Man's innate humanity worthy of respect...
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I disagree with "we". From a Structuralist perspective, sure, 'many of us' many have such a social calculus, but I do not, and I do not believe it is inherent/independent of cultural indoctrination toward that way of thinking..
You talked about your way
I, on the other hand, have a 'what's good for me' and b 'what's good for others', my duty (as close as I feel such a thing) is to not do what is bad for me, so in so far as doing what's "bad for others" isn't bad for me (think of trying to eat a zebra vs trying to eat a lion) I have no reason to regard it. That is my social calculus, mine is not the same as yours, that one which our society encourages, such that would have me subordinate to the wishes of others.
Given a chance to vote in some manner of environmental related economic reform, such that your own quality of life was reduced marginally, but the planet was kept in a healthier state for future generations - you would side with the 'selfish' no reform vote?
Sorry to get so specific, please read it in as broad a scope as possible
Sorry to get so specific, please read it in as broad a scope as possible
Given a chance to vote in some manner of environmental related economic reform, such that your own quality of life was reduced marginally, but the planet was kept in a healthier state for future generations - you would side with the 'selfish' no reform vote?
Sorry to get so specific, please read it in as broad a scope as possible
naa, fuck deep ecology. Mankind will die some day, so whether that's 1000 generations or 100 generations from now makes no difference to me, and I don't consider anything else more valuable than man, so I wouldn't sacrifice something myself for that which isn't going to know about it's own non-existence. And if I'm going to sacrifice myself for these Gen Y emofags, or generation z and so on who're they going to sacrifice their shit for? is everyone living as fertilizer for the gardens of others? Surely the only point to sacrifice is for some cunt to finally get to enjoy the fruits of it, and to anyone who would ask me such a question I must ask, who are these cunts to be happier than me? If their happiness is so important, what if instead of my being their great-great-grand neighbour they were a generation older than me... do they deserve to fuck the world over for me, I mean it's for them that I'm supposed to not get what I want right? So, reverse the story, if I was to be born in 100 years time, why would I deserve to be happy then any more than I deserve it now? Why are people now supposed to sacrifice for people then? why shouldn't they sacrifice their lives (with no discomfort whatsoever, them never being born n all) for us to be happy now, rather than us knowingly enduring bullshit now for them to be happy, that hardly seems fair!?
I hope that's the reply you were expecting, given the trend of thought in this thread it seems predictable.
didn't really have any expectations, that one is certainly internally consistent
I don't know that anyone is 'supposed' to make any form of sacrifice, it's a choice with bearing upon other humans, as such it 'may' be something the law tries to force upon you at some point, for the same reason as any other law - a reduction in personal freedom (power) for the 'net gain' of the society.
I don't know that anyone is 'supposed' to make any form of sacrifice, it's a choice with bearing upon other humans, as such it 'may' be something the law tries to force upon you at some point, for the same reason as any other law - a reduction in personal freedom (power) for the 'net gain' of the society.
Why is humanity automatically, magically valuable and yeast is not?
Measure the quality of the humanity before you praise it... Britney ain't Beethoven
Measure the quality of the humanity before you praise it... Britney ain't Beethoven
Stravinsky, Spears, Stalin, they all have a self-evident right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness
Stravinsky, Spears, Stalin, they all have a self-evident right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness
So do those who would kill them. "Self-evident rights" make little sense as a result.
I had imagined, from my other posts in this thread, you'd have picked up the sarcasm there... perhaps I punctuated with the wrong smilie (This board aint got much to choose from)
Sorry, I flaked on noticing the smiley or waiting for graphics to load. Blitzkrieg trollsk filosofik attack!
Nile577
Member
- Jun 26, 2003
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I think Justins’ astute realisation that we must have a conception of what ‘man’ is before we ascertain the value of claims to any innate ‘worth’ he possesses provides an excellent foundation for considering this thread.
Here are some very rough and rambling thoughts. I apologise for their unpolished presentation. Time constraints prevent me from fleshing this out into a coherent piece.
It is quite interesting to consider what has been made of the notion of ‘man’ historically. If we examine Kipling’s ‘If,’ for example, it would seem that ‘man’ is almost a task to perform. According to the poem, a person is NOT innately a man – that title is conditional to fulfilling the behavioural duty outlined in the stanzas. I think Kipling’s man reflected what in the English vernacular became the gentle man. It is this performative man that is often assigned respect, and (moral) rights. It is this perfomative man against which one is judged in the courts.
I think that this notion of conditional man is reflected across a spectrum of ideological thought. A ‘man’ is he that performs the tasks of allegiance necessary for subscription to an ideology, or theology, or morality. You might argue that Christ's love, perhaps, is distinct because - in the words of Desmond Tutu - 'all, all, ALL are embraced,' but presumably this embrace is to little avail unless 'man' fulfils the obligation of penitence.
The word ‘moral’ needs some clarification, but it seems that judgements of man’s worth are quite common. 'Self' seems to be invested with value either by a deontological external – God, for example - , or invests its own value in willed experience. It seems that when this valuating process aligns with a posited external – an abstract universal ideal, for example – , what might be called the moral worth of man is revealed quite strikingly. The ‘nihilist’ might posit a strongly negative moral worth of man; the theist a high positive. Perhaps the scientist might view man as a collection of molecules striving to propagate his genes and ascribe 'moral' worth in accordance to a perceived beauty in that process.
When man’s worth is revealed through his own invested experience (his existentially posited values), it seems to me that ascetic ‘moral’ worth is dispensed in favour of worth in accordance with experiential compatibility. That is, the hedonist ‘values’ man as a tool for obtaining pleasure. 'Pleasure' is the condition which one must fulfil to be considered ‘man.’ Pleasure is what man IS. However, as Sartre noted, it is also exactly what man is NOT. The reflective ‘for-itself’ of man’s consciousness is the nothingness of what he is not. That is, when man reflects ‘I am happy,’ the point from which this evaluation is undertaken (the ‘I’ that posits ‘I am happy’ is NOT itself ‘happy;’ it is that which stands outside of happiness and evaluates it. For Sartre, we live in an existentialist age, in which for many God is dead, and the nothingness of the for-itself reads its own values into life, revealing our Being. This evaluatory nothingness is the existentialist’s replacement for God.
My opinion? I think there are serious problems with many of the above notions of man. ‘Man’ is not a material object. Man is a way of being. Man is Dasein. Dasein is not biological, but ontological. To ascribe no innate ‘value’ to Dasein would indeed be a catastrophic nihilism and – if such a thing were really possible – represent the eradication of Being. Dasein shepherds Being into the World. In this way man is ‘Godded’ before he needs recourse to reflective experience. In this way he is able to ‘own’ his own death: to understand it as a necessary tenet of his ontological condition. He is, as Nietzche might say, ‘beyond good and evil.’
The Being of man is not for moral disposure.
There is a disclosed moral dignity of Being to being man or woman.
Here are some very rough and rambling thoughts. I apologise for their unpolished presentation. Time constraints prevent me from fleshing this out into a coherent piece.
It is quite interesting to consider what has been made of the notion of ‘man’ historically. If we examine Kipling’s ‘If,’ for example, it would seem that ‘man’ is almost a task to perform. According to the poem, a person is NOT innately a man – that title is conditional to fulfilling the behavioural duty outlined in the stanzas. I think Kipling’s man reflected what in the English vernacular became the gentle man. It is this performative man that is often assigned respect, and (moral) rights. It is this perfomative man against which one is judged in the courts.
I think that this notion of conditional man is reflected across a spectrum of ideological thought. A ‘man’ is he that performs the tasks of allegiance necessary for subscription to an ideology, or theology, or morality. You might argue that Christ's love, perhaps, is distinct because - in the words of Desmond Tutu - 'all, all, ALL are embraced,' but presumably this embrace is to little avail unless 'man' fulfils the obligation of penitence.
The word ‘moral’ needs some clarification, but it seems that judgements of man’s worth are quite common. 'Self' seems to be invested with value either by a deontological external – God, for example - , or invests its own value in willed experience. It seems that when this valuating process aligns with a posited external – an abstract universal ideal, for example – , what might be called the moral worth of man is revealed quite strikingly. The ‘nihilist’ might posit a strongly negative moral worth of man; the theist a high positive. Perhaps the scientist might view man as a collection of molecules striving to propagate his genes and ascribe 'moral' worth in accordance to a perceived beauty in that process.
When man’s worth is revealed through his own invested experience (his existentially posited values), it seems to me that ascetic ‘moral’ worth is dispensed in favour of worth in accordance with experiential compatibility. That is, the hedonist ‘values’ man as a tool for obtaining pleasure. 'Pleasure' is the condition which one must fulfil to be considered ‘man.’ Pleasure is what man IS. However, as Sartre noted, it is also exactly what man is NOT. The reflective ‘for-itself’ of man’s consciousness is the nothingness of what he is not. That is, when man reflects ‘I am happy,’ the point from which this evaluation is undertaken (the ‘I’ that posits ‘I am happy’
is NOT itself ‘happy;’ it is that which stands outside of happiness and evaluates it. For Sartre, we live in an existentialist age, in which for many God is dead, and the nothingness of the for-itself reads its own values into life, revealing our Being. This evaluatory nothingness is the existentialist’s replacement for God.My opinion? I think there are serious problems with many of the above notions of man. ‘Man’ is not a material object. Man is a way of being. Man is Dasein. Dasein is not biological, but ontological. To ascribe no innate ‘value’ to Dasein would indeed be a catastrophic nihilism and – if such a thing were really possible – represent the eradication of Being. Dasein shepherds Being into the World. In this way man is ‘Godded’ before he needs recourse to reflective experience. In this way he is able to ‘own’ his own death: to understand it as a necessary tenet of his ontological condition. He is, as Nietzche might say, ‘beyond good and evil.’
The Being of man is not for moral disposure.
There is a disclosed moral dignity of Being to being man or woman.
Man is many things at once: biology, a quest, a meat hunk, part of the herd.
Innate value requires an observer. Back to G-d. Not sure of the value of positing the end of an argument before the beginning, although the metaphysical questions are mostly tautological anyway.
Man is HIV.
I figured that went without saying.
Reminds me a lot of the more useful thoughts of Eckhart Tolle
"To ascribe no innate value to Dasein would indeed be a catastrophic nihilism". in what sense are you speaking of 'value'---I certainly ascribe it the property of existence---has the values necessary to consider it an existing things, but in the sense of "intrinsic value", "moral value", that sorta shit, which is the relevant term to the thread, were I, for sake of ease, to be a solopcist and only concerned with my dasein as the only one (rather than wondering if like other humans trees also have some dasein with a value I'm supposed to acknowledge---think O.S Card's Speaker for the Dead), would I even be wrong in commiting suicide say, would it be some sort of devaluing or denying the value of the dasein? If there is no value in this sense to be spoken of, do we even make any headway to use Heidegger's language? (excuse my poor phrasing, I guess 'my dasein' means 'me', but yea, had to write it somehow)
meaning what?
It's typical Judeo-Christian Bullshit.
Fuck Christ
Christianity propagates a morality of meekness and terror, subservience and feebility. It's followers cling together as an inane herd, self-righteously stamping out any suggestion of difference or strength.
Fuck Christ
Christianity propagates a morality of meekness and terror, subservience and feebility. It's followers cling together as an inane herd, self-righteously stamping out any suggestion of difference or strength.
felinusz
New Metal Member
- Jul 9, 2007
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I think that the person who mentioned empathy touched upon the root of this belief.
Empathy, more the depths our empathy is capable of, is one of the major attributes which differentiates us from most other animals.
The baby easily rescued from the burning building (without personal risk) example falls apart somewhat with empathy factored in - prior to taking action one must ask what they would do should it be -their- baby. They ask what they would wish another to do should it be -their- baby.
That said, the ignorant and useless members of our society have less of a claim to this world than the intelligent and productive, in my opinion.
Worth is not inherant. Worth is earned. To me, a human life is generally worth more than a dog's life, but it depends on which human, and which dog (is it -my- dog?)
I think a major problem we face in our modern society, is all these little pricks walking around thinking they are king shit, because parents, teachers, Sesame Street, and Mr. Rogers have been telling them that they are special and important since before they could even write their generic little names down unassisted.
These people do not realize that they are not special. They do not realize that they are average and mundane, that they will most likely fail to do anything particularly above average with their lives. But they have been raised with a deception; the belief that they have inherant worth as human beings, and as such are entitled to whatever the fuck they want to take or do (to other people, to the environment, etc.). These white middle-classed wigger type kids are by far the worst possible example I can think of
Real life gives them a rude wake up call. I work for a credit card company (the man) right now. You would be amazed how many customers who were once deeply into depbt, who completely neglected their bills for months, contact us to complain; stating that they should be entitled to a letter waiving all of their account's past delinquencies - often on very large balances - because these past delinquencies have ruined their credit ratings. Suddenly, Jimmy cannot get a mortgage or a bank loan larger than $5
You've got a lot of explaining to do, in order to justify your decision to target only "Judeo-Christianity" as the culprit.
Empathy, more the depths our empathy is capable of, is one of the major attributes which differentiates us from most other animals.
The baby easily rescued from the burning building (without personal risk) example falls apart somewhat with empathy factored in - prior to taking action one must ask what they would do should it be -their- baby. They ask what they would wish another to do should it be -their- baby.
That said, the ignorant and useless members of our society have less of a claim to this world than the intelligent and productive, in my opinion.
Worth is not inherant. Worth is earned. To me, a human life is generally worth more than a dog's life, but it depends on which human, and which dog (is it -my- dog?
)I think a major problem we face in our modern society, is all these little pricks walking around thinking they are king shit, because parents, teachers, Sesame Street, and Mr. Rogers have been telling them that they are special and important since before they could even write their generic little names down unassisted.
These people do not realize that they are not special. They do not realize that they are average and mundane, that they will most likely fail to do anything particularly above average with their lives. But they have been raised with a deception; the belief that they have inherant worth as human beings, and as such are entitled to whatever the fuck they want to take or do (to other people, to the environment, etc.). These white middle-classed wigger type kids are by far the worst possible example I can think of
Real life gives them a rude wake up call. I work for a credit card company (the man) right now. You would be amazed how many customers who were once deeply into depbt, who completely neglected their bills for months, contact us to complain; stating that they should be entitled to a letter waiving all of their account's past delinquencies - often on very large balances - because these past delinquencies have ruined their credit ratings. Suddenly, Jimmy cannot get a mortgage or a bank loan larger than $5
You've got a lot of explaining to do, in order to justify your decision to target only "Judeo-Christianity" as the culprit.
These white middle-classed wigger type kids are by far the worst possible example I can think of
phew, not me. *is a lower-class white hip-hop enthusiast*
The British 'chav' sounds worse than the American 'wigger' to me.
