How to get from Universal Ethics to The Promised Land?

[Parodite]

Inspirational Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcDDV9ECMFQ (Stefan Molyneux)

A conversation between Stefan Molyneux and Mama Nature. (With some possible interjections by Papa God)

SM: "Hey Mom. Can we please talk. I had a conversation with a young man, he has serious trouble finding meaning and purpose in his life. Given that we all die at one point, the pursuit of something universal and eternal seems to be a waste of time to him. It darkens his soul deeply. Did you listen to the conversation? How did I do?"

MN: "Of course I did. Nothing goes on unnoticed. You explained yourself well, as did the boy."

SM: "Thanks. I'm just not sure it really helped him. He seemed to be looking for some rational proof of Papa God's existence. I explained that proof only exists on the level of reptiles and mammals. Doing empirical science. As opposed to universals; they are only true in the abstract. As in mathematics. But without that same mathematics there would be no physics and no engineering. Similarly, without an ethics that is universally true in the abstract, there will be no ethical and healthy society either. We will just be the same reptiles and tribal mammals that eat, reproduce, fight, die and are eaten in the end."

MN: "So what you say is true in the abstract too? You warned against false abstractions. They are toxic and dangerous indeed! They can infect whole societies. It must feel like an enormous responsibility to give the world your abstractions Stefan. Are you really sure they are true? I understand the abstract truths of mathematics, but beyond that... I'm not so sure. Why don't you go and ask Papa God about math and truth in general.. he loves these discussions like no other. I'm more concerned with seeing smiles on the faces of my children." (SM gets a firm hug of his Mom, squeezed between her massive breasts..)

PG: (overhearing their conversation, chuckling from another room): "Yes yes! I'm the guy doing the abstract stuff! For many people I'm even an abstraction myself! Especially when I'm away doing inspirational missionary work, like have earthlings writing down holy books and all. Some of my kids call me "Mr. Abstract". My wife explains to me, usually after I returned from another important mission, that I'm "a living theory of what an actual husband could be but never is!". (his chuckles become giggles) "But she is right: she married a theory of what a man is. It can't be helped. We all are each other's abstractions! Now THAT is not a joke!"
(PG now can't stop laughing anymore. MN closes the door between the two rooms. "Your Daddy old fool is better off alone, we all know that. And so are we." She winks at Stefan and gives him another massive boob hug. Because she knows; it is the only thing that makes him really happy.)

- tbc

[noddy]

vaguley related to such things.

In my reading travels, I saw a headline that a study showed men prefer abstract goals and women prefer details, and while I wouldnt get too caught up in the venn diagram of the actual splits in these preferences, it did occur to me that this is perhaps the simplest political viewpoint on our endless squabbles for laws and ethics.

the distant father versus the smothering mother, the libertarian vs the authoritarian.


the actual ethics themselves are largely irrelevant to this squabble, they can both be wanting the same outcome but virulently opposed to the method of achieving it.

[Simple Minded]

Parodite,

This is only a problem from the wimps who want to live in the Promised Land, but who won't man up and kill themselves to get there.

In a related news item, 11,000 "scientists" have recently signed a petition stating that human beings are the greatest threat to man's continued existence on Earth.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/05/world/cl ... index.html

You spent all that time and money to get your PhD, and now you won't take the last step towards actually solving the problem you outlined? How the hell am I supposed to respect a person like that?

Soon as my grant money comes thru, I'm opening an Think Tank where we collect these dolts, incarcerate them, and make them watch Greta Thunberg lectures 24/7 until they decide to do the right thing for the greater good.

[Doc]

Just give everyone an angry teenage daughter. That will whip them into the proper mind set in no time at all.



We have minds that rationalize, that make up stories in order to make sense of reality. Thus "we know what we know" Upon such knowledge we make decisions on what to do with our lives. As Mike Rowe likes to say, "we are told to follow our passions. And that is the worse advice you can give anyone."

What if you are a teenage girl that has decided your passion is to go to Hollywood and become an actor. The most common *successful* route to make it in Hollywood is through someone like Harvey Weinstein. And for every success there are at least 1000 failures where you end up on the mean streets as a prostitute and on drugs. In other words they certainly followed someone's passion.

I think Greta Thunberg's parents are very successful as parents. They have made their daughter famous by living out their dreams. All they had to do it was get her to forsake modern transportation. Plus make her fearful angry and bitter about her impending death due to global warming.

Just imagine what she could have accomplished if she had, instead of taken a boat to NYC, taken boat to the d-day invasions. Where she could shout at the Germans "You have ruined my life !!!" "How dare you !!!" Imagine the passion !!!

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[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

We have minds that rationalize, that make up stories in order to make sense of reality. Thus "we know what we know" Upon such knowledge we make decisions on what to do with our lives. As Mike Rowe likes to say, "we are told to follow our passions. And that is the worse advice you can give anyone."

Each of us live in a bubble of our own perceptions. Our reason works by sorting through the piles of salient data to find the relevant data, but our strategy for doing so may be flawed. Scott Adams wrote a book that maybe...... will help us correct that....'>.......

[Doc]

We have minds that rationalize, that make up stories in order to make sense of reality. Thus "we know what we know" Upon such knowledge we make decisions on what to do with our lives. As Mike Rowe likes to say, "we are told to follow our passions. And that is the worse advice you can give anyone."

Each of us live in a bubble of our own perceptions. Our reason works by sorting through the piles of salient data to find the relevant data, but our strategy for doing so may be flawed. Scott Adams wrote a book that maybe...... will help us correct that....'>.......

Years ago I saw an episode of PBS Nova. In it there was an experiment conducted where a man whose brains were split /severed as treatment for Grand mal seizures.

His brain were separately presented two different images. One brain hemisphere was present a picture of an orange the other a picture of a bluish bird. He was asked to pick up a colored pencil with his left hand and draw what he saw.

He picked up an orange pencil and drew an orange. Then put down the pencil. The scientist asked him what he drew. The man said "I was trying to draw a bird but I don't know how to draw a bird" The scientist then told him to try using the other hand to finish the drawing. He again picked up the orange pencil and added to the drawing of the orange to make it an orange bird.

The point is the man rationalized a story as to what he was intending to draw and why he did not finish. He seemed to sincerely believe the story he rationalized. He knew what he knew.

I am aware of Adam Scott's views on this subject He has a periscope pod cast I watch from time to time. He has shown more than a passing interest in the subject and pretty much flat out stated that people are easily persuadable on various rationalizations by association.

For example the MSM has a trick. Every time a republican is accused or convicted of a crime MSM stories highlight that the perp was a republican. However if a Democrat is the perp they rarely mention the perp is a democrat

So people (not all but many) associate republicans with various illegal activities. And it works until they are called on it. Not to say the MSM will highlight that it is a democrat, or that this is some great planned conspiracy. But they will instead bury somewhere down in the story that the perp is a democrat. That way they can claim they did actually state that the perp was a democrat so of course the claim that they are only pointing it out when the perp is a republican is not true.

Another trick of association, that I have not heard Scott talk about is to frame the argument in a manner that supports the argument you are trying to make. So you have associated the mental image in the background with the one in the foreground to make it appear your argument is more rational and/or more appealing to believe.

For example the EU used to be very good at this.

Back in the late 90's or early 00's there was an argument about global warming going around the MSM. It was that the US emitted 25% of the world's CO2 output but only had 5% of the world's population.

The reality was that the US produced with that 25% of the world's output of co2 28% of the world's manufactured goods.
Meanwhile the EU would not aggregate its member countries into an EU total CO2 output which was in fact over 30% of the world's CO2 emissions with 6% of the world's population while the EU only produced 24% of the world's manufactured goods.

But people "Know what they know"

Another WRT to the EU framing arguments was an online argument I got into with someone from the Netherlands about US foreign aid. He was angry over the US planning to spend something like $80 billion on a weapons system while the EU was giving out a similar amount of foreign aid and the US government was giving out much less.

What was missing form what the guy knew that he knew was that Charitable giving in the US was running around $180 billion per year at the time and in the EU charitable giving was so non existent that no one bothered to keep statistics on it.

I suggested that he should give some of his own money to charity. His response was that that was government's job not his. That that was what he paid his taxes for.

But frame was government giving. An Argument that was meant to shame Americans into pushing our government to give more foriegn aid. This still leaves out that the US Military has generally been the leader in emergency disaster relief over the years. That is not free either.

But people know what they know

To the credit of a lot of people in the EU when it was pointed out that Americans did a lot of charitable giving they started doing the same.

Another and somewhat counter example to the above was several years ago Walmart gave children in an orphanage somewhere Christmas presents. Probably around 10 or 20 thousand worth. A woman that worked for Walmart had pointed out the orphanage to Walmart corp management.

So Walmart could honestly say they gave orphans Christmas presents. IE "Walmart good"

At that point a lot of people "Knew what they knew"

But of course the only reason the vast majority of people knew about it was because Walmart spent millions of dollars advertising that 10 or 20 thousands dollars worth of presents it gave out.

Not to mention at the time the average Walmart store was selling $80,000 worth of goods a day with a gross profit of around 90% because it was buying $31 billion dollars worth of goods per year from China at the time. Gutting US manufacturing in the process.

But people knew what they knew.

In fact many would get upset with anyone that pointed out that Walmart was a corporation whose sole purpose, the only reason it exists, like all large corporations, is to make money. Planting in the minds of the public that "Walmart good" was simply a means to that end.

But people know what they know

[Doc]

Another great example

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They know what they know. Except when they aren't sure exactly.

[Simple Minded]

Another great example

DqBkuC4Oh-g

They know what they know. Except when they aren't sure exactly.

absolutely, positively, f**king. brilliant!

In order to be woke, you have to be for higher values, which you have to be against something..... which makes you wise and tolerant....
er, no, wait.... it makes you some kind of racist, sexist, blank-o-phobe!!!!

More wokeness needed over here please! I think the children who are raised by parents who are practicing cannibalism are gonna fix damn near everything. They just need a little more time.

[Doc]

Another great example

DqBkuC4Oh-g

They know what they know. Except when they aren't sure exactly.

absolutely, positively, f**king. brilliant!

In order to be woke, you have to be for higher values, which you have to be against something..... which makes you wise and tolerant....
er, no, wait.... it makes you some kind of racist, sexist, blank-o-phobe!!!!

More wokeness needed over here please! I think the children who are raised by parents who are practicing cannibalism are gonna fix damn near everything. They just need a little more time.

When you think about it there is no end to low hanging examples out there



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[NapLajoieonSteroids]

2nd-order discourses about the methods of our methods are conceptually disorganizing and obscuring.

And all the empiricism in the world isn't going to help anyone out, on any level. Heck, we went over this in the old evolution thread- the idea of a mammalian pocket where proof resides is an argument in itself. (What's a mammal? and so on).

====

A problem, to start with, is that the kid isn't asking a question but seeking approval in completing a frame a reference. To give him an opinion in return is a grammatical error; missing the kind of proposition that we are dealing with.

The argument can be made that the whole thing is a sort of cultural pantomime; to be modern [and by modern, I mean to be born after 1500] only allows for one answer, and that is to reinforce doubt, or maybe more specifically a break from purpose. For this we have developed some very brilliant and sophisticated techniques, coming at us from every which angle and universally appealing. When we do not have the particular technique, we quickly invent it and co-opt whichever person or groups of people outside of it.

The Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntrye argues that our whole ethical system, and our language about it, is a mess because we long ago lost the ability to discuss it when in a frenzy of changes, we westerners threw out Aristotle and the idea of telos. That it continued to work at all for as long as it did was living on borrowed habits more so than anything else, but even that cache is dwindling. And so we are left speaking unintelligibly about very important matters (related to how we'll get along with each other) with a bunch of broken scraps of ideas that we either jerry-rig together or code swich between. This has made emotivism and the idea that all ethics are just manipulation or manipulative cleverness more and more appealing. For MacIntyre, the choice is between three main streams of thought: emotivism, the now discredited rationalism or going back to virtue ethics. That is famously what MacIntrye sort of did- going from a self-proclaimed Marxist to a self-proclaimed Thomist.

Yet, let's say for the sake of argument MacIntyre is right about his description of the problem; how successful his proscription remains doubtful. Virtue ethics lives and dies on a conceptual framework of what constitutes human flourishing and what doesn't. No one, the scholastics, aristotle, the stoics.- whoever- ...no one has quite gone far enough to establish it and how it applies to our situation. That it may provide us a way to talk about things doesn't mean it proves that our chatter is connected to those things...

I don't mention MacIntyre to advocate for or against virtue ethics or his overall ideas but to highlight that if only in this one area, this very common exercise proves him on the right track.

Virtue-ethics has this structure: 1) Human beings are untutored; 2) Human beings have a telos; 3) Ethics is the tutelage necessary for human beings to achieve their telos. And that is how we naturally talk about the matter. Our enlightened philosophies have abandoned two and have left themselves with an impossible task of deriving the third from the first. Pace MacIntyre, I'm not sure if it is a flaw so much as the telos of the whole project to begin with.

The real question, to me, is if modernity is even possible if we didn't suppress our naturally tendency for a two?

[noddy]

Any meat on that for me is in the change from the small monocultural village to the chaotic multicultural city - the comfy place for everyone and everyone in their place , everyone having the same background versus the madness of making it up as you go along in a non community of folks who will bash you as likely as help you. Telos is easy in the former, in the latter its definitions are somewhat less defined.

Ive never been that comfortable with all the ancillary enlightenment chatter , the alleged purity of the religious thoughts prior to it or whatnot.

You are dead right about the simmilarities with the Evolution splitting and lumping on that level.

Right here, right now, based on the things that have been happening in my community and real world in the last few weeks - id be tempted to say most modern folks are solpsists at heart, with a layer of morality of cuteness

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Any meat on that for me is in the change from the small monocultural village to the chaotic multicultural city - the comfy place for everyone and everyone in their place , everyone having the same background versus the madness of making it up as you go along in a non community of folks who will bash you as likely as help you. Telos is easy in the former, in the latter its definitions are somewhat less defined.

I see the point, and it's hard to disagree with. The argument would be that the emphasis is in the wrong place. One can under-appreciate past diversity.

It's not the place or the background but the sameness itself. An agrarian society based on blood and order does not have sameness; even an Ancient Rome and Damascus struggles with sameness- if and when they did at all.

Aristotle wasn't the tutor of Alexander The Mediocre, after all. There is the old argument that one must be very wealthy and powerful to be virtuous under Aristotle's rubrics. And while Aristotle slyly shares an opinion on slavery (not every slave or free man is one by nature) we don't really get a system from him that cares all too much about little people.

The rise of sovereignty, the return of citizenship, these things track pretty well with the decline of virtue ethics and setting things by telos.

And when types of telos rears its head married to this industrial society, we see that a whole lot of people end up dead under the telos of thousand year reichs and bolshevik revolutions and national wars to end all wars.

[noddy]

I wasnt clear - I very much included Athens, Rome, Carthage, whatever in that thought and should have explicity said that by that definition, modernity goes back to BC and not just enlightenment.

my point was the yearning for that previous small village were everyone had a focused place and possibility was reduced to the perfected known, I am accusing Aristotle of noticing the problem, rather than living the solution.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

I am accusing Aristotle of noticing the problem, rather than living the solution.

I am going to have to think about that.

==========

As for the modernity of modernity.... (talk about 2nd order second orders)...I've come 'round to the view that without vast systems of trade, which disappeared from Europe for several centuries, it's very hard to talk about modern-ness.

Now, if the argument is the rest of the world, with their writing&trade systems and settlements remaining modern- I can see it.

[noddy]

As for the modernity of modernity.... (talk about 2nd order second orders)...I've come 'round to the view that without vast systems of trade, which disappeared from Europe for several centuries, it's very hard to talk about modern-ness.

Now, if the argument is the rest of the world, with their writing&trade systems and settlements remaining modern- I can see it.

From my crude understanding, that state existed in the Bronze age - the Phoenicians bought tin from the English and between the Silk road and the Mediterranean most of the contintent was trading hard.

The Iron age stuffed all that up, you didnt need complex trade to make Steel, you just needed a local iron deposit so local warlords could form.

These changes of course are not spiritual or ethical, those things changed to suit the technology changes.

1) Human beings are untutored; 2) Human beings have a telos; 3) Ethics is the tutelage necessary for human beings to achieve their telos.

my knee jerk thought of Artistotle, of multicultural city kids, of modernity is tied up to this sentence.

Ive never met a traditional kid who suffered from lack of 1/2/3, they are dead certain about all of that, because it is the way lavender is done and everyone follows that way, some hit the city and explode in uncontained options, some freak out and go back to as simpler life as they can recreate.

In complex, every changing, multicultural environments , sometimes that level of certainty is not particularly beneficial, nor relevant.

modern modernity has that in spades.

the ethics will follow, once that settles down a bit i spose - im doubtful it will be universal, or even it is, it will only be so in name and not practice as per the previous Christian or Muslim attempts, I doubt the progressive loons even know what they are asking for.

[noddy]

I think the horse and cart of ethics and society is another layer of ugly definitions and boundaries drawn in murky waters.

surely a society without solid ethics (tm) is an uglier more brutal one than the godly one (tm) but those ethics exist in the context of whats possible at the time and they surely do change as technology/trade/ideas grow and change.

folks on the old spengler board used to hand wave lurking paganism for all the bits they didnt like.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

From my crude understanding, that state existed in the Bronze age - the Phoenicians bought tin from the English and between the Silk road and the Mediterranean most of the contintent was trading hard.

The Iron age stuffed all that up, you didnt need complex trade to make Steel, you just needed a local iron deposit so local warlords could form.

Reminds me of a blog I once came across which tried to track magical sword stories with bronze age meterorite events, with the speculation that the iron-nickel ore falling from the sky, being one of the sources of usable iron before smelting, would give us a good idea of what was going on around those stories.

These changes of course are not spiritual or ethical, those things changed to suit the technology changes

Well besides arguing that spiritual and ethical are not necessarily interchangable; I don't see why one wouldn't point out the material concerns- not that it is the cause but ideas are reconciled to it after all.

And so, yes generally Silk Road/Eurasian activity is pretty complex trade and all the peoples along the way have a sophistication which can't be waved away. I don't see why this is a problem?

[noddy]

not a problem, just a muse on modernity and what are the drivers on ethics,me discovering what I actually think, one tortured thought at a time.

Trade and the level to which its a foundation of society, as against a nice to have source of luxuries, seems to me one of the core aspects of the ethical system, some might even see it in the red/blue split in some countries right now. cough.

Packing lots of europeans into a single city in a foreign land, changes them from Italians, English, French and Irish, all with cultural clashes and historical ethical contrariness, into "cultureless white people"

various political groups see those things happen and then try and force it to happen with language and rules, ignoring the underlying conditions that created it, eg: first up you need folks who left their cultural enclaves and had an open mind to a new set of rules.

I always get in clashes with folks who put the language and the ethics first, the conditions second, I always tend to see the world the other way round, with those things being the polish on the framework more than anything.

he Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntrye argues that our whole ethical system, and our language about it, is a mess because we long ago lost the ability to discuss it when in a frenzy of changes, we westerners threw out Aristotle and the idea of telos.

my point is around that thought - is that a bad thing or a good thing, or as im thinking, a thing that just happened natually because the simple conditions of a focused ethical lifestyle became literally impossible.

how do America and Australia even work with all the "white people" studiously holding on to their full cultural baggage and history, with all its rules and binding limitations ?

This is the big absurdity of ww1 and ww2 and the various European powers trying to enforce their own cultural subset.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Not satisfied with this word salad, and I'll have to come back to it.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Maybe better than me mangling the whole thing, I should post a lecture of his own, "On Having Survived Academic Moral Philosophy":

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[Simple Minded]

Packing lots of europeans into a single city in a foreign land, changes them from Italians, English, French and Irish, all with cultural clashes and historical ethical contrariness, into "cultureless white people"

various political groups see those things happen and then try and force it to happen with language and rules, ignoring the underlying conditions that created it, eg: first up you need folks who left their cultural enclaves and had an open mind to a new set of rules.

I always get in clashes with folks who put the language and the ethics first, the conditions second, I always tend to see the world the other way round, with those things being the polish on the framework more than anything.

my point is around that thought - is that a bad thing or a good thing, or as im thinking, a thing that just happened natually because the simple conditions of a focused ethical lifestyle became literally impossible.

how do America and Australia even work with all the "white people" studiously holding on to their full cultural baggage and history, with all its rules and binding limitations ?

Well said.

Trimming out all the big words, it all goes to sh*t in the intellectual, idealist, preachy world when the word "universal" gets incorporated into the goal.

Infinite number of shades of white out there, Almond, Tope (Freudian typo, should have been Taupe), bone, ivory, etc. and every other group identity (Dem, Repub, Socialist, Libertarian, etc.) can be parsed until one gets down the the dreaded term of individual.

The definition of "us" and "we" gets as inaccurate as "them" and "others" when a "me" enters the picture.

"The Common Good? F**k me!"

"Wokeness" is wonderful concept. Hopefully, the non-woke will adopt this new religion voluntarily.... for the common good!

But in order to be a high standard, any measure must of necessity discriminate against the lower 30, 40, or 80%. If it don't discriminate against the low lifes, how can we be better than them?

As the old workplace team building bromide goes "There is no I in team!" Similarly, "There ain't no me in we!"

Maybe that's why thruout history, the best and the brightest of us, when they pick up the Herculean task of making things better for the common good, eventually abandon preaching ideals after some time and just pick up weapons to make "the others" behave according to "our ideals."

[Simple Minded]

Not satisfied with this word salad, and I'll have to come back to it.

"Word salad" is an excellent descriptor. Reminds me of the saying about sausage, "if you like sausage, you don't want to see how it is made."

Fred: How do you make your word salad? Everything in it is such a uniform size. I goes down your that so smoothly.
Joe: First you unhook the drain trap on the kitchen sink and put a bowl under there. Cut up everything into bit size chunks. Turn on the garage disposal, dump it all into the sink, and push everything down the drain. Voila'

Hopefully, my PhD. in humanities is in the mail.....

[noddy]

Maybe better than me mangling the whole thing, I should post a lecture of his own, "On Having Survived Academic Moral Philosophy":

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I can agree for hours on the obvious tedium of academic moral philosophy, yet I can also say some are occaisionally thought provoking if nothing else.

After that, Im not qualified to have an opinion - it appears to be dabbling in the conceptualisations of "why" that always show up when relgious minded folks are squabbling with atheist ones - the belief in higher order and structure that makes truth, "truer", versus the chaos of changing unknowns that make truth, more of a human opinion and subject to change.

Im obviously in the latter camp, so im part of the problem and cant really see the other side, by definition.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

I can agree for hours on the obvious tedium of academic moral philosophy, yet I can also say some are occaisionally thought provoking if nothing else.

I think the trouble begins when its supposed to be more than producing clarity of thought, as that is the whole of the profession. John Locke called himself a handmaiden to natural philosophers, and I think the handmaiden bit is a good descriptor.

After that, Im not qualified to have an opinion - it appears to be dabbling in the conceptualisations of "why" that always show up when relgious minded folks are squabbling with atheist ones - the belief in higher order and structure that makes truth, "truer", versus the chaos of changing unknowns that make truth, more of a human opinion and subject to change.

Im obviously in the latter camp, so im part of the problem and cant really see the other side, by definition.

I appreciate that we are not gonna see eye to eye on this because of all sorts of roadblocks- I'm not even certain we are in the same room with the conversation to a point where I'm not sure if we are even able to disagree. None of those things even come to mind for me. And applyed to MacIntyre who has been accused of relativism and chaos?

My point is this, the idea of trying to find that one system at the end of a long process of mental agitation is the wrong approach. It doesn't work because it's silly to begin with- though attempted for very important and well-intentioned reasons, some even insightful. We've tried to find that special mental space where all social references are excluded, no theology, no law, no aesthetics; at the end of long process of mental agitation, and one could be justified in saying that going back to narratives (however under-explained) to discuss ethical behaviors would be one approach that isn't as discredited as once imagined. For me, its getting back to practical reasoning and thinking of ethics more plainly as character and not some sort of all encompassing image in the mind's eye that is a more sensible avenue.

[Simple Minded]

Some discussions are truly timeless...

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