Thanks Rob. It was very pleasing to receive the notification of Part 3.
I'd been thinking about the previous articles and had some thoughts but couldn't remember the specifics. Fortunately you mentioned Socrates early on and that was the memory trigger I needed.
The second article got me thinking along the lines of Agnosticism as a personal process of refining our ability to regain a trust in our Gnostic abilities. I agree with Richard in as much as all 'cultures' tend toward conservatism in terms of a process that can be labelled 'brainwashing'. Gnosis in such circumstances - in that values remain unexamined - probably produces 'variations on a theme' because established cultural memes have successfully replaced the empty jigsaw pieces in the overall picture presented. Those empty spaces seem to be, either culturally under valued, or socially proscribed. Someone I knew once expressed it as 'the truth is hidden or forbidden', which is what the band he was the vocalist for became known as for its short lifetime.
Anyway, part 3 provided me with more food for thought. Socrates and the concept of 'those that know', heretical Gnosticism versus imperial Scriptural Imperatives, Martin Luther's 'through faith alone' and many others encourage us all to look more closely at all of those things we are 'encouraged' to take-for-granted as immutable realites. Thanks again.
I had to re-edit this since the Substack editor botched the first version...
I agree with a lot of what you've said.
One problem I have is the use of the term "morality". The Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy says this in an article:
Quote:
There does not seem to be much reason to think that a single definition of morality will be applicable to all moral discussions. One reason for this is that “morality” seems to be used in two distinct broad senses: a descriptive sense and a normative sense. More particularly, the term “morality” can be used either
descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or
normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational people.
End Quote
In my view, what matters is an objective fact: survival. As you say "they are meant to promote things that are valuable to human existence. If they do not do this, they would not be valued."
Ayn Rand argued that all values stem from life; if you're dead, you don't have any values. She then ran off and made all sorts of claims that didn't directly follow from that fact.
In other words, it's not a "value" that one is alive or dead. It's an objective fact - absent the concept of "zombies", of course. :-) It's also the ONLY "value" of interest. Everything else derives from that. So why bother talking about values? Talk about facts.
So I prefer not to discuss "values" since that''s another amorphous term that could refer to almost anything real or imagined. I prefer to discuss actions and consequences on the individual level and, scaled up - as analyzed by objective human behavior patterns - which Ludwig von Mises called "economics" - on a social and civilization level.
I never use the terms "right" or "wrong". I use the terms "correct" and "incorrect." A behavior pattern is "correct" if it can be estimated to improve the survival probability of the individual both in the short term and the long term, or, scaled up, the survival of the species (which by definition improves the survival probability of the individual.) In other words, if it "works" to improve survival, it is correct behavior. If it doesn't, it isn't.
The Marquis de Sade blew "morality" out of the water centuries ago with his "Philosophy in the Bedroom" which IIRC went over all the variant social codes of conduct from various societies, all of which were considered "moral" and imposed by those societies on their members and all of which would have horrified the society he lived in.
Move to today and the same situation exists. Everyone believes in rules of behavior that have nothing whatever to do objectively whether they actually survive or not.
Timothy Leary once said that the best way to determine whether someone was intelligent was to ask them how much of their behavior was robotic. Anyone who answered that less than 98% of their behavior was robotic was too stupid to talk to.
So one could say that in my view, most people are acting 98% incorrectly and only 2% correctly since most human behavior is not conducive to either the individual's or civilization's survival.
So the question is: why are humans still surviving? Well, William S. Burroughs had an answer for that:
Quote:
The history of the planet is a history of idiocy highlighted by a few morons who stand out as comparative geniuses. Considering the human organism as the artifact of an intentional Creator, we can then see more or less where we are. To date, no super-genius has managed to achieve what might be called normal intelligence in terms of potential functioning of the human artifact.
“Look at this artifact.” The instructor holds up a flintlock rifle. “What’s wrong with it? Quite a bit. It still has a long way to go.” He holds up a modern automatic rifle. “Now we are getting close to the limit of efficiency for small arms on the principle of a projectile propelled by an exploding charge. Now look at this artifact.” He holds up a cage in which a weasel snarls. “What’s wrong with this artifact? Nothing. It’s limited, but in terms of its structure and goals it functions well enough . . .” Take a look at the human artifact. What is wrong with it? Just about everything.
And how wrong can you be? DEAD.
No species that isn’t fundamentally flawed could be this stupid this consistently.
At a time when the hope of the human race lies in space exploration and above all in biological mutation, we are threatened by a Moron Majority committed to enforcing their stupid, bestial, bigoted opinions on everybody else. To such people the very thought of mutation is the ultimate sacrifice. These are the guard dogs that will keep the human race in arrested evolution until this
experiment is quietly buried . . . until it disappears. That is what we are facing here: an extermination program.
End Quote
He also explained, similarly to Max Stirner, the problem with words:
Quote:
Look at abstract words that have no definite referent words like communism, materialism, civilization, fascism, reductivism, mysticism. There are as many definitions as there are users of these words. According to Korzybski, a word that has no referent is a word that should be dropped from the language...What do these words mean? Virtually nothing. And because they mean nothing you can argue about them for all eternity. Any words that have referents cannot be argued about; there it is—call it a desk, a table, call it whatever you like, but no argument is possible. All arguments stem from confusion, and all arguments are a waste of time unless your purpose is to cause confusion and waste time.
End Quote
As an aside, I wish these comments had the ability to make quotes stand out like other comment systems like Disqus do without having to use words (since quote marks are almost invisible.) Substack needs to implement a full editing capability, and I've mentioned that to them before.
I enjoyed your article and you philosophical conclusions. so I just wanted to add something that might help answer some of your questions. The 3 greatest blessings in the universe are 1. To be born as a human. 2 To have a desire to know God. 3. To find a Guru or Savior (divine teacher) who has already found God and can show you the way. You are blessed with the first 2 and I will share the possible answer to the 3rd. Read "Autobiography of A Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda. Everything is there for you to begin your search. If you met a person from a foreign country and they did not know your language and you did not know their's, to communicate one of you would have to learn the other's language. God cannot be know through the senses, so they can never reveal him, but he can be known through intuition. If you get to know his language, you can communicate with him and he will communicate with you. He is ever existing, ever conscious and ever new joy and so are you. Good luck on your journey.
"Greed is good" a laughable statement, and yet large sections of our western political establishment actually believes this.
"The IDF is the most moral army in the world" any six-year-old would scorn this statement, yet our news broadcasts will still show clips of Netanyahu saying this.
For people who cannot live without a preordained set of values, there is religion. The rest of us grew up, or were fortunate enough not to have been brainwashed from a young age, and living in a brainwashed society.
Many think that values are developed or have evolved in the Run of time and they are different across the many people in the world.
But If we look cosely, there are certain values somhows built in into humankind. They are reognized from all faiths and belives.
Just for example one list from the bible:
Galatians 5:22-23
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."
We all know that these virtues are good and should be practised, but we fail to do all of them out of various reasons and influences.
We also know what is beauty, truth, justuce, goodness and hope.
These are the core values and we have always tried to include them into society and culture, but only to a certain degree and often we have perverted them.
The problem of agnosticsm ist one has no orientation. Or the orientation ist just survival and own advantages.
But this happens only in theoretical discusions and philosophcal thoughts. In reality these values work also in any atheist and believer of agnosticism.
The question remains, where do this in-built values stem from? Just a coicidential product of evolution? Or sombody has created us in this way?
It is possible that what you say is true - that we have been created this way. My value system is Christian - more or less - even though I am not a believer. So these values guide me as much as they guide many believers, though some believers do not uphold these values at all. Being agnostic does not necessarily entail being concerned with survival or being selfish. Even atheists can be selfless. In claiming that values have been created in order to enhance life I am not committed to selfishness in my own actions. The values you mention are important imv. It is possible that these are common to different societies at different times precisely because they are life affirming - i.e. because societies can't function effectively without them. I would have added 'forgiveness' - which is not prominent in Wokist Western society.
I had to study Hegel for my PhD; not only his Phenomenology of Spirit (or mind) but his writings on Christianity and love. Hegel said that God had given the people the Ten Commandments through Moses because of the 'hardness of their hearts'. Thus Hegel appears to be suggesting that there was an absence of love in Hebrew society. This could have been the case even if God does not exist. For Hegel, love was an important foundation for moral action. Attacking Kant's 'categorical imperative' (where duty guides moral action in the same way as the Commandments do) he said that when people act out of love they have no need for duty. I think he was right on this but I'm just an old Hippie who used to wear flowers in my hair and chant 'love and peace'.
I think you're missing my point. Every society, religious or not, is brainwashed. Most of them have religious brainwashing on top of the social and morality brainwashing.
Thanks Rob. It was very pleasing to receive the notification of Part 3.
I'd been thinking about the previous articles and had some thoughts but couldn't remember the specifics. Fortunately you mentioned Socrates early on and that was the memory trigger I needed.
The second article got me thinking along the lines of Agnosticism as a personal process of refining our ability to regain a trust in our Gnostic abilities. I agree with Richard in as much as all 'cultures' tend toward conservatism in terms of a process that can be labelled 'brainwashing'. Gnosis in such circumstances - in that values remain unexamined - probably produces 'variations on a theme' because established cultural memes have successfully replaced the empty jigsaw pieces in the overall picture presented. Those empty spaces seem to be, either culturally under valued, or socially proscribed. Someone I knew once expressed it as 'the truth is hidden or forbidden', which is what the band he was the vocalist for became known as for its short lifetime.
Anyway, part 3 provided me with more food for thought. Socrates and the concept of 'those that know', heretical Gnosticism versus imperial Scriptural Imperatives, Martin Luther's 'through faith alone' and many others encourage us all to look more closely at all of those things we are 'encouraged' to take-for-granted as immutable realites. Thanks again.
Here's George's take https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1SSXhIM2Xw which might appeal.
Thanks for that - was a big fan of his but never heard that before. BTW - I used to be a singer and guitarist in a Rock Band.
'And I donna wanna watch the mainstream media
Don't wanna fall under its spell.
And don't believe in its illusions
I just believe in me and Belle (my wife).'
Me neither. It was my beautiful companion who introduced me to it. Glad you liked - best wishes to you and Belle.
I had to re-edit this since the Substack editor botched the first version...
I agree with a lot of what you've said.
One problem I have is the use of the term "morality". The Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy says this in an article:
Quote:
There does not seem to be much reason to think that a single definition of morality will be applicable to all moral discussions. One reason for this is that “morality” seems to be used in two distinct broad senses: a descriptive sense and a normative sense. More particularly, the term “morality” can be used either
descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or
normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational people.
End Quote
In my view, what matters is an objective fact: survival. As you say "they are meant to promote things that are valuable to human existence. If they do not do this, they would not be valued."
Ayn Rand argued that all values stem from life; if you're dead, you don't have any values. She then ran off and made all sorts of claims that didn't directly follow from that fact.
In other words, it's not a "value" that one is alive or dead. It's an objective fact - absent the concept of "zombies", of course. :-) It's also the ONLY "value" of interest. Everything else derives from that. So why bother talking about values? Talk about facts.
So I prefer not to discuss "values" since that''s another amorphous term that could refer to almost anything real or imagined. I prefer to discuss actions and consequences on the individual level and, scaled up - as analyzed by objective human behavior patterns - which Ludwig von Mises called "economics" - on a social and civilization level.
I never use the terms "right" or "wrong". I use the terms "correct" and "incorrect." A behavior pattern is "correct" if it can be estimated to improve the survival probability of the individual both in the short term and the long term, or, scaled up, the survival of the species (which by definition improves the survival probability of the individual.) In other words, if it "works" to improve survival, it is correct behavior. If it doesn't, it isn't.
The Marquis de Sade blew "morality" out of the water centuries ago with his "Philosophy in the Bedroom" which IIRC went over all the variant social codes of conduct from various societies, all of which were considered "moral" and imposed by those societies on their members and all of which would have horrified the society he lived in.
Move to today and the same situation exists. Everyone believes in rules of behavior that have nothing whatever to do objectively whether they actually survive or not.
Timothy Leary once said that the best way to determine whether someone was intelligent was to ask them how much of their behavior was robotic. Anyone who answered that less than 98% of their behavior was robotic was too stupid to talk to.
So one could say that in my view, most people are acting 98% incorrectly and only 2% correctly since most human behavior is not conducive to either the individual's or civilization's survival.
So the question is: why are humans still surviving? Well, William S. Burroughs had an answer for that:
Quote:
The history of the planet is a history of idiocy highlighted by a few morons who stand out as comparative geniuses. Considering the human organism as the artifact of an intentional Creator, we can then see more or less where we are. To date, no super-genius has managed to achieve what might be called normal intelligence in terms of potential functioning of the human artifact.
“Look at this artifact.” The instructor holds up a flintlock rifle. “What’s wrong with it? Quite a bit. It still has a long way to go.” He holds up a modern automatic rifle. “Now we are getting close to the limit of efficiency for small arms on the principle of a projectile propelled by an exploding charge. Now look at this artifact.” He holds up a cage in which a weasel snarls. “What’s wrong with this artifact? Nothing. It’s limited, but in terms of its structure and goals it functions well enough . . .” Take a look at the human artifact. What is wrong with it? Just about everything.
And how wrong can you be? DEAD.
No species that isn’t fundamentally flawed could be this stupid this consistently.
At a time when the hope of the human race lies in space exploration and above all in biological mutation, we are threatened by a Moron Majority committed to enforcing their stupid, bestial, bigoted opinions on everybody else. To such people the very thought of mutation is the ultimate sacrifice. These are the guard dogs that will keep the human race in arrested evolution until this
experiment is quietly buried . . . until it disappears. That is what we are facing here: an extermination program.
End Quote
He also explained, similarly to Max Stirner, the problem with words:
Quote:
Look at abstract words that have no definite referent words like communism, materialism, civilization, fascism, reductivism, mysticism. There are as many definitions as there are users of these words. According to Korzybski, a word that has no referent is a word that should be dropped from the language...What do these words mean? Virtually nothing. And because they mean nothing you can argue about them for all eternity. Any words that have referents cannot be argued about; there it is—call it a desk, a table, call it whatever you like, but no argument is possible. All arguments stem from confusion, and all arguments are a waste of time unless your purpose is to cause confusion and waste time.
End Quote
As an aside, I wish these comments had the ability to make quotes stand out like other comment systems like Disqus do without having to use words (since quote marks are almost invisible.) Substack needs to implement a full editing capability, and I've mentioned that to them before.
Thanks Richard - thought you'd have something to say about this. Appreciated.
I enjoyed your article and you philosophical conclusions. so I just wanted to add something that might help answer some of your questions. The 3 greatest blessings in the universe are 1. To be born as a human. 2 To have a desire to know God. 3. To find a Guru or Savior (divine teacher) who has already found God and can show you the way. You are blessed with the first 2 and I will share the possible answer to the 3rd. Read "Autobiography of A Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda. Everything is there for you to begin your search. If you met a person from a foreign country and they did not know your language and you did not know their's, to communicate one of you would have to learn the other's language. God cannot be know through the senses, so they can never reveal him, but he can be known through intuition. If you get to know his language, you can communicate with him and he will communicate with you. He is ever existing, ever conscious and ever new joy and so are you. Good luck on your journey.
"Greed is good" a laughable statement, and yet large sections of our western political establishment actually believes this.
"The IDF is the most moral army in the world" any six-year-old would scorn this statement, yet our news broadcasts will still show clips of Netanyahu saying this.
For people who cannot live without a preordained set of values, there is religion. The rest of us grew up, or were fortunate enough not to have been brainwashed from a young age, and living in a brainwashed society.
Every society is a brainwashed society. That is almost the definition of "society".
Yes, the word "religiously" should have gone before "brainwashed society".
Many think that values are developed or have evolved in the Run of time and they are different across the many people in the world.
But If we look cosely, there are certain values somhows built in into humankind. They are reognized from all faiths and belives.
Just for example one list from the bible:
Galatians 5:22-23
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."
We all know that these virtues are good and should be practised, but we fail to do all of them out of various reasons and influences.
We also know what is beauty, truth, justuce, goodness and hope.
These are the core values and we have always tried to include them into society and culture, but only to a certain degree and often we have perverted them.
The problem of agnosticsm ist one has no orientation. Or the orientation ist just survival and own advantages.
But this happens only in theoretical discusions and philosophcal thoughts. In reality these values work also in any atheist and believer of agnosticism.
The question remains, where do this in-built values stem from? Just a coicidential product of evolution? Or sombody has created us in this way?
It is possible that what you say is true - that we have been created this way. My value system is Christian - more or less - even though I am not a believer. So these values guide me as much as they guide many believers, though some believers do not uphold these values at all. Being agnostic does not necessarily entail being concerned with survival or being selfish. Even atheists can be selfless. In claiming that values have been created in order to enhance life I am not committed to selfishness in my own actions. The values you mention are important imv. It is possible that these are common to different societies at different times precisely because they are life affirming - i.e. because societies can't function effectively without them. I would have added 'forgiveness' - which is not prominent in Wokist Western society.
I had to study Hegel for my PhD; not only his Phenomenology of Spirit (or mind) but his writings on Christianity and love. Hegel said that God had given the people the Ten Commandments through Moses because of the 'hardness of their hearts'. Thus Hegel appears to be suggesting that there was an absence of love in Hebrew society. This could have been the case even if God does not exist. For Hegel, love was an important foundation for moral action. Attacking Kant's 'categorical imperative' (where duty guides moral action in the same way as the Commandments do) he said that when people act out of love they have no need for duty. I think he was right on this but I'm just an old Hippie who used to wear flowers in my hair and chant 'love and peace'.
I think you're missing my point. Every society, religious or not, is brainwashed. Most of them have religious brainwashing on top of the social and morality brainwashing.
I was actually refining what I said. Yours expanded it.