It is of priceless worth to be able to acknowledge that life is innately ludicrous and to respond to the insanity of those around you with laughter and good humor.
It is of inestimablely more worth to be able to acknowlege that this means everything you do and say is also inherently laughable and respond accordingly.
The End is like the girl who wanted to eat a real apple. “Never seen a real one,” said her Dad. “Real ones make you sick,” said her Mom. “Apples used to rot on the ground,” said her Uncle. But her brother wanted one too, and so flew her to the museum. They found the farm exhibit and the old tree in the window-house. The tall brother picked an apple from a branch and took a bite. But it was a real apple, and not yet ripe. “Gross,” he said, and spat. The girl knelt and took an apple from the ground. She bit in, then spat out worms and rot. “See?” her brother said. But she took another apple, bit, stopped, chewed, smiled, and swallowed. “Don’t eat it, it’s rotten!” her brother warned. But she had discovered the truth: not everything fallen is rotten.
My analysis of our apocalyptic age, hand-written of course. Comment here, if desired.
Just reading the newspaper this morning, and realizing how much trouble America is in. Does anyone even disagree anymore - whether we are liberal, conservative, or whatever, it seems like we can all agree that things are getting worse and don’t look to be getting better anytime soon.
So my question for the WEF minions is this - at root, why are things going so wrong with America (and with the world). I mean not only politically, not only economically, but also socially and culturally. The whole deal. If you can isolate one thing, what is it? My answer is in the comments.
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question . . . [Utilitarianism] enjoins and requires the cultivation of the love of virtue up to the greatest strength possible, as being above all things important to the general happiness.”
-John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
After reading some of Mill’s work, I find myself much more appreciative of utilitarianism. Although I’ve only read portions of this theory, I think, perhaps, that the essence of this ethical system has been popularly misrepresented as, “the ends justify the means”. The proponents of utilitarianism might have well ended up at that conclusion, but the central point of utilitarianism seems to involve something else: general and particular happiness as the end of existence. Mill proves that every human pursues happiness as their end. Mill counters the argument of animalistic hedonism by pointing out that human beings are capable of greater pleasures due to their “superior faculties”. The more virtuous one is, he reasons, the more capacity one has for greater happiness. Pigs can be happy, in other words, but not as happy as a human being. Because utilitarianism says that we should all promote as much happiness in the world as possible, that means promoting the capacity of men and women to be even more happy than they already are. This is done by training in “noble character” and “virtue”.
Nice idea in theory, but even Mill admits that most men give up on noble character and virtue for the sake of bodily health and material power. Further, he conflates happiness with feelings rather than following Saint Aquinas’ contention that happiness is what perfects us as human beings - what is truly good for us. Ultimate happiness, then, isn’t ultimate feelings of pleasure, but an ultimate ‘good’, a treasure that we possess and that perfects us. Pleasure, of course, follows from having attained such a good. But happiness is distinct from pleasure.
Because Mill is unwilling to make this distinction, he never really defines what are the highest pleasures. He only says that those with superior faculties are those who are most capable of judging what are the highest pleasures. When utilitarianism hits the masses - those without ’superior’ faculties, let us say, it becomes an ethics of pigs and fools. Utilitarianism works well with the virtuous, because they already know what is good for them. The failure of Mill to account for what is good or not doesn’t affect those who already know what is good. But for the rest of us, those who struggle to find happiness, who never seem to know where happiness comes from, utilitarianism ends up reinforcing our deluded ideas of what makes us ‘happy’ - in other words, whatever mud we happen to be laying in, feeling quite pleasurable in. Utilitarianism couldn’t handle the onslaught of subjectivism and relativism, where one could claim that happiness, as a feeling of pleasure, is equal in both pigs and saints. Poor Mill! If only he hadn’t disconnected what makes us happy from what is truly good for us! But then you run into questions that lead smack right into meaning and essence - what does it mean to be a human being? Are we mere carbon machines, evolved out of goo randomly? Or are we designed by a source that stands outside of time and space - a source that is not only reason itself, but love itself?
You are in a hot-air balloon with a fellow traveler. You have been blown off course and are now over the ocean. It is quite clear that you don’t have enough fuel left to get back safely to land. The only way to save your life is to lighten the balloon by throwing off the other person.
Is it moral to throw the other person off the balloon? Why or why not?
Modern culture resists any connection between morality and happiness, and tends to equate happiness with bodily pleasures and psychological delights. To suggest that goodness, or virtuous living, leads to true happiness, is to suggest a return to the “dark ages” of medieval ignorance. While ancient man knew limits to the insatiable appetite of the senses, modern man, armed with science, technology, and material domination of the world, seems to have broken through such limits. It now seems possible to sate the senses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, living in a virtual world of digital media and psychoactive chemicals. The senses, far feeling limited an unsatisfied, are now overwhelmed. Where is the value of virtuous living when goodness is relative, when justice is democratic, when emotions are synthesized, when problems are solved with a pill? The value comes from the fact that human nature really does have limits, that human happiness does reside in an objectively ordered good. The foundational (”cardinal”) virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude provide the habitual disposition and unlimited capacity to know this true good of the human person and to passionately seek it.
Man is a creature of habit. What we do forms who we are. The cardinal virtues form us into excellent human beings. Just as Michael Jordan is an excellent basketball player (through practice) some men and women are excellent human beings through the practice of virtue, by which they become “virtuosos” of humanity. The four cardinal virtues perfect four different aspects of the human person: prudence perfects the judgments of evaluation (practical intellect), justice perfects the freedom of the will (rational appetite), temperance perfects the emotions that provoke (concupiscible passions), and fortitude perfects the emotions that sustain (irascible passions). Upon these virtues does the happiness of man ‘hinge’, “for a good life consists in good deeds” and “the entire structure of good works is built on four virtues” (Summa I-II, 57, 5 & I-II, 61, 1) Read the rest of this entry »