Growing up entails reaching moral adulthood, to not claim entitlement to expect anyone else, including government, owes you much at all. It entails not expecting government or law to satisfy all your moral concerns, discharge your bodily needs, or avail you or your club with socially paid for special privileges that are inconsistent with generally assimilated values of your culture. It entails not expecting government should commission experts to "settle the science" about all general concerns of a citizenry.
Do empirically correct answers to general moral questions exist? Sam Harris imagines there is an objectively correct "answer," as a natural or factual matter, regardless of whether we know it or not, to each general moral question, such as: would the world be better off were the U.S. to destroy its nuclear weapons? Or, should government equalize wealth redistribution?
My intuition is that Harris is wrong. If correct moral answers "exist," I doubt they are in respect of nature. Rather, I think answers abide, ambiguously, within a field of possibilities --- not within a field of actual, manifested, measurable nature. Any "answer" would be good for a fleeting context only. This is because neither we, nor nature, know how our context will evolve from possible permutations of manifestations. Even if there is a synchronizing, choosing Aspect that interfunctions with nature, I doubt IT would know (assuming IT is not without power to change IT's mind, depending on appreciations of IT's unfolding interaction with nature).
That which consciousness/Consciousness appreciates as being "best" (or in its well being) depends on that which it chooses, wills, or determines to appreciate --- something which it, to the extent it is functioning from an unfolding perspective of consciousness, cannot with certitude predict. Why? Because consciousness knows it can change its attitude, point of view, and mind, if it chooses to do so, with regard to whether to appreciate any particular focus and whether or how to provide for the unfoldment of that which follows. In common sense, this would seem obvious to anyone not entertaining an agenda to rationalize a "science of morality" or a "liberal reality."
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Intuitively, for information to be stored in masses of manifestation necessitates a conscious beingness to which such manifestatioins, at least in potential, can eventually reduce to appreciation. Otherwise, no field of possibilities would produce anything more than meaningless, ungoverned fuzz. Morality, like numbers, does not in itself exist, except as concept, in a relation with a field of conceptualizing consciousness. Consciousness, in itself, is neither moral nor immoral, but may function in ways that give relative expression to morality or immorality. In whatever way numbers have always existed, in relative potential, so also has consciousness existed. Qualitative consciousness does not exist as a derivative of quantitative nature. Rather, quantitative nature exists as a derivative of qualitative consciousness. You cannot weigh the consciousness in the quality by which you experience it, yet your consciousness is the one non-trival thing you can know. All else that is qualitative (other conscious beings, a field of synchronizing consciousness, God) is intuitive. All else that is quantitative is derivative, not by mathematical proof, but by intuitive dependence. One can intuitively reason that nature is derivative of flux and feedback within a field of consciousness; one cannot mathematically derive the quality of one's conscious will or morality from the quantity of measurable nature.
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Answers to moral questions do exist. But the answers are not empirical or final answers. They are choices about answers. They are choices for which perspectives of consciousness consider the moral effect. That effect is unfolding, subject to continuous testing, perpetually subject to remorse, rededication, recalibration. That effect is the most important aspect of our beingness. A general guide may be summarized thusly: Seek those mores and laws that seem best for availing a culture that maximizes the decently civilizing and unfolding expressions of individual freedom and dignity.
Do empirically correct answers to general moral questions exist? Sam Harris imagines there is an objectively correct "answer," as a natural or factual matter, regardless of whether we know it or not, to each general moral question, such as: would the world be better off were the U.S. to destroy its nuclear weapons? Or, should government equalize wealth redistribution?
My intuition is that Harris is wrong. If correct moral answers "exist," I doubt they are in respect of nature. Rather, I think answers abide, ambiguously, within a field of possibilities --- not within a field of actual, manifested, measurable nature. Any "answer" would be good for a fleeting context only. This is because neither we, nor nature, know how our context will evolve from possible permutations of manifestations. Even if there is a synchronizing, choosing Aspect that interfunctions with nature, I doubt IT would know (assuming IT is not without power to change IT's mind, depending on appreciations of IT's unfolding interaction with nature).
That which consciousness/Consciousness appreciates as being "best" (or in its well being) depends on that which it chooses, wills, or determines to appreciate --- something which it, to the extent it is functioning from an unfolding perspective of consciousness, cannot with certitude predict. Why? Because consciousness knows it can change its attitude, point of view, and mind, if it chooses to do so, with regard to whether to appreciate any particular focus and whether or how to provide for the unfoldment of that which follows. In common sense, this would seem obvious to anyone not entertaining an agenda to rationalize a "science of morality" or a "liberal reality."
********
Intuitively, for information to be stored in masses of manifestation necessitates a conscious beingness to which such manifestatioins, at least in potential, can eventually reduce to appreciation. Otherwise, no field of possibilities would produce anything more than meaningless, ungoverned fuzz. Morality, like numbers, does not in itself exist, except as concept, in a relation with a field of conceptualizing consciousness. Consciousness, in itself, is neither moral nor immoral, but may function in ways that give relative expression to morality or immorality. In whatever way numbers have always existed, in relative potential, so also has consciousness existed. Qualitative consciousness does not exist as a derivative of quantitative nature. Rather, quantitative nature exists as a derivative of qualitative consciousness. You cannot weigh the consciousness in the quality by which you experience it, yet your consciousness is the one non-trival thing you can know. All else that is qualitative (other conscious beings, a field of synchronizing consciousness, God) is intuitive. All else that is quantitative is derivative, not by mathematical proof, but by intuitive dependence. One can intuitively reason that nature is derivative of flux and feedback within a field of consciousness; one cannot mathematically derive the quality of one's conscious will or morality from the quantity of measurable nature.
******
Answers to moral questions do exist. But the answers are not empirical or final answers. They are choices about answers. They are choices for which perspectives of consciousness consider the moral effect. That effect is unfolding, subject to continuous testing, perpetually subject to remorse, rededication, recalibration. That effect is the most important aspect of our beingness. A general guide may be summarized thusly: Seek those mores and laws that seem best for availing a culture that maximizes the decently civilizing and unfolding expressions of individual freedom and dignity.
4 comments:
Obama wants to destroy America as it is; that is, to change America into something fundamentally different. Sort of like calling Big Brother a liberal. Radicals like Obama, who want to make fundamental changes, are almost always willing, even desirous, of using radical means, almost any means --- even uniting with enemies or burning the foundation from within. Obama sees America as a moral slum, and his regime is clearing the slum to build a new and morally revitalized society. He is like the Muslims who would torture apostates for their own good. There is a fork at the moral beginning and foundation of each person and each society. All of Obama's intellect and energy are directed to one fork, and most of responsible America is directed to another. With apologies to Frost, that makes all the difference. The result follows from a direct path: Obama is the enemy of America as she has always fundamentally been. Obama does not care what the people of America want. He does not want America to be a government of its people, by the people, or for the people. He wants America to be as elites --- privy to the word of Gaia, Allah, or some other Pagan perspective --- would have it. It is not for us to judge Obama's soul. But it is religiously blinded ignorance for O'Reilly, Medved, and Big Gov Christians to fail to see that Obama is indeed an enemy and a figurehead for all that is hateful to representative republicanism. He only appears to be a blank slate. In fact, he is the personification of al Taquia.
Pity the fool (or saint) who feels free to reason about Islam in any predominately Islamic country. No, to export their "reason," Muslims have to come to the West. Sort of like a crime country, in search of new victims to recruit, would have to export good will ambassadors. No sale. That part of the West that has any moral sense is insane to export wealth, technology, trade, and military know how to criminal, parasitic cultures and nations. Should we feel remorse when crime families feel "humiliated?" Read the Koran. Any adult who freely buys its message has already abased and humiliated himself. What part of the West coddles this sore to humanity? Answer: Those who would sell their own mothers for an upgrade to first class. We do have a severe moral problem in the West. It is not because we loathe the message of the Koran. It is because we dither with the devil, who has found a niche in the middle east, and those who would sell our own families for cheap profits.
What is unfolding all around is about the elites who run the state presuming to know best how to raise children. Once they take over the raising of your children, you can kiss your individual freedom and dignity goodbye. This is not about respecting people to allow them to pursue and enjoy their own pleasure. It's about using carrots (irresponsible deployment of drugs and sex) to entice and regulate us into corrals of serfdom. Libertarians (the unfriendly to family values crowd) needs to grow up and figure this out, before we're all trampled.
As far as the role of government: Many conservatives agree the feds need to back off. But what happens when the issues are left with the states? Well, state citizens invariably vote to uphold traditional marriage. So then what do the libs do? Well, they go to their favorite judge, who doesn't believe in law as such anyway, and so on ... and on. At some point, it becomes necessary to stop debating people who don't really mean to respect debate to begin with. It becomes necessary to stand up to them.
So many, having shed trust in God, now shall learn to fear having lost faith in faith --- until they learn that our illusion of fiscal substantiveness floats on nothing more than a quality of conscious faith, a trick of suspension of disbelief.
Do you have faith in "America?" Do you believe faith in a concept of America is worthwhile? Can you objectively define what you mean by America, or your faith in it? Regardless, is your faith, and the shared faith of others, in America, worthwhile? Does that faith carry a moral value? How is faith in "Jesus" different? Isn't Jesus a worthwhile, shorthand reference for that which many in our culture associate with the worthwhile? If you went on a crusade to convince certain people to believe America is no longer a good concept, would that be a good thing? Would a similar crusade against Jesus be a good thing, insofar as it affected our everyday lives? How many times do we feel the hubris of someone who wants to push aside all faith, except that faith of which he places himself at center stage?
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