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What do Veganism, Nonviolence, and Universal Love have in common? Good, but unrealizable, intentions.
It's always been popular, this delusion that we can be without harming. Whether it's the Christian command to love your enemies, or the much older principle of Ahimsa ('non-injury') in Indian religions, Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolence or that of Martin Luther King Jr.—the world has always had a soft spot for the idea of non-harmful, zero-footprint living, going as far as to codify it in our current culture, in impossible injunctions such as 'live and let live.'
Can we live without killing?
Simply by being we rob other organisms of their own life. The mere act of breathing, for instance, though it appears to be quite innocuous, is an act that results in the death of a numberless multitude of bacteria. The Buddhists go to such great lengths to avoid stepping on ants and other such small creatures, only to have modern science reveal that the process of being itself is a veritable bloodbath.
The non-harming principle (in this case Jainism) captured vividly in the character of Merry Levov in Philip Roth's American Pastoral.
Can we love without hating?
Every value implies a disvalue. Every positive can be expressed as a negative: saying 'I love X' is just another way of saying 'I hate not-X.' A parent who loves his child and cares for its welfare will inevitably experience and express his displeasure when anyone harms it. It's a psychological fact, it's human nature: We love only to the extent that we hate the opposite of what we love.
Why is there conflict in the world?
This entanglement of value and disvalue explains why hatred and conflict are such a pervasive feature of our lives. It also shows why there can be no such thing as universal love. Knowing who we really are entails coming to terms with this agonistic (hostile) nature of ours. Any ethics that is premised on the possibility of universal love is bound to fail.
Toward a more honest ethics
In order to build a more honest and correct ethics, we first have to make peace with our own nature. Truth, virtue, love—all great and wonderful ideals, to be sure, but the truth of the deer is ill-suited to the lion's way of life. No matter how much we'd like our lives to have a zero biological footprint, the nature of existence—of what it means to have values—makes it impossible. That's because every positive value necessitates the existence of its antithetical 'evil twin': every parent can be turned into the executioner of his child's killer, every property-owner into an oppressor of the labor class, every Christian into a witch-hunter. Since every value X has its antithesis not-X, opposing the antithesis of the value one embraces (opposing not-X) is not an option—it is an inescapable and logical necessity. I love therefore I hate! It is possible that this 'I hate' may never be expressed—may remain hidden even from the consciousness of its bearer—because no actual event so far has brought it out into the open. But for those of us whose awareness is not limited to the skin-deep proceedings of the accidentally actual, no man is as peaceful and kind as he might seem.
Summing up
Brevity is the soul of logic, and so everything I've said above can be expressed briefly and neatly as follows:
(1) To be is to have values.
(2) For every value there corresponds a disvalue. In other words, for everything we love there corresponds something we hate.
(C) Therefore, to be is to hate!
Right or wrong, good or evil, this is just the way things are. This is who we are.
If you prefer to end it on a positive note, just replace (C) with (C2):
(C2) Therefore, to be is to love!
Just remember that you must take the bad (C) with the good (C2)!
Interesting article.
I am not yet convinced. :-)
Parents could love their children, care for them, help and teach them without hating anybody else.
One concept could be to love some people and don't care about (but also don't hate) some other ...
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In this specific example, the meaning was that if you love, say, your child, then you will hate someone who would harm it. True, there are people who forgave their child's killer or rapist etc., but this just shows the weakness of the analogy, not the principle (or it shows they held other values, like equanimity, that outwrestled their love for their child). I have to come up with these examples to make my ideas clearer, but really nothing depends on them. The essence of the argument is that you can't value something (i.e. freedom, pleasure, knowledge, etc.) without disvaluing its opposite. Our values are necessarily binary: there's 2 sides to them. Too many people today pretend they can be for something without being against something else. So for example people try to be atheists without being polemical atheists. It's one of the reasons I appreciate vegans, feminists, social justice warriors, etc., cos at least they wear their agonistic nature on their sleeve. I mean, if it's objectively true that we shouldn't eat animals, like the vegan believes, then of course vegans should be doing everything they can to convert the rest of us! Of course they can't sit at a table with meat-eaters and not think more lowly of them, and not think of themselves as morally superior. What else would we expect? Only a fundamental misapprehension of human nature would make us expect, or demand, otherwise.
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Complicated topic ... I understand the idea that a trait can only be remarkable if the opposite exists. But in case of love the question is if hatred is the opposite of love? To know that I love someone I need not to hate someone else (to be able to feel the difference). I just claim the opposite of love is indifference. So I can know what love is because I also know that I don't have deep feelings for others ... So actually I would not necessarily argue against 'your' two-side-theory, but I would argue about what the opposite of love is. :)
If it is objectively true to eat no meat ... we will never know. Everybody has his own subjective (and possibly well founded) 'truth', but that depends on so many things, ones gustatory sense, environmental and health related aspects, our own moral values and believes, ... right up to the question why the universe exists :-) , so that I guess there will never be an agreement (or at least not intermediate term) about the objective truth.
Do you think in case atheists are objectively right that God doesn't exist they should do everything to convince everybody about it? Actually I see it like that, that even if I am convinced (or strongly believe) to be right I respect that other people follow other ways of life than I do ... To tolerate even 'wrong' opinions could sometimes be objectively better than always fighting against them. :)
And concerning vegans again: I fully respect them, even if I don't belong to them. Not everything is about morally superior or not. I just decided to eat meat from time to time, but that's a personal decision, and I really see no reason to think it was better in general than deciding not to eat meat ...
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Well like you say, the original topic is complicated, and now your new topic here is ethics and morality and what we should do in different cases, and that's even more complicated!
So yeah that's just a very long discussion! I'd rather just go and read one more of your articles. In fact, that's what I'm gonna do! :)
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;-)
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Don't love just fuck
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Thanks for pointing me to this post. It definitely gave me food for thought, and I've plenty of more thinking to do, as the journey to understanding is, literally, interminable.
One thing I reckon I can offer up is that Thich Nhat Hanh said in 'Anger' that anger is the child of fear. If one follows this line of thought, it becomes apparent that hatred isn't really anything more than fear. It isn't the opposite of love, it is an aspect of it. I actually agree with @jaki01 that if there is an opposite of love, it is indifference.
I agree with your thesis in general, but feel I am (and we, as H. sapiens, are) incapable of parsing the full extent of meaning. We are really insignificant specks of mud relative to meaning itself, and to think otherwise is sophomoric hubris. I don't mean to accuse, but I may not be capable of expressing what I believe in a manner that isn't perceived as accusation. When I say I am but a speck, and so are we each and all, some folks will take that as an insult, contrary to the certainty of our sublimity Shakespeare relates we are.
I don't believe in duality, but in singularity, in a sense. A way to explore that sense of meaning is that there isn't only light and dark, but shades.
Also, I'm offended by determinism =p I'll follow up the link to Schopenhauer, whom I haven't read, but doubt I'll be convinced regardless of his lucidity and loquacity. I can humbly believe that our incapacity to comprehend can lead us to be certain we have comprehended a thing beyond us, so even if my grasp of his rationale leads me to feel certain sure he is right, and we don't have free will, I have but to humbly recognize I'm simply incapable of proving him wrong - and that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
I wanted to enter into this conversation here, rather than on @soo.chong163's post, as he can follow it here, or enter into it there as he prefers, but this is where you treat of the issue, so it seemed appropriate to come here.
Thanks!
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You always give thoughtful and eloquent responses! You're the kind of reader many a writer here on steemit hopes for.
I can agree that there's an element of fear in anger and hatred, because without fear (or threat) hatred and anger probably become mere amusement. I hope though that's not interpreted in the wrong way, where fear somehow illegitimizes the concern, like "fear of gay people" etc. Some fears are legit, like fear of Hitler's rising power before everything became evident. Amusement is sometimes peddled as the superior man's default reaction to everything, as though he's supposed to be bereft of any fear/hatred etc., which is ridiculous.
About being "incapable of parsing the full extent of meaning", I view meaning as any other discipline. Touching it doesn't mean solving it completely. I don't see why we should be specks when it comes to meaning but hills when it comes to, I don't know, medicine. If we can figure out that the universe began with a big bang, we can make strides toward demystifying meaning, too.
About determinism, I'm afraid, as I've already stated in the comment you read, it's considered solved! ) If you believe we are 100% material beings, and a rock that is also 100% material has no free will, there is no point at which added material complexity creates free will. Free will is not an emergent property. There's no way a material thing, no matter how it's organized, can suddenly cease to obey all the same laws of nature that any other material thing obeys. I always find the following question helps to clarify things and people's intuitions, and gets at the core of the debate: at time x-1 (i.e. whatever time in the past), if everything had been exactly the same, could you have done otherwise? Given the same neural makeup, all the same experiences, influences, everything exactly the same, is there any chance you would've chosen differently? This is essentially the same as asking if a coin toss could ever yield a different result than the one it did the first time round, had everything else remained exactly the same. I don't see how or why the answer could differ depending on whether we're talking about living or non-living things, given that one is a materialist.
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Hmmm. This is not the complete truth. We can call it half truth though. Like the concept of beauty that I am going to publish soon, which I stated as calling one person beautiful is calling all others ugly, doesn't mean that i dont appreciate beauty. It means that I appreciate beauty but in a different manner. I appreciate the beauty in everything instead of discriminating between the ugly and the beautiful. Likewise in your this article, when you say that there is no such thing as universal love, well there is. We don't understand it yet. The way nature loves us without any demands, without asking for anything in return is universal love. The way animals take care of their babies, without the need of wanting them to care back in oldage as happens with humans. Similarly universal love exists, we are just not aware about it. Yes we have hatred and love both in us, knowing and realising this is good but its still half truth. The next step is to choose between these both. Life is all about making choices. We can choose to not hate, we can learn it, we need to give a chance to love to come out and display itself, only then will we know what actually universal love is.
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Well I think universal love is the half truth! Mine is the whole truth because it includes both love and hate, and explains how one rises from the other! When you say "nature loves us without any demands, without asking for anything in return is universal love. The way animals take care of their babies", this is a half truth, because nature doesn't just "love" us, it also "hates" us, like when Mount Vesuvius erupts, like when cicadas destroy all our crops, like when your DNA grows old and dies, like when animals kill other animals in order to feed their babies, etc. Nature is full of monstrosities, but when we live comfortably, we forget to notice them, and notice only the beauty: http://www.cracked.com/article_17199_the-7-most-horrifying-parasites-planet.html
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What i believe is that it happens due to Karma. Crops being destroyed, animals being killed, natural disasters effecting some people, these happen because one might have done something to deserve it. Animals killing each other is not because of hatred of nature, but because of maintaining a balance as in the nature. Killing should not be called an act of hatred until we are assured of what happens to us after death. Isn't it ?
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Well Karma is exactly a theory that tries to explain the evil in the world. Evil is like the first thing people notice (like the first Noble Truth of Buddhism says, "there is suffering"!), and that's why every religion tries to explain it, in a different way in every case.
The idea of Karma is meant to help people accept their suffering, so they can cope with their shitty lives and with injustice, and also maybe so they won't try to do anything about it. Science solves problems, it says "if you are suffering, let me help you". Karma says "if you are suffering, you deserve it". It's actually a very nasty idea. So imagine a 10-year-old girl gets raped. Now imagine telling her she deserves it! A 'Karma rape counselor' would be a very unpopular person indeed!
Here are a few problems with the idea of Karma: First, let's go back, let's go waaay back. You say I suffer X because I did Y. So let's go back to the first person who ever did an evil thing. Say his name is John, and John did something bad to James. Why did James suffer without any reason? So, there must've been the problem of the first person (or animal) who suffered. Either this, or everyone had past lives to infinity, which is ridiculous. So Karma doesn't answer the question ('the problem of evil'), it just pushes it back.
Second, it means we never know what's good and what's bad. Maybe the girl who got raped was a rapist in her former life. So the rapist who raped her, wasn't doing anything bad. So maybe he won't get punished? How can anyone live their life like that, never knowing what's good and what's bad?
Third, there are many more humans now being born than in any other point in history. Where are all these souls coming from? The animal population mathematics don't exactly add up.
Etc.
True. I always wondered why Christians don't celebrate when a person dies! But this is exactly the reason Nietzsche called Christianity and Buddhism nihilist religions: they look favorably upon all things that are anti-life. So for example scientific/material immortality is within our grasp, but we don't pursue it because people believe in immaterial immortality, so they don't care about real immortality (the same way people used to refuse treatments from doctors because they said that God willed this disease for them, so treating it would be against God's will).
In general, before I put my faith in X, I would like to see some evidence for X. I see no evidence for Karma, or life after death, and I see many problems with these ideas. So I'd rather put my faith in science, that actually tries to solve problems instead of rationalizing them.
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To be frank, I don't have an answer to you. May be you are right but I will have to rethink it all again, ask myself, knock the doors of my subconscious and come up with an answer later. Thanks for questioning my beliefs. I will get back to you after I come up with an answer.
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Interesting. Reminds me of Jung's concept of The Shadow. Are you familiar with it?
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No. Just googled it.
Well his 'shadow' idea is commonsencical in a way. It's the idea that there's a dark side to us, and we're liable to suppress acknowledgement of it. We've all met people who are trying to hide the truth from themselves, who are trying to bury the knowledge that there's certain aspects of their personality that are bad, even downright evil.
One difference between that idea and mine, is that mine doesn't have anything to do with the unconscious, nor is there any innate pressure for people to hide this knowledge from themselves.
My point was a more logical one, and as far as I'm aware an original one: that if you care about something, there's an 'inverse-care' that corresponds to that. If you love your car to an unhealthy degree, you might become violent against a person who keys it. We should become aware of that, so that we don't get lost in the positivity of the light side of the coin. A parent teaching his child to love his country, might get so lost in his passionate teaching, that instead of instilling patriotism, he instills nationalism. We should always be aware that there's a dark side to all our passions, and try to think how that might affect real people and our actions. Basically, nothing is free! There's a price to pay for every positive value you hold. So you might want to check what values you choose to invest in, what people or organisms can potentially be harmed by them, how passionately you invest in a small number of values vs a wider amount with less passion, etc. For instance someone who invests everything in his religion, might easily be turned into a suicide bomber, whereas someone else who invests more 'promiscuously' let's say, is in less danger of turning into a fanatic.
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Jung goes further than that though. He argues that everyone should not only face this 'evil side', but incorporate it in his identity. To not shy away or be consumed by the monster within, but to assimilate with it. Only than can individualization begin.
Your points reminded me of his concept, because it sort of echoes the same practical warning to always be vigilant of ourselves and how that self manifests in the world. His approach is obviously more subjective, while yours is logical and objective.
In short, I think it's definitely a valid argument. More awareness is always a good thing right?
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Probably! Wouldn't go as far as 'always' since it could kill you or something!
I'm definitely gonna be serving a lot of argument fodder on my page, so keep following!
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Interesting point of view.
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Interesting username! :P
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Haha :p
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nice post!
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Thanks cripto)
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One of many philosophical approaches the hit TV show Agents of SHIELD touched on is the idea that a single altered event in our timeline could completely transform who we are.
Actually I can't make this comment worthwhile with a point because you should watch it and I don't want to give spoilers (the 90's style Steemit won't allow spoiler buttons...)
But I guess the point is we all have the capacity to become explorers of the evil person inside us we never knew existed; think nazi propaganda
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Never watched the Agents of SHIELD (tho I love comic book movies), cos the trailers didn't impress me.
Maybe I should give it a go. But there's so many other movies and TV shows on my IMDb watch list. More than a thousand to be inexact....!
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Agents of shield is a rare case in that it consistently improves as the seasons continue, like Breaking Bad.
It's not really comic book-ey, not really about super heroes exactly (though there are many involved). Strongest recommendation! When you get to season 4, you'll thank me
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You have successfully swayed me!
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Nice bro
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👍
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Love the ideas you share, will follow. This is a great post. I recently went Vegan, but the primary driving factor was health reasons. I do distinguish between harming mammals and bacteria however. There are certain organisms and creatures who impose themselves upon us, and there's certain animals creatures and organisms who we impose ourselves upon. Not sure if it's right either way.
Also fuck mosquitoes
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Thanks! Will check out your page as well later.
True. Buddhists (and other religions) don't though. They actually thought it was possible to live without harming any other creature. It wouldn't be possible to achieve Nirvana otherwise. When it rains a lot, some Buddhist sects avoid walking outside because they can't see if they're stepping onto some creature.
If you haven't already, see this article by @kyriacos regarding the impossibility of being a vegetarian.
I understand people who are vegans and vegetarians might do it for a lot of reasons, and many might be aware that their lifestyle still harms mammals, but may choose to do it as little as possible, which also qualifies as an -ism.
I worry that this non-harming trend will soon begin to involve plants, to which some now attribute consciousness!
I wanted to make the article intelligible so I didn't go into modal claims ('possible worlds'), whereby it becomes logically inescapable that holding any value means you are being harmful toward some creature, conscious or not.
Agreed on the mosquitoes! :P
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Very interesting article Alexander:) I ll resteem it:)
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Many thanks George! :)
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You have some good points. For me personally I try not to over analyze and just go with the flow of life. I feel happier that way. Spreading
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There's no reason why what I wrote should be interpreted as making a person sadder. It could maybe even make us feel better in those moments where we hate something intensely, and we realize that's just the flip-side of loving something intensely.
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A lot depends how these thoughts are expressed.
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this is a really nice post
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Thanks!
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RESTEEMED!!
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Appreciated!
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Hi, you have such a great posts, you deserve more upvotes!
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😊
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Nonviolence and ahimsa are equivalent to NAP (non-aggression principle). It's about striving to live without creating harm because you don't need to. Not to create violence and violate others because we don't need to. We can be better.
Attempting to deny such goals through absolutist thinking is a failure the part of those who want to accept that nonviolence, ahima, or veganism has to comply with absolutism in order for it to be valid. Just like "willusionists" deny freedom or free will exists because it can't be absolute. Degrees of harm and not-doing-harm apply. Degrees of freedom. We can choose to learn about what we are doing, recognize the wrong, and find another way.
Harm other human animals? Harm other nonhuman animals? Harm bacteria? What life are we even talking about? I consider psychological life of animals that feel and think to a different degree than us, as warranting consideration for our harm towards them. We are psychologically and emotionally connectable, people have animal companions they love and care for because it's a real connection that is reciprocal and feeds-back for both. Once that reality is recognized, then we can see how other animals are like us in kind and differ in degree, deserving to be free from our harming them. Why? Because we can. Because it's better to not harm, than to harm.
Thinking that because we can't "absolutely" stop harm in "all" aspects, that those who strive to stop and reduce harm are "delusional", is actually the deluded thought process. Why stop engaging in slavery of other humans since we can't stop all harm. Living by the principle of doing no harm is just a delusion, why bother to care about the harm we do or try to stop it! ... LMAO. Have fun on that ride.
Also, the X and opposite-X model as applying to "everything", is more absolutist thinking. To clarify one point "love" is a watered down word, when we mean "like". We like one thing, and can dislike the opposite. Can is the important thing to note. Not that there's always the thing we like and it's opposite value. I can like bananas, or "love" them, but there isn't an opposite to hate or dislike.
Claiming "We love only to the extent that we hate the opposite of what we love." is false. Sure you can love truth and hate falsity. Love love and hate hate. Ok. But you loving someone doesn't mean you have to hate someone else. I love X, doesn't mean I hate not-X lol. I love person X, doesn't mean I hate person not-X. I love this persons glasses (X), doesn't mean I hate persons who don't have these glasses, or have no-glasses (no-X).
Each positive value has a negative correspondence in many cases. Hot to cold, up to down, left to right, true to false. But affirming favor for one doesn't mean being in opposition to the other.
I get you had this bone to pick with "universal love" and other things ;) but you got lost in trying to explain it clearly ;)
This was like people who try to say good is like light, and evil is like dark, so you need both good and evil. Analogies only carry over so far. Correspondence is not to be carried out blindly after some similarly is detected. Right and wrong, or good and evil, are only metaphorically like light and dark. All the qualities don't apply form one dual model (light/dark) to the other dual model (right/wrong). One is the contrast to the other, to distinguish them, but they both are not required to be created. Something right, good and true can be created without the creation of its opposite wrong, evil and false. The words are descriptors for comparison to know one thing from another: the law of identity, logic.
Similarly, one can care for someone, or values they have, or qualities they have, or qualities in reality, without hating the opposite. Like the color green. Liking Green doesn't mean you hate magenta. You can love the quality or value X, without hating the not-X quality or value. Sometimes there is a clear analogous correspondence of X and not-X applying to love/hate, but not always like you claim. I hope you will consider this criticism of your thinking :) Peace.
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:)
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Practically, I agree with everything you say! So the disagreement is really just on how I went about making the analogies, I think. So maybe you're right in saying that I 'got lost in trying to explain it clearly' and 'Analogies only carry over so far'.
Let me make a list of things I'm in agreement with you:
We should do whatever we can to lessen harm in the world. We should try and create meat in labs so that people stop killing animals. We should strive to be better in every single respect we can be better at. (Can you tell I'm a meliorist?!) We should always strive to learn, second-guess our actions (in a good way), and even tho I'm an atheist I can say some good ol' Catholic guilt can play a role in personal development and 'looking at oneself in the mirror'. I'm definitely not arguing that we should continue to do bad things that we can obviously stop doing, because 'every upvote corresponds to a flag'. I am saying that if you believe the Earth is round, you probably don't believe it's flat, and that you'll do something about those who do. If you believe in Darwin, you probably don't believe in the most popular (and correct) interpretation of Genesis, and your 'valuing' Darwin will transform into some action regarding what children should be taught. It's those kinds of beliefs I'm saying we should stand up and admit. If a vegan's at all a vegan, he's probably faking his politeness when he's seated at a table with meat-eaters, as I would if I were seated with racists.
I must say about free will, it's been proven not to exist by both philosophy and science. There's no way around it. The only debate for instance in philosophy right now is between compatibilists and incompatibilists, and both believe every single human eye-blink is 101% determined, with room to spare. They just disagree on the definition of free will. Schopenhauer's Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will distinguishes between freedom of the will and freedom of action, saying we can't have the former but that we can have the latter, and I think that might be what you mean.
So you think that your liking bananas does not 'spill over' into anything else that doesn't concern the very act and instance of you eating and enjoying a banana? So for instance this article doesn't make you feel anything? I imagine it does! And you can easily imagine how, if we were talking about issues more pressing than bananas, you might easily be spurred into taking political action, or some kind of action. We never value something in isolation. It always spills over into the rest of reality. With every 'I love' there's an 'I hate' hiding ready to come out into the open! (such as 'I hate monocultures' or whatever! :P)
It might mean you hate color-blindness. Think of it this way: there would be no reason for you to dislike color-blindness if there was no such thing as its opposite. I think disliking color-blindness can be directly traced, at least partly, to our 'liking green'.
So I hope you get the gist of where I'm coming from. I didn't respond to every fine point of your critique (which I thank you for, it was a long one so it took some time and effort!), because I feel it may have been a misunderstanding of where I was coming from. Though it does seem we disagree on some points maybe, I think we agree on the important one: we should do everything we can to avoid harming whatever it's possible not to harm. Even Merry in the gif, who thinks wearing a scarf will save the 'organisms that dwell in the air', has got her idealistic heart in the right place probably, and if science in the future can make it so that we can breathe without killing bacteria, I don't see why we shouldn't opt to do that, all things being equal.
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I like this point of view as well. However, when you add it the idea of.
I'm trying to find a balance that I agree with, where we can go about 'harming' or participating in the cycle of life. But, maybe it isn't so much about the act (harm), but the intention (or lack of intention) behind the act...
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Lol! You actually want to harm living organisms?!
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I don't want to, but I do reconcile and attempt (if I remember to) show respect. Which I think is the point. It's almost like a reverence towards taking life. Being thankful for the life's gift. You know?
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I understand how that makes you a better person, and the whole situation more ethical I guess (I would surely prefer to be killed by someone who'll feel the weight of what he did than by someone who won't), but I don't think showing respect etc. makes it okay to kill.
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Good read, I like it when you don't serve complex issues in simple positivist slogans but give your reader the responsibility of deciding what's the moral of the text.
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Good article and nice to meet you.
Please follow me @patricksanlin and upvote. Thanks
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Geez, not one mention of The Demiurge on this very good post! You guys are no fun at all!
I wonder what Nietzche would have thought of The Nag Hammadi and The Matrix scenario.......
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I wonder about what Nietzsche would've thought about a lot of things!
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Great post! I am happy I came by your post! Followed! Do check my latest post https://steemit.com/life/@alexkoshy/times-ayn-rand-s-philosophy-was-criticized-recently-and-my-take-on-it-in-less-than-250-words
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I think this notion of love as a value is mistaken. Psychology tells us that love is something like "positive emotion with a connection". I think hatred comes from a lack of understanding. We tend to blame people and give people personal responsibility without acknowledging that we live in a universe without libertarian free will. Sam Harris explains this well in his book "Free will".
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Values are the more basic element for me, and love is a result of it. I love something because of several values that I hold, that are represented in the loved object. These values can be instinctive (it's how I was made), or they can be learned. And what I call 'hatred' is simply the kind of things you feel when something you value/love is opposed/harmed.
I don't believe in free will, just like Sam Harris. I don't know of any philosopher who doesn't believe in determinism.
However I don't think that means you won't 'hate' anything. Hate is not something you can help. It happens automatically. At least for the most of us. It's very difficult to rewire your brain in such a way where you feel nothing because you know every action is determined, and therefore 'no one's fault'. I don't really feel faultlessness follows strictly from determinism, either.
Thanks for your comment!
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Your post here, like many of your others, will require some digestion!
The first thing that comes to my mind is the pseudo-paradox of tolerance and intolerance. (I say "pseudo-" because I think this argument is actually not very helpful, though I hear it all the time.)
I think of people who esteem and celebrate tolerance between people of other faiths, cultures, sexual/gender identities, etc. And there are others who make sharp distinctions between these differences, even intolerant distinctions that are hurtful to others. And so those that lift up tolerance become frustrated against this intolerance and speak out against it. The response I hear back from the intolerant is: "See, you are intolerant, too! You are intolerant of us!" in other words, the tolerant is intolerant of intolerance.
Sorry, I my reasoning may be a bit convoluted. Lol.
My point is that yes, much like love/hate, tolerance can't exist without intolerance. The tolerant MUST be intolerant of intolerance.
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Yes, that's correct!
My article for some reason gives off 'bad vibes' that make people think of absolutisms and intolerances! (Maybe the 'Nazi' sign has something to do with it?! :P) Those may be part of the picture, for sure, because my theory after all explains outright wars as well. But the overarching point is that it's impossible to hold a value without it having a 'negative effect' or 'shadow image' somewhere else, be it lighter affairs like 'hating' Pseudocercospora fijiensis because I 'love' eating bananas, or disliking color blindness because I like colors, or darker matters like being intolerant toward the intolerant and whatever that intolerance might lead to. And I expressed this logical point by saying that you can't 'love' without 'hating'. Having values is a necessary correlate of being conscious, and so opposing the 'enemy' of those values is also a necessary correlate.
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