're too scared to lay out so they hide it behind a lot of flowery obfuscation.
Yes, there's something very wrong with society nowadays, I think anyone with any sense can see that, and blaming "incessant propaganda, threats, ideologies, and cultural 'noise'" isn't going to ruffle any feathers is it? Who thinks propaganda is a good thing?
The problem is, behind all this vague hand-waiving, there will be some specific agenda, only loosely tied to the very real issues with society. Inevitably such agendas stem from nothing but personal bias, and lead to nothing but idolatry.
If there's something wrong with society (and I'm certain there is), the solution will be in real changes people make to their actual day-to-day life, changes which can be demonstrated by at least some logical theory, to actually work. It won't come from some ambiguous prose.
We need conceptual parallels to magnify our own personal story without unconsciously blocking this potential articulation with self-defence mechanisms. The ambiguity of the prose - just like the ambiguity of the parable that attempts to teach one about morality through a story without actually codifying it specifically - is intended to enable us to subjectively reflect and contrast so that we can actually understand why we feel a certain way.
Only then can we be enabled with the right solutions to make real changes. As mentioned, a person could consciously enjoy the consumerism, have a perfect life, partner, family and everything could be great, but they are deeply miserable and are unable to ascertain why. They instead opt for psychological placebos such as new ageism and mindfulness to try and accept the happiness of the situation, despite the fact that they are crying out through their feelings. To be able to make real changes, one really needs to understand and confront why their actual day-to-day life is bad.
This is the precise problem.
I agree, but I don't think anyone particularly wouldn't. The point is this kind of sentiment still leaves open the real question which is how we actually identify the genuine unity. In my experience most people agree that there's something fake about consumer culture and something missing from those that persue it. The trouble is, almost everyone disagrees about what those things actually are.
Quoting TimeLine
Again, one person's new age mumbo-jumbo is another person's deeply held spiritual belief system. How are we to tell the difference?
I think that authenticity is essential to the sucess of any venture in personal fulfillment, but that too is so difficult to measure.
Respectfully, this is risky territory. How is one consciously enjoying a consumerist life, for instance, and yet deeply miserable? A misery that never becomes conscious is hardly a problem.
On the other hand, I understand that someone can have it all on paper and yet be miserable. But this is real or conscious misery. If they truly have it all on paper, then it will probably be called 'depression.' Of course we don't really have it all if we don't have ourselves in a state that enjoys.
What comes to my mind reading your post is the image of an ambitious person who dutifully gathers what one supposedly gathers to be successful/happy -- and yet is not happy. I'm sure that happens, and it's a good theme. A person can be envied and hang themselves, quietly desperate. Or a person can be looked down on and yet be happier than those who look down on him.
No. This is outright BS. The only reason why consumerism is bad is because it leaves you vulnerable to the loss of the pleasure of consuming, through your susceptibility to loss of health, loss of money, loss of friends, loss of social status, etc. If it didn't leave you vulnerable to those things, or if you could be invulnerable to them, then it wouldn't be bad. But life is so structured, that suffering is an intrinsic aspect of it, and consumerism doesn't help to minimise it.
You seem to try to get Buddhism on your side, but it's actually quite the opposite I believe. I'm not sure how deep your understanding of metaphysics is, but metaphysics is certainly relevant here. You never usually engage in discussions of metaphysics here though.
There is no "hidden" despair as such, because there is nothing to do in life. One is free to either do or not do.
When you look at the saying I do not only see the rose, the rose also sees me, the rose itself is no longer an object because there is a genuine reciprocal unity. Ultimately, how we identify and perceive the external world and our relatedness to it is determined by the quality of our mental state. Aside from functional requirements, consumerism teaches us to acquire and own objects where we begin to transform and identify the external world as a thing, including values and ideals. A rose is just a thing, a disposable object. Our relationship with others is devoured by a sense of ownership and entitlement, where people market archetypes in order to be advantageously positioned in society thereby making themselves and their own feelings property.
This is the mode of having. It is kind of orientation or relationship between you and the external world, not actual commodities, and a totality in your perceptions and thinking and thus an actual mode of existence. While there is harmony in this social dynamism, the continuity of this acquisition is constant and as such the very essence itself is nothingness since there is no satisfaction. This mode of having is nothing, empty. The mode of being, on the contrary, is to be creative, to be capable of expressing ourselves and find that genuine relatedness to others. This is impossible if our relatedness to others has no substance, is not rooted with feeling but rather viewing others as merely objects that one can acquire and dispose of.
A beautifully worded statement, but just because it's beautiful doesn't mean it's true. In what sense does the rose "see me"?
Quoting TimeLine
I don't see how consumerism implies that you treat others as objects. The world is as much a forum for action, as it is a place for things. The rose is a thing - how I relate to that thing is a different question from what the rose is.
This is a good question, Foo, and I have mentioned this in another thread, whereby we have conscious thoughts, learned behaviour taught to us since childhood, the language we acquire and the social requisites that enforce behavioural expectations. Our unconscious, however, is our own personal identity, separate and contains intuitive feelings that we are unable to articulate using language. Have you ever encountered a situation where you felt like something was wrong, but could not put words to explain why you felt that way, perhaps until sometime later? Anxiety and depression is the language of this unconscious feeling telling you that something is wrong, for instance, but that you are unable to understand or explain why you feel that way.
So, consciously, you are told that getting married to a trophy wife, working in a secure job, having two kids and living in the suburbs will bring you happiness. You do what you are told. You find that attractive wife, but she is mindless, you cannot have great conversations with her or laugh with her about similar jokes, but you think she is right for you because she epitomises what you are told to find attractive. You are silently suffering because you are blindly following, but you cannot articulate why because there is a totality in your conscious thoughts as dictated by your environment that you actually think that you are supposed to be happy because that is what you are told will bring you happiness. .
We are told that selling ourselves as objects - to be attractive, powerful, wealthy - is the requisite for this success, that we feel accomplished when we post a photo on Instagram and get likes for it despite the fact that it is completely meaningless. The more likes, the more worthy the object. There is an inherent emptiness in this, a lack of relatedness, or substance that despite the fact that we are dynamic, active, energetic and doing things, all of it is really nothing.
The congratulations that we receive from others who are also experiencing the symptoms of this pathology satisfy us consciously because we think there is some unity in this approval, but deep within we understand the self-deceit or the sacrifice to our own self-hood, but we simply cannot articulate it.
How are these likes different from the rose's looking at you?
I understand the contrast between the mutuality of relationship and the one way relationship of possession, but to the extent that one sells oneself and buys a trophy husband, at least the semblance of mutuality is restored. Can you articulate why it is only the semblance and thus unsatisfying?
Isn't yours the question that drives people to church every Sunday? https://youtu.be/UNcu6g7sXPs
The theme of the impact of consumerism and related ways of life on human culture and morality is one you've discussed quite a few times on the forum. You and I have different ways of thinking about the issue. The idea that people generally live lives of quiet desperation does not match what I see in the world. I acknowledge the damage that looking outside ourselves for answers to questions that can only be answered by looking inward can lead to, but I don't put a moral dimension on it.
I don't remember you discussing this with the added metaphysical dimension before. Maybe you did and I missed it. When I first read the rose quote, I couldn't see what connection it had to the issue. What came to mind was the objectivity/ subjectivity dichotomy, but I didn't see what that had to do with consumerism. Later, as I read the rest of the posts in the discussion, it made sense. I've always thought that the ways of thinking that manifest as consumerism are related to a reductionism which leads us to think of ourselves as separate from the world. I think that is traceable all the way back to the enlightenment and the scientific revolution. Consumerism and science both evolved from a particular metaphysical view of reality.
Doesn't that undermine the moral argument against living an inauthentic life dependent on the opinions of others? How can you hold someone responsible for living out the way of life overwhelmingly promoted by western, and increasingly world, culture. That way of thinking has given us the social and technological world we live in now. It's too late to go back, and I don't think you are suggesting that. I don't have a solution, but the phrase that comes to mind when I think about it is "the only way out is through." There is no way of going back, so how can our culture evolve into something more humane.
Fromm stated in "Marx's Concept of Man" 1961:
"...what was originally his" was the unity of existence and essence, which alienation has torn apart. Fromm goes on to state:
"Ask not what the rose can do for you, ask what you can do for the rose."
Feeding, weeding, pruning, debugging the rose, one has a relationship of care that is entirely different from the performing cut roses available to buy.
1) Moderation
2) Engagement
3) Being who I am and not expecting too much of myself
4) Patience
5) Understanding what relationships and friendships means to me
5) Viewing life as a learning experience to express my creativity
6) Developing all aspects of myself: spiritual, emotional, mental, physical
7) Creating a philosophy of life that is practical and useful as a guide
None of this was handed to me and there are no simple solutions. A sailor sets his/her sights and navigates always prepared to change direction and fully aware that while there will be many surprises the navigator has skills and choices that participate in the journey. Life then becomes meaningful no matter what the circumstances may be.
I think there is a big difference between Marx's social/critical theory and vulgar Marxism as practiced ideology.
In a word, anthropomorphic. Maybe on a deeper level, that we appreciate the rose for its beauty and meaning rather than its rational value.
Sounds to me like you're waxing poetic as you gaze into that bouquet you got from your sweetheart on Valentine's Day. Awww.
Well I likened roses to the Nation - why speak of the Nation? Patriotism is a vestige of another kind of relation to the world. People are difficult, much harder to relate to than roses.
At any rate, without making general attacks, I do believe my objection is valid, which is that religious practitioners do find meaning from their practice despite the various Marxist objections you raised, including that acceptance of a higher power is an abdication of one's free will or humanity.
Try Eric Fromm.
The connection between idolatry and alienation is based on the Old Testament. Fromm is not fighting against God as a religiously meaningful symbol for some, but rather he is fighting against religion as an empty place marker, as a golden calf.
Projection. In the end, the representations we make of objects in the world is a projection that determines the quality of our own mental state.
Quoting Agustino
This is a good point and one I am attempting to ascertain in order to find the necessary psychological conditions that enable transcendence, the fundamental mistakes we make that mediate the wrong perceptual attitude. This dichotomy between the thing in itself and things as they appear to us. We learn from others to perceive that a rose is just a rose and like all other objects, it is disposable and the relation we have with it lacks meaning or feeling and one is alienated and void of any emotional connection. The analogy of consumerism is that society is that machine, this buy and sell, commodity demand and marketing in a social and political system that becomes embedded in our representations that our values themselves become aligned with it.
Our value depends on the success of how well we sell ourselves. It is no longer about the quality of our experiences, but whether our experiences are approved. The mode of having.
Kant is unable to give any real explanation of how schema is connected to categories or the conceptual rules that adequately determine this cognitive orientation and since it is the structure of our mental state that is in question as it is reason or our rational faculty that regulates our observations, how we productively associate with the external world is the primary determinant of this relationship. The problem is not the fact that one would want a family and home, but a trophy wife or husband is a form of consumption where one is passively oriented like a commodity without any inner activity.
For instance, being creative is an active orientation that in contrast alleviates boredom, while on the flip-side can also be compensated with destructiveness as an activity or action. What I am attempting to illustrate is this being mode of existence, our capacity to give and to be a part of the world - rather than to take - and our capacity to love, to feel a connection even to simple things like a rose. It is how we project our understanding and has nothing to do with the rose.
Productive self-experience. The framework that determines our value through others is paradoxically narcissistic, despite a reliance on others, because there is an absence of an active orientation towards being.
Many ideologies are formulated on the same tangible proof that enables mobilisation through this essentially faux suggestion of self-worth.
Quoting Hanover
Be careful. This is not the shoutbox so I would appreciate you responding appropriately or not responding at all.
That is not the rose seeing me, but rather I seeing myself in the rose, through the way I choose to relate to it.
Quoting TimeLine
The thing-in-itself is not accessible.
Quoting TimeLine
No, that's not true. Some people's value depends on that, because they let it depend on that, since they want the good things in life, but are not aware of Epictetus' dichotomy of control. Some things are in our power, and some things are not. Their mistake isn't with regards to the preferred indifferents - they are preferred for everyone. Their mistake is with regards to the fact that they cannot wield control over success, if that is defined by having your experiences approved. So in choosing to place your value in that, you give up control to others, and hence are vulnerable to be disappointed.
Exactly, but in this instance think of Foucault and his concept of discourse:
"What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn't only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression"
Society is not empty, it is dynamic and compelling otherwise why else would highly intelligent people be swept away by the tide and very powerful people lack self-esteem. Consumerism enables us to be convinced that we need it, and that without it there is no meaning to our existence and the sensory stimuli that it evokes, the category it places you in that determines your worth, is powerful.
The answer is in our creative pursuits, how we challenge and defy this system by a mode of being rather than a mode of having or of acquisition, the acquisition of values conducive to the paralysis of our own self-worth.
Quoting Agustino
I can't accept this.
Quoting Agustino
Exactly. Ask not what the rose can do for you, ask what you can do for the rose.
Quoting praxis
The value here is still projected, but we value the rose for something more than just an object; being rational is actually the regulator and therefore how we understand beauty and meaning is dependent on the clarity of our rational faculties. Our moral values and consciousness determines our ability to give love.
I read recently that a couple adopted a child from Thailand and the mother had twins, but they took only one child and never looked back neither did they help the family. To them, adoption was an image, they did not actually care about the child clearly by not caring about the family of the child, they just wanted a token adopted child for social reasons rather than moral.
It's not about what you can accept. You can't just pull out a term out of Kant's philosophy and completely misunderstand it. The nature of the transcendental aesthetic precludes whatever is empirically real from ever giving us access to things-in-themselves. To claim otherwise is just to misunderstand Kant's metaphysics.
I didn't pull it out, you did and you are the one misunderstanding it.
Quoting TimeLine
Where did I pull it out when you are the first to have mentioned it in this thread? :brow:
As above. Far out, Agu, do you have to do this in every single thread?
???? Yes, that is in a place where I quote your wrong use of thing in itself.
Can I summarize this then as it's better to give than receive and we should take time to smell the roses because there's meaning even in the smallest moments? I'm not sure who disagrees, and I think attributing the opposite view to the consumer driven capitalists is a strawman. Adhering to an economic philosophy for pragmatic purposes says nothing of the person's theological position. My cite to Joel Osteen was meant to point out that you are espousing traditional Judeo-Christian values, which are held most closely by the consumers you condemn.Quoting TimeLine
Either that or they could only save one life, so they did what they could do. The couple did a deed far greater than I, as I adopted no one. I'd also say that even if (and I don't think it's the case) this couple adopted a child and saved him from misery and did it for no reason other than for fame and attention, I still applaud them. A child saved is a child saved, regardless of intent.
We generally ask both questions - if you imagine that we must treat each and everything in the world by solely asking what we can do for them is (somewhat) silly I think. As I said before, we always see the world from both vantage points - both as a world of things and as a forum for action. Indeed, if we didn't see it as the former, then we couldn't act, because any action implies using things in some way or another. Now you might say that only some kinds of usage are ethically permissible, and that is fine, but it doesn't change the fact that we always see the world from both vantage points.
Eliminating the "world qua forum for action" viewpoint leads to nihilism and despair. Eliminating the other pole, "world qua set of things" leads to idealism and inaction, precisely because we're left with nothing with which to act.
I don't follow why one couldn't believe that our perceptions have been skewed by societal expectations and then further hold that we can somehow transcend our skewed perceptions and then correctly perceive the thing in itself. That is a common view afterall. It's the idea that clarity can be obtained by contemplation, meditation, prayer, or whatever. I get that it's counter to Kant, but so what? I'd think even the staunchest direct realist would admit to false perceptions, yet contend they could be clarified.
Fair enough. I'll try, but I gotta be me.
I don't object to that, but please don't use a word with heavy connotations when you want to put forward this sort of idea, because then you'll be misunderstood.
Kant also accepts that idea - that we can be mistaken in our views about empirical reality, and these mistakes can be corrected. Kant's distinction is between thing-in-itself and phenomenon. The thing-in-itself is unknowable. Within the phenomenon, we have the distinction between the empirically ideal and illusory, and the empirically real. So when you're in the desert and hallucinate an oasis, that is empirically ideal, and you can achieve clarity about this, and overcome this false perception. But overcoming this false perception has nothing to do with gaining access to the thing-in-itself, and starting to talk about the thing-in-itself in this context really confuses matters, because the word already has a philosophical baggage.
I am not attributing to consumer driven capitalists, like "I have this object" but the fundamental orientation of our self with the external world and where our character is structured by contemporary society that determines this complete totality in the way that we perceive the world. We are no doubt driven by material gain and this mode of existence is so deeply rooted in our understanding that possessing and ownership have become engendered even in our values that everyone including yourself have become property. Prior to this, dogma dominated the social arrangements that values were input and illustrated in the dominant orientation of experience. Both are actually wrong.
Quoting Hanover
They didn't need to 'save' anything, the amount of money they spent taking this child away from his twin and his mother could have been used to give the entire family a comfortable life and both children an excellent education in their respective country. We love to translate these unsustainable actions to be heroic; we can "pity" the disadvantaged because we think our tears is actually going to help them, but take a step back and look at the fruits of the labour here. I am currently moving through an adoption arrangement in Australia (known as Permanent Care) and despite the fact that the child cannot be taken care of by the parents due to a number of possible reasons and hence why the courts take responsibility that enable the order for myself to be the primary carer on a permanent basis, if the parents are still alive we are legislated to ensure visitation rights a number of times. Because, psychologically, this is important for the child.
Our awareness to exercise moral law that is authentically willed and therefore real is based on our understanding of ourselves as one that establishes this law, the world of understanding that is grounded in the transcendental 'I' and this does not follow if the things-in-themselves cannot be known. If subjective experience is noumenal then we are attaching knowledge to the unconscious realm, which is unknowable. What I am attempting to convey is that there is no exclusion from accessing the noumenal because we have practical reason to postulate that free will exists there and presume that it is the location that constitutes reality even if it can be experienced only qua appearance. There is a distinction between appearances and the thing-in-itself, just as much as a person' experiences can be tied to their imagination and schematically projected, but being independent from our experience of it does not make it entirely inaccessible - think semiotics - despite such an assumption being a paralogism because of this presupposition of some unity of apperception. Overall, understanding of the ultimate nature of reality remains unknown, but we are nevertheless capable of regulating using reason the principles that govern our experience that is constitutive of this free will.
I wanna jump in more but i won't have time till tomorrow. But how have people become property?
Subjective experience is phenomenal. The object of the phenomenon is noumenal. If you say the noumenal is knowable, reading generously, I read that as rejecting Kant as opposed to misunderstanding Kant, but I can't follow your suggestion that the subjective is noumenal (i.e. the phenomenal is noumenal).
I too am working so I will quickly say that contemporary society invented the profitability of the production of goods and the attainment of assets both for the person purchasing and for the system as a whole; the producer markets the profitability in order to get more people to believe that they need to make this purchase. We become proud to own something because we are taught that ownership is valuable. So, as an example, women were considered "property" or an object of possession and the greater the perfection or appearance of this person, the greater the social congratulations (your value is interconnected with this ownership). There is a shift in our understanding of what value is and the acquisition of more objects in your possession - friends, family, job, power, money - the more valuable you become. You essentially become property.
How is subjective (being the unconscious) phenomenal?
Certainly the idea of a wife as property is way way less prominent in contemporary culture than it was, so i can't see how consumerism somehow made that phenomenon worse. And I don't see how you can make the jump to friends and family being property based on that seemingly innacurate portrayal of wives as property.
This is a good point, but I am speaking about ownership where there is an absence of relatedness and where the orientation to people is without feeling because people become objects or property. While you are correct that this is not a new phenomenon, it is that consumerism has shifted our approach to this orientation and broadened this symbolic unity, becoming more resistant due to marketing ploys and where success and value is determined by something outside of you. The motivation here is an attempt to symbolically cure the alienation we feel and the lack of esteem we have to our own selfhood.
You could love a person not because you actually love them, but because they epitomise the right type of object that furthers your social position. It is the same thing, just more sophisticated.
Subjective experience is defined as phenomenal. Are you positing the subjective as an objective entity that experiences? Maybe I'm not following you. The world of experience (the subjective) is phenomenal.
Sure, there are thousands of ways people can be in bad relationships, but how is that more prevalent in industrialized, complex, modern societies than in more traditional ones, especially those that formally relegate women to subservient roles? And I'd reiterate that the escape from consumerism in modern society (in the grand ole USA at least) is typically religion, where a higher power decrees meaning and worth regardless of social standing and material wealth. From my American eyes, I just really see this thread as a standard lament that modern society has abandoned God, and I'm having difficulty placing it in the Continental framework you're espousing. You sound like Joel Osteen in the video I posted (that you doubtfully suffered through).
This thread also heavily reminds me of Buber. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou
If the good ole consumerist society is not going to give us any real standards of worth and meaning, where else is one to find them?
I know nothing of Thai law, but are you suggesting the child was sold from a needy family as opposed to the child being without capable parents? If so, I don't know why the twin being left behind is relevant. I'd be opposed to the sale of people whether they're sold in singles or pairs. Quoting TimeLine
In the US, the termination of parental rights is extremely difficult as long as the parent expresses an interest, but the suggestion that it is based on protecting the interest of the child is wishful thinking. Many of these children would benefit if their parents just let them go. That's a sad reality. The state's hesitancy to terminate parental rights is based as much on its protection of the sanctity of the family unit as it is on the needs of the child.
I am as certain that most adoptions are for reasons pure and true as I am that your adoption will be. Unless you have some supportive data, it's hard for me to accept that couples are bringing little ones in their homes because they match the shrubbery.
My question was, that if one does not want God, and does not want to go to church, but still wants to turn somewhere for moral direction, where does that person turn? We've intentionally created a godless government, because we do not want to be governed by the church. But as you admit, the government doesn't give us moral authority, so where do we turn? Obviously we do not want to turn to the church, because we didn't like their moral authority, and that's why we divorced ourselves from it.
translation:I can't make heads or tails of postmodern discourse.
Sounds like Merleau-Ponty's flesh of the world.
Are you familiar with Max Weber’s iron cage ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_cage )?
I was talking about commercial surrogacy and international adoption.
Quoting Hanover
I forgot to respond to this before I hit publish. In Australia, there are strict regulations that determine when a person moves into state care by court order; for instance, a woman could have an intellectual disability and was sexually assaulted by an unknown assailant and does not have the capacity to look after the child, or a drug addict who may also not know the father etc, or the neglect is so profound that protection of the child involves the removal of parental rights. The circumstances are usually dire, however there is a shifting paradigm involving the refugee community due to a lack of extended familial support.
What you say is exactly the same in Australia, which is why when it moves into Permanent Care, there is really no other possible hope for the child to be cared for by their parents. Despite that, visitation rights continue four times per year and this is essential for the child, despite the difficulties.
Quoting Hanover
My adoption will be a child who has parents that are incapable of looking after him/her and rather than going into state care, I will become his/her permanent carer. I am well known in my community for being amazing with babies and children and I would love to take care of someone that would otherwise have no one. I am not wealthy and do not have much money, but I will work hard enough to invest in their education, although my focus will be to invest my personal efforts for them to overcome mental stress and other risk factors that they will inevitably experience. I am not saying that a majority of adoptee parents are bad, that is certainly not true and I am certain that their intentions are genuine, but this whole celebrity adoption and token child is certainly around.
Because that is the 'I' - noumenal feature of the soul - or the real that interacts with schema and creates the phenomenal.
Then why don't you enlighten me?
Are you just saying people don't actually love one another without condition? And that consumerism encourages that?
I get what TimeLine is trying to get at, but she's still wrong that we can have access to the noumenon. Contrary to the Cartesian version, in Kant, the subjective is not prioritised over the objective as giving us access to knowledge that is more "certain", since the subjective is still mediated through the pure internal intuition of time, and hence is not given to us as it exists in-itself. I don't have direct access to either external objects or to myself. So just like the noumeon corresponds to an "object in-itself", it must also correspond to a "subject in-itself". These two are both inaccessible. In fact, the whole talk of "object in-itself", even though Kant uses it, makes no sense, since objects always exist for subjects, and the noumenon does not have the forms of space and time which permit for the individuation of existence into the poles of subject and object.
However, just like how we come to learn about external objects, we also come to learn about who we are (our subjectivity). This is not something that we see clearly - we can (and often are) wrong about what we want, who we are, what we react like, what will make us happy etc. It is only by going through phenomenal experience that we come to learn more (hopefully) about who we (phenomenally) are. But we are often deceived about our intentions, our desires, and our inner states. Often, we also deceive ourselves into thinking we are so and so, or we are capable of so and so, when in truth we aren't.
So yes, TimeLine is right that there is a subjective "in-itself" - but she's wrong that we have access to it.
We never know ourselves as we are. We know THAT we are, but not WHAT we are. The access we have to our own subjectivity is also given mediately, through the pure intuition of time.
Quoting TimeLine
While I am not as familiar with Kant's ethics as I am with his metaphysics, I don't quite follow you here. Through practical reason we postulate those that we cannot know through pure reason, but which are needed in order to act. I don't see how this "gives us access" to the noumenon.
Quoting TimeLine
The argument goes more like this: we can presume, if you want, that the noumenon is the location of freedom because causality is a category imposed by the understanding, and the noumenon stands outside of it.
This is the most controversial aspect to Kant' thesis because the noumenal self is not subject to deterministic laws and therefore not bound by time, which is where this distinction is made since understanding is always subject to nature. Whereas free will is not bound by nature and if we know what we ought to do, we choose to do what is right; if nature is deterministic and where our understanding is subject to vis-a-vis categories, freedom is noumenal and so is our morality. You are saying that we do not have access to it, but we do, we just don't know how we have access because it is not bound by categories since free will can causally influence nature. That means that we know once we experience the effects from noumenal causality.
I think that's the other way around - not bound by time, and therefore not subject to deterministic laws which can only apply within time.
Quoting TimeLine
But free will is noumenal - we cannot empirically know it.
Quoting TimeLine
Except that we don't "know" what we ought to do, at least we don't know with certainty.
Quoting TimeLine
Where do you get the idea that free will can causally influence nature from :s ? I think this is wrong, because, once again, causality is imposed on the phenomenon by the understanding. So you cannot infer causality outside of the domain of application of the understanding, meaning outside the phenomenon. I think it is fair to say that the phenomenon as a whole is some kind of "reflection" if you want of the noumenon, but not that one causes the other.
Quoting TimeLine
I disagree we can experience effects FROM noumenal causality. Effects are always given from within the pheonomenon - one experience is given to us, presented to us, as the cause of the other. But both experiences are necessarily within the phenomenon.
I don't know, that's why I was asking. I suppose one might turn to intuition on that matter.
Quoting Agustino
Actually I think it's Kant who is wrong on this point. From the Platonic tradition, we have direct access to apprehend intelligible objects (noumena) directly with the intellect, through intuition. That's why Aristotle placed intuition at the highest level of knowledge. Kant simply defines "intuition" in an odd way (as you explain in the other thread), and this dismisses "intuition" in the traditional sense, disposing of our access to the noumenon.
You should open a new thread about this, it would be interesting to discuss. A direct confrontation between Kant and Aristotle/Plato/Aquinas is never brought about, and, usually, participants on both sides only skirt around the issues and dismiss each other. I have yet to see a rigorous treatment of Kant from a Thomistic perspective (for example), or a rigorous treatment of Aquinas/Aristotle from a Kantian perspective.
I'm not sure Kant is wrong. For Kant to be wrong, I think the transcendental aesthetic must fall - without collapsing the transcendental aesthetic, I don't think it's possible to show that Kant is wrong.
For example, given the transcendental aesthetic this is wrong. Those "intelligible objects" are given at minimum mediately, through the pure intuition of time. Thus, they are not given as they are in-themselves, but as they are in time.
This question, like all things Kant, is complicated. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-mind/#4.6
If you want to go through all this, I could try, but I think it deserves a different thread.
Can we have the above comment moved to a different thread please, and I will reply there? Thanks!
:up:
That is why I said it is not bound by nature; nature is deterministic.
Quoting Agustino
You just repeated exactly what I said. There is no other way around.
Quoting Agustino
https://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-010-3099-1_45
This is very well written, and I think I know what you mean. This is a great description of erring on the side of a kind of conformity (a conformity to billboards and perfume ads, which is now probably a conformity to the Instagram feeds of those who strive to incarnate such ads.). John Berger comes to mind on this: "Glamor is the happiness of being envied." On the other side we find a disagreeable insistence on 'individuality' that is little more than transgression, a mere negation of the norm which conforms in its own way.
I've tried to learn to trust my own first-hand experience. The photoshopped ads say one thing. The public sentimentality say something similar. The fullness of life, however, says things that cannot be fit conveniently into particular manipulative/marketing strategies. Even benevolent manipulation (political activism) tends to hide the part of the truth that muddies its message.
Are you saying that it's not conformity that's the problem, it's inauthenticity? If so, I agree. When it comes to conforming with societal or cultural expectations, you pick your fights. Much of conformity is the grease that keeps the wheels turning. Take your stands when it really matters, either personally or morally.
This conformity is intelligently marketed as compelling by the simple fact that people believe that they are 'individual' despite blindly moving in masses. 'Individuality' is a collectivist ideology constructed to overcome barriers to the system, just as we have laissez-faire to promote capitalism. Social media like instagram enables the platform for a person to promote or sell this false individuality - since it is their account and their name and their selfies - while underlying motivations is social unity where one forms meaning through 'likes' and congratulations as though the quality of their existence is levelled by how well they mimic this pattern. People are doing the same thing while saving themselves from criticism by behaving in a pleasant manner, but all it inherently is are automatons pretending to characterise liberalism and thrives since this individuality is believable.
Quoting foo
I don't necessarily think it is about the tools that are available, but how those tools are used. I know this young man who has a very overweight girlfriend and he is consistently criticised because he is intelligent and attractive, but he says that he is fighting the system by constantly challenging himself against public scrutiny and opinion. What he is challenging, really, is not public but within, his own cowardice and ultimately his own perceptions that determine his experiences and identification with the external world.
Is there any authenticity in individuality, is it even possible?
Emerson:
To believe our own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought, is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
Isn't he talking about both authenticity and individuality? Aren't both together the essence of self-reliance?
But the dichotomy between autonomy and authenticity is not satisfactorily answered by the transcendentalists, that being true to who you really are is much more complex considering any understanding of the self could be motivated by a number of factors that stand against this authenticity. There is an imperfection of sincerity there that is addressed with much more duress by Kant than Emerson, though I do respect the latter.
I've tried to follow the various discussions of Kant in this post and gotten lost. Where in Kant should I look for what he has to say.
His moral theory is the best starting point and the concept of autonomy and the transcendental argument vis-a-vis reason or practical reason, but I would recommend more introductory explanations as it is easy to get confused by him. You can start here and progress to his work later. As stated: "Put most simply, to be autonomous is to be one's own person, to be directed by considerations, desires, conditions, and characteristics that are not simply imposed externally upon one, but are part of what can somehow be considered one's authentic self." The footnotes also offer some good links to other titles, such as Autonomy and the Paradox of Self-Creation: Infinite Regresses, Finite Selves, and the Limits of Authenticity, and The Ethics of Authenticity, amongst Kant' moral and ethical works.
I read the entry you linked at the Stanford Dictionary. The approach to morality and authenticity is really different from how I see it. Not just different, contradictory. The idea that being autonomous means having to make moral decisions based on will and reason and that will lead to a universal moral law is completely opposed to my personal experience. I pay attention to where my moral values come from. I can feel them bubble up from a well inside me. From that dark center where reason never could go.
From the Stanford Dictionary - "Individual autonomy is an idea that is generally understood to refer to the capacity to be one's own person, to live one's life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one's own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces." How can that be consistent with a requirement that people come to the same moral decisions?
One of my favorite quotes from "Self-reliance:"
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested,--"But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil."
That is the most radical statement I can imagine. Why does autonomy, authenticity have to lead to moral behavior? The philosophers referenced in the Dictionary seem to be using convoluted arguments to avoid that question.
Anyway. Thanks for the reference. It was interesting.
I think that's part of the truth. But we do have unique bodies and unique formative childhoods, so that we are indeed distinct. I agree that this distinctness can be exaggerated or feigned for ideological reasons, but what I have in mind is the genuine uniqueness that is allowed to manifest itself in a person who is not being self-conscious, who is not performing. Let's imagine the differing behavior of those who are not being watched. Maybe the rest of humanity is somehow gone. No one will ever know how they choose to pass their time in this thought experiment. I'll grant that we carry virtual societies within ourselves, and that selves are largely constructed in relation to and dependent upon other selves. Nevertheless, I think you can see the continuum I'm pointing at. In short, I think that people can indeed more or less authentic, which is roughly to say more or less flowing, trusting, uncensored.
Yes, I agree. Conformity is mostly grease on the wheel. 'Bad' individuality involves a vain transgression for transgression's sake, whereas 'bad' conformity is perhaps attempted conformity to the 'lies' of advertisements.
To be clear about 'the problem,' I think about it from an individual's point of view. For some individuals, there must always be a social problem as a prop for their role. As I see it, life is difficult sometimes even for the relatively enlightened. Also, social problems are often directly related to individual freedom. If we want freedom, we will pay for it by tolerating the freedom of others (to be stupid, etc., by our lights.) So the 'broken' world is a mirror of our broken selves (our own ambivalence as complicated creatures.)
All of this is discussed by Kant; moral psychology and epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics and it is true that I favour psychology because without this subjective moral dimension, without authenticity of this moral consciousness or 'love' then we are no longer human. Without our humanity, we are just automatons. His ethics are all about our motivation and the mind or our cognitive capacity to me is a tool that enables agency and therein the very freedom that allows us to recognise our own selfhood. It is psychological and while I understand the metaphysical considerations, being moral cannot be performed without consciousness, that our instinctual drives or impluses contain nothing of substance and as such conformity is acting on impluse; you do 'good' because that is what you are told and because that is what is expected and not because you consciously will to act.
It is rational thought or reason that gives us the capacity to structure our phenomenal experiences and even if there are properties that transcend this, accessing objects through spatial and temporal representations is a sensibility that allows us to understand and experience and that is all that really matters. Everything - being your identification to and experience with the external world - requires rational clarity.
I tend to think of this like idealism: there are some religious people that place emphasis and worry about the afterlife - heaven and hell - but since it is our moral behaviour that channels the prospect of transcending to heaven, thinking about the afterlife is pointless. All that is necessary is focusing on our moral behaviour. Indeed, the metaphysical realm or intuitive consciousness is valuable and perhaps the subconscious allows us to explore concepts, nevertheless we bound by the conditions of sensibility. My favourite Kantian statement:
Then how do you explain the fact that literally every act we consider moral has a parallel in the animal kingdom? Are you suggesting this is just coincidence?
This distinctness is really the cognitive capacity to rationalise and reason with common sense, but central to this prospect is the autonomy that wills such agency, so it is not really about the separate and unique body that we possess - aside from the health of your brain - neither is it entirely our formative and unique childhood but autonomy is the motive or will that we possess that gives us the capacity to regulate our own behaviour and therefore legitimacy or authenticity to our moral actions; it is moral actions that make us human or good. There needs to be some sort of grounding, though, in this will or autonomy and that is our rational capacity where the mind regulates our decisions and opinions and therefore the obstacles that we face are psychological. We need to overcome these obstacles that enables this continuity of irrational behaviour, such as self-defence mechanisms, fear, negative childhood experiences, self-esteem etc &c., and it doesn't help that these vulnerabilities we possess advantageously complicate the process of transcendence, the latter of which is possible cognitively or psychological and not mystical.
Quoting foo
Language is fundamental to our understanding since our capacity to describe, articulate and communicate to one another provides us with subjective meaning as we contrast this experience and internalise it back to ourselves. While I believe that we have an internal language - unconscious - that speaks to us intuitively through feelings or emotions including anxiety or depression, language is the very tool that allows us to articulate our engagement with ourselves and the external world. Children who were raised severely neglected and abused in Romanian orphanages, for instance, continue to struggle mostly because of the lack of contact and emotional care or love so much so that the severity of this neglect or lack of human contact made these children incapable of even walking. We are dependent on this contact or interaction as contrasting contains the very dynamism needed for rational thought.
The point, however, is when this engagement fails to transcend to the next level that we are capable of achieving, this capacity to calculate and correspond and independently ascertain the difference between fact and fiction and the predominate population fails to do this. Heidegger and many more attempted to explain why, mostly fear, and that is the purpose of the OP - what is it that stops us from engaging authentically?
Que?
I thought it was quite a simple question. You said that our instinctual drives contain nothing of substance morally and yet those same drives in animals seem to produce all the behaviours we consider moral. We do not carry out any behaviour labelled 'moral' that is not carried out by some species of animal driven, presumably, by those same instinctual drives you've dismissed as empty. I was just wondering how you explained the coincidence.
Perhaps the reason why I have not explained this contrast is because I do not believe animals have moral agency. Instinctual behaviour for evolutionary purposes that necessitates "good" behaviour is not the same as being able to display empathy.
I understand what it is you believe, I'm trying to get at why you believe it in spite of what seems to me to be overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
If rational consideration lead to some conclusion that instinctive drives never reached, then we would have an argument that rationality was necessarily involved in moral action, but that is not what we see.
Every behaviour we think of as moral - helping those in need, defending what is just, sacrificing our own well-being for the benefit of others... These are all behaviours which can be seen in the animal kingdom and so, presumably, all behaviours which derive from instinctive drives.
What I'm confused about is why, in the face of such evidence, you feel our own moral behaviour, which looks identical to that found in the animal kingdom, requires some special explanation. We are animals, animals have instinctively motivated behaviours which 'look' moral, why the need to invoke anything other than the simplest explanation that our morals derive from the same place?
Animals may display behaviours that one could assume to be moral, but they do not posses the same cognitive capacity to transcend to a level of autonomy that human beings can; we are merely projecting our experience of empathy to their behaviour. They are not aware of themselves because they do not have consciousness, and most importantly do not have language, both of which is necessary to attain any sense of moral consciousness. The key difference is feeling and what gives us 'humanity' or a 'soul' is our ability to love and love is not merely remaining with the same mate and being faithful. When I say our behaviour is instinctual, it is blindly identifying to behavioural norms and therefore there is no authenticity in our motives or will that enables a sense of autonomy, not just the evolutionary behaviour that compels us to act a certain way.
How do you know this?
Quoting TimeLine
How do you know this?
Quoting TimeLine
How are you deriving this?
Quoting TimeLine
How do you know animals are incapable of love?
If you don't want to explain how you arrived at your beliefs, that's fine we'll just leave it there, but what you've provided here is not an argument it's just a series of unfounded assertions.
My interpretation of this is that the form, as distinct from the content, of the education system is such as to instil conformity, fear of standing out or being wrong, an obsession with 'right answers', competition and not cooperation, and this has a pathological effect that is normal to the extent of being almost universal. And it doesn't make for contented people either.
Quoting TimeLine
Quoting Pseudonym
The issue here, I think, is the question of where we derive moral principles from. Let's say that humanity has produced, with conscious minds, certain moral codes, ethics which ought to be followed by the individuals who apprehend these principles with their conscious minds. We define being moral as adherence to these principles.
The question is where does the human mind derive these principles from. If we do not get them from intuition, instinct, and therefore what is proper to the entire biological realm, then the principles are completely artificial, "inauthentic" you might say. The individual conscious minds will not be inclined to adhere to these principles, because intuition and instinct will be motivating them in a different direction. So if conformity is what is desired from moral principles, it is necessary to have moral principles which individuals desire to conform to.
Quoting TimeLine
I see a real problem with this perspective. If we ground morality, "what is good", with rationality, and allow rationality to dictate on this, without reference to intuition and instinct, presupposing that consciousness has the capacity to regulate our behaviour in this way, we run the risk of creating a divide between "what we ought to do" according to the rational mind, and "what we can do", according to the rational mind's natural capacity to regulate. Therefore the real grounding needs to be intuition and instinct, the human being's natural disposition.
That's very much to the point. Notice that in Plato's Republic, Socrates defines "just" in a manner which is very much opposed to conformity. Socrates' notion of just is that every individual be allowed to do one's own thing, which is particular to that individual, without being interfered with by others. To be just is to mind one's own business, and the just society seeks to promote the unique strengths of each individual, rather than seeking conformity.
If you take a look at the history of moral principles, the evolution of "ethics" is away from rules of conformity, towards the freedom to do what one determines as good. For example, the Old Testament had ten commandments of what not to do, the new has one golden rule of what one ought to do.
I have no problem with the general idea of what you are presenting here, although I don't think the world is broken. You haven't been around long enough to know I am the sweetness and light philosopher on the forum. I think using the phrase "relatively enlightened" in reference to us, I assume, is pretty presumptuous and disrespectful to those you consider relatively unenlightened.
Anyway - I recognize the value and importance of people living by their true natures whether you call that autonomy, independence, authenticity, or self-reliance. I agree that there can be personal problems associated with living one's life to meet the expectations of others. I have personal experience with that. As far as social problems, go, I agree that a society that teaches and supports autonomy is better, more humane than one that does not. In that regard, I think inauthenticity is more a symptom than a cause.
My real problem is with the inclusion of a moral dimension to this issue. People are responsible for their behavior, not for whether or not their internal life meets my standards.
This is a very humane way of looking at this issue.
Yes, the dichotomy between individualism and collectivism that plagues us at the moment is a false one. Difference does not entail conflict, individuality does not entail selfishness and antisocial attitudes, cooperation does not require coercion or conformity.
There is a third choice - you do good because you feel empathy for others and want them to be happy and safe because you are a person of good will. Because you care for people. That is not a rational or willful process. It's from the heart, not the mind. You don't have to be self-aware to be good. If someone comes to moral behavior by this path, would you reject that because it doesn't involve reason and will?
Quoting TimeLine
I'm not sure if this is intended as statement of psychological fact or metaphysics. If it's a statement of fact, I strongly disagree. If it's a statement of metaphysics, I don't find it a useful, helpful way to think about people.
Quoting TimeLine
I see things exactly the opposite. For me, what you call "intuitive consciousness" is our true self. Reason, self-consciousness, will are just stories we tell ourselves and others about who we are and why we do what we do. The stories are useful. They help us transmit our internal lives to others. They can provide us feedback, guidance on the consequences of our behavior and how to do things better. On the other hand, they can be a source of inauthenticity because people don't recognize the map is not the terrain, the story is not the truth.
Looking inside myself, what you say about the source of moral behavior is correct. That doesn't mean I reject a more rational approach such as Kant's. It just doesn't describe me and many, perhaps most, others. My only objection is in stating that the rational approach is the only valid way to behave morally.
The study described seems pretty bogus. I can't judge for sure without seeing a better description of the study. Was there a control group? That would be difficult. On the other hand, I don't disagree with your statements about the educational system.
When I was 17 I read "Freedom, not License," a book by A.S. Neill. Neill ran the Summerhill School in the UK. The school was set up so that children were not required to attend class. Some never did over periods of years. The children voted on school rules and policy on all but the most critical issues. The book had a big influence on my understanding of how society forms children to fit in.
I didn't, but now I have. It's better than the article. Makes me think there might be something there, but it's a TED Talks type explanation. Big, general, facile thoughts with few details. I'll say the same thing I did before - I don't disagree with the general theme, but I'd like to see more detail about the specific study. How was it run? By whom? How rigorous was the set up? How well did they control for outside influences? What percentage of the kids tested at 5 were retested at 12? I'd like to see the questionairre. I'd like to see how the data was analyzed. What was the ethnic, gender, economic status of the participants. What type of school were they in? Were they all in the same school? Was there a difference between different schools and different types of schools. What does "genius" mean? How was test scored. If participants were given numerical scores, what was the distribution? Averages? What was the difference between average scores in the different age groups? What is the relationship between divergent thinking and creativity? Intelligence?
I can think of more. These are not nitpicking or trivial questions. These are the types of questions you ask about scientific studies.
Summerhill used to be famous. Now most people haven't heard of it. Had you heard of it before?
Oh yes. I read Neill at uni and was involved with the free school movement and the British home schooling organisation. So I am firmly partisan on this issue. But have some scholarly research on me.
As I said, his book had a big influence on me. It was the first time I ever came across the idea of psychology. That there is something to study. I'm sure I'd heard of it before, but it never registered till "Summerhill."
Later in life, I came across a book called "Summerhill, for and Against." It was a series of essays by prominent education theorists. Two things surprised me 1) the venom with which conservative essayists hated Summerhill and its ideals and 2) the extent to which the liberal writers understated the radical nature of what Neill had done. They seemed to want to class it as a rather tame educational reform instead of as a revolution.
Well they go together. Someone says you're ruining the children in your care and bringing up ignorant monsters, so you want to say - it's really not that bad.
But it is scary. While I was working at Leeds Free School, I started to worry - kids not learning to read at 11 or 12 yrs. Were we messing their lives up? It was years later, coming back to find these ex-pupils had made something of their lives, that I was reassured. These were already excluded kids that were one step from reform school or prison, and I found a girl who preferred football in the street had decided to get some qualifications and become a physical ed teacher, another lad had rejected his older brother's violent lifestyle in favour of a job on the railways and a mortgage. And these were the dregs of society being taught by dole- scroungers like me with no pay or qualifications using scrounged materials in a semi-derelict and condemned house. Rather different from the rich brats at fee-paying Summerhill.
I understand your objection, but it seems to me that the very notion of philosophy is hierarchical. If there is something to be learned from life with the help of books, then those who have partially learned this 'it' are 'relatively enlightened.'
If we look at the context of our conversation (this thread that diagnosis a culture rather than an individual), we see an example of a structure common on internet forums. A poster objects to some kind of broken-ness of the world and suggests a cure. This is implicitly parental, metaphorically speaking. For what it's worth, I try to be especially aware of what is presumed in the projection of problems and solutions. I'm especially interested in what the form of communication says about the communication which is not made explicit within or by that communication.
A simple example might be what the grading structure of the university class says that the lectures do not say. An instructor might verbally emphasize the importance of X, while the silent grading structure sends a second and dominating message to the shrewd students who see through the sentimentalities about pure knowledge to their economic situation in the world at large. The 'A' they seek is itself a tool to be put to use. The instructor is essentially an 'A'-dispensing machine that has to be understood and operating correctly. This is not the whole truth, but it's the 'ugly' part of the truth of the communicative situation. Similarly, the 'ugly' part of the world-diagonising and world-curing pose is the implicit assertion of the world-fixer's superior 'spiritual' or 'moral' status.
I'm not offended, but even your lines quoted above imply your moral superiority to those who imply their moral superiority (to me, for instance). From my point of view, the quest for moral superiority is a fact of life like digestion. What varies is the understanding of what constitutes this superiority.
It seems to me that being reasonable is a learned, virtuous conformity.
Quoting TimeLine
Ideally, I may agree. But I can't follow this downplaying of the body. We are just such social, sensual creatures that a healthy brain in body that is considered ugly will likely lead to a very different formative childhood than a healthy brain in a body that is considered beautiful. I think we are like plants that develop in the direction of recognition.
Second point: Is there not a tension between autonomy and 'moral' actions? If I am incarnate autonomous reason, I may decide that my culture at large is wrong about some issue. I may decide that some kind of prohibited violence is actually good and even a duty. Those who proscribe such actions while celebrating autonomy will presumably do so in the name of 'reason.' But this is to deny autonomy or to identity it with the incarnation of reason. But then who gets to speak in the name of reason? We are back to the same situation. Autonomy with any bite is dangerous. An autonomous person is not easily persuaded by the claims of those who identify either with God's will or universal reason (variants of the basic idea of authority.)
I think that's only (potentially) true if I agree that book larnin' is the only path to moral behavior, which is the whole point I've been arguing against in this discussion.
Quoting foo
Really? Me civilly and respectfully objecting to something you've written is a claim of moral superiority on my part? Sorry. That's pretty silly. There is no "quest for moral superiority." I'm just trying to be a good person.
As someone with much more credibility than I have on this subject, where do you stand now on the goals and success of the free school movement. Was it a good idea that could be made to work on a larger scale or pie-in-the-sky idealism that can't be maintained in the long run? Or something else?
In reading the Stanford Dictionary reference TL sent, I got the impression that Kant believed that the application of reason and will would lead to a universal morality about which there would be no disagreements among rational people. Am I wrong about that?
Well my experience is very limited and close-up, so it is only anecdotal. It was definitely pie in the sky, and also remarkably successful given the circumstances. The difficulty with education is that it is always an unethical experiment for the results of which one has to wait about 20 years. There was a move in the general direction of 'freedom' advised by the Plowden report, in the early 60's. But there is a fundamental difficulty with such top down policy moves, that they expect the same smacking and shouting teachers to implement the new 'child-centred' policy. what resulted was a sort of covert war of manipulation between teachers and children which continues to this day. It's like expecting the Conservative party to run the NHS - but literally, wiping up the blood and performing the operations. :yikes:
From what I remember, I think that was the hope. But I could never take Kant seriously on ethics. I've always related to being more of a realist than a dreamer.
I associate reliable knowledge with a kind of neutrality. I trust those who are more invested in being correct or objective than in supporting a righteous position. In my experience, the 'righteous' tend to 'forget' inconvenient facts and remember convenient facts. Moreover, it's not hard to justify a white lie if the enemy is pure evil or if the battle must be won at all costs.
I've been struggling with this issue for a while now. This discussion helped make it clearer for me.
This is a contemporary outlook on Rousseau and it is interesting the "creative" here is the mode of being Fromm discusses, namely that by being creative, to have an active inner life and to express this faculty outward, symbolises this cognitive potentiality but that the system continuously tempts us further and further away from ourselves.
"In contemporary society the having mode of existence is assumed to be rooted in human nature and, hence, virtually unchangeable. The same idea is expressed in the dogma that people are basically lazy, passive by nature, and that they do not want to work or to do anything else, unless they are driven by the incentive of material gain, or hunger, or the fear of punishment... These considerations seem to indicate that both tendencies are present in human beings; the one, to have - to possess - that owes its strength in the last analysis to the biological factor of the desire for survival; the other, to be - to share, to give, to sacrifice - that owes its strength to the specific conditions of human existence and the inherent need to overcome one's isolation by oneness with others."
Quoting T Clark
You are still not getting it and it is pretty profound considering I guided you to the most basic literature on the subject. Authenticity is not a standard.
I'm a smart guy. I have good reading comprehension. I sincerely tried to understand. So.... I doubt that my failure was "profound." It's not primarily that I don't get it intellectually. The description does not match my experience of human behavior. How people are good. How people are real.
You judge people by whether or not they are authentic - whether or not they live their lives based on what others expect. You apply authenticity as a standard.
In the final analysis I believe the need to overcome one’s isolation by oneness with others is also biological and owes its strength to the desire for survival, or rather the drive for gene propagation. In the vast majority of human evolution long term isolation severely decreased the odds for survival, and obviously gene propagation.
Perhaps you took me in the wrong spirit. I wasn't complaining of being treated badly. I was trying to make a point that moral judgments imply a hierarchy. If it is bad to think that one is better than others, then we will think we are better than others because we don't think we are better than others.
Of course I realize you're just trying to be a good person. Me too. What's the alternative? Being a bad or a less good person. Now why be a good person as opposed to a bad person if being a good person is not to be morally superior? (This is almost tautologous. I think 'moral superiority' just has a bad ring which I did not intend.)
OK, but books were just an example. Here's the simple question: is there individual moral progess? In my view, of course there is. And progress is (seems to me) the move from an inferior to a superior state.
Just to clarify, I intended 'sophisticated' as having-progressed or having-evolved along some continuum. That word may have bad ring for some, but I associate it with virtue. I tend to like those who have become gentle and measured in their interactions. Books are not necessary here, though I do think they can help.
That would be in relation to something. The judgement of inferior and superior would be a judgement in relation to some objective, as progress is toward that objective, the goal, the desired end. Without that standard for judgement, there is no superior or inferior, nor is there progress, there is just change.
There is this 'white Australia' culture that I have been attempting to sociologically penetrate and dissect, although my personal ethnography has not been successful to say the least. This cohort convey kindness at the most superficial level; what that means is that kindness is merely a tool to further advance their image that they portray and thus morality is a functional property or an object (and thus dead). They celebrate alcohol and anti-intellectual pursuits and by following this established mode of existence, they epitomise the so-called highest order in this human chain, therein giving them this sense of entitlement, so much so that they think they are entitled or justified to be vicious, to bully, to harass, to gossip and slander, to ostracise all underpinned by this archetype that appropriates a vision of superiority. They are not doing wrong or evil, they are allowed to because morality, to them, is exclusive and only for a select few and identity is merely power relations, objectifying imagined concepts like masculinity and where values become hegemonic.
So a beast or this large, monstrous animal comes to life only by this network, where this individual is dead and only comes to life when meaning is formed by this interconnection with the dynamic whole, which is merely an indestructible illusion. People identify meaning only through this symbolic whole and the practitioners of this mode of existence contrast and compare to everyone else. Underlying this is a need to belong, to unify and thus overcome the sense of alienation and aloneness that our selfhood projects through anxiety and depression (so we escape into our imagination) and the better we preform in this human order, the more meaningful our existence becomes.
So, to Fromm, he believes that there is a dichotomy to this mode of existence, where we paradoxically identify with two types of experiences namely that of Being and that of Having and emerge from two need; the need to belong and the need for freedom. We possess the need for freedom the moment we become conscious of our selfhood (perhaps that moment where our brains possess the capacity to rationalise concepts like death) and this produces an anxiety within us because we become aware of our separateness or that we are alone.To escape from that freedom, several possibilities emerge; Authoritarianism and Automaton Conformity - domination/control or sado-masochism, ultimately between those that cease to be by adopting the personality most appreciated by their environment and those that attempt to control others because they are out of control; it is hierarchical. This is blanketed by destructiveness, something you find in the justified violence of political regimes.
"The destruction of the world is the last, almost desperate attempts to save myself from being crushed by it."
He had several types of unproductive character orientations that develop from this Mode of Having; the Receptive (needy, passive, unable to make decisions), Exploitative (willing to lie, cheat, manipulate), Hoarding (possessive, unable to let go) and Marketing (shallow, dependent on social status, opportunistic). This character types seeks to possess or to have, which renders values, ideas, perceptions to be something that can be owned; love, for instance, is about possession and ownership, that the said person is 'mine' or about being loved. The energy is channelled in an unhealthy or toxic way, because they assume that to possess or own objects - such as by having a trophy wife - that he would be congratulated by this symbolic or imagined whole and thus give his life meaning.
The problem here is that we cannot escape this determinism, that the language we form that enables this experience with the external world to be articulated is established socially, through this dynamic interaction and communication and knowledge is formed by comparing and contrasting, but that we can transcend it to what Fromm calls the Mode of Being. We accept that we are alone, separate and channel the negative feelings associated by that isolating experience into productive and creative expression, to form a healthy understanding of our place in the social world. In a way, it takes a psychoanalytic approach to existentialism, where although we desire the delusion of immortality, come to accept that we are going to die and that we are responsible for our choices.
We feel lonely and isolated because we have become separated from nature and from other human beings. But once we fully accept this, we begin to articulate and express ourselves authentically, a type of solidarity with ourselves, an inherent respect that projects outwards into our mode of being, where we love and relate to all people, the environment and nature as a whole (not to just objects). It is a productive orientation that responds with care, respect, and knowledge.
So, when you think of the analogy of the rose at the OP, think of Goethe' poem that reflects the point so eloquently.
Actually, you know you are right here. I am going to touch on this when I get home in about half an hour.
I agree. So when societies or individuals are diagnosed or accused, this seems to imply at least some blurry notion of a preferred state.
I think we have these blurry notions of virtue before we think to justify them. Indeed, thinking we need to justify/clarify our blurry notions was presumably motivated or in pursuit of another such blurry notion --one that tends toward its own clarification.
I was using "book larnin'" as smart ass shorthand for formal application of reason and will.
I think there can be progress toward authenticity and that may lead to improvement in moral behavior. That's been something I've experienced personally. As I've discussed, I see autonomy and morality as separate. No, I don't believe there is individual moral progress. For me, morality is not a state of being, it is behavior.
Quoting foo
The alternative is not trying.
I don't see why "moral judgments imply a hierarchy." I can't think of a time I'm not ashamed of when I thought I was better than someone else. To me, belief in personal superiority is the root of, a prerequisite for, immoral behavior.
Someone asked me once, "Have you forgiven your father?" I responded with, "Of course. Forgiveness is not about my father overcoming his mistakes but about me understanding why he made them. It is not about him." You see, philosophy to me is about defining concepts, mapping and articulating them, but how I apply this with my interactions with others is one of many ways in my attempt to translate their interpretation of the external world. I do not apply authenticity as a standard for or against others, but I practice authenticity as a way to understand others.
So, when you say:
Quoting T Clark
Why is it that your interpretation of others is somehow justified since people are good and real, and yet I am being judgemental? You are placing yourself central to this standard and projecting it outward, not me.
Now, the reason why you are correct is not for the reasons you think; you are wrong vis-a-vis Kant and my expression of confusion was for why you are having trouble understanding the relevance of morality in Kantian philosophy. The reason why you are correct is because - like how Fromm speaks of love - we need to avoid defining authenticity because it is not an explicit or inherent thing, but rather something that we cultivate rationally, that we can learn to be 'true to our nature" as Kant said. If we avoid defining morality - like how we avoid defining love - but rather see it as a characteristic that we rationally attempt to cultivate consciously (why I always say that love is moral consciousness), then it is not an inherent thing but rather a practice and that there is a sincerity in this practice, the motivation or intent relies on our ideal commitment to good.
What underpins our humanity, what makes us transcend the biological or instinctual is empathy and our capacity to become self-aware; love and therefore morality is what makes us human, but it is ultimately a decision and not an inherent thing. It is something that we cultivate through learning and experience. It is grounding morality in a priori principles. The distinction between authentic and inauthentic as a mode is not suggestive of something "moral" but rather a dynamic that I am attempting to explain.
This is exactly the kind of gross misrepresentation of nature that justifies the continued destruction of our ecosystems and presides over what is becoming the next mass extinction event. "It's OK to kill as many animals as we like because they're all brutal savages who deserve it, not like the angelic humans with their desire to share, give and sacrifice".
Remind me, which species is it that wiping the others out, the sharing, giving, sacrificing one, or the ones driven by nothing but the desire for survival?
I think it's clear this is not the way I use philosophy or interact with people and the world. I've only met a few people who, like you, use reason as a tool to guide their lives and make themselves better people. Although it's not my way, I find it very moving. Meeting people like you has changed the way I feel about western philosophy.
Quoting TimeLine
I try to observe, experience, understand, and feel empathy for how people behave. There is no interpretation involved. I am not making any moral judgments. I'm trying to describe what I see. You said authenticity is not a standard. In response I said you apply it as a standard. I have specifically said I don't see any moral dimension to authenticity.
Quoting TimeLine
And, as should be clear by now, I disagree. I don't believe authenticity is fundamentally rational or moral. I can see that you and others apply reason and will to achieve it. I can see that it works for you and others and I respect that. It opened my eyes when I first realized that philosophy could be used in that way. But it's not the only path to autonomy. It's not mine.
Quoting TimeLine
Again, I strongly disagree, although I don't think the word "inherent" is really correct. It is certainly not instinctual like a bird's mating dance or salmon spawning. In my experience, it grows naturally out of who we are, what we are. It is a natural human impulse. It comes from the heart, not the mind. It can be beaten out of us, as evidenced by the conforming behavior you criticize. To me, truly authentic, autonomous behavior is not intentional at all in the sense we normally use that word. It is what eastern philosophers call "action without action."
All I mean by individual moral progress is some individual becoming a better person. In the ordinary sense of all the words. Nothing fancy. And, yeah, in their actions especially. In their state of being the kind of person who does or does not do X.
Your body is regulated by the brain as much as your sensual impressions are formed through experience and maintained by the health of both the physical and the psychological; think of those individuals who have perversions or fetishes. Our sensual impressions is ordered by our understanding, which is why we are evolutionary and that there is a historical direction, but it does not give us knowledge.
Language is very dynamical and we have the cognitive capacity to calculate, contrast, and communicate that means that we are enabled or wired with the capacity to transcend conformity and start using our own autonomous, rational thoughts to understand and apply virtue aside from what we have learned. That is why I said that I am a compatibilist; free will is only possible through determinism and our brain is the tool that carries the capacity for rational thought while our mind through our social interactions gives us the structure to develop understanding. The paradox of our individuality is through the interconnectedness of all things, which is why God stands as the ideal in stark contrast to our autonomy because he is the Form of Good, the immortal, the virtuous, the righteous, all the moral concepts we seek to perfect in ourselves.
Quoting foo
I think what has been misunderstood is that being moral somehow implies something innate or explicit, when it is a rational process that requires cultivation. I think it has been suggested that morality - just like love - is something given to us or at least that for there to be any purity in the concept it must be beyond you - and to a degree with you think of platonic Forms that makes some sense - but love and morality is actually a system that we apply and improve rationally and autonomy is a process of cultivating this rational process that gives authenticity to this experience because it is grounded by our will. There is a multidimensional aspect to this dynamic that moves between ordinary or customary to visionary and wonderment, between determinism and free will, between learned and autonomous and in-authenticity is as much a part of our authenticity as we attempt to measure and describe ethical modes.
Ok. :groan:
Oh, devastating philosophical argument, I'm sunk, I don't know how I could ever have been so foolish as to not agree with you entirely from the start.
What I have in mind is the attempt to impose a particular vision of the moral (like yours) on an autonomous person. I don't disagree with what you say about morality, but that's beside the point I'm trying to make. For you it is at least the attempt at a universal truth. But other thinkers have other visions. The autonomous person feels a certain distance from the claims of others. They may, of course, be persuaded.
Quoting TimeLine
Yes, I roughly agree. New personalities are possible that have never existed before. We can and do transcend and extend our cultural influences. For me there's a tension, though, between 'rational' and 'explicit.' It's hard not to read 'rational' here as partaking of something 'innate or explicit.'
Quoting TimeLine
I agree that the body is regulated by the brain, and surely you'll agree that the brain is largely programmed by the environment, especially the social-linguistic environment. That's why I mentioned looks and physical strength. We learn who and what we are largely by how we are treated. Ideally we can reason ourselves through negative influence, but there are limits to this. And even here we are borrowing positive influences to work against the negative.
I don't know what you consider perversions and fetishes. Does that not change? Trans has exploded as a valid identity. I don't mind. It's not a big issue to me, and I don't like judging adult sexual behavior. But it's a good example of how something considered perverse can quickly be mainstreamed. Now those opposed to trans rights are themselves diagnosed with some kind of moral perversion. An autonomous trans person might feel secure in this identity before it was mainstreamed and an autonomous conservative, for instance, might shrug off 'political correctness ' (the intolerance by others of their own intolerance or at least objections.) Really I just associate autonomy with a strong personality that can act without or against the approval/disapproval of others respectively.
Well, it happens. No need to be too hard on yourself.
The problem is not isolating oneself physically or socially, but it is about becoming aware of and accepting the isolation that forms from becoming self-aware and separate from others, because our conformity gives us a false sense of unity. If, on the other hand, you are saying that our survival is dependent on this blind conformism in a Huxley sort of way and that maybe this small cohort of philosophers should just go and live on an island somewhere, then perhaps.
Isn't this somewhere in the vicinity of what I was saying about autonomy being separate from moral considerations?
Doesn't intention itself derive from such a "blurry notion". Suppose your particular, definite intent, at a specific time is to drop into the fast food joint and grab a burger. That intent may have developed from the more general intent of wanting to get something quick to eat, which may have developed from being hungry. So the original source of the intent is just a blurry feeling inside, which develops into the less blurry notion of hunger, and this develops into the more particular intent.
So we can look at all virtuous intent in this way. It develops from a blurry notion, a feeling that we need to be good and cooperate. Then it develops into different particular intentions. So, you refer to a "blurry notion of a preferred state". Let's compare this to hunger. There is something lacking which produces this weird feeling which we identify as hunger, the need for food. Likewise, if a person is diagnosed or accused, we could say that there is something lacking which produces the weird feeling within that person which we identify as the need for a preferred state. But this notion of a preferred state, unlike hunger which is satiated with a burger, is far too blurry, so the person has much difficulty in proceeding toward a particular intention. How could we ever bring this blurry notion out from its condition of being too blurry, so that we can develop clear virtuous intentions?
I was basically saying that in the final analysis both Having and Being owe their strength to the same thing: survival or gene propagation. At least that's one way of looking at it. I don't see any reason why a person of the 'authentic' persuasion would object to this interpretation, being that they are interested in knowing themselves. We can realize and accept that we may be driven to cooperative behavior because it's an evolutionarily successful strategy to pass on our genes. This doesn't diminish the value of sharing, giving, or sacrifice. Knowing all the science behind a rose doesn't diminish its beauty and in fact may deepen our appreciation of it.
Quoting TimeLine
I tend to think that blind conformism will lead to our extinction. Blind conformists are easily manipulated by people with selfish and shortsighted goals, like wealth and power.