Dean
29th September 2008, 06:18
Right, so I've been working on this a bit, and I wanted to get some ideas. The point is to define concisely my own moral and philsophical stances and the logic of how I got there. I figure I don't have any single compelling theories or whatever, so my best bet for personal posterity is to write it out in this sense. I mostly just want a reference point for my own ideas and ideology so when I become elderly and insane I can go back and get some footing again.
I welcome any criticism, but I would like the whole metaphysical point set aside. I'm much more interested in why my statements might not be cohesive or coherent; I don't want to argue about the basic premises of morality and the mind, sentience and mysticism, though they are brought up.
This is the first portion, which will describe humanism as a fundamental moral value. Later, I explain why / how psychology, liberation and communism all grow out of this premise.
Humanism - Fundamental values for assessing moral relevancy and standards
In this section I will attempt to explain some basic viewpoints on ethics as they are interested in and applied to the human condition. It should be said firstly that I am basically pro-human. That is, what is good for humans is ultimately the standard for which other value judgments should be made. This sets humanism up as the primary foundation for my belief structure.
If humanism is understood to be “what is good for humans,” then we must also explain what that means. It is my understanding that what is good is ultimately productive. This is by no means setting up efficiency, commodity production or other economic functions as ends in themselves. This means, rather, that productiveness is a standard by which human activity and goals can be judged, and can be seen as the root and goal of labor. Productiveness, put simply, is specifically interested in whatever nurtures, enhances, uplifts and empowers the human being.
It is important to understand this on clear terms. Labor is the subject of productiveness, and productiveness is the subject of humans. Therefore, all activities, labors, orientations and goals should be judged for their productive content, which itself is only important as it benefits mankind. This benefit can be seen as a free actuation of the human being which in turn frees, informs and empowers us as actors in society and in nature.
Why is human profit or efficiency not listed? These values do not directly benefit the human being. Profit may be beneficial, if someone has debts or needs which can only be met by trade. But capital is not in itself useful or desired by humans. The same is true for efficiency. It may be quite valuable for a human being to be efficient in cooking, for instance. But when that efficiency reaches a point, it becomes no longer useful for human society, and can in fact be destructive – a person extremely efficient in one kind of production may make others feel less valuable in the same industry, or they may render the labor of others obsolete, thus narrowing the workforce and creating an unfair burden on the worker.
In fact, both profit and efficiency can be destructive in the same way. They both turn labor into a force interested in bulkier or expedited commodity production, which recreates labor into a self-destructive impulse. The final goal of labor, the benefit of mankind, fails when labor becomes a selfish or over-consuming goal, and the labor therefore fails.
Every thought put forth so far assumes that human beings have some value simply for being human. That lends itself to the question, ‘what makes humanness valuable?’ I think the answer is simple. The humanist perspective is specifically interested in the sentient existence of the human being. The individual conditions, biologically and environmentally, have no power in regards to the moral worth of the human being. Because humanism is a productive orientation towards the human being, it must look inward to understand how the human being works. What is good or desired for a human being is, as a standard, what humanism is interested in. Subsequently, the organ and entity for whose benefit the human being primarily works holds the key to understanding what conditions and values are most fundamentally important to the human being. The brain, as the housing for the mind, is the most valuable and important organ, and just as we talk of each individual as the central subjects of society, we also understand the brain as the central organ of the human, for which all others work. It is only because a heart creates a life-sustaining blood flow to the brain that the heart has any worth.
I welcome any criticism, but I would like the whole metaphysical point set aside. I'm much more interested in why my statements might not be cohesive or coherent; I don't want to argue about the basic premises of morality and the mind, sentience and mysticism, though they are brought up.
This is the first portion, which will describe humanism as a fundamental moral value. Later, I explain why / how psychology, liberation and communism all grow out of this premise.
Humanism - Fundamental values for assessing moral relevancy and standards
In this section I will attempt to explain some basic viewpoints on ethics as they are interested in and applied to the human condition. It should be said firstly that I am basically pro-human. That is, what is good for humans is ultimately the standard for which other value judgments should be made. This sets humanism up as the primary foundation for my belief structure.
If humanism is understood to be “what is good for humans,” then we must also explain what that means. It is my understanding that what is good is ultimately productive. This is by no means setting up efficiency, commodity production or other economic functions as ends in themselves. This means, rather, that productiveness is a standard by which human activity and goals can be judged, and can be seen as the root and goal of labor. Productiveness, put simply, is specifically interested in whatever nurtures, enhances, uplifts and empowers the human being.
It is important to understand this on clear terms. Labor is the subject of productiveness, and productiveness is the subject of humans. Therefore, all activities, labors, orientations and goals should be judged for their productive content, which itself is only important as it benefits mankind. This benefit can be seen as a free actuation of the human being which in turn frees, informs and empowers us as actors in society and in nature.
Why is human profit or efficiency not listed? These values do not directly benefit the human being. Profit may be beneficial, if someone has debts or needs which can only be met by trade. But capital is not in itself useful or desired by humans. The same is true for efficiency. It may be quite valuable for a human being to be efficient in cooking, for instance. But when that efficiency reaches a point, it becomes no longer useful for human society, and can in fact be destructive – a person extremely efficient in one kind of production may make others feel less valuable in the same industry, or they may render the labor of others obsolete, thus narrowing the workforce and creating an unfair burden on the worker.
In fact, both profit and efficiency can be destructive in the same way. They both turn labor into a force interested in bulkier or expedited commodity production, which recreates labor into a self-destructive impulse. The final goal of labor, the benefit of mankind, fails when labor becomes a selfish or over-consuming goal, and the labor therefore fails.
Every thought put forth so far assumes that human beings have some value simply for being human. That lends itself to the question, ‘what makes humanness valuable?’ I think the answer is simple. The humanist perspective is specifically interested in the sentient existence of the human being. The individual conditions, biologically and environmentally, have no power in regards to the moral worth of the human being. Because humanism is a productive orientation towards the human being, it must look inward to understand how the human being works. What is good or desired for a human being is, as a standard, what humanism is interested in. Subsequently, the organ and entity for whose benefit the human being primarily works holds the key to understanding what conditions and values are most fundamentally important to the human being. The brain, as the housing for the mind, is the most valuable and important organ, and just as we talk of each individual as the central subjects of society, we also understand the brain as the central organ of the human, for which all others work. It is only because a heart creates a life-sustaining blood flow to the brain that the heart has any worth.