Burning off dead wood
What is a human being and how does it grow? Two men offer helpful and constructive answers can be found below. To be human is to be the sort of creature whose mind can incorporate struggles and trials into itself to become more. Marcus is commenting on the Stoic concept that human beings are rational animals, Peterson is commenting on Scripture in the first quote and on Jung’s understanding of Solve et Coagula[1] in the second. I hope what follows is helpful and encouraging:
Two Types of Honesty
There are two types of honesty:
- Frankness: Saying what you think/feel is true, simply. When one is being frank, you could speak complete untruths (objectively speaking) while still being honest.
- Scientific Accuracy: This mode of honesty is intentionally humble in the sense that you say what you think could provide evidence for, qualify what you mean, and admit which elements of what you say are unclear to you.
Taylor Swift: Great American Philosopher
I read a great quote in a meme. So I decided to find its source. It had a philosopher's touch:
Live your life like you're 80 looking back on your teenage years. You know if your dad calls you at eight in the morning and asks if you want to go to breakfast? As a teenager you're like no, I want to sleep. As an 80 year old looking back, you have that breakfast with your dad. It's just little things like that that helped me when I was a teenager in terms of making the choices you won't regret later.
Abraham's Virtues
God Blessed Abraham in All Things
Yoram Hazony makes the case that in Genesis, Abraham is painted as a paradigmatically virtuous character. The primary evidence is that while Abraham is not perfect, God has confidence that he will “command his children and his house after him, and they will keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and right.[1]" Also significant is Genesis 24:1, “And the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things.”
Simplify Complex Problems Like Descartes
Ever Feel Stupid?
Many of us wish we were smarter than we are. Rene Descartes even felt this way:
"For myself, I have never fancied my mind to be in any respect more perfect than those of the generality; on the contrary, I have often wished that I were equal to some others in promptitude of thought, or in clearness and distinctness of imagination, or in fullness and readiness of memory...I will not hesitate, however, to avow my belief that it has been my singular good fortune to have very early in life fallen in with certain tracks which have conducted me to considerations and maxims, of which I have formed a method that gives me the means, as I think, of gradually augmenting my knowledge, and of raising it by little and little to the highest point which the mediocrity of my talents and the brief duration of my life will permit me to reach."
The Loquacious Atheist: He Is Speaking Pure Gibberish
When I heard that Daniel Dennett's new book on consciousness was released, I didn't care. He has a tendency to argue in this format:
- Here's an idea it isn't worth explaining from the past.
- Here's my alternative that uses sciency words.
- It cannot be explained by current science, but with enough scientific advances, it obviously will be explained.
- Logic, etc.
I'm hardly exaggerating. It's like Sam Harris, but less endearing because it isn't podcast format and he doesn't look like Zoolander. I stopped reading Dennett's books when I recognized that pattern.
A Spiritual Exercise From Genesis 4:1-7
The Introduction to Cain's Story
Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, "I have gotten a manchild with the help of the LORD." And again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. And Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? "If you do well [make the best of it], will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." (Gen 4:1-7 NAS)The Lord tells Cain the best thing a resentful person could hear and he says it in two ways:
Adler's Moral Axiom
As far as I can tell, there are three major problems in ethical thinking today:
- Disconnecting ethics from happiness and therefore thinking that personal well-being and pleasure have nothing to do with ethics.
- Hedonism: The idea that right and wrong is only a matter of what leads to the highest personal pleasure. In social ethics, this means allowing people to do whatever they think/feel will make them feel the best. We might call this unscientific utilitarianism (because it isn’t based upon actual knowledge of what is good for the individual or collective human organism.
- The is/ought problem: That since knowledge is all descriptive, no understanding of what is can lead to a conclusion about what one ought to do.
Below are the paragraphs where he introduces the axiom in his book, 10 Philosophical Mistakes:
Foucault the Resentful
In an long interview, two of my favorite authors/speakers discuss the problems of academia, particularly the adoption of Lacan, Foucalt, and Derrida as heroes:
Peterson’s interpretation of why intellectual elites (Paglia calls them midgets), influenced as they are by Foucault act as they do is beautiful (6:42). He essentially says that the motive force in academia is resentment virtually anything that implies merit or competence!
Coincidentally, I just read a chapter in Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life where he rather politely abuses Foucault’s misreading of the stoics. Foucault claims that the stoic notion of cultivating the self is a form of pleasure in one’s own self. But the very letter of Seneca from which he derives this view eschews self-admiration for precisely a form of contemplating ’the best version of the self,’ or rather meditating on a transcendently transformed vision of the self in order to more fully pursue that vision. It appears to be precisely what Peterson claimed, resentment of any notion of merit or competence.
Paul Graham on what can't be said
I love ideas, data, speculation, experiments, and plans.
I also love arguments, refutations, and attempts at persuasion.
And I think what I love the most about the United States is the general legal consensus that outside of inciting people to acts of terrorism, one is allowed to say what they wish without government censure. In this sense, I am and have always been a free-speech absolutist. If somebody wants to make the case that a grave sin is actually sane and good, I’ll hear it. If somebody wants to claim that mega civilizations can control galaxies for energy and call it science, I’ll listen to Michio Kaku: