Apologize when you feel, remorse or guilt?
When the feeling passes, can you no longer apologize?
Can you do this when you don't hurt, or forgive when you do?
If you cannot, know you are enslaved to your passing emotions.
- - -
"Forgive them. They know not what they do".
"Forgive us, as we forgive those who trespass against us".
- - -
What rules in your life: will, or passions?
What frees you to decide?
What compels you to blind action?
Thursday, 31 October 2013
HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2013!!
Happy Halloween / Hallow's Even / All Saint's Day's Eve everybody!!
Enjoy this awesome holiday!
(-[^]__[^]-) _b
Enjoy this awesome holiday!
(-[^]__[^]-) _b
Ethics & Solidarity - D8: Egosim and Ethics
Q1: Can we only act to benefit ourselves (psychological egoism)?
A1: Psychological Egoism is really a perspective and not an argument. It cannot be disproven. This impasse has cost me plenty and dearly, so I just nod and smile and let it meander on by in it's supposed argument. When even subconscious reasons for altruistic can be argued selfish, I can think of no fitting rebuttal. Too sterile and arbitrary for my liking or accepting, so when someone chooses to hold it, I no longer bother to contest it.
Q2: Ought we all be selfish (ethical egoism)?
Q3: Are we obligated to consider others [first] (altruism)?
A2,3: I see no divide here. Maybe I am wrong. -I- (my free person) cannot give or help others unless I be free and whole in my means and capacities, so I must consider myself first if I am to be able to consider the needs of others, for what can I give that I do not have?? The first and last thing we have is our being -- that prime subjective observer and actor we cannot rid ourselves of, that we ARE. That may seem self serving, but for the following: by giving to others, by the pouring out of my being as fully as I may, I redeem the value of what I am, and possess it all the more, as the light of a torch shared and spread to others is not diminished, but more present and realized. So, in giving to others, I have what I am more, and in strengthening myself for this purpose, I give to others and myself a greater ability to share through my person. Giving to my self does not deny others, giving to others does not deny me.
Were living a competition alone, this may seem mad, but what hermit is fulfilled in a solitude without at least praying for others? Likewise, what devoted spouse or parent is at all diminished by striving to better their loved ones?
To finalize this example of self & other being fulfilled in a BOTH/AND vs. an US-vs.-THEM or a SELF-vs.-OTHER, consider a lifeguard trying to save a drowning victim under a pier. Should the lifeguard:
1. let the person drown, neither protecting them nor cultivating anything worthwhile by his position?
2. place his own body between the drowning person and the pylons, risking both their lives hould he hit his head against one when a wave pushes them? Or
3. place the victims body between him and the pylons, so that, should the victim be concussed, the lifeguard may yet save them both, if not at least himself and any future victims he may save?
Your best interests and mine are not, and must not be thought to be opposed. If I am to love you, to serve you, to protect you and the value of what life and means I have, I must love and protect myself as well. If I am to love, serve, and cultivate what I am and have, I must put it to use in service of others.
Q4: What do you think?
A4: Altruism and Ethical Egoism are both extreme and needlessly-opposing views that don't do nearly enough. We cannot attend to others without benefitting our own interests, as I am better when you are, and we cannot cannot attend to ourselves without benefitting others interests, as you are better off when I am. Only in the mind-state of opposition are these views possible.
- - - - -
p.s.
I admit my view of ethics may seem either completely off, or too radical to consider viable. It does not seek the comfort of ending thought, which is what Ethical Egoism, Altruism, and Psychological Egoism seem to. Living in a world where opposition is so often taken as the rule and not the exception, the BOTH/AND view of solidarity always risks dismissal, doubt, and opportunism. It is especially uncomfortable in the arenas of religion and politics.
-xv, 31st October 2013
A1: Psychological Egoism is really a perspective and not an argument. It cannot be disproven. This impasse has cost me plenty and dearly, so I just nod and smile and let it meander on by in it's supposed argument. When even subconscious reasons for altruistic can be argued selfish, I can think of no fitting rebuttal. Too sterile and arbitrary for my liking or accepting, so when someone chooses to hold it, I no longer bother to contest it.
Q2: Ought we all be selfish (ethical egoism)?
Q3: Are we obligated to consider others [first] (altruism)?
A2,3: I see no divide here. Maybe I am wrong. -I- (my free person) cannot give or help others unless I be free and whole in my means and capacities, so I must consider myself first if I am to be able to consider the needs of others, for what can I give that I do not have?? The first and last thing we have is our being -- that prime subjective observer and actor we cannot rid ourselves of, that we ARE. That may seem self serving, but for the following: by giving to others, by the pouring out of my being as fully as I may, I redeem the value of what I am, and possess it all the more, as the light of a torch shared and spread to others is not diminished, but more present and realized. So, in giving to others, I have what I am more, and in strengthening myself for this purpose, I give to others and myself a greater ability to share through my person. Giving to my self does not deny others, giving to others does not deny me.
Were living a competition alone, this may seem mad, but what hermit is fulfilled in a solitude without at least praying for others? Likewise, what devoted spouse or parent is at all diminished by striving to better their loved ones?
To finalize this example of self & other being fulfilled in a BOTH/AND vs. an US-vs.-THEM or a SELF-vs.-OTHER, consider a lifeguard trying to save a drowning victim under a pier. Should the lifeguard:
1. let the person drown, neither protecting them nor cultivating anything worthwhile by his position?
2. place his own body between the drowning person and the pylons, risking both their lives hould he hit his head against one when a wave pushes them? Or
3. place the victims body between him and the pylons, so that, should the victim be concussed, the lifeguard may yet save them both, if not at least himself and any future victims he may save?
Your best interests and mine are not, and must not be thought to be opposed. If I am to love you, to serve you, to protect you and the value of what life and means I have, I must love and protect myself as well. If I am to love, serve, and cultivate what I am and have, I must put it to use in service of others.
Q4: What do you think?
A4: Altruism and Ethical Egoism are both extreme and needlessly-opposing views that don't do nearly enough. We cannot attend to others without benefitting our own interests, as I am better when you are, and we cannot cannot attend to ourselves without benefitting others interests, as you are better off when I am. Only in the mind-state of opposition are these views possible.
- - - - -
p.s.
I admit my view of ethics may seem either completely off, or too radical to consider viable. It does not seek the comfort of ending thought, which is what Ethical Egoism, Altruism, and Psychological Egoism seem to. Living in a world where opposition is so often taken as the rule and not the exception, the BOTH/AND view of solidarity always risks dismissal, doubt, and opportunism. It is especially uncomfortable in the arenas of religion and politics.
-xv, 31st October 2013
Friday, 25 October 2013
MORE - on thoughts, oughts, shoulds, & musts
Regarding this
week's topic of moral relativism vs. universalism, and how they are often
thought of as outward-facing instead of internally-reflecting, I would
like to share these two considerations with you all. Looking forward to
any thoughts on this!:
Friedrich Nietzsche:
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
More - a short film by Mark Osborne
Have a great weekend, all.
Pulse and Breath,
-X.
Friedrich Nietzsche:
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
More - a short film by Mark Osborne
Have a great weekend, all.
Pulse and Breath,
-X.
Thursday, 24 October 2013
Discussion Seven: Moral Relativism AND Moral Universalism, Oct 2013
Discussion
Seven: Moral Relativism AND Moral Universalism
“Which
side do you think is right?
Are
you an objectivist or a relativist?
Which side do you think has the most virtues?
Does the other side have any intolerable faults?”
Which side do you think has the most virtues?
Does the other side have any intolerable faults?”
An ongoing theme and
argument, truth. Objective or Subjective? Moral, religious,
political, ontological? Truth...
I was having this conversation with a friend recently, him supporting supposed-objectivism as a perspective. I did not support him, but neither did I support a relativistic perspective entirely. I don't think squeaky-wheel extremes really can grasp at truth with any worthwhile claim but rhetoric and noise, drowning others out and such. My point with my friend was merely that there is no objective or subjective thinking then, but thinking if anything at all. The whole objectivity thing is a myth - we are all and always subjective and biased, even in how we present facts as reasons and supports for moral arguments, which they cannot ever be.
Both sides are right, and wrong.
In judging the morality or worth of a thing, we must look to the act, the intention, and the circumstance. not one of these overrides the others, so favoring mysterious circumstances as a relativist, or favoring action alone as a universalist, does violence to the multi-faceted reality of the whole. Neither strict view is at all tolerable. Both are the same - my way for you and all, or nothing. Both are equally wrong.
How can we judge at all, then? I believe man is to judge himself and all, not toward a culpability of error, sin, or depravation, but toward our being good, noble, useful - in short, our happiness. Seeing things as what they are, to the degree that they are, is all we can ACTIVELY do. Here, the Moral Relativist is right to accept differences in cultural norm, and to be tolerant WITHOUT requiring or demanding tolerance of others. Here the Moral Universalist is correct in appreciating the similarity and gradiant degree of one-ness, good, and health manifest and manifesting in all things, peoples, and tribes the same.
Our similarities amidst personal and tribal incongruities are to be celebrated and honored, not imposed. Our differences should be known as the distinct and mysterious qualities beyond us, yet without disdain for that finiteness we recognize amongst our own distinct cultures and customs.
Our pulse and breath, individually and together, betray a hope in BEING. Here is from where we rightly judge, not by our divisions, but in one human family of many tribes, cultures, histories, and languages.
I was having this conversation with a friend recently, him supporting supposed-objectivism as a perspective. I did not support him, but neither did I support a relativistic perspective entirely. I don't think squeaky-wheel extremes really can grasp at truth with any worthwhile claim but rhetoric and noise, drowning others out and such. My point with my friend was merely that there is no objective or subjective thinking then, but thinking if anything at all. The whole objectivity thing is a myth - we are all and always subjective and biased, even in how we present facts as reasons and supports for moral arguments, which they cannot ever be.
Both sides are right, and wrong.
In judging the morality or worth of a thing, we must look to the act, the intention, and the circumstance. not one of these overrides the others, so favoring mysterious circumstances as a relativist, or favoring action alone as a universalist, does violence to the multi-faceted reality of the whole. Neither strict view is at all tolerable. Both are the same - my way for you and all, or nothing. Both are equally wrong.
How can we judge at all, then? I believe man is to judge himself and all, not toward a culpability of error, sin, or depravation, but toward our being good, noble, useful - in short, our happiness. Seeing things as what they are, to the degree that they are, is all we can ACTIVELY do. Here, the Moral Relativist is right to accept differences in cultural norm, and to be tolerant WITHOUT requiring or demanding tolerance of others. Here the Moral Universalist is correct in appreciating the similarity and gradiant degree of one-ness, good, and health manifest and manifesting in all things, peoples, and tribes the same.
Our similarities amidst personal and tribal incongruities are to be celebrated and honored, not imposed. Our differences should be known as the distinct and mysterious qualities beyond us, yet without disdain for that finiteness we recognize amongst our own distinct cultures and customs.
Our pulse and breath, individually and together, betray a hope in BEING. Here is from where we rightly judge, not by our divisions, but in one human family of many tribes, cultures, histories, and languages.
-xv, Oct 2013
Friday, 18 October 2013
Discussion Six: Rights Theory (Locke, Hobbes, Marx, & Mill), 18 Oct 2013
Discussion
Six: Rights Theory
(Locke, Hobbes, Marx, & Mill), 18 Oct 2013
John Locke:
Rights are: Our Lives. By extension, this includes our Liberty to be as we choose, and to own what property we create, but our lives are our rights, first and wholly.
Opinions for: I agree with Locke's assertion of our natural right to live, as our lives come to us from beyond us without our provoking, and we do make and posses what we are, and deserve to do as much. If this is governed or given over to a king or community, it is first possessed, and a part of us. That it should freely remain as such would be ideal, in a world that is about development, and not ideals. As an ideal, if not as a possibility, he mostly reaches the mark.
Opinions against: A bit too optimistic in his views that we naturally cooperate and negotiate with others. If Hobbes is all horror, then Locke is seemingly candy-land. Reality has both and more, and is neither a dystopia nor utopic. We surrender our rights in some ways, and demand their acknowledgement in others.
Thomas Hobbes:
Rights are: Powers. What you can take, you have a right to, and would naturally be compelled to take if not restricted by some greater power taking and selectively granting those rights or powers for his greater interest. A king increases his powers by keeping a social contract amongst his subservients, allowing individuals only enough powers to keep them in check. Allowing a king to do this keeps us all secure.
Opinions for: Hobbes is quite astute in his observations of greater and lesser powers, and his instrumental analyses of them, such as friendship, reputation, servants, influence, forces, and favor. If seeming inhuman, his observations are true to our animalistic and fearful nature - one he believes we at best keep at bay by consolidating these strengths. I can see how Hobbes thought about civilisation may have greatly influenced the growing of the Commonwealth, and have justified it's influencing of the Savages, or natural man. I also agree that democracies may tend to be watered-down versions of this power-dynamic Hobbes presents.
Opinions against: I disagree with Hobbes that a monarch should and can have every right or power within his grasp, including our religious beliefs and hierarchical authorities. The existence or tolerance of a black market in any system defies this reasoning, and reveals Hobbes' idealism that a king has every power. He cannot reasonably allow powers to work against his powers as a means of obtaining more power. While not so explicit, I also disagree with his view of uncivilised men of foreign lands being so favored by the imposing of such civilised rule as he supposes. Lastly, the concept of there being no justice or injustice, or morality outside of government is something I find repugnant, believing as-I-do that all men must first and lastly govern themselves: “You can't have a cop on every corner, but you can have a father and mother in every home”.
General opinion: Rights being Powers, and Powers Rights, morality doesn't seem very important to man's nature in Hobbes view. We have centralized government then as a necessity of nature, ala Dog-Eat-Dog, where a monarch is the Alpha and secures and consistently imposes his position, and the pack allows this for the order it provides for everyone. Our American democracy so often resembles this, especially in the case of empowered popular opinions being unanswerably wrong.
Karl Marx:
Rights are: Alienating and Divisive. From the onset, he attributes Being – in this case the divisions of social classes – not as an opportunity for shared growth, but as a stage for oppression that grows ever-more sheer between the haves, and have-nots. All men should govern and use (if not necessarily own) goods equally and together.
Opinions for: An ideal that might have been useful, if it could manifest through our limited human context; something Marx does not seem interested in. Who takes from me does not permit me to give. Who proffers me stolen means denies me my power to share of my vulnerablity for the redeeming of the strong through their own charity – the little power I yet have that touches the great ideal Marx grasps at – without molesting any.
Opinions against: Just as Hobbes' and Locke's, Marx' vision is a fancy apart from reality.
Who best understands rights?
Marx sees rights as divisive, and in an ideal where all men and none are king, power is distributed and must also be governed my all. Yet we fail. Corruption enters, and abuses and tyranny follow. What cannot be known as true communism comes to attain and sustain unrepresentative centralized powers that yet claim it to be.
Hobbes' King is the alpha-dog running the pack – for better or worse – who the pack allows to rule for it's own benefit. All fine and good if not for illegal actions and the black market. A king or kingdom divided against himself is not really then the Alpha, and a society functioning in accord with this model can never be a peaceful one.
Locke's society – attempted in the Great Experiment of the United States – may be one of the most free states between communism and monarchy. Still far too often,though, we vote ourselves and our idyllic and seeming-democracy further and further from our own freedoms, our property, and our self-ruling ideals, as if our harmony exists not in them, but in just that one law that would bring us closer to not having to think and be responsible for our lives, criminalising a bit more of our freedom each time so as to, somehow, be more free. As a friend and teacher of mine was wont to say: “America needs a Statue of Responsability in San Francisco Bay to even us out!”. If we value our Lockean liberty so, we must remember it is not a Liberty-From conscious thought and examined living, but a Liberty-For right and free actions.
John Mill has the quietest and yet most-coherent voice of these four. By the zealous guarding of our most fundamental and necessary right and responsibility to speak and debate freely, arguments such as these about “What government is best?” are possible, and may come to their most inclusive and useful ends. His view is both more prudent in scope, and more realistically and immediately attainable, inclusive, and beneficial than any of the other views' ideals. It is the most readily useful, and best represents an understanding of what rights are.
Thursday, 10 October 2013
Discussion Five: Introduction to Political Philosophy, "What are [not] rights?"
Discussion Five: Introduction to Political Philosophy
Koheleth: "What are [not] rights?" Hokma: "Why?"
---
What do you think rights are?
Why do we have rights?
Do we have rights because we're human?
Are rights unspoken agreements?
Are rights gifts that governments protect?
Are rights obligations that governments protect?
---
Optimus Prime: "Freedom is the Right of all sentient beings."
Rights are Just freedoms. Like respect, rights are not earned. Many deserving respect get little, and others deserving but little get more than they deserve. If someone is determined not to acknowledge you, to respect you or your rights, it doesn't matter what the circumstance. Outside of some corrective measure, neither respect as man nor any other right may be acknowledged.
Whatever they are, rights are not a matter of popular opinion.
Many if not all would agree that a man (gender inclusive) of good will has a right to live peacably, and as a man, participate freely in social exchanges as is our nature. Yet some are killed, oppressed, imprisoned, or ostracized for myriad reasons by the will of others, either through direct and social force, or through indirect executing powers such as laws, community standards, and armed services.
Whatever they are, rights are not beyond social custom.
A train is right to be on a track, not off it. A fish is right to be in water, not out of it. Man is right to be healthy in all that entails: as a social creation working their way through time and change, in whatever society they are in, and to whatever degree they best can.
Man has this right alone: to be well.
Where we have the -ability- to be unwell, to cause violence to the better natures of ourselves and others, it cannot be said we have a right, but a capacity to abuse the means to our right to be well. Herein we have our choices, and our capacity to freely grow as persons. Here we can freely reach out beyond our circumstances to become more real as persons. Here we embody a virtue beyond bestial, slavish automata.
Whatever rights are, they are nothing of worth without first determining "What is Right?", save mandate opinions of duties and expectations.
These words may not satisfactorily address what rights are, why we have them, if they are gifts or obligations, if they are agreements, if they are human, or whatall else. I think that is good. With a topic like this, I think it is good not to be satisfied.
Whatever rights are, they are tied to the mystery of what Man is, and what he might be. As a discussion, and at the risk of completely missing the question, I think it just-as, if not more important to discuss what rights are not and cannot be.
Koheleth: "What are [not] rights?" Hokma: "Why?"
---
What do you think rights are?
Why do we have rights?
Do we have rights because we're human?
Are rights unspoken agreements?
Are rights gifts that governments protect?
Are rights obligations that governments protect?
---
Optimus Prime: "Freedom is the Right of all sentient beings."
Rights are Just freedoms. Like respect, rights are not earned. Many deserving respect get little, and others deserving but little get more than they deserve. If someone is determined not to acknowledge you, to respect you or your rights, it doesn't matter what the circumstance. Outside of some corrective measure, neither respect as man nor any other right may be acknowledged.
Whatever they are, rights are not a matter of popular opinion.
Many if not all would agree that a man (gender inclusive) of good will has a right to live peacably, and as a man, participate freely in social exchanges as is our nature. Yet some are killed, oppressed, imprisoned, or ostracized for myriad reasons by the will of others, either through direct and social force, or through indirect executing powers such as laws, community standards, and armed services.
Whatever they are, rights are not beyond social custom.
A train is right to be on a track, not off it. A fish is right to be in water, not out of it. Man is right to be healthy in all that entails: as a social creation working their way through time and change, in whatever society they are in, and to whatever degree they best can.
Man has this right alone: to be well.
Where we have the -ability- to be unwell, to cause violence to the better natures of ourselves and others, it cannot be said we have a right, but a capacity to abuse the means to our right to be well. Herein we have our choices, and our capacity to freely grow as persons. Here we can freely reach out beyond our circumstances to become more real as persons. Here we embody a virtue beyond bestial, slavish automata.
Whatever rights are, they are nothing of worth without first determining "What is Right?", save mandate opinions of duties and expectations.
These words may not satisfactorily address what rights are, why we have them, if they are gifts or obligations, if they are agreements, if they are human, or whatall else. I think that is good. With a topic like this, I think it is good not to be satisfied.
Whatever rights are, they are tied to the mystery of what Man is, and what he might be. As a discussion, and at the risk of completely missing the question, I think it just-as, if not more important to discuss what rights are not and cannot be.
Friday, 4 October 2013
Discussion 4: The Meaning of Life (or Meaning-In-Life), 04 October 2013
Discussion
4: The Meaning of Life
Questions:
Are Tolstoy and Camus right or wrong to say nothing has value other than what we put on it?
Ought we look outside ourselves for value, as Tolstoy says?
Must we make and be responsible for values all on our own, as Camus suggests?
Observations:
Both Tolstoy and Camus' crises resolve by reexamining and making peace with their situations.
Leo Tolstoy is not so much comforted by faith in God, as he is by a trust and alliance with the happiness in the lives of yet common men, that he comes to admire and even love for their simplicity-of-heart, so far removed from the intellectual elitism and listlessness which he had become accustomed to.
Albert Camus comes to a meaningful awareness despite his unshakable ideal of accepting meaning only in certainties, by a close scrutiny of his circumstances. No matter how much he longs for some transcendent truth beyond his possible knowing, it could never fit with his ideal of certainty. So be it, he resolves. His ideal of certainty-alone intact, and adrift and apart from some transcendent meaning he yet longs for but can never allow, he decries existence itself as absurd and devoid of meaning, and makes his peace only by deciding to live on in defiance of this absurdity. This enduring of the absurd he does not admit as meaningful, though it does close his line of thought...
Both Tolstoy and Camus also long for greater meaning and purpose than their present circumstances allow, and find it in unexpected ways.
For Camus, meaning comes in living a life of defiance against an existence without meaning despite our longing for it, though he does not address his conviction as such.
For Tolstoy, meaning awakens within him by coming to accept, appreciate, and even love the happiness of the common man who trusts in what he does not wholly know - God, the greater unity he experiences together-with them allowing him to come to do the same and be at peace and happy -despite- the depressing conventions of his elite intellectual circle.
Questions:
Are Tolstoy and Camus right or wrong to say nothing has value other than what we put on it?
Ought we look outside ourselves for value, as Tolstoy says?
Must we make and be responsible for values all on our own, as Camus suggests?
Observations:
Both Tolstoy and Camus' crises resolve by reexamining and making peace with their situations.
Leo Tolstoy is not so much comforted by faith in God, as he is by a trust and alliance with the happiness in the lives of yet common men, that he comes to admire and even love for their simplicity-of-heart, so far removed from the intellectual elitism and listlessness which he had become accustomed to.
Albert Camus comes to a meaningful awareness despite his unshakable ideal of accepting meaning only in certainties, by a close scrutiny of his circumstances. No matter how much he longs for some transcendent truth beyond his possible knowing, it could never fit with his ideal of certainty. So be it, he resolves. His ideal of certainty-alone intact, and adrift and apart from some transcendent meaning he yet longs for but can never allow, he decries existence itself as absurd and devoid of meaning, and makes his peace only by deciding to live on in defiance of this absurdity. This enduring of the absurd he does not admit as meaningful, though it does close his line of thought...
Both Tolstoy and Camus also long for greater meaning and purpose than their present circumstances allow, and find it in unexpected ways.
For Camus, meaning comes in living a life of defiance against an existence without meaning despite our longing for it, though he does not address his conviction as such.
For Tolstoy, meaning awakens within him by coming to accept, appreciate, and even love the happiness of the common man who trusts in what he does not wholly know - God, the greater unity he experiences together-with them allowing him to come to do the same and be at peace and happy -despite- the depressing conventions of his elite intellectual circle.
Opinions:
There is value and meaning inasmuch as we live, as being is necessarily more valuable, and so more meaningful, than oblivion. One is greater than zero.
We may think of God or any value-source externally, as Tolstoy suggests, only inasmuch as that external source can exist within us as a concept, filtered through our initial apprehension, memories, and imaginations.
Whether as external objects of thought as Tolstoy suggests necessary, or as fully-internalized value determinations as Camus illustrates, we come to understand and assert value and meaning only by first conceiving of the possibility within, even if we only conceive of it as we act upon it.
I think this view is akin then to both Tolstoy and Camus', if also very unlike theirs; that meaning and value are immediately inherent in the act of being, no matter what we think of it.
We manifest our developing understanding-of and participation-with that value, that meaningfulness of being based-on our apprehension, conceptualization, and imagination of all things both within and without by means of our actions.
I drink a glass of water. I do not know this glass of water intimately, immediately, as-it-is: the molecules, the sediments, the glass. I know this glass of water imperfectly, by my apprehending of
it, conceiving of it by my memories of experiences like it. I really believe it to be cool and refreshing, and that I actually interact with it, as an external, real thing, through my senses and concepts, which are internal and part of me.
As to external or internal, then, to Tolstoy or Camus: I say neither fully, yet both.
...but I am still thirsty.
There is value and meaning inasmuch as we live, as being is necessarily more valuable, and so more meaningful, than oblivion. One is greater than zero.
We may think of God or any value-source externally, as Tolstoy suggests, only inasmuch as that external source can exist within us as a concept, filtered through our initial apprehension, memories, and imaginations.
Whether as external objects of thought as Tolstoy suggests necessary, or as fully-internalized value determinations as Camus illustrates, we come to understand and assert value and meaning only by first conceiving of the possibility within, even if we only conceive of it as we act upon it.
I think this view is akin then to both Tolstoy and Camus', if also very unlike theirs; that meaning and value are immediately inherent in the act of being, no matter what we think of it.
We manifest our developing understanding-of and participation-with that value, that meaningfulness of being based-on our apprehension, conceptualization, and imagination of all things both within and without by means of our actions.
I drink a glass of water. I do not know this glass of water intimately, immediately, as-it-is: the molecules, the sediments, the glass. I know this glass of water imperfectly, by my apprehending of
it, conceiving of it by my memories of experiences like it. I really believe it to be cool and refreshing, and that I actually interact with it, as an external, real thing, through my senses and concepts, which are internal and part of me.
As to external or internal, then, to Tolstoy or Camus: I say neither fully, yet both.
...but I am still thirsty.
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