Brilliant. And the social contracts you reference all begin with the careful socialization of children beginning when they are very young. Fail at that and all else comes a cropper.
Nov 1, 2022·edited Nov 1, 2022Liked by Stacey Eskelin
When I really started writing during the pandemic, one of the things that I did was to try and follow things through to their natural conclusions. Similarly, I also tried to trace things back to their initial creations. In doing that, what I discovered was that most of our society is held together not with iron but with the whispiest spider webs of faith. Nixon resigned because he came up against the wall of the agreed upon social contract and had to admit that he had betrayed it. It was solid for him because, fundamentally, he believed in it. 45, on the other hand, just waltzed through it as if it were nothing more than a projection, which, much to my dismay, is true. There is no there there without agreement, belief and faith.
I've never understood how farmers could fight to have pesticides deregulated so that they could use whatever they want and to hell with everyone down river. Don't they understand that if they deregulate pesticides that it means that the farmers UPriver can also use whatever they want no matter what it does to our original farmer's land?
We cannot survive in anarchy. Well, the strongest and most devious among us can, but it would mean a state of almost constant warfare. There would be no time to enjoy any of the fruits of these regulated labors because nobody would be able to leave their cauldrons of molten metal long enough to create them.
45 is probably the most dangerous person we have ever encountered in our history because he is willing to let it all just fall away. He doesn't have faith in any of it. He sees the spider webs and is willing to just brush them all aside. Even he doesn't realize where that will end, but he's willing to take us there anyway. The people who hang on to him are just as ignorant of the consequences as he is.
I truly do think that the US needs to split in half. Let that half devolve into anarchy and do whatever it wants. Just leave our half alone. Of course, they won't be able to keep the lights on so they will start attacking us.
I wish I saw how any of this ends well. We've opened Pandorra's box and that shit is OUT.
Like you, my wise and brilliant friend, I do not want to performing a living reenactment of Mad Max: Fury Road. Which is pretty much where we are headed.
This may be stating the obvious at this point, but I actually believe that some values (at least) are objective, in so far as they apply universally to any life form that is based upon carbon chemistry, and a somewhat narrower band of values that apply universally to beings of a sufficiently high enough level of cognitive function to employ language. Truth be told, even the people who deny such objective facts nevertheless believe in them, protests to the contrary notwithstanding.
(By the way, saying that they are objective is *NOT* the same, and in no way entails, that they are immutable. There are reasons to believe that not even the "laws" of physics are changeless. Yet that does not make them whimsical or subjective.)
Students in philosophy classes, for example, will typically declare with one voice that all values are relative, until you offer to distribute "F's" arbitrarily, and suddenly fairness is an objective reality. The fact that people pay obscene sums of money for fatuous twaddle like Nava's pathetic piece of pre-schooler quality finger painting does not make it mean it has any genuine artistic or aesthetic *value*. It only demonstrates that people with obscene sums of money will spend it in fashions that demonstrate a complete absence of real judgment.
That being said, social contracts are a kind of objective value, a value that can be better or worse than others. The contract of Stalinist Russia, of theocratic Iran, of Nazi Germany, are manifestly -- and objectively! -- inferior to ones that actually promote the growth and development of human potential. Contracts that promote things like Female Genital Mutilation are not a matter of subjective preference, or relativistic equivocation: FGM is *objectively* evil.
What I said about immutability has shown itself in recent debates. Access to birth control only became a real issue when birth control became a serious possibility. (The herbal lore that is often promoted is undermined by the fact that if it really worked women wouldn't be squeezing out a dozen spawn before they finally died of puerperal fever or preeclampsia.) Similarly, a right to privacy only became a real issue when the invasion of privacy became such an overwhelming reality.
People's agreement is not enough to make these things true or false. No amount of Church enforcement will ever change the fact that the sun does NOT rotate around the earth. No amount of populist racism and Fascist enforcement will ever make 'The Councils of The Elders of Zion' anything other than a fraud. Placing my bare hand on a red-hot stove is objectively bad. Being denied my basic rights to develop my fullest potential is objectively bad. (As long as I don't trample on others -- Jefferey Dahmer's "full potential" *objectively* overstepped any possible defensible bounds.) Etc.
Social contracts make such development possible. We are -- again, objectively -- social creatures, and it is our society that enables us to realize ourselves. The Greeks understood this -- Plato and 'The Crito,' for example. But discovering the fullest meanings of these ideas is not something that is just given to us. It calls for inquiry, and living with the reality of some pretty shockingly bad false turns. (Slavery, anyone?) As with physical science, it seems unlikely that moral/ethical inquiry is the kind of thing that will ever reach a final, perfect theory.
"Truth be told, even the people who deny such objective facts nevertheless believe in them, protests to the contrary notwithstanding." That's it in a nutshell--the entire docuseries. They don't want rules when they inconvenience them or prevent them from realizing their greatest financial potential, but by gum, they not only welcome rules but actual law enforcement when someone gets murdered.
If only the Hippocratic Oath was applied to the health of the planet, “Do No Harm”, perhaps corporate cleptocracy wouldn’t be raping her resources for short term gains and egregious profits for the few. So yes, regulations are a good thing when applied as an equitable and obligatory social contract for everyone’s betterment, but we know how the game is played and rigged. Future? What future? A dystopia? Big money begets bigger monies, and the rate of return from the planets investment is a slow death of it’s flora and fauna!
Humans are greedy and duplicitous. We are humans, therefore we are greedy and duplicitous. I do not exempt myself from this. But knowing how we are wired, wouldn't it be better to put guardrails on the sled before launching it down the snowy hill?
"But sadly, there is one thing about which Ayn Rand is correct: most people are in it for themselves." All too true. Left to our own devices, society can and will degrade into something resembling "Lord of the Flies." Trust is something we must learn as children. If we learn, and believe, that people are inherently good and trustworthy, I believe there's a greater chance of a collectively successful co-existence.
Even with that, though, self-interest doesn't go away. Human are wired to look out for themselves. Self-preservation is one of our most basic drives. As much as I despise Ayn Rand, she did nail that one thing about us.
The real problem is that we can't live with each other...and we can't live without each other.
That's EXACTLY the conundrum I find it so difficult to come to terms with. It was also, in a slightly different way, the philosophical question asked but not answered by the Romantics.
Brilliant. And the social contracts you reference all begin with the careful socialization of children beginning when they are very young. Fail at that and all else comes a cropper.
When I really started writing during the pandemic, one of the things that I did was to try and follow things through to their natural conclusions. Similarly, I also tried to trace things back to their initial creations. In doing that, what I discovered was that most of our society is held together not with iron but with the whispiest spider webs of faith. Nixon resigned because he came up against the wall of the agreed upon social contract and had to admit that he had betrayed it. It was solid for him because, fundamentally, he believed in it. 45, on the other hand, just waltzed through it as if it were nothing more than a projection, which, much to my dismay, is true. There is no there there without agreement, belief and faith.
I've never understood how farmers could fight to have pesticides deregulated so that they could use whatever they want and to hell with everyone down river. Don't they understand that if they deregulate pesticides that it means that the farmers UPriver can also use whatever they want no matter what it does to our original farmer's land?
We cannot survive in anarchy. Well, the strongest and most devious among us can, but it would mean a state of almost constant warfare. There would be no time to enjoy any of the fruits of these regulated labors because nobody would be able to leave their cauldrons of molten metal long enough to create them.
45 is probably the most dangerous person we have ever encountered in our history because he is willing to let it all just fall away. He doesn't have faith in any of it. He sees the spider webs and is willing to just brush them all aside. Even he doesn't realize where that will end, but he's willing to take us there anyway. The people who hang on to him are just as ignorant of the consequences as he is.
I truly do think that the US needs to split in half. Let that half devolve into anarchy and do whatever it wants. Just leave our half alone. Of course, they won't be able to keep the lights on so they will start attacking us.
I wish I saw how any of this ends well. We've opened Pandorra's box and that shit is OUT.
Like you, my wise and brilliant friend, I do not want to performing a living reenactment of Mad Max: Fury Road. Which is pretty much where we are headed.
The shit is out and it's about to get REAL.
This may be stating the obvious at this point, but I actually believe that some values (at least) are objective, in so far as they apply universally to any life form that is based upon carbon chemistry, and a somewhat narrower band of values that apply universally to beings of a sufficiently high enough level of cognitive function to employ language. Truth be told, even the people who deny such objective facts nevertheless believe in them, protests to the contrary notwithstanding.
(By the way, saying that they are objective is *NOT* the same, and in no way entails, that they are immutable. There are reasons to believe that not even the "laws" of physics are changeless. Yet that does not make them whimsical or subjective.)
Students in philosophy classes, for example, will typically declare with one voice that all values are relative, until you offer to distribute "F's" arbitrarily, and suddenly fairness is an objective reality. The fact that people pay obscene sums of money for fatuous twaddle like Nava's pathetic piece of pre-schooler quality finger painting does not make it mean it has any genuine artistic or aesthetic *value*. It only demonstrates that people with obscene sums of money will spend it in fashions that demonstrate a complete absence of real judgment.
That being said, social contracts are a kind of objective value, a value that can be better or worse than others. The contract of Stalinist Russia, of theocratic Iran, of Nazi Germany, are manifestly -- and objectively! -- inferior to ones that actually promote the growth and development of human potential. Contracts that promote things like Female Genital Mutilation are not a matter of subjective preference, or relativistic equivocation: FGM is *objectively* evil.
What I said about immutability has shown itself in recent debates. Access to birth control only became a real issue when birth control became a serious possibility. (The herbal lore that is often promoted is undermined by the fact that if it really worked women wouldn't be squeezing out a dozen spawn before they finally died of puerperal fever or preeclampsia.) Similarly, a right to privacy only became a real issue when the invasion of privacy became such an overwhelming reality.
People's agreement is not enough to make these things true or false. No amount of Church enforcement will ever change the fact that the sun does NOT rotate around the earth. No amount of populist racism and Fascist enforcement will ever make 'The Councils of The Elders of Zion' anything other than a fraud. Placing my bare hand on a red-hot stove is objectively bad. Being denied my basic rights to develop my fullest potential is objectively bad. (As long as I don't trample on others -- Jefferey Dahmer's "full potential" *objectively* overstepped any possible defensible bounds.) Etc.
Social contracts make such development possible. We are -- again, objectively -- social creatures, and it is our society that enables us to realize ourselves. The Greeks understood this -- Plato and 'The Crito,' for example. But discovering the fullest meanings of these ideas is not something that is just given to us. It calls for inquiry, and living with the reality of some pretty shockingly bad false turns. (Slavery, anyone?) As with physical science, it seems unlikely that moral/ethical inquiry is the kind of thing that will ever reach a final, perfect theory.
"Truth be told, even the people who deny such objective facts nevertheless believe in them, protests to the contrary notwithstanding." That's it in a nutshell--the entire docuseries. They don't want rules when they inconvenience them or prevent them from realizing their greatest financial potential, but by gum, they not only welcome rules but actual law enforcement when someone gets murdered.
I do love reading your posts.
If only the Hippocratic Oath was applied to the health of the planet, “Do No Harm”, perhaps corporate cleptocracy wouldn’t be raping her resources for short term gains and egregious profits for the few. So yes, regulations are a good thing when applied as an equitable and obligatory social contract for everyone’s betterment, but we know how the game is played and rigged. Future? What future? A dystopia? Big money begets bigger monies, and the rate of return from the planets investment is a slow death of it’s flora and fauna!
Humans are greedy and duplicitous. We are humans, therefore we are greedy and duplicitous. I do not exempt myself from this. But knowing how we are wired, wouldn't it be better to put guardrails on the sled before launching it down the snowy hill?
"But sadly, there is one thing about which Ayn Rand is correct: most people are in it for themselves." All too true. Left to our own devices, society can and will degrade into something resembling "Lord of the Flies." Trust is something we must learn as children. If we learn, and believe, that people are inherently good and trustworthy, I believe there's a greater chance of a collectively successful co-existence.
Even with that, though, self-interest doesn't go away. Human are wired to look out for themselves. Self-preservation is one of our most basic drives. As much as I despise Ayn Rand, she did nail that one thing about us.
The real problem is that we can't live with each other...and we can't live without each other.
That's EXACTLY the conundrum I find it so difficult to come to terms with. It was also, in a slightly different way, the philosophical question asked but not answered by the Romantics.
Sad but true. well-said.