Values: Common and Unifying
We are basically a species that lives in the present, like all other species. We respond to and value only things in our immediate environment. Our understanding of the world is limited or determined by our customary geography. We tend to interpret what we are not familiar with through a lens of paranoia.
People say that we are a divided society: A society of the elites and the real people, of the 1 % and the 99 %, of liberals and conservatives, of warring tribes .... We are no longer thought of, we seem no longer to think of ourselves, as "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
We seem to think of ourselves as "one nation" only in regards to thinking of a place with physical borders. That nation is "indivisible" only in a physical sense. "Liberty" is conflated with unbridled license to do what one wants in spite of how it affects others. "Justice" is only justice if I approve of its outcome, it is a personal preference rather than the Golden Rule, it is what benefits me rather than what is moral.
For the sake of profit, the mass of people have been put in a place in which it is easier to give up our values than to strive to exemplify them. It is easier, more convenient, cheaper, tastier, social, fun to eat at McDonald's than it is to prepare a nutritious meal. Thus the values of convenience and the rest replace the value of health. It is not surprising that they do since they are so much more immediate, apparent, obvious and material than the health. Health is a long-term, basal state that is difficult to perceive since it constitutes the background of life rather than its immediate pleasures.
Justice is also a background condition: It is the unbiased application of the rules, tempered with wisdom; wisdom being an understanding of a moral society.
But a moral society is one in which all of its members know that they share the same fate. Knowing that they share the same fate means that any individual would not take advantage of another to the other's detriment since that individual will know that being disadvantaged will also be his fate.
But this is seldom how people think or feel or believe. Partly because they are not taught to believe this, but also because the evidence of their senses shows them that they can "get away with it", escape sharing the fate of others -- at least in the short run, which evolution has built us to prioritize.
Does this mean that in the long run we will share the fate of bacteria in a petri dish? The earth is vastly larger than a laboratory petri dish, but in the long run it is still basically a petri dish. Contrary to Cassius in Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Indeed, the fault is in our stars.
People say that we are a divided society: A society of the elites and the real people, of the 1 % and the 99 %, of liberals and conservatives, of warring tribes .... We are no longer thought of, we seem no longer to think of ourselves, as "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
We seem to think of ourselves as "one nation" only in regards to thinking of a place with physical borders. That nation is "indivisible" only in a physical sense. "Liberty" is conflated with unbridled license to do what one wants in spite of how it affects others. "Justice" is only justice if I approve of its outcome, it is a personal preference rather than the Golden Rule, it is what benefits me rather than what is moral.
For the sake of profit, the mass of people have been put in a place in which it is easier to give up our values than to strive to exemplify them. It is easier, more convenient, cheaper, tastier, social, fun to eat at McDonald's than it is to prepare a nutritious meal. Thus the values of convenience and the rest replace the value of health. It is not surprising that they do since they are so much more immediate, apparent, obvious and material than the health. Health is a long-term, basal state that is difficult to perceive since it constitutes the background of life rather than its immediate pleasures.
Justice is also a background condition: It is the unbiased application of the rules, tempered with wisdom; wisdom being an understanding of a moral society.
But a moral society is one in which all of its members know that they share the same fate. Knowing that they share the same fate means that any individual would not take advantage of another to the other's detriment since that individual will know that being disadvantaged will also be his fate.
But this is seldom how people think or feel or believe. Partly because they are not taught to believe this, but also because the evidence of their senses shows them that they can "get away with it", escape sharing the fate of others -- at least in the short run, which evolution has built us to prioritize.
Does this mean that in the long run we will share the fate of bacteria in a petri dish? The earth is vastly larger than a laboratory petri dish, but in the long run it is still basically a petri dish. Contrary to Cassius in Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Indeed, the fault is in our stars.
posted by Godel at 1:00 PM
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