The great ideological clash of our times

[Ummon]

From the atheism vs. belief threads, to the smallest details of everyday life and the economic crisis, there is to my opinion a possible common denominator in the cultural background of our era, the clash between a rising materialism and a dwindling metaphysical, spiritual tradition.

As the battle unfolds, fought on the beaches as much as on message boards, in universities as well as newspapers, humanity is progressively falling back from those "achievements" we thought did arise from our science and industrial progress.

A "what-you-see-is-all-there-is" outlook, has been in one guise or the other (there is the "do-not-bother-seeing" variant along with the "it-doesn't-matter" one) the goal of most if not all systems of thought which are not originated in the Jewish and Greek tradition. The ultimate consequences of such an outlook, are easily traceable:

1) the individual is less important than society

If there is no metaphysical root of the unity of the ego, and no transcendent base for the individual and his rights, it is only natural that we have to take a dialectic, negotiational outlook. As a consequence, the rights of many are more important than the rights of few, and even more, of one.

In simple terms, if your ego is merely an illusion arising from firing neurons (there is no spirit) you are relative. If you are relative, your rights are relative: there is always a circumstance when killing you is correct. Sad for you, and bring on the next victim of the system.

Additionally, given that everything is negotiable, and that material benefits (and that includes every existential aspect of your life, as you are merely organized matter) are the only existing benefits, you, your meaning, and your life are the result of your neighbours state.

I used the physical term state, because that is what it is: there is a system, composed of several masses of living flesh, and that system has a state. Through several permutations, in time, the system will evolve. It may evolve by cutting you off, or making you thrive: we don't know. It is a complex system, as such, unpredictable.

Such systems, under the proper conditions (expanding mass, dwindling resources) become more hierarchic, besides. So kiss your democracy goodbye, it is not going to last. At least for real.

2) you are an animal, you should live like an animal

Your consciousness is an obstacle, a problem, not a resource. That is a common concept in Buddhism, as well. If there is a God, a transcendent root of reality, you can determine who you are by comparing yourself with that absolute. But without it, you only have a vague ("dialectically" - the dialogue is apparent as well - arising from the state of the system) idea of what you are.

This means on one side something good: there are no morals. You can, even better, you must, to be clear, eat, drink, and copulate. That is the purpose of your life. Whatever makes you eat more, drink more, and copulate more, (give and take a few concessions to Maslow's other needs) is the win move.

On the other side there is a problem. The win move might imply stealing, robbing, killing. I you can get away with it without any karmic backlash from the system (you can, probably), why not?

But consciousness is what produces science. Science, differently from technique, doesn't have a direct advantage in making you eat, copulate, etc more. Will science resist the return to the animal paradise?

3) you have no free will

That's sad, but simple. Physical systems are deterministic: classical or chaotic that they are.

This means that infact, whatever you want makes no difference: it is a confabulation produced to justify what you would have done anyway to an illusionary spectator (that is you again, as you do not exist).

3b) there is a way to make you do something without you wanting or knowing (and that's the thing to do if it is convenient).

Again, sad but simple: physical systems can be (gently, or else) influenced so that they evolve one way and not the other.

I could add more, and I will. Opinions?

[Avendiel]

The inclusion of the words like 'should', 'importance', 'purpose' seems more likely from someone that is straddling both sides. Someone who is dealing with those is still at least partly in the m/s tradition, even if they/you think they're not.

[Ummon]

Quite the opposite: I am merely describing what will happen if there is no spirit. An experiment, if you will.

[My Favorite Martian]

m/s tradition

What does m/s tradition mean? You mean "mainstream"?

I could add more, and I will. Opinions?

I am not really a good debater. I would say nevertheless that your dialectic statements are worth to think about. I have a lot in the mind now including two glasses of Scilian Merlot but for the time being I would think it is worth to see that every dialectic falls under a further inner dialectic. The interesting in the book of Job and it includes a degree of sceptic is that there may be numerous friendly words but at the end consulation* comes from somewhere else. That is the openness of the mind.


*your innovativ thought

[Ummon]

I am not pessimistic at all. Thinking, is the only thing being promoted here.

When we manage to be good enough for consolation to come, we in a way have already solved the riddle. Which Sicilian Merlot?

[My Favorite Martian]

Which Sicilian Merlot?

A poor man's version ... Giacondi Nero D'Avola Merlot 2008.

It's ok for 2.99€ in the discounter.

Of course, I would perfer the wine from the organic shop for 15 € upwards, but that is made for other people.

[Avendiel]

Well, the point is, it seems a bit arbitrary. Can you lay out what you see as the "what you see is all there is" worldview that is going to cause all this in a bit more detail?

Specifically, where is it going to get the resources to establish views on what is important, valuable, worthy of being done, etc?

Or, maybe better---how is going to undermine morality without denying itself the resources to suggest an alternative? If it says all we're left with are natural causes, then it will have to say that morality is a legitimate result of those causes. It's not going to be able to say that we 'should' act in a way that we already don't.

[Ummon]

If we happen to meet (a really unusual consideration for me), I will remember this.

And the proper consideration which followed it as well. Of course hospitality should not be sinful.

[My Favorite Martian]

I'll contribute the bread, the cheese and the olives in garlic.

[Ummon]

There is no need to get those resources. If that view is true, the resources are already its own.

We have two possibilities:

1) what we see is all there is.
2) what we see isn't all there is.

In the former case, those things I outlined are merely consequences.

This author here: http://www.ptahhotep.com/authors/e-f.html

La Pensée de l'Égypte Antique
(Jean Fallot)
ISBN 2866006607
© 1992, Publisud

From AEB : La représentation de la nature et de l'homme n'a fait que s'affaiblir et se détériorer en passant du polythéisme de l'Égypte antique à l'oligothéisme grec et surtout aux religions monothéistes qui suivirent. Aménophis IV-Akhénaton ne fit que remplacer le culte dominant d'Amon par celui d'Aton. L'auteur analyse la découverte fondamentale que l'on nomme justement la triade d'Égypte (le couple et la famille), puis celle des trois êtres qui font le vivant: la triade intime, faite de la coexistence du corps, représenté par la sculpture, du sommeil profond qui subsiste dans la momie et sans lequel elle n'aurait pas de sens, de l'être de rêve enfin, que les Égyptiens nommèrent le ka. Ce que l'auteur a nommé la pensée de l'Égypte antique est à la fois très proche et très loin de nous ...

Proposes a similar outline for ancient egyptian thought, infact.

EDIT: Actually, to the "lie" argument there are two aspects.

a) a cognitive state is causally active in a closed multi-looped multilayer system such as our brain/society/etc.: thus a lie like that (preaching 2 when 1 is true) would have an effect on the system. Only, it would be self-produced and infact, unfree.
b) before we know what solution is true we can discuss. Consequences are part of a discussion, no?

[Avendiel]

But they aren't. At least, not from where I'm standing. Values, purposes, etc. aren't "visible"---they don't have any place in a truly "what you see is all there is" outlook. There's only behavior. Nothing becomes more important than anything else; the issue of importance becomes subjective or meaningless. The purpose of life doesn't change, it disappears.

You're proposing consequences for the non-existence of transcendent values and purposes in terms that presuppose that they do exist. At least, that's part of what you're doing.

Again, this is supposing that you and I mean the same thing by a "what you see is all there is" outlook.

[Ummon]

Values and purposes are attractors in the state space of the system: as such they are visible with proper tools. I can easily visualize (simplified replicas of) them, infact.

There exists no idea under condition 1), or if you will information is a merely peculiar order of matter.

Like pictures infact. Hieroglyphs.

[Avendiel]

I think it's pretty clear at this point that we're not on the same page as far as the outlook you have in mind.

If that kind of visualisation is on the table for you as far as a "what you see is all there is" outlook goes, then you're not excluding a whole lot, and it's not at all clear to me that it's something I would still call 'materialism'.

[Ummon]

The fact that I can visualize it is because it already is material. If I imagine a line of atoms, my idea (in modern terms) is not the thing (ceci n'est pas une pipe), but infact the thing exists. A line of atoms is the (stochastically possible) thing my idea imitates.

In other terms, it is even possible to imagine that the idea is the thing. I am the thing as well, and the thing is me. That is 1), in which infact I don't exist (as an isolated system).

[Avendiel]

Hold that thought, I'd like to get clear on what it was you were saying in the original post first.

So, whatever this materialism is that's going to cause all this, it doesn't believe in a soul or an ego or a God or anything transcendent but it has very specific views on the 'material purpose' of life, 'material values', etc...which apparently fall directly out of its lack of belief in those transcendent things?

I'm not at all confident that's what you're trying to say, but feel free to correct me.

[Ummon]

Materialism isn't going to cause anything, if it isn't true. On the other hand, if it is false, why believe in it?

[Tankbuster]

Interesting thread.

I think the intellectual quality of the thread would suffer if we started a quote-fest right away, so I thought I'd wrote a couple of paragraphs of my own on this (probably won't have nearly the information Ummon manages to put in his sentences, but anyway).

The first observation worth making is that the "what-you-see-is-all-there-is"-attitude is indeed a despicable attitude, because it is an attitude of certainty. It is however a strawman in the sense that this is not what is encouraged. Intellectuals on both sides of the argument continue to stress the importance of studying, learning new things, experiencing new things, and ultimately: analyse and test your assumptions. That is something completely different from "What you see is all there is.", in my opinion.
People should have a personal quest, and if this leads them to the recognition of a higher power, so much the better for them. If it does not, then so much the better for them as well. Ultimately it's the old Confucian saying that "The road is more important than the destination". What your precise beliefs are is not nearly as important as to whether or not you have researched and analysed your position and the arguments in favor and against it. A perfect society would never be one where everyone thinks the same, but where everyone has thought his beliefs through, regardless of what they might end up to be.

The rest of your post is a little more strange. The 'ultimate consequences' of a materialist worldview are not all that obvious as you make them out to be.
'The individual is less important than society.'
In an absolutist sense, two lives are worth more than one of course, but all of us can see the value of having a society that appreciates and respects the individual. From a merely pragmatic standpoint (which is the one you're taking at that point), societies that have a place for the concept of 'privacy' and 'individuality' are not only more productive but also more of a joy to live in. This is because they cater to the innate needs of humans.

'You are an animal, live like an animal.'
I think you know quite well that this is a crude oversimplification. Humans have an innate dislike of stealing and have innate senses of guilt and they inherently like cooperative groups and societies.
If an individual can bring himself to the selfish point where he can overcome those basic and very important emotions, he can also rationally persuade himself that a society where everyone does that is ultimately self-destructive.
On a side note: plenty of people who did have transcendent beliefs were very happy to steal and kill. This is far more complex than you make it out to be.

As for the last point about free will and determinism, it is indeed true that recent studies show that free will is less powerful of an agent than humans like to think it is. The question we have to ask ourselves is how we will cope with the realisation that a murderer might have less of control over himself than we would like to think.
But the fact remains that humans are not self-destructive and even IF we figure out that free will is almost an imaginary concept, we will still rationally come to the conclusion that we need a workable society to survive. The premise you seem to make is that given a perfectly materialist and rationalist society, humans would somehow have to have an emotional outrage at the discovery that free will does not exist. This is wanting it both ways; an emotional man will take materialism as an offense to begin with and not accept the idea that free will is limited, a rational materialist would not see this as an impediment to human progress and solidarity.

So far I see mainly a sense of pessimism and a (concealed?) appeal to wish-thinking...
Do add more options though, I enjoy these inquiries into the basis of morality and ethics, and you usually make good points about them.

[Avendiel]

No disagreement there. What I'm trying to get out of you are some specifics that will allow me to know what the view you're actually calling materialism is,since the group of beliefs normally called materialism in the things I read is evidently very different from what you're calling materialism.

Once I know what it is you're calling materialism, I might have something useful to say about it. I also might not, but at least then we'll know which.

[Ummon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

The philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism is a form of physicalism and belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism and to spiritualism.

For what concerns Tankbuster's reply:

a) the road is more important than the destination. In the conditions I described, there is not road if not as illusion. All we do is pre-determined.

b) you are an animal, you should act like an animal. Quite the contrary: the innate dislike arises from the fact that we are conscious (an illusion, if a materialist outlook is true). The root of all suffering in all truely materialist stances taking complexity into account. A machine thinking it is more than a machine -> useless suffering.

c) free will. Under the conditions I described, short of a revolutionary discovery capsizing the whole vessel of logic and science, no free will is possible as many physicists and psychologists already assert.

The OP is merely a description of a series of logical consequences if we take a current outlook. No more, no less.

[Avendiel]

Yeah, so it's the standard one. The first answer I gave is one I'll stick to, then.