Philosophy Now Forum

One: that we human beings, as with all living things, have needs..
food, water, shelter, sleep, health care and education are
some of the basic, fundamental needs....and these are bodily needs,
we also have psychological needs, of love, safety/security, of needed esteem,
of a sense of belonging.... and these needs have to be met just
as surely as our bodily needs...

Two: that the basic point of human existence is to meet these needs...
the question becomes, what is the best way to meet these needs?
the entire edifice of the state, society, institutions, education, is to
meet these needs..

Three: that needs are not just individual, but also collective...
to say, I need, is to say, we need...for the needs of the collective is
just as certain as our individual needs...collectively we need safety/security
and the freedom we have individually...a society/state cannot be so rigid or
fixed that it can't change or adapt to new conditions... one of the primary
goals of both the state/society and the individual is to change and adapt
to new conditions and environments.... the very survival of both the
the individual and state/society is done by adapting and changing
to the changing conditions we find ourselves in...

Four: that there doesn't seem to be an obvious and clear statement
of the point of existence...the why of life isn't very clear....
why have existence instead of no-existence? there doesn't seem to be
a clear reason for existence... either individually or collectively...

Five: that we human beings use/create disciplines like history, economics,
theology, philosophy, science, inquires, to explain or create a reason
for existence.... history teaches that existence is for..... or philosophically,
we can't find a reason for god... thus we are....

Six: that we cannot convert scientific facts into philosophical facts..
the sun is 93 million miles from earth... but how does this fact create
any type of understanding as to the point of human existence....
or that the theory of relativity is about motion between two objects,
one is stationary and the other moving.. and the special theory of
relativity is about two moving objects....(or maybe it's the other way around?)
anyway, scientific facts cannot lead us to any understanding of what
it means to be human...science is the understanding of the how,
whereas to find meaning requires us to seek out the why of existence...

Seven: the various ism's of existence are, at best, temporary...
now is the time of capitalism, and tomorrow? that we have
had several different types of economical theories that
we lived by...and we have had several different types of political
theories upon we use to create the political society we have lived
under.... there is no such thing as a permanent ism that will
be here yesterday, today and tomorrow..... ism's change often
and quickly... they are temporary, "ad hoc"...

Eight: that knowledge doesn't lead to wisdom... the two are different
things.... to know facts isn't enough to have wisdom or to be wise....
facts are not wisdom....

Nine: that we have, at best, is an incomplete understanding of the earth,
of history, of philosophy, of the meaning of life, of science, of god,
of anything.... we know a lot of small, independent facts that don't add
up to any overall, coherent system of life.... our knowledge of the universe
is small... we have an incomplete knowledge of the universe....

Ten: our knowledge of the universe is so small that we can't really
''know'' anything... everything we think we know as a fact is really
just conjecture...in other words, we think that there is a god,
conjecture, we think that the universe is forever, conjecture,
we think that life is permanent, conjecture... that human beings will die..
conjecture... one might say, we can know that some human beings are white or
are male.... but that definition is circular if you think about it...
''to be a white person one must be this" and yet, we cannot define
a white person because of all the variables of race..
how are we to define a person born of a white mother and a black
father? what race are they? and this is true of everyone....
my sister took one of those ancestry test... she was, and thus I am,
part Ashkenazi jew, and part black and part native American,
and a whole lot of Irish/English.... so, what am I? mostly, and
emphasis mostly, I am Irish/English... I am, like everyone else
on earth, a mix of a whole lot of things.. there is no such thing
as a ''pure" human being... the Nazi idea of "pure" Aryan is
just a lie...for there is no such thing as "pure"

Eleven: that there is no such thing as ''objective"
all knowledge is subjective.. for facts, all facts are subjective...
what exactly does the objective fact, "that the earth is 93 million miles
from the sun" mean? it become a subjective interpretation to make
sense of that fact... given no context, a statement like the "earth is
93 million miles from the sun" means nothing... it only makes
sense in context to something else... facts only make sense
in context to something else... in fact, our statements,
can only make sense in context to something else...

''That democrats are evil" requires context to make any sense...

and if they don't need context, " the sun rose today" the statement
tells us nothing... that statement actually has no point in even
being made.... ''the sun rose today" and so what?
much of what passes for information is here in the "so the fuck what"
area....without context, most information belongs here...
"so the fuck what"

as I must get ready for work, I shall end this here...

Kropotkin

a couple of more points today:

that morality/ethics is not universal, applicable to all, in
all times, at all situations...

that there is not a universal morality/ethics leads us to say, that morality/ethics
is local, society based... different societies had different moral standards...
for example, in the Aztec culture, human sacrifice was common and given
a religious context....the priest were the ones conducting the sacrifice for
the gods as the gods had sacrificed for the Aztecs...

it has been suggested that originally, the Jewish faith also practice human
sacrifice, but that practice was ended not too long after the Jewish religion
had been founded... the sacrifice of animals was very common in the Jewish
temple...and recall the story of Abraham.... where he was commanded to
sacrificed his child, Isaac... to honor the lord... this is the story that
Kierkegaard used in the book "Fear and Trembling".....
but what K. focused on was the anxiety that Abraham felt when
god asked him to sacrificed his child...not on the story itself,
but on its effect on Abraham....this is a very modern thing to do....
focus on its effect on people, not on the act itself....

but today, does any society or state practice sacrifice, human or otherwise?
it is considered today, to be a barbaric act....and a man asked by
god to sacrificed his child, would not be considered to
be a holy man, but to be mentally ill....
and yet the bible makes great use of the attempted sacrifice of Isaac..
as has writers and Artists since then...

and the question of ethics/morality goes on...what does it mean
to be ethical/moral and what standards are we to use in being
ethical/moral? How do we know an action is ethical/moral?

Let us take IQ45 and his ongoing issues with the truth... it is estimated that
that during his presidency, has lied over 2,500 times... big lies as well
as little lies.... and has lied about the election being fraudulent, stolen
as well as there being a deep state or that entire world is against him....
(not the entire world, just the intelligent part of the world)

this ongoing, constant lying allows people the permission to lie also...
and we see this in congress within the GOP/MAGA party which goes
on lying about, well virtually everything...lying as been standardized in
political discourse... and as there is no consequences for lying, it
will go on and on and on.... that is the danger in IQ45.. he normalizes
speaking and actions that were, in times past, ethically wrong...
in years past, a politician caught lying would have their career destroyed..
now they are reelected and praised....

Next: the basic fact of life for human beings is their social nature...
we are, as created by evolution, to be social creatures..
we function best within a group of others...as we cannot survive
alone, either in the meeting of our needs, bodily or psychologically...
or in being able to function.....one of the most damaging things you
can do to a human being is to isolate them... solitary confinement
can bring about both mental and physical health issues... we become
sick if we are not in contact with other human beings... human beings
are wired to be in physical contact with other human beings... we must
touch and be touched if we are to stay healthy as human beings....

and this understanding of the social aspect of being human means
that we can understand that the successful ism's and ideologies of
existence, must engage with this social aspect of being human...
that is why communism is mentally better for us as human beings
instead of capitalism... for capitalism encourages us to compete
with each other whereas communism encourages us to engage
with each other in a social, communal way...communism is based on
the idea that we are social beings... that we must work together to
achieve the gaining of our needs, both bodily and spiritual
and psychologically... that we cannot become fully human unless
we begin by meeting both our needs, physical and psychological...
and that can only happen with us being social....working together...

our economic and political system must start with this fundamental
need of being human, which is to be social, to work together is the basic
aspect of being human...one might say, that the basic fundamental
law of being human is that we must connect with each other on
a daily basis or we suffer from health issues and we will be unable
to meet our needs...

all our understanding of what it means to be human and what
type of society, state, political and economic structures we have..
all have, as their base understanding, that we human beings must
be socially and physically in contact with each other at all times....
any political or social or economic system that ignores that fact,
is doomed to failure...to succeed, we need each other...
and there is no way around that fact...
and every aspect of human existence must take that into account...
as capitalism does not, it will fail...

Kropotkin