DescentBB

Lord knows, this is likely to draw yawns, but it IS about Ethics and/or Commentary:

For the past several days, I've been reading a book by Irving Sandler about the Abstract Expressionist art movement in the US(1943-1960), and it's relation to the American scene and events of the day. This is the sort of cultural study that is the direct result of a delayed fishing season, and a trip with my middle grandchild to Story Time at the county library. At any rate, central to some of this discourse was the matter of Existential philosophy, which
Sandler notes was the direct outgrowth of the turbulent and bleak history of Europe and the World in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Now, for those who didn't study Existentialism in school, a superficial description would call it a philosophy based upon the primacy of the Individual. In other words, given that we are all going to die at some point, we should focus on maximizing our personal individuality and spend our time on earth searching for our 'true self'. This differs from most precedent philosophies, which were either Deist(primacy of a God or Gods), or Socialist(primacy of the society), in nature.

Now, what this set off in me was a wonderment about the current world we live in. We seem to have much celebration of the Individual in some strains of Libertarian politics, and also within the me-first attitude of modern society. However, the difference, as I see it, is that today's focus on the Individual seems to be(when one digs into it a bit) driven by larger forces, such as corporate goals, political movements and the like. Was the appeal of this focus, though, generated by the bleak events of the 2001-2009 period, with terrorism and very dire economic failures? If so, that would jive with the initial trigger for the development of an Existential philosophy back in the mid-20th century. One can only wonder how folks like Kirkegaard, Camus or Sartre would view our modern world, and how the individual is celebrated and/or nurtured in modern society.

Any thoughts(beyond the obvious: "slick has WAY too much time on his hands in retirement", or "'slick is nuts!")?

How much of the "Me First" philosophy is generated by those who use a life long dependency on welfare whereby they take but give nothing back to society?

woodchip wrote:How much of the "Me First" philosophy is generated by those who use a life long dependency on welfare whereby they take but give nothing back to society?

very little that I can see......no one on welfare has the wherewithall to do much by way of self-searching. The funds just are not there. Perhaps, you don't understand what I'm calling 'me-first', but it has to do with more things other than mere subsistence. Or, you're merely trying to refocus yet another discussion towards the same old mean-spirited Conservative BS.

Try taking my statement at face value instead of trying to parse it into political perspectives. I would heartily disagree that welfare recipients do not have the ability to self search. If any group should be self searching those who are in a dead end existence should be at the top of the list.

woodchip wrote:Try taking my statement at face value instead of trying to parse it into political perspectives. I would heartily disagree that welfare recipients do not have the ability to self search. If any group should be self searching those who are in a dead end existence should be at the top of the list.

but once again, that is not what I'm talking about. YOU chose to make it a rant about 'welfare states' and the like. I have no clue how well you understand the Existentialist philosophy around the primacy of self, or self-definition(hell, I'm no expert). That might be why this is starting to get to be a circular discourse. I don't see at all how you've demonstrated that 'those in a dead-end existence' are involved in a search for their 'true selves'......or, even a suggestion about how they could.

a quick overview.....interesting to note, even Sartre himself(rather famously) claimed to not know what Existentialism really was:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/existent/

callmeslick wrote: I don't see at all how you've demonstrated that 'those in a dead-end existence' are involved in a search for their 'true selves'......or, even a suggestion about how they could.

They are not in a "search" but they could be if they chose to. As such they (welfare recipients or anyone else for that matter) have to give themselves some meaning in life. Kierkegaard espoused that idea as a starting principle in the school of existentialist thought. Lets face it though, how many people undertake educating themselves in the principles and philosophy's of existentialism to perhaps better their view of the world? You haven't, I haven't and most on this board haven't.

woodchip wrote:

callmeslick wrote: I don't see at all how you've demonstrated that 'those in a dead-end existence' are involved in a search for their 'true selves'......or, even a suggestion about how they could.

They are not in a "search" but they could be if they chose to. As such they (welfare recipients or anyone else for that matter) have to give themselves some meaning in life. Kierkegaard espoused that idea as a starting principle in the school of existentialist thought. Lets face it though, how many people undertake educating themselves in the principles and philosophy's of existentialism to perhaps better their view of the world? You haven't, I haven't and most on this board haven't.

I've tried to incorporate it, and spent a bit of time studying it(Philosophy class, and oddly, perhaps, in third-year French class). As a Fine Art minor, the thinking about artistic self-determination was part of the process as well. Now, my contention is that most people, whose lives are directed by and channeled by large group-think(I view this as most Westerners) are not going to escape that to search for self. Maybe you are correct in that some poor person on welfare, for no other reason than poverty alone(so many are receiving social services due to other factors, such as disability or external factors such as labor cutbacks and such) COULD be well-served by searching for his/her true individual self. My point earlier was that someone with a hand-to-mouth existence, and especially dependants to focus on, might have a lot of difficulty finding the time required. Sure, to go back to the book I was reading, the AbEx artist were generally dirt-poor, living in cold-water walkups in NYC and had been receiving Federal benefits during the depression. But most of them were living solitary lives, and thus had no little kids or even spouses to worry about supporting in any way. They were therefore free to self-explore.

At any rate, what I see as the modern-day celebration of, or insistance on, primacy of self, seen in both how stuff is marketed, and certain political strains( in a sense, Rand's thinking is a sort of perversion of Existential thought, IMHO) are just 'individualism' in the service of outside manipulation.

Classic woodchip. Slick starts off a deep-thinking thread about discovering the current zeitgeist of the American philosophical landscape and woodchip answers with a one-liner along the lines of "herp derp welfare." So deep!

vision wrote:Classic woodchip. Slick starts off a deep-thinking thread about discovering the current zeitgeist of the American philosophical landscape and woodchip answers with a one-liner along the lines of "herp derp welfare." So deep!

And your excuse in my threads? and look at what you just posted here. Whatta contribution.

vision wrote:Classic woodchip. Slick starts off a deep-thinking thread about discovering the current zeitgeist of the American philosophical landscape and woodchip answers with a one-liner along the lines of "herp derp welfare." So deep!

hehe, nice. On a related note, woody is the same guy who wanted high quality threads once per day, while not being able to deliver any himself. Bad thinking, bad bargaining, weak positioning.


Slick: your op-ed reminded me of a story I read yesterday about how unemployment, traditionally thought as "you succeed on your own merits only", was due for a shift, where those who are unemployed are not always necessarily at-fault in this day and age. And I could see why. Due to the emphasis on the "convenience factor", people have become rather short-sighted in that respect. It's not always about how well you do, it's how well you can work your situation. And sometimes, you can be great at self-sufficiency and still end up broke, hungry or homeless. Just because someone didn't like you enough.

Yeah I haven't really chimed in because any coherent response on this would be the size of a novella.

Ferno wrote:And sometimes, you can be great at self-sufficiency and still end up broke, hungry or homeless.

Ferno touches on a much more manageable topic here. Some of today's biggest thinkers are predicting an unemployment crisis in the near future as automation takes jobs faster than new ones can be created for the exponentially exploding population. The crux of the argument is, our global economy is based on a 10,000 year old agricultural model that doesn't match up with today's technology and efficiency. Is short, as a species we are so good at providing for ourselves that most of us really shouldn't have to work at all, and most of the work people do is simply for the pursuit of materialistic pleasure (which has no value compared to food, shelter, and well-being).

Perhaps you can look at the never-ending quest for material satisfaction as a byproduct of existentialism and also materialism? But rather than go backwards to revisit Aristotle and his search for the transcendent divine we should probably adopt a new worldview that keeps it's focus on society, but leans heavily toward the well-being of others. (I had a philosophy teacher years ago who hinted at this so maybe I'm subconsciously plagiarizing the book he wrote.) Put another way, we downplay the emphasis on abstract principals and keep an existentialist approach to meaning, but redirect our efforts away from searching for "the meaning of life" and toward "life's potential." In essence, let's not worry about an ultimate solution to the human condition but rather push humanity to explore the limits of the mind and body. Let us adapt, evolve, and make new minds and bodies fit to explore the cosmos. Let's not look for that one ultimate answer, but search for all answers to all questions in an unprecedented quest for knowledge. (The journey is the destination.)

Can we make society more efficient? We will have to. How can we give people more freedom to explore? Working 50 hours a week is a drag. No one has time to search for answers when you are bombarded hollow, consuming jobs. We will need to free up as many resources as possible if we want to turn our entire species into a vehicle for exploration in every direction imaginable. Part of that "freeing up" will be letting go of concepts that keep us down. The first one we should get rid of is gauging a human being by their capacity to work 50 hours a week.

Ferno wrote:

vision wrote:Classic woodchip. Slick starts off a deep-thinking thread about discovering the current zeitgeist of the American philosophical landscape and woodchip answers with a one-liner along the lines of "herp derp welfare." So deep!

hehe, nice. On a related note, woody is the same guy who wanted high quality threads once per day, while not being able to deliver any himself. Bad thinking, bad bargaining, weak positioning.


Slick: your op-ed reminded me of a story I read yesterday about how unemployment, traditionally thought as "you succeed on your own merits only", was due for a shift, where those who are unemployed are not always necessarily at-fault in this day and age. And I could see why. Due to the emphasis on the "convenience factor", people have become rather short-sighted in that respect. It's not always about how well you do, it's how well you can work your situation. And sometimes, you can be great at self-sufficiency and still end up broke, hungry or homeless. Just because someone didn't like you enough.

in a global economy, and a modern era of production/productivity, the idea of many people at all being able to be self-sufficient as they were in the US 150 years or so ago is ludicrous. We are too interdependant. Your observation on folks being unemployed more due to external factors than their own shortcomings is very valid. As was noted by Vision, productivity and efficiency are FAR outstripping demand for goods and services, and, coupled with an ever-expanding workforce, this puts downward pressure on both employment AND wages.
Now, to address Vision's post, my view is that the individualism espoused by Existentialism is sort of the diametric opposite of the materialistic society, given that most acquisition of products is heavily driven by the will of others(producers and advertisers). I tend to lean toward your goal of a societal approach to some extent, but in doing so, that DOES negate the primacy of self, by definition.
Good responses from both of you......THAT was sort of encouraging to read at the start of my week!!!

callmeslick wrote:Now, to address Vision's post, my view is that the individualism espoused by Existentialism is sort of the diametric opposite of the materialistic society, given that most acquisition of products is heavily driven by the will of others(producers and advertisers). I tend to lean toward your goal of a societal approach to some extent, but in doing so, that DOES negate the primacy of self, by definition.

Ah, I hadn't thought about materialistic society being driven by the will of others. This seems a little bit like a chicken/egg problem. Did producers and advertisers create the demand for material possessions or are they simply filling a void? Production and consumption is a product of economy which precedes philosophy. However, the desire to create and posses non-essential goods and services can be easily traced back to human success with agriculture and the freedom it gave us to explore art, beauty, and the superfluous. Perhaps our materialistic society is the result of too much freedom? If that is the case, things will get worse as efficiency increases!

Now I did want to clarify my use of the word materialistic. I meant to emphasize the concept of materialism in regard to existentialism (and did a poor job since, you know, video game forum). Existentialism walked side-by-side with society's move toward science and learning about the physical world as opposed to humans searching for divine answers through reason alone.

In the 19th Century God Is Dead and we are alone on a raft in the cosmos. The 20th Century was depressed by this news. But the 21st Century is showing us things barely conceivable decades ago. Who wants to worry about God and the meaning of life when there is so much exploring to be done? It is exhilarating! As we dig deeper into biology, the question "what does it mean to be human" starts to lose it's meaning. We are inseparably connected to all other species. We can't define a human by it's parts because we will soon be able to change that. We can't define a human by our intellect because we are discovering both our close and distant animal cousins have brains that work much the same as ours. Existentialism Is Dead. Discovery has killed it.

Personally, I give absolutely zero cares about God, the meaning of life, and all that other jazz. There is just too much cool stuff going on in the world to distracted me, haha. Thanks to our continuously growing body of human knowledge we are realizing ideas almost as fast as we can think them, and it's just going to get better, faster, like each piece of puzzle falling into place. But the puzzle itself is simply a piece of an infinitely larger, infinitely interesting puzzle. Who has time to contemplate such brooding mysteries like "why are we here" when there is so much work to be done and satisfaction to be gained by creating new ways of improving the lives of other living beings?

I gotta come back to this thread when i'm not knee-deep in either my trucks, or aircraft...

Ferno wrote:I gotta come back to this thread when i'm not knee-deep in either my trucks, or aircraft...

Please do. And before you reply, read this first and revel in the power of discovery.

neat article, vision. People who denigrate science should be denied access to such, IMHO.

I agree that discovery and that distractions in general are a good way of putting off existential despair. But you can discover whatever you want, but, in the end, you'll still die.

Jeff250 wrote:...but, in the end, you'll still die.

Die satisfied!

For all the good it will do me.

callmeslick wrote:neat article, vision. People who denigrate science should be denied access to such, IMHO.

Then that would make us (you) as bad as them. Can't agree.

As bonkers as their position may be, we can't deny them the scientific help they may need.

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vision: wow.

it was a tongue in cheek comment, but can't we make them seek help for mental weakness first?

That’s called technology not science, science is the “study of”...the resulting knowledge and products are called technology.

One can "denigrate" science based on the mistrust of methods and people etc. and have absolutely nothing to do with practical applications.

Spidey wrote:That’s called technology not science, science is the “study of”...the resulting knowledge and products are called technology.

One can "denigrate" science based on the mistrust of methods and people etc. and have absolutely nothing to do with practical applications.

if you've figured out how to get technology without a lot of basic science beforehand, let us know how, please.

Yea, but that wasn’t my point.

but, it WAS mine.