Philosophy Now Forum

thinking about existence, we have several thoughts in mind....

among the questions of existence, and in no particular order,
we have:

what is the meaning of existence,
what is the goal of life...
what is the relationship between the one, the individual
and the collective, the state....
what does it mean to be human...
what is the point/value of the state....
what is the best form of government....
what is the best economic system for us...
what metaphysical system is the best...
how does history fit together...

these are a few, a few of the many questions we can ask...
and we can, if we so desire to, combine any two such questions
into a third question.....how did the Napoleonic wars
fit into our understanding of the meaning of existence?

we humans, both collectively and individually, take on
"ad hoc" positions about most things.... ad hoc, of the moment,
temporary, it is rare that we take a position and think about it
in the wider terms of being human....

we think: drag shows should be banned.

instead we should think socially, historically, philosophically
about what drag shows mean and are....

as I have mentioned before, when I was young, men wearing women
dresses, was a common thing... it didn't even raise any eyebrows... I
recall some variety show of the 60's having John Wayne in drag..
and no one batted an eye....and the early 60's were fairly
conservative...it wasn't until 1966 or 67, that the "radical''
nature of the 60's occurred..... ( as I lived in the suburbs of
Chicago at the time, I didn't see them first hand, only on TV)

But today, drag shows are considered to be the end of civilization,
and don't even get a conservative started on gays....so, what changed?

I think part of the change comes in the nature of "ad hoc" beliefs....
for the most part, "ad hoc" beliefs stand alone, apart from other beliefs...
they are not connected to other beliefs.....apart from the conservative
love of, fascination with the past... the past is aways better than the present....
that is an inherent part of conservative beliefs...a belief that is not true,
but that is the beauty of "ad hoc" beliefs, they don't have to be true....
because "ad hoc" beliefs stand in isolation of other beliefs....
they are not compared or contrasted to any other beliefs...

"gays should die" that is an "ad hoc" belief and isn't connected to
any other belief...it isn't compared to or contrasted with any other belief...

or to say this another way, we hold many beliefs that are not connected to
our overall belief system.. our belief stand in isolation to all our other beliefs...
we hold disparate beliefs that are not connected to any other beliefs....
and in doing so, we can hold separate, isolated beliefs that have
no connection to each other...

ok, let us try this: gays should die because (and we then compare
and contrast this belief with other beliefs) and that is something
that can turn "ad hoc" beliefs into a coherent belief system.....
we can say, Napolean was a tyrant.. which in an isolated belief
that means nothing... if we compare and contrast Napolean
to others, we may come to the conclusion that Napolean is or
isn't a tyrant....or we can think further about Napolean and decide
that he brought about some of the greatest changes ever brought
about by anyone in history....he may have been a tyrant, depending on
on how we compare and contrast that, but he was a force for our
modern world....and by his actions, he created the modern world....
if that is good or bad, is a value judgement...


we tend to focus on very small aspects of existence and make grand
statements about them, but we rarely if ever put those thoughts
into a larger understanding of existence.... on the whole, there is
much to dislike about Napolean, but on the whole, he brought about
greater good than bad.... which good and which bad, becomes
a question of comparing and contrasting before Napolean
and after Napolean...and how you feel about modernity...
much of the modern state comes from Napolean and his actions.....

to think about existence since the beginning of time, can be thought of
as two steps forward and one step back.....nazi Germany is one step back,
the European Union is two steps forward...now many might say, the EU is
bad, but what are you comparing and/or contrasting that to?
it is clear from history, that we have moved ever so slowly to
a unified world.. one world collective acting with one voice...
and that will happen, given time..... the strength of human beings
comes from the collective actions.. we are social creatures...
and as the Greeks noted, that we are raised by and become human
by our being part of the polis... the city... but follow the path
of human beings since the day of the first human being walking on
the savanna floor... we have gone from small tribes to small cities
to larger cities to cities/state to nations and to larger nations
and to empires... each step of human existence has been
aiming for a world government.... and we must embraced
that future because it is the only possible future we have.....
anything less spells the end of the human race....

and how do I know that? by comparing and contrasting possible
futures with each other.... and by knowing the laws of entropy...
we must increase our energy even while standing still because of
the nature of living bodies... a large state requires large amounts of energy,
and as we have grown ever larger, we require more and more
energy to run these individual institutions....

and the laws of complexities... which says that we need more
and more complexity to run larger and larger institutions
which includes governments....

so we can fit our beliefs and actions into our understanding of entropy
and the laws of complexity... we can act within a coherent system of
beliefs and actions.. not as we have been doing, beliefs as done with
"ad hoc" beliefs...temporary and isolated beliefs that don't fit with
any sort of coherent belief system...and what about morals/ethics?
we can now have some sort of coherent moral/ethical system
because we can fit it into a coherent unified system of understanding
what it means to be human...


Kropotkin

"This gear engages multiple other gears positioned in an Feston arc around it. The gear, this one, yes, this one, turns this shaft which itself moves what we call a Daniel alternator. Daniel was one of the, if not the, greatest engineer of the 45th century. He solved the Kampan problem, which we all know was the reason why the 9th industrial revolution failed, miserably. Some like to think of it as a delay, a completely unnecessary one once we recognize the simplicity of Daniel's solution. However, to the GEA, the 8th technological jump, as they like to call it, was followed by the 10th; so remarkable was Daniel's breakthrough. We are now a Stella type IV civilization which in layman's terms means we control .... everything there is to control except ... Mr. Pex, Daniel's fifth cousin's wife's gardener's mother's employer's dog's vet's school's chief patron's barber's daughter's teacher's favorite student's left index finger."

"What's that Jon?"

"Ah that! That's ... er ... that's ... what is that? Mr. Sen, what is that? I've never seen that before."

"That, that's a ... a ... what is that?"

I shall ignore agent smith as he has nothing to add to philosophy
anymore...

the question facing us is simple, what does it take to travel
the road of becoming human... of going from animal to animal/human
to becoming fully human.....the law of complexity suggests that
we part of a society/state/culture/civilization and, AND we
are individuals doing our individual thing within that society/state....
and the law of entropy suggests that if enough people quit or walk
away from a society/state/culture, that that society/culture/state will
collapse....any system must maintain energy to holds it form..
and if enough people remove their energy, that society/state can no
longer function....let us think about the final collapse of the ancient
Greek religions...why did they die? simple, enough people removed
their energy, which took the form of participating within that religion
and took that energy elsewhere.....energy can take the form of
participation, money, actual energy within that system,
and we can increase that system or decrease that system, by
our time, money, effort or participation within that system...

if no one believes in a religions system anymore, it dies.. it quietly
folds up and no longer exists...and we can see this today within such
systems as Catholicism... in Europe today, the churches are barely half
full and that is on religious holidays... far more tourist visit churches
than actual believers...and we can see this in churches in America...
it only on important religious holidays that we see churches
approaching full capacity...otherwise churches are quiet,
empty places...the question of complexity leads us to the
knowledge that it is energy that allows a thing, system,
group, or even individuals to keep on going....remove
the energy and any system will fail and collapse....
that is about a sure thing as we can get in this universe....

so we can now think about such systems as democracy...
it needs energy, as does every single system, and the reason
we can hold that democracies are "failing" is the lack of
energy being put into them...we can easily revive our
democracy if, if we put energy into it.. by money,
effort, time, and individual energy put into it...
all we lack is the will to actually engage in this...
dictatorships are growing in America and around the world
because people are putting their energy into them.....
remove the energy in dictatorships and they too will collapse
and fail.... you can turn the tide away from the current
fashion of dictatorship back into democracies by simply
putting your energy into our democracy instead of wannabe
dictators like IQ45....the solution to our "crisis" is simple...
where do we put our energy, time, money, effort into?

so, where do you want to put your effort into?
and that answer will determine whether we hold our
democracy or turn to a dictatorship.....

and that is the law of complexity... the energy you put into
something determines if that something succeeds or fails...
the less energy you put into something, the more likely that
something will fail...be it a human being, or the law or any system like
corporations or the court system....

Kropotkin