On 11/26/2013 11:13 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
2013/11/26 meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
On 11/26/2013 10:03 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
but personal purpose must be metaphisical. I mean transcendental,
beyond our own.
Beyond my what?...beyond my purpose. That would be incoherent.
Yes. beyond your purpose.
Except in the case of people in the edge, that are concerned with its
own survival.
Why is survival special? People are often more concerned with other values
more
than survival.
Then they are not concerned with their own survival. These people are in constant danger
of death.
Of course everybody is in danger of death, but I don't think it significantly greater
because I have children I would sacrifice my life for.
you can not find meaning working every morning for a society if your
society has
not a purpose,a plan itself for going along.
Suppose you work for yourself instead of society. Or as George Carlin put it,
"If
I'm here for other people, what are those other people here for?"
You can work for yourself. and there may be a number of them. even there may be a number
of special psychopaths that do an overall good to the society forced by some market
forces. But a society of work--for-themselves can not survive. It is naturally corrupt.
Therefore that is not in our nature. It may work for some, for it will not work for most
of us.
A false dichotomy. Values don't have to be all-or-nothing. Some people enjoy helping
others. Some people (usually artists) enjoy creating for themselves (which is why
Nietzsche admired artists). But the shades in between are more common.
The need for an ultimate, transcendental purpose is so strong that
every people
gets depressed (even to suicide, Boltzmann for example) by the idea of
a the
thermal end of the Universe, even knowing that this end is unimaginably
ahead in
time. I find no better example of how purpose, long term planning for
survival
and transcendence are related in the human mind with quite practical
consequences.
Certainly caring about the future had evolutionary advantages for an
intelligent,
social species. But people are no better at imagining an infinite
immortality than
an end of the world. They are only comforted by keeping them fuzzy.
Brent
It is not necessary that everyone imagined or suffer for that. Just a few sensible and
influential people makes the difference in moralizing or demoralizing the entire
society. There is a specialization in which people short term oriented trust other more
long term and so on until the "priests" of the times, who have the trust in looking the
very long term path and tell what they see to the rest.
Whether they are sensible or not, they may be influential.
Brent
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