Equality... who is opposed?

Equality... who is opposed?

When we take on an ethical concept like equality, we meet opposition. So who is opposed to equality? It turns out no one, as long it it not being applied to them; everyone when it is being applied to them. Equality cannot fly unless it is attached to reciprocity. It must be universal. So who are the big organizations that are opposed to equality being applied to them? Well, after examination, most organizations want to be "something special" status.

Religions, well the Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, want to be special. Within their organizations, women hold a special lower place politically. They are a social group to themselves. That is not equality. Political organizations have a special problem. Now they try to boost women up, making men the second class. How well is that working now?

So religions are the principle resistance, although many of them agree that equality is a good thing, yet do not live it within their own organization. So what good is their support, if it is dishonest support? Equality means that religions would need sell their faith to adults, not impose it on children. That is the way of religion, imposing the religion onto children before they can sort real and false, before they have other means of support, before they have learned to reason, before they can reason.

So we see equality is one more reason to abandon organized religions, and even belief systems that are less organized, like Islam. These do not support equality. Any religion that places value on old books is also suspect. It places the book above the thinking of the current population... not realistic but it is the way of religion. No thanks.

So now we see that if we adopt equality as the foundation for our ethics/moral life, we will be at conflict with religions and many social groups. Oh well, life goes on until it does not. It is done. Hail all as equals. 

Stepping Forward

Stepping Forward

Last day we spoke about how equality and reciprocity are the foundation for this built up belief system. The next four are logic and/or reason, reality, wisdom; knowing what is right, and prudence; doing what is right. These six basic concepts go a long way in defining what is right, the good life, and similar concepts of life in a philosophy of life.

Wisdom includes truth, or perhaps truth should be in there specifically. As the system is being developed, additions are to be expected. Truth, correctness is critical in the process, as well as in the system.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs outlines what human needs are, although these have never been proven. The lower ones are self evident, and yet many philosophies ignore the lower ones, likely because most people do not struggle with these. They have "arrived" by the time they start to look at philosophy. And yet we need to understand that we humans are firstly animals, and even if we can mentally arise a basic animal, we still have animal needs that must biologically be met. This puts vegans out to lunch.

These first seven values reject religions, for the most part.  Equality of persons is not part of the three Western Asia Religions, and Eastern religions are also limiting. Western Modren Buddhism may be an exception, however, it too, has issues, with obsession with mediation. That may work fine with a monastery society, but not so well in a lay society. Religions promote inequality, male domination society. We also live in an overpopulated earth, we need also to deal with the reality of life today. Oh well.

I hold that these first seven points are mostly self evident, but more could be written about the need for these later.

To recap: equality, reciprocity, truth, logic and reason, reality, wisdom, prudence are the foundation for a philosophy of life.

  

Current / Future Philosophy

 Current / Future Philosophy

https://www.becomingminimalist.com/happy-life/?  

So now we know, Lead a happy fulfilling life... but that is circular logic... do what is necessary for a happy contented life will yield a happy contented life.

People are much of my issue, I am happier and more contented if I limit contact. So it is to some extent, we must match our personal social need with our social involvement. A low social person such as I am should not be involved in politics, sales or any high social career. I am better off "at the controls" or as I originally started out, doing, not managing people.

When we look at some of the books written under duress: Marcus Aurelius, Victor Frankel, Boethius, etc. what do we find? These people are talking philosophy, and are mentally lost in philosophy. What a way to live; ignore reality around them and concentrate on philosophy to the point of shutting out the remainder of the world around then and concentrate on one little aspect for the duration. I experienced that degree of concentration/effort/mindfulness for periods of time studying/  computing problem solutions when I was at University, many years ago. The issues of life since then do not create such an intense process solution as did those engineering problem that required long involved processes, the answer evolved out of the process, just like squeezing a tube of toothpaste. Keep cranking and the end just came. Not so with philosophy/ethics, the goalpost just keep moving. There are no solutions.

Suppose we started with a solution, and built a philosophy on that. Analysis as much as you like, and it would come back to the starting point, built up logically, one step at a time. So if were to take something like political equality as the starting point, add a touch of reciprocity, and we could create quite an ethical system. First, we need to use something like categorical imperative process, good for one and all, what do we find? In general it seems to agrees with the main historical ethics, but not the contentious bits, like abortion, birth control, LGBT etc. But more on that next day.

 

Bah Humbug

Christianity invented sin to sell salvation. It is done. 

StoBud Philosophy

Both the Stoics and Buddhist claim to offer happiness, contentment, serenity, and the like. When we examine their philosophies, at first they are so different, yet eerily similar in so many areas. Yet looking further, they are not mutually exclusive. So what would a merger of the two look like. Patrick Ussher and Ronald W. Pies, and others have separately explored this.

What would the objective ultimately be? To develop a correct philosophy to live that would produce a flourishing peaceful life. As we know now, it is all about what we think, not about the way it actually is, relative to others. If we are happy sitting on a stump by a fire, and are willing to work enough to keep that fire going, we can be happy. Personally, I need a warm house, enough food, and enough to do to keep my mind off food. My social needs are low but I do need a bit more that I am currently getting... oh well. The internet makes up for that.

Point 1. It is about what we think, our expectations over actual, or our satisfaction index. If the ratio is greater than one, our expectations are less than actual, then we are happy. If the actual does not reach our expectations, the ration is less than one and we are unhappy.

There are two parts to this satisfaction index, the actual which we do not control but only influence, and our expectations, which we have absolute control over, so the Stoics say, and seems to be true. There is no reason that we cannot be happy almost all the time, within reason. We may have periods of adjustment, when we need to adjust our thinking to the new reality.

First we must accept that we are animals first and human second. The physical capacity is limited, we get tired, sick, and in the end we die. We have no control over this, regardless of what high energy hype grues say. There are always those who sell hope and other forms of false information. Reality is the world is filled with evil bastards, and we must avoid these predators, approximately one third of the population. These animal humans do not think of themselves as bad people, if they think about behavior at all. They just take and are happy, greedy, and living off the work of others. They may only be part time evils, but we need to identify and avoid heavy exposure to these, if we are ethical, and hold ethical values.

Point 2, we live in a real evil world time, and all is beyond our control. Both philosophy systems make these points. That which is common to both systems is likely correct, that which is not common is somewhat questionable, or just assumed in the other system. These come from two very different cultures. Any culture has a bunch of common assumed foundation beliefs, and if these are right, these often go unstated, when they are wrong, the philosophy covers it over. Merging two philosophies requires uncovering and merging the assumed unstated foundation beliefs. Therein lies the difficulty.
 

Morals

The religious often say "you cannot be moral because you have no objective moral standards." ... Ahy but neither do you, you have authoritative standards, handed down from old men of history, that you think are objective. They are objective in that you have never questioned them, and often, when looked at, they are rather poor and have no foundation to stand on.

There is no underlying principal such as equality of all people. If we assume that all people are equal, then all opinions are equal... well no, some are more equal than others. At least generate a number of alternatives, generate some criteria to judge them, and evaluate them. What do you find? everything is subjective.

It turns out that often, after evaluation, everything just matches our confirmation basis. We have confirmed our opinion. That is not objective, or is it?

People are equal. The earth is overpopulated. We should have less children until the population gets down to a reasonable level. Unless the sixth extinction occurs. Methyl hydrate fire in the Arctic, putting H2O and Co2 into the atmosphere. "The tundra is burning." When that is the headline, the sixth extinction has begun. It may not be complete. Oh well, the earth will survive. Will humans?

So morals/ethic are important for a dense population so that we can all get along. Family is important, but where does it say that I must be around asshats? Perhaps it should say something like nice family is important, un-nice, well not so much. Dysfunctional is one thing, unfunctional, well that is the luck of the draw, it is time to move on, but what if you are dependent? Suck it up buttercup. You are stuck, but there is always at least one out. We live in an overpopulated world. We cannot look at suicide without looking at the family, from the viewpoint of the offed. But we cannot know, after the fact. Parental emotional abuse is often well hidden from the outside. The abuser often does not consider what they are doing as abuse... There are no standards of behavior between people, within a family.   

So indoctrination into a family way, a culture, a way of behaving, a moral or ethical code, it is all just indoctrination. We stay because, indecision or by choice... well most never look at it. It is not indecision, not choice, but habit. Habit, doing what we have always done, because... well that is what we have always done, and how bad is life anyway...