[SolarCross]

Youtube is creepy sometimes. I was thinking about all this quite polarising rhetoric going around on the social media, including here, when this comes up in my suggestions. I wonder if we could dial it back a bit? Try to see things from the other point of view? Or at least agree to disagree? How did we get to be so divided?

[Tainari88]

I found the Art of loving by Erich Fromm but in Spanish. It is a classic about what love is about.

I will try to find the English version, but in Mexican youtube it is hard finding English versions of anything related to Fromm.

It boils down to that people find it hard to love because they have the wrong thinking about it.

It is not easy to love people properly because it requires something that is difficult to obtain. You got to work on loving with a sense of art. You got to have various steps, theory, practice and many other things involved in love.

[Wellsy]

Alosdair MacIntyre makes a case for modernitys individual prior to social relations being part of tje problem. The break down of the fact value distinction such that an evaluative term is thought mere preference and without objective or factual content. In realizing this, the fragmentation of modernity doesn’t evaporate once acknowledging MacIntyres point. We remain in crisis and despair if we’re not simply unaware of our circumstance.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=rel_fac_pub

Many thinkers are inclined to see shrillness and interminability as part and parcel of the nature of moral debate. But Alasdair Macintyre begs to differ. In After Virtue he offers the "disquieting suggestion" that the tenor of modern moral debate is the direct outcome of a catastrophe in our past, a catastrophe so great that moral inquiry was very nearly obliterated from our culture and its vocabulary exorcised from our lan-
guage. What we possess today, he argues, are nothing more than frag- ments of an older tradition. As a result, our moral discourse, which uses terms like good, and justice, and duty, has been robbed of the context that makes it intelligible. To complicate matters, although university courses in ethics have been around for a long time, no ethics curriculum predates this catastrophe. Therefore, for anyone who has taken ethics
courses, and especially for those who have studied ethics diligently, d1e disarray of modern moral discourse is not only invisible, it is considered normal. This conclusion has been lent apparent credibility by a theory called emotivism.

Emotivism, explains Macintyre, "is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically aU moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling...."2 On this account, the person who remarks, "Kindness is good," is not making a truth claim but simply expressing a positive feeling, "Hurrah for kindness!" Similarly, the person who exclaims, "Murder is wrong," can be understood to be actually saying, "I disapprove of murder," or "Murder, yuck!"

If emotivism is a true picture of the way moral discourse works, then we easily see that moral disputes can never be rationally settled because, as the emotivist contends, all value judgments are nonrational. Reason can never compel a solution; we simply have to hunker down and decide. Moral discussion is at best rhetorical persuasion.

[ness31]

Love one another? Not sure. I’d settle for tolerating and just getting along with each other.

If there is a silver lining to the whole Coronavirus shit right now, it’s that hopefully we can find it in ourselves to band together and not go down the path of some zombie apocalypse movie.

I live through this pandemic in hope.

[Potemkin]

Alosdair MacIntyre makes a case for modernitys individual prior to social relations being part of tje problem. The break down of the fact value distinction such that an evaluative term is thought mere preference and without objective or factual content. In realizing this, the fragmentation of modernity doesn’t evaporate once acknowledging MacIntyres point. We remain in crisis and despair if we’re not simply unaware of our circumstance.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=rel_fac_pub

And the catastrophe which MacIntyre posits is, of course, the breakdown of a cohesive religious faith as the ontological basis of value judgments. Without divine sanction - and a divine sanction which most of society recognises as valid at that - then value judgments become mere expressions of visceral emotional responses. Which they are. And MacInyre is correct in calling this a 'catastrophe'. At first, it was thought that reason alone could arrive at correct and valid ethical judgments with which every rational person could agree, until David Hume put paid to that by pointing out that one cannot derive an ought from an is. We still haven't recovered from that failure of pure reason; it's like a ticking time bomb at the foundations of the Enlightenment Project.

[Wellsy]

And the catastrophe which MacIntyre posits is, of course, the breakdown of a cohesive religious faith as the ontological basis of value judgments. Without divine sanction - and a divine sanction which most of society recognises as valid at that - then value judgments become mere expressions of visceral emotional responses. Which they are. And MacInyre is correct in calling this a 'catastrophe'. At first, it was thought that reason alone could arrive at correct and valid ethical judgments with which every rational person could agree, until David Hume put paid to that by pointing out that one cannot derive an ought from an is. We still haven't recovered from that failure of pure reason; it's like a ticking time bomb at the foundations of the Enlightenment Project.

I think his project of looking for answers in a modern version of Aristotleanism is worthwhile. Although it seems post aftet virtue he has become a devout thomist catholic and asssertedly wants a return of such a divine end to life. Whilst I ilagine I might’ve made an alright christian, I’m too far from religion to feel like I could ever adopt it. So i hope to look to Bernard Williams...
https://www.bu.edu/cura/files/2016/04/Laidlaw-paper.pdf

MacIntyre is not the only great exponent of virtue ethics who has argued recently that moral philosophy ought to be an historical and anthropological enterprise. Two others have been Charles Taylor and Bernard Williams. There is a passage where Williams reflects on the fact that he was the odd one out in this trio, because the other two were practising Roman Catholics. Williams commented,
‘I used to find this a disquieting fact but no longer do. All three of us, I could say, accept the significant role of Christianity in understanding modern moral consciousness, and adopt the three possible views about how to move in relation to that: backward in it, forward in it, and out of it’.
By ‘forward in it’, Williams refers to Taylor, and his view that much in what we nowadays think of as secular values are directly descended from Christianity, including the value we place on sincerity, the individual, and the sanctity of everyday life. And Taylor thinks that our modern moral imaginaries will be deepened and enriched if we more fully reflect on and acknowledge that Christian inheritance. By ‘out of it’, Williams refers to his own contrary (but not strictly contradictory) view that persistent Christian ideas are among the more disabling features of modern morality: the idea that morality should be opposed to self-interest, the idea of the moral will, and an overemphasis on intention in our thinking about responsibility. Williams saw much of merit in Nietzsche’s injunction to accept that God is dead, and undertake the almost unbearably hard work of rethinking our values in light of that fact.
MacIntyre’s preference for trying to move ‘back in it’, to try to re-wind history and undo the Enlightenment, along with the Reformation, is undoubtedly the
least sociologically and politically realistic of the three possibilities Williams refers to. But none seems wholly possible on its own, and we probably need elements of them all.

And so I seek a socialist ethics instead as something which might be possible to form in todays modern fragmentation of individuals based in solidarity with strangers than necessarily just based in community.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Virtue%20and%20Utopia.pdf

Though I do wonder if a functional concept of man with a purpose (human flourishing/all rounded development for all human beings) can be made the backbone of such an ethic.
https://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=44298
A natural humanism which sees that the divine is the “magic” of the social relations working behind our backs as we still see one another in too abstract a fashion, still thoroughly alienated.

[SolarCross]

Love one another? Not sure. I’d settle for tolerating and just getting along with each other.

If there is a silver lining to the whole Coronavirus shit right now, it’s that hopefully we can find it in ourselves to band together and not go down the path of some zombie apocalypse movie.

I live through this pandemic in hope.

The irony here is that "banding together" will only increase the chances of infection. The best way through an epidemic is quarantine not congregation.

[anasawad]

Tolerance, love, unity, and all the nice words are only possible with, and are the result of, economic prosperity.
The more people have to worry about simply surviving, the more distrustful and fearful of strangers and out-groups they become.

[ness31]

The irony here is that "banding together" will only increase the chances of infection. The best way through an epidemic is quarantine not congregation.

We could band together in a spiritual sense?

[late]

What partly stopped Jim Crow the first time was Federal soldiers. This was in the 1800s.

What partly stopped Jim Crow the second time was a variety of actions by the Federal government.

Jim Crow will come back again, if we don't restrain the racists. Their efforts to bring it back are a constant. Just look at the documentation in the Civil Rights Act.

You need a referee to be sure people play nice. It's one of the more troubling aspects of Trump's attack on the Rule of Law.

On a personal note, the comments that morality has to be grounded in religion are a throwback to a more primitive era. If you know what you are looking for, you can see the culture escaping that trap in the Pragmatists of the 1800s. That wasn't just a philosophy, you can find it easily in the writings of authors like Mark Twain.

[Wulfschilde]

obviously we must presume that God may exist, if only because to declare that he definitively does not is too destructive.

Frankly, this is what most of the normies do and they get along OK. Notice that "may" exist does not require that anyone be religious. We only require that they sort of act like it sometimes.

[late]

obviously we must presume that God may exist

Not really.

You may presume I am a god, that would be acceptable.

"We are as gods, we might as well get good at it." Stewart Brand

[Tainari88]

I think his project of looking for answers in a modern version of Aristotleanism is worthwhile. Although it seems post aftet virtue he has become a devout thomist catholic and asssertedly wants a return of such a divine end to life. Whilst I ilagine I might’ve made an alright christian, I’m too far from religion to feel like I could ever adopt it. So i hope to look to Bernard Williams...
https://www.bu.edu/cura/files/2016/04/Laidlaw-paper.pdf


And so I seek a socialist ethics instead as something which might be possible to form in todays modern fragmentation of individuals based in solidarity with strangers than necessarily just based in community.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Virtue%20and%20Utopia.pdf

Though I do wonder if a functional concept of man with a purpose (human flourishing/all rounded development for all human beings) can be made the backbone of such an ethic.
https://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=44298
A natural humanism which sees that the divine is the “magic” of the social relations working behind our backs as we still see one another in too abstract a fashion, still thoroughly alienated.

I think the advances in neuroscience and studies of the human brain and the emissions of the human liver (where our emotional fuel actually resides biologically speaking) will give us a clearer picture of what love is about Wellsy.

If we feel connected to nature and to each other as Fromm speaks about in his audiobook which I posted? Then we have a greater capacity to love each other....that alienation of humankind is real in many urban cities. How to feel connected to ourselves, and each other and create societies in which love is preferable over violence, and aggressive tendencies. A great field to study.

[Wellsy]

I think the advances in neuroscience and studies of the human brain and the emissions of the human liver (where our emotional fuel actually resides biologically speaking) will give us a clearer picture of what love is about Wellsy.

If we feel connected to nature and to each other as Fromm speaks about in his audiobook which I posted? Then we have a greater capacity to love each other....that alienation of humankind is real in many urban cities. How to feel connected to ourselves, and each other and create societies in which love is preferable over violence, and aggressive tendencies. A great field to study.

I still feel confused by what still appears to be a cartesian dualism in theories of emotion. Psychology still describes causal physical processes or it describes the experiencing of qualia and then pairs them. So whilst the physiological examination is useful as the basis of emotions emotions also aren’t reducible to physical processes. The james lange theory exemplifies as much in that emotions are imbued with the intellect and take on a different quality. Where we are able to weep at art, or to feel injustice. The difference between a man whose ideological milieu has him wish to harm a woman for infidelity in a way that another man doesn’t. Emotional life and its explanation has come a long way in being more tied to actions rather than merely a passive reflection of a physiological process, but I feel still uneasy about how it should be accurately concieved such that one can explain how one socializes man in such a way that his body becomes sensitive to very complex ideas that from a bio causal explanation don’t seem quite possible. Our passions are educated such that the love many find is not synonymous with what counts for love in those who see only the satisfaction of desires/appetites through another.

But I imagine Fromm draws attention to the higher quality of love although he may not be able to really explain it in specific detail.
There is something odd about humans where I suspect we might be able to make things like emotions intelligible but not through a causal means, causality as a concept has its explanatory limits of which it cannot quite explain practical free will although it can provide hints to clarify as much.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/determinism.htm
I suspect human nature is made intelligible in inferences from our activity and our concepts embedded in such activities.

And I very well see such alienation in the inmates I work with. The narrowing of their selves due to their addiction. We even talk about that or they talk about it in ways without knowing the word. Like how they view their drugs with human powers which it as an inanimate object it couldn’t have but such is its power over them. They even use the analogy of it being their God, even if a false one.

[Tainari88]

I still feel confused by what still appears to be a cartesian dualism in theories of emotion. Psychology still describes causal physical processes or it describes the experiencing of qualia and then pairs them. So whilst the physiological examination is useful as the basis of emotions emotions also aren’t reducible to physical processes. The james lange theory exemplifies as much in that emotions are imbued with the intellect and take on a different quality. Where we are able to weep at art, or to feel injustice. The difference between a man whose ideological milieu has him wish to harm a woman for infidelity in a way that another man doesn’t. Emotional life and its explanation has come a long way in being more tied to actions rather than merely a passive reflection of a physiological process, but I feel still uneasy about how it should be accurately concieved such that one can explain how one socializes man in such a way that his body becomes sensitive to very complex ideas that from a bio causal explanation don’t seem quite possible. Our passions are educated such that the love many find is not synonymous with what counts for love in those who see only the satisfaction of desires/appetites through another.

But I imagine Fromm draws attention to the higher quality of love although he may not be able to really explain it in specific detail.
There is something odd about humans where I suspect we might be able to make things like emotions intelligible but not through a causal means, causality as a concept has its explanatory limits of which it cannot quite explain practical free will although it can provide hints to clarify as much.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/determinism.htm
I suspect human nature is made intelligible in inferences from our activity and our concepts embedded in such activities.

And I very well see such alienation in the inmates I work with. The narrowing of their selves due to their addiction. We even talk about that or they talk about it in ways without knowing the word. Like how they view their drugs with human powers which it as an inanimate object it couldn’t have but such is its power over them. They even use the analogy of it being their God, even if a false one.

Whatever a person dedicates huge amounts of effort, time and dedication to doing or being? That is what they become Wellsy. How many people truly dedicate themselves to loving other people with absolute dedication the way Fromm says one has to do. With discipline and with practice and theory all wrapped together?

The system says relationship is secondary to status. Got to have things, possessions, money, power.....and where does love and loving and caring about other persons fit in to this?

You are going to get a lesson on love that is wide as the sky when you get that baby girl in your arms....Alice Elizabeth.

She is going to depend on you to be alive in everything. And she is you and your wife's physical and emotional connection incarnate......

All the rest of your activities are going to be about how to protect her...once you understand that? Love will take on a new dimension for you.

You will see directly how being in love with your wife and having a child from that relationship means that the creative forces out there making life happen for humanity has a power that is infinite....

My husband's first words when our son was born and he cut the umbilical cord and contemplated that baby? Was: "Dios es Grande." "God is Great". Because nothing is quite as miraculous as a being who did not exist and suddenly exists and is there....because you exist darling Wellsy.

Ese es el amor. That is the power of love in this world.

[Rancid]

I love all of you.

[Wellsy]

I love all of you.

No homo :’)

[Tainari88]

I love all of you.

And I love you too Rancid. Despite you saying you will become a caudillo and run for the airport after getting millions in donations for your campaign in Austin.

Deep inside you just want to hang about with millions in Argentina, making money off of betting on tanking economies in the USA....never being loyal to your employers deep down....only thinking they are a means to an end...

No one knows the true you....but me. I...who love you....who understood you when your family called you a Haitian Adoptee...who stood by you....when you dumped one engineering job for another.....who knew your ass wasn't going to Europe with the panic there is about that virus thing....I the only one....

Te amo...lo confieso....te amo!!

[annatar1914]

And the catastrophe which MacIntyre posits is, of course, the breakdown of a cohesive religious faith as the ontological basis of value judgments. Without divine sanction - and a divine sanction which most of society recognises as valid at that - then value judgments become mere expressions of visceral emotional responses. Which they are. And MacInyre is correct in calling this a 'catastrophe'. At first, it was thought that reason alone could arrive at correct and valid ethical judgments with which every rational person could agree, until David Hume put paid to that by pointing out that one cannot derive an ought from an is. We still haven't recovered from that failure of pure reason; it's like a ticking time bomb at the foundations of the Enlightenment Project.

Which in my opinion is a good thing, although the ''Enlightenment Project'' which Hume (and Kant!) undermined is still alive in many people's minds because ''Reason'' holds a Totemistic or Fetishistic grip on them. Reminds me of one of my favorite madmen's creations, William Blake's god ''Urizen'', contending with Orc and so forth...

So as for myself I found a society in the process of rebuilding itself, with that very ''Divine Sanction'' you mention as the basis of Pre-Enlightenment societal thought.

[Potemkin]

Which in my opinion is a good thing, although the ''Enlightenment Project'' which Hume (and Kant!) undermined is still alive in many people's minds because ''Reason'' holds a Totemistic or Fetishistic grip on them. Reminds me of one of my favorite madmen's creations, William Blake's god ''Urizen'', contending with Orc and so forth...

So as for myself I found a society in the process of rebuilding itself, with that very ''Divine Sanction'' you mention as the basis of Pre-Enlightenment societal thought.

The Enlightenment Project was, and still is, an attempt to remake human society from the ground up by applying human reason to analyse it from first principles and reform it root and branch until it conforms to our sense of reason. It is, in fact, an attempt to rationalise human society. What the Enlightenment rationalists did not seem to understand, however, is that Reason itself has its own internal contradictions, as people like Goedel or Wittgenstein pointed out, and that we may believe that Reason has expelled the idols of superstition and passion, only to find that Reason has itself been enthroned as just another tawdry idol to be unthinkingly and superstitiously worshipped by the credulous masses. This is why Nietzsche talked about the need to "philosophise with a hammer", to tap the feet of humanity's idols to hear if they are hollow or not....