Philosophy Now Forum

Now recall that I am an American and thus hold an American
viewpoint on this.. You can turn this into a British viewpoint as you wish or
any another viewpoint...

As with everyone else, I have my own personal issues... my ankle surgery which I
am still recovery from and I will be going back to work in about a month..
this loss of income has created a small issue with income coming in... you
know details that like that everyone goes through.. and we all have issues
and problem that are engaging to us.. (I almost wrote unique, but it isn't unique
that we have similar problems/issues as human beings.. in being human,
we are faced with similar/comparable issues of existence, of birth, life and death)

and sometimes, in my own fixation with my issues/problems, I forget to look
at the world with what I call an "Eagle viewpoint" instead of seeing the world
from a perspective of what I call the "Ant viewpoint"... we, each of us, face the
world in an "Ant viewpoint" .... think of the viewpoint of an "ant", think of what
an ''ant" can see... try to imagine what an ''ant'' can see? What does an 'ANT '' see from
their perspective? That is the 'ANT" perspective... looking up at the world and seeing
what exactly?

Now for the most part, this I liken this to a human perspective...
we are so involved in our daily grind, we see the world from an "ant" perspective..
we see work and school and relationships and the daily details of our lives,
in an up-close perspective.. we can't get a real perspective of our lives because
it is too close to our vision.... I am married, 26 years now, and given my
situation, I am unable to get a birds eye view of my marriage.. I can only see
the "ANT" viewpoint of being married... doing the dishes, cleaning out the litter box
for the cat.. taking out the garbage.. making dinner... the daily tasks that make a marriage
work..marrriage is hard work.. and not for the lazy.. and sometimes one gets
lost in thinking all marriage is just about those endless tasks that fill our days..

and so to get a proper perspective, I have to raise my vision to an ''Eagle viewpoint''
see my marriage from a bird's perspective...I can see from an ''Eagle viewpoint''
that my life and marriage is a pretty good life and marriage...while
the daily grind of live does exists, we lead a very good life.. all my
daily needs are being met...as per Maslow pyramid, where food, water,
shelter, education, health care.. our basic biological needs are being met,
and my psychological needs are also being met...I/We have safety/security,
love/belonging, esteem needs are also being met...

Given the larger perspective, I see my/our lives is better than 90% of everyone
on planet Earth...

so let us take a birds eye view of what is going on in America today....

there is a lot of discontentment in the world today....let us examine
some of the world's issues through the lens of Maslow's pyramid..

the bottom run of meeting our basic biological needs of food, water, shelter,
education, health care... for millions of people, here and around the world,
the basics are a challenge.. millions of people are lacking the basic necessities of
existence.. lacking in food or water or shelter or education or health care....

that is not to mention, meeting the psychological needs of human existence,
of finding love, esteem, safety/security.... in seeking those psychological
needs, people fill the worlds bars and pubs.. internet dating sites, sites like
this....all of them in an attempt to fill our psychological needs...

To be blunt, we have a world of psychological damaged people..
trying to fulfill our bodily and psychological needs..
(note that for many, failing to meet our bodily needs, will create
psychological needs and quite often failing to meet our psychological
needs create bodily issues, addictions like drug use or overeating
come a failure to meet these psychological needs...

in fact, our frantic search to fulfill our psychological needs by
such things as addictions and the like, is another example
of viewing the world via the ''Ant'' perspective... we are so single
mindedly in search of fulfilling our needs that we forget
to see what else is possible for us.. we cannot see the "eagle"
perspective because we are so focused on meeting our own
private needs.. be it bodily or psychologically..

here I have laid out the mechanism for why we see the world from
an "Ant" viewpoint.. and the next post will talk about what we might see
if we raise our view to go from the "Ant'' to the "eagle"

Kropotkin

Now some might say, this has nothing to do with philosophy,
and they be wrong.. at this intersection of seeking needs lie
much philosophy and religion... for example, Buddhism,
much of what the Buddha says lays at this point of seeking
needs... he says that by eliminating our desires, by removing the
bodily and psychological needs, we can reach the desired
state of nirvana.. that is to be able to return to our home of
non-existence.. and the other religions that preach
sacrifice and negation.. like Catholicism, where the path
to heaven is found in the denial of pleasure, lust, self-gratification,
and enjoyment of the senses... we are told the only way to heaven is
to deny the body and embrace the spirit/soul...

this denial of the body is a denial of meeting our basic needs..
where food and water and shelter and education and health care
is not important...it is the soul and the passage to heaven that counts,
nothing else...and certainly nothing of the body is praised... the body
in many religions is the enemy.. the source of evil... and in
asceticism, we discover much of the world's trouble.. for we cannot
deny our basic needs.. and in trying to please two gods, the body
and the lord, we run into trouble...

for I am a living being and as such, I cannot deny millions of years of
evolution.. I must seek out food, water, shelter, health care and education..
and I must seek out my psychological needs of love, esteem, safety/security,
belonging... I cannot do anything else.. and perhaps in this clash of two
contradictory demands, one that seeks to fulfill the body and the other
to fulfill the soul, we can see the modern day discontentment that fills
our lives and damages everything we do... religions that demand
denial and bodily needs that demand fulfillment..... which master
are we to serve? I have made my answer clear, we must first engage
with the bodily needs.. to have food, water, shelter, health care, education..
we cannot survive without those needs being met...and we can, if we can,
seek out our psychological needs of love, belonging, safety/security, esteem...
but the body comes first.. that is evolution speaking...

part of the psychosis of today, comes from our attempting to meet both needs
without any regards to their significance... for example, conservatives preach
religion and the need for god.. but they are driven by meeting their needs
for money/power/ lust/ material goods..... it is within this paradox of
trying to meet both needs of the body and the soul, that has damaged the
conservative... and the Liberal has been damaged by their focused on
the bodily needs and not on the psychological/spiritual needs...

I hold that the liberal is less psychological damaged than the conservative..
because their focus is more in line with what we need to do...to engage
with bodily needs because we are human.. biological bodies with
biological needs...and that is not to say the psychological/spiritual needs
are not important, but they need to come after the bodily needs are fulfilled...

but in the end, it requires both needs, the bodily and the psychological/spiritual
needs to be fulfilled for us to be ready to move into the next stage of human
development... for us, we are going from animal, as we came from animals,
to becoming animal/human, where are needs, both our bodily needs and
psychological needs come into play.. and as we grow into becoming more
human, our needs shift from being physical, bodily to become more
psychological/spiritual... the nature of our needs, that which we search for
become more along the lines of our inner needs, and not our bodily needs...

the struggle to become human is not a physical one, but a psychological struggle,
the battle to become human lies inside of us, mentally, emotionally and psychologically...

but we cannot get there until we are able to solve our bodily needs.. we must
have food, water, shelter, education and health care before we can seek out
meeting our psychological needs...If I am starving, what does it matter if
I have love or not? If I don't have shelter, what does it matter if I have
esteem or not? If I don't have an education or health care, what does it matter
if I am without a sense of belonging or safety/security?

These two needs of the body and the psychological need, are not two distinct
and separate needs, they are two sides of the same coin, the human coin...

The path to becoming human, fully human lies in our being able to
meet both our bodily, physical needs and, and our psychological needs..
to deny one, is to be unable to become human... we must have both,
our physical and our psychological needs to be fulfilled...

that is one "eagle eye" vision of today... there are others, what is your
"Eagle eye" vision of today and of tomorrow?


Kropotkin

Can you weave in wind turbines? They don't mix well with eagles. Maybe use the damaged people portal.

when I write a post or thread, I expect don't expect many to understand what
I am talking about.... I have few expectations and thank you for meeting
my low expectations...

Kropotkin

That didn't take long.

I’ll venture that your answer is a chilly, “no to relevance!”
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=19312

(The link is best understood as a metaphor, or allegory, for what happens to eagle views of today ..)