Realism and Benevolism
Actually written NOVEMBER 5, 2006 (SUSPECTED)
# Objectivism or Subjectivism?
I side with objectivism for its compatibility with radical benevolence. But I don’t particularly mean the objectivism of Ayn Rand here. I mean metaphysical realism generally, as opposed to idealism – the notion that existence is a dream generated by consciousness.
I strongly suspect that any truly intense care for humanity (or a care for all affective creatures) requires a belief in the absoluteness and consciousness-independence of existence, along with such corollaries as the correspondence theory of truth and the validity of logic.
My reasoning is this:
All philosophies other than realism reduce to utter contradictory nonsense.
Contradictory nonsense in one’s view of existence is a potential blank check invitation to practice contradictory nonsense in any other area of life one wishes. We get the classic Orwellian “War is Peace” and all that other shit.
One such potential contradiction is “Benevolence is malevolence”. This is the reduced form. The expanded mumbo-jumbo form is: “Existence is an unintelligible mess and nothing makes any ultimate sense anyway, so all we can do is make shit up as we go along, which means we are free to interpret stuff as either (or both) benevolent or malevolent as we wish. And I mean that what we call ‘benevolent’ is also ‘malevolent’ at exactly the same time and in exactly the same way – as we fuckin' wish.”
Under such mental conditions, we can’t have a straight (consistent) stance on just what benevolence is. And we’re likely not even to care. So on with the malevolence because, after all, it’s different from benevolence in whim only.
Radically benevolent people believe that benevolence has an identity independent of consciousness. Benevolence is what it is regardless of our beliefs or whims about it. Our care for others, even though it be located in the mental realm, is what it is not by way of our becoming conscious of it, but by its being what it is – a part of our mental existence that can in turn become an object of our consciousness. Benevolence does not become something else on whim. It is what it is, absolutely.
Such is what the radically benevolent believe. And that’s quite different from what people of average benevolence believe.
People of average benevolence don’t even think about the issue I’ve so far described, but rather they naively believe in metaphysical idealism or relativism. In their minds, any kind of absolutism, such as realism, is rather fascist. So naturally, they rebel against fascist absolutism by embracing subjective-relativism. The story goes like this:
2. With a sense of benevolent fairness, we lament that too few people can meet these absolute conditions for getting what they want and being wanted by others.
3. In the name of a more egalitarian benevolence, we rebel against absolute conditions for happiness in favor of relative (especially culturally relative) conditions for such happiness. We want the conditions for happiness and social acceptance to be relative and changeable, so more people have a chance to feel wanted and get happily laid.
4. To do number 3, we feel it is necessary to take this relativism all the way into our theories of existence itself. To affirm that everything is relative, subject to culture, subject to the consciousness of those who comprise their culture. We must cut those fascists off at their metaphysical roots.
So anyway, such is the trend among those of average benevolence. Off they go attacking absolutism, relativizing the identity of everything generally, not realizing that they’ve relativized the identity of benevolence in the process, rendering the whole mess subject to the interpretation by whim.
Not that whim is in every respect dangerous to benevolence. It’s possible to have consistently benevolent whims. But I fear that it is unlikely, given that people in general seem lacking in consistent benevolence. So with this relativism, people of average benevolence can pay a lot of lip service to benevolence, yet entertain major lapses in their benevolence, and then assure themselves they were benevolent the whole time because they can (on a whim) adjust the identity of benevolence to include their lapses.
Anyway, instead of saying that whim threatens benevolence, it’s more precise to say that radical benevolence threatens the whim to interpret benevolence contrary to what it actually is. Radically benevolent people don’t lie to themselves (or others) about the absolute identity of benevolence. The identity of benevolence (like anything else) is not relative, not subject to anyone’s consciousness.
Such is my speculation so far.
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