Philosophy Now Forum

thus said Martin Buber.... and he is right....
for the first time in history, man has become problematic to
himself....the old certainties have failed...
religions, and the political theories of monarchy and despotism,
and man ''rightful'' place in the universe..... all gone due to the
several revolutions of the last 500 years... the scientific and political,
historical, and social and economic and of course, the philosophical
revolutions of the modern age... have changed how we think of ourselves,
of how we think of human beings......

many people run into problems in thinking that the problems/questions
of the modern age are simply questions that extend from the very beginning
of human beings.......the old age questions of ''what does it mean to be human?''
is today, a different question then it was for Socrates, for example,
because of the complexity of modern life......the various revolutions
have created a different set of problems then Socrates faced.....

I wear a hearing aid due to my hearing loss....I am now actually too deaf
to even consider buying a new hearing aid..... it won't work anymore....
so, my next step is a cochlear implant.... which is a surgically implanted
device that allows me to hear.... technology that allows me to hear.....
and technology that is surgically implanted into me... wires and such.....
am I still human if I am wired like a machine? or am I a mixed of human
and mechanical? and questions like this is becoming more and more
a thing....... I believe it is called '''Transhumanism''... technology that
becomes a part of me..... without which, I am unable to ''properly''
function as a human being..... (hearing is one of the primary senses
that we human beings have, are we still human without those senses?)

but it is not just about the rise of technology that I wonder about,
it is the changing nature of how we view ourselves....is my view
about being human, different than Socrates view about
what it means to be human? and this change, is it due to the many
revolutions of the last 500 years? I believe so.... If Socrates has
one conception of being human due to the milieu of his times,
and I have another conception of being human due to the milieu
of my times, what are we to make of this?

I hold that part of the problem of our times, of man being a problem to
himself, is that we don't actually have any real sense of what being human
actually means...... What does it mean to be human? and few if any today
can answer that question......

or to say this another way... man/human beings for centuries, have
existed within a closed box, of what it means to be human....

we existed inside a box of religious, political, social and economic
factors....and it wasn't possible for human beings to exists outside of
the box constructed by the state/society..... human beings had a set,
determined view of what it meant to be human......as defined by the
state/society/religion......

but today, today we don't exist within that set box anymore.....
we are not defined socially or politically or religiously or economically,
even sexually as we were once defined as..... in a very set, determined
way...... if you were a man, you were defined in a very set determined way,
you had certain jobs, had a certain function within society/state...
you wore certain set clothes and haircut and shoes based on being
a man........ and if you were a woman, you were defined in a very
set, determined way/fashion..... and there was no escaping that
set, determined understanding of what it meant to be male or female,
which dominated our understanding of human beings......

but our modern world, the understanding of being human, changed and
changed radically...... our understanding of being human changed because
our social, political, scientific, economic and philosophical understanding
of being human is vastly different than it was for thousands of years.....
due to the various revolutions of our modern times.......and this recent,
within the last 200 years revolution of what it means to be human,
has left us being problematic to ourselves.....

what does it mean to be human given our radical changes in our
understanding of being human.......the various revolutions of
the last 200 years, really 500 given the scientific revolutions,
has dramatically changed how we view ourselves and our being human......

what does it mean to be human given the various events of the last
124 years.... since 1900...... for example, we have had two world wars,
the Holocaust, the My Lie massacre, Kent State, the torture at Abu Ghraib,
the acceptance of the torture camp at Guantanamo Bay.....
so, would any of those have been acceptable to Socrates and why
or why not?

is life sacred? and if so, then how can we justify the torture of people
in defense of the state? if the defense of the state is greater than
human life, then human life isn't sacred... and it is expendable....
and the Anti-abortion crowd has no leg to stand on...... no justification
for their position.....

or to say this another way, the Anti-abortion crowd actually holds to their
position ''ad hoc'' or as the situation dictates.... beliefs that most people have
for what passes as morality or ethics..... it is really an ''ad hoc'' position.....
as the situation dictates..... and how come the Anti-abortion crowd holds
to an ''ad hoc'' position? Because they have, as most Modern people, no
sense of what it means to be human.... they have no base line in which
to make their demands.... they make demands, to end abortions, but
they have no sense of why they make such a demand..... outside
of it being ''ad hoc''... of the moment.......because they have no
sense of what it means to be human.....some overall sense of what
being human is all about.......

if we are human beings, animals as suggested by both science and
psychology, then being human means one thing... and having
abortions is totally acceptable... if we are ''Gods' creature"
as defined by the religious crowd, then we are something else
and abortions are not acceptable..... but we are so confused as
to what it means to be human.. are we animals or are we something
spiritual, that we become a problem to ourselves.....
that, until we make a choice, we will continue to
be a problem to ourselves..... what does it mean to be
human?

Kropotkin

it is an interesting thing to note that part of why man is
problematic to himself is that we fail to understand what
a human being is...... that we are not a set, defined problem
but an ever changing one....

As Nietzsche noted, that we, human beings are going from
one place to another.....we were animals... and we are transitioning
into human beings.... some of us more successfully than others......

and one might ask, correctly I might add, what happens if everyone,
all human beings/animals successfully transition into fully human beings?

then the next transition occurrs..... we go from being fully human to the next
stage... whatever that might be...... ''god'' perhaps? I don't know what stage
is next, I only know that we never stop the journey from one set, animals to human,
and then human to ....? Just as with every ideology and ism, we travel from
one to the next to the next..... as we must and as we should......belief
in god is not the final step, just the latest step..... and soon enough,
that step will be in the past......and we will believe in something else.....
hopefully, we hold faith in human beings..... for most belief is actually
just belief in something outside of us... god, country, guns, IQ45,
nationalism, racism, bigotry..... all values, beliefs in something outside
of us.......the next step, the next stage is in belief in what we have inside
of us......belief in the value of human beings.......not in the pretend faith
of the Anti-Abortion crowd.... they are not pro-life... if they were, they
would be against the death penalty.... no, the faith in human beings
is where we find the solutions to our current problems......

something the existentialists have tried to point out......
if we are problem-based beings, then the solutions reside within
us.... as human beings....... we can, for example, take responsibility for
our actions and thus negating the current attempts to blame god or family,
society or our own nature or even other human beings for our own failures.......

the questions of ethics or morality, for example begin with us.....
as a human being, how should I treat other human beings?
why should I treat other human beings with dignity or value or
with respect? Because as a human being, I want to be treated that
way..... and why should I treat others differently than I want to be
treated? The only way we can mistreat, devalue others is by
thinking them less than human, less human than me.....
the Jews in Nazi Germany were considered to be less human
than the Germans...... and then it is easy to torture and put
them into concentration camps, if we think of them as not-human.....
if we could answer the question, how could human beings torture
and enslave other human beings? The answer is easy.... Just consider
them less than human.....

The question becomes how many concentrations camps must we build
before we consider other humans, as human?

so, the problem facing us is this..... how do we grow enough, as human beings,
to consider ALL human beings as human beings? to treat human beings with
equality and tolerance? to consider all human beings as equal to us.....
politically, socially, economically, historically, and of course, philosophically......
therein lies a tale..... those who oppose ''WOKE"" are the ones who
want to consider themselves superior, above other human beings....
because if you do consider yourself superior to others, then it is
easy to build concentration camps and torture chambers
and deny other the rights you demand for yourself.....

We are on a ''tightrope'' traveling from the past to the future....
and what future do you wish to see? The future of torture chambers
and camps named Auschwitz? for that comes with the feeling of
feeling superior to others...or do we practice equality and tolerance
to others and create a future that has a future?

what kind of human being are we and what kind of human do
we want to be?

Kropotkin

the question of human beings is a question of history...
of past, present and future....

what do we make of the past, how has it changed, influenced
the present and what must we do to create a future worth living,
for all of us? including, especially the ones not yet born......
what future are we leaving them?

Is hatred, bigotry, prejudice really the legacy we want to leave them?
or do we leave our children and grandchildren, a legacy that can help them
come closer to the reality of becoming fully human?
of reaching our potential, our possibilities of being human?
that tightrope of becoming human.... going from animal to animal/human,
us today to becoming fully human? and after that? I for one, have no idea
what we might become after becoming fully human, but I am sure it
will take them a long time to make the next journey..... just as it has
take human beings millions of years to go from animal to animal/human...
and who knows how long the journey from animal/human will take
to get us to becoming fully human?

the journey, the meaning of existence is simply to become fully human...
not just animal or animal/human, but to become fully human and then
the journey begins to make the next step and after that the next step
and then the next step.......to be human is in becoming.... becoming
something else.....

Kropotkin