Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 04, 2019 2:11 pm
You believe you must, "know the inner states of others," or, "detect the inner life of your companions," before it is possible to enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship with them, socially or commercially, or any other way. I do not.
You're misunderstanding what I'm pointing to. I'm not pointing to anything " intrusive, a very dangerous and anti-social." I'm talking about the very simple, natural and pro-social practice of caring what other people think and feel. It's empathy...sympathy...compassion...fellow-feeling. Nothing could be more necessary to relationship, or more healthy. Those who can't do it, we diagnose as "emotionally insensitive," or "socially inept."
The only human beings who are truly socially competent, are those who know how to associate and deal with others to their mutual benefit and enjoyment no matter what they, or others, think and feel. Nothing is more destructive to any social relationships than the intrusion of feelings and sentiments in one's dealings with others. Almost every social problem is the result of individuals allowing their feelings and emotions to influence their behavior, or reacting to what they think other's feelings and emotions are.
All these words mean the same thing. They mean,
to feel with: compassion: [com (with) passion (feeling)]; sympathy: [sym (together) pathy (feel)]; empathy: [em (with) pathy (feel)]. They all mean having feelings that are the same as or like someone else's feelings, but they almost only ever pertain to feelings of human failure like suffering, sadness, grief, misfortune, and despair. You will not find any words that describe, "feeling with," or, "sharing the joy of," the successful, the happy, the achievers, the normal, the healthy, and the triumphant.
It is not possible to know what anyone else is feeling, much less to able to have the same feelings. These pathetic feelings are nothing but sentimentalism. One dictionary definition of sentiment is: "A thought, view, or attitude, especially one
based mainly on emotion instead of reason." Dictionary definitions are often inaccurate, but this one is perfectly correct. Sentiment is based solely on feelings,
not reason.
Empathy, compassion, and sympathy are promoted as some kind of virtue that makes those that have them superior to those who do not have the, "right kind of feelings." But their feelings are worth exactly nothing to anyone else, or even to themselves. Nobody's compassion ever fed the starving, nobody's empathy every relieved the suffering of the sick, and nobody's sentiments ever provided a product or service of any real value to anyone.
I ran across an article some time ago that asked the question, "Don't you want nurses to be compassionate?" I was suddenly aware of what is wrong with this whole sentimental question of compassion. The right answer is, "NO! I want any nurse who tends to me to be competent, knowledgeable, and efficient." The nurse's "feelings" are absolutely worthless to me. The nurse may be positively dripping with compassion and empathy, but if that nurse screws up my IV, I'm dead.
Real virtue is difficult. Growing, transporting, and marketing food requires very hard work. Discovering and producing drugs, providing real medical services, and performing life-saving operations require the kind of discipline and acquired knowledge that is impossible to mere sentimentalism. Those who produce the products and provide the services that truly benefit human beings frequently have little feeling for those who benefit from their efforts. What they feel strongly about is their achievement and accomplishment, which is what any who benefits from their ruthless dedication to principle ought to really appreciate.
It is much easier to "feel" than to "do," and pat oneself on the back because one, "cares about others," while being absolutely worthless to themselves or anyone else.
Allowing feeling, emotions, or sentiment to control or replace reason is always wrong. It is wrong in one's own life and leads to self-destruction, and it is wrong in dealing with others, because it attempts to short-circuit others' rational judgement.
There is only one moral method of social intercourse, especially when one is attempting to persuade another. That moral method is appealing to another's ability to think and reason. No matter what the objective, convincing a prospective customer to purchase your product or use your service, convincing another to take some action or abstain from that action, encouraging others to support your cause or view, the only moral way to persuade someone else is to demonstrate by clear reason why your product or service is to their advantage, why the action or inaction you advocate is morally or practically right, or why your cause or view is objectively correct in a way they can rationally understand.
Any other method is both deceptive and immoral. Any attempt to persuade someone with appeals to anything other than their ability to reason, such as appeals to feelings, emotions, sentiment, desires, fears, superstitions, gullibility, or ignorance, are appeals to the irrational. It is an attempt to bypass reason and to produce an emotional response, without, or even in defiance of rational understanding.
These are the methods most employed by advertisers, religionists, various scam artists, advocates of political ideologies, promoters of various diet, health, and psychology fads, and a million other popular movements that have no objective rational basis. That which is objectively and rationally true does not have to be promoted by appeals to irrational feelings.
Our feelings and emotions are our means of experiencing and enjoying life. The are the result of our beliefs, values, thoughts and choices. To reverse the order, to allow our feelings to influence or determine our beliefs, values, thoughts, and choices is both practically and psychologically disastrous.
A young mother who loves her children more than life will be filled with feelings of love for those children, but it is her love that causes the feelings. When she is tired, or ill, or the children are being particularly cantankerous, she may not "feel" very loving toward her children at all. Unless she confuses her "feelings of love" with "love itself", she does not love her children any less, just because she does not
feel very loving. Unfortunately we are living in an age where everyone is taught rational values are trumped by feelings and that feelings can determine for us what to value and what to choose. The daily news reports the consequences of that view.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 04, 2019 2:11 pm
I'm not sure what you mean by living, "in social groups." If you mean there are other people almost anywhere one lives, that's obvious enough,
That's all. And living with them means we have to negotiate their wants and interests with our own. It doesn't mean they "own" us, in any sense. But it does mean that we are social creatures, and to fail to actualize that nature is not a sign of individualism and maturity, but rather only of selfishness and immaturity.
Every living organism except human beings has a specific nature that determines how it must live to live successfully as the kind of organism it is, and those organisms are provided with a pre-programmed pattern of behavior that guarantees they behave as their nature requires. That pre-programmed pattern of behavior is called instinct. That is exactly what human beings do not have. Human beings do not have a nature that determines for them how to live. Instead, they have a nature that requires them to discover how to live and then to choose to live that way if they are to live successfully. They do not have an instinctive nature, they have volitional minds.
Some organisms are "social" in nature, like ants, bees, and grazing animals. Some organisms are predators like cats, raptors, and snakes. Some organisms are parasites living off the productive lives of other organisms. Human beings do not have a pre-determined nature like the animals and are no-more social animals than they are predators or parasites and must choose the kind of life they will live. Human beings do not have some kind of pre-determined nature to "actualize."
There are many advantages to living where there are other human beings from specialization and trade, the availability of knowledge discovered by others, the pleasures of social interaction, to finding a mate, among them. But other human beings are not an unmitigated advantage, because many human beings are just the opposite, not productive traders but thieves or parasites, not a source of knowledge but con-men and deceivers, not socially enjoyable but emotionally unstable and constant threats. Like everything else in the real world, one must discover which things are truly of value to pursue, and which things are truly worthless, or, dangerous, and should be avoided. Unfortunately most of today's societies are predominantly the latter.
For the record I am radically selfish. Everything I think, choose, and do is with the single objective of living and enjoying my own life. Whenever someone accuses me of being selfish I have discovered they believe that my pursuit of my own self-interest in some way automatically means it is at some cost to someone else. That is very revealing to me. It means they believe an individual can actually gain something of true value in life at someone else's expense. That, to me, is an immoral view of the relationship between human beings. The only gain that is possible to me from any relationship with another is one in which we both mutually benefit. While the benefit of others is never a prime motive for anything I choose to do, my pursuit of my own self-interest can never harm anyone else, and can only benefit them if it affects them at all.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 04, 2019 2:11 pm
You are the late product of an accidental process called "The Big Bang," and nothing more. You came into life some seventy-something years ago, perhaps...knowing nothing. You built up resources and had experiences, but these count for nothing; because shortly, you will return to the chaos from which your existence accidentally emerged.
I really have little use for what I call the "origins pseudo-sciences" which are nothing but sophisticated guesses about where everything came from (cosmology, evolution). I also have no idea what you mean by chaos. I'm sure you don't mean, "chaos theory," which is a very rigorous mathematical phenomenon, so you must mean, "confusion," or, "disorder." "Things" cannot be confused, only human attempts to understand things can be confused, and there can be no, "disorder," unless someone has decided what order is. The universe is decidedly disorderly and could not exist if were not. If you truly understood the second law of thermodynamics you would know that entropy is not a move toward disorder, but a movement toward perfect uniformity, in particular, the uniform distribution of energy.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 04, 2019 2:11 pm
You will die. And all your "learning," your "experiences," and your "work" will soon come to absolutely nothing -- if not instantly, then when this universe arrives at its final state, known as Heat Death, in which it shall persist in absolute cosmic silence forever. The same fate awaits all your companions, too, and the entire human species.
Everything dies. Everything has a beginning and end. But I'm not dead and things only matter to the living while they are living. Nothing matters before we are born or after we are dead.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 04, 2019 2:11 pm
But there's no glory, there's no tragedy, and there's no greatness in the death that awaits you. For there will be no one to tell your story, and nobody for it to be told to. We will all vanish like vapour...forever...and the universe will neither know nor care that we existed at all.
What makes this sort of description so revolting is this: you know, in your heart, that your existence DOES mean something. But on your own account, how
can it mean anything? You come from nothing, and you go to nowhere. What, then, is the value of all this noble-feeling struggle between the womb and the tomb?
Is any of this supposed to worry me? Why would I care what happens after I die, only what happens while I'm alive matters to me. I certainly don't care if anyone, "tells my story," while I'm alive, much less after I'm dead. Of course my existence means something but it only means something to me and only while I exist. Of course, "We will all vanish like vapour...forever...and the universe will neither know nor care that we existed at all." The universe doesn't care now. So what?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 04, 2019 2:11 pm
This is indeed the difference in our perspectives. Except that, in your heart of hearts, if I can speak honestly, I really think that you believe
my view more than
your own. Because you insist on attributing ultimate value to that which, by your account,
cannot have any ultimate value.
You have no idea what I truly believe, and it certainy isn't what you believe. Something only has value to some goal or objective, that is, to beings capable of having goals and objectives. So long as I live and have chosen my objectives, everything that helps me achieve my objective is a positive value, and everything that interferes with my achieving my objective is a negative value. There are no other values.
For the record: The only purposes there are, the only values there are, and the only things that matter are the purposes, values, and interests of individual human beings while they are alive. There is no meaning, purpose, or value to that which does not exist. There were none before I was born and there will be none after I die. Before I was born the fate of the world, of mankind, or anything else in life mattered not at all to me. It will be exactly the same after I am dead.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 04, 2019 2:11 pm
It seems to me your ideal world would be one where there are no difficulties to overcome, no disappointments to surmount, no problems to solve, no mistakes to correct and learn from, no possibility of growth, development, and improvement, where there is nothing new to discover, learn, or achieve, a world where nothing is at stake, where pain and loss are not possible, and where essentially nothing matters, because negative consequences are not possible.
...
Indeed, this is not at all my view of the ideal. If I can say so, I think maybe it's a vision more conditioned by cartoonish depictions of a "Heaven" of harps, fluffy clouds and white robes than evoked by any theology. In any case, this is not what I'm thinking of at all.
I actually did not have the, "after-life," in mind at all. I based my thoughts on your expressions of pessimism about human knowledge, the necessity of mistakes, and the inevitability of human failure, as well as the fact that you seemed to indicate nothing short of omniscience and infallibility were sufficient. I thought I was describing what would be opposite those things you regarded as negative in the present real world.
Since you say my guess is not at all your view of the ideal, I'd be very interested in what your ideal is. I have a question for you I think you may never have been asked and have never asked yourself, but I'll wait to see what your view of ideal existence is first.
RC