Discourse on Human Value Systems
- lucabottazzi
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Re: Discourse on Human Value Systems
1) ANIMALS DO NOT HAVE A SYSTEM OF VALUES, because they do not have the great "gift" (or "handicap") of Free will: they are not capable of making decisions, but they do things for an instinct imprinted in their brains since they are born.
AND ANIMALS DO NOT NEED TO BE "EDUCATED", while a child is not given an education, he remains in the "animal" state.
2) THE SYSTEM OF VALUES IS NOT UNIVERSAL, SOME SYSTEMS ARE IN CONFLICT WITH OTHERS (see the culture that states that to go to "Paradise" it is necessary to respect human life, while another culture ensures that you go to heaven if you kills those in conflict with that culture).
Human values are therefore not objective, scientific, but VALUES ARE A "CONVINCTION".
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Some examples of Values (of the Duties of Man indicated by the dogmas):
● Socialism / Marxism: man's problems do not arise from inner causes (as for Freud), but from the existence of two Classes (in today's language "poor" and "rich") in conflict with each other - the Duty of each person it is therefore helping to eliminate one of the two classes.
● Christianity and Buddhism: man's problem is in (spiritual) evil that contaminates man, which cancels the condition of love in man's spirit
- Buddhism: the only way to improve one's existence is to live in a relationship of love with the world.
- Christianity: the duty of every Christian is to give love to others, even when they suffer evil from others ("turn the other cheek").
● Einstein: in order to understand reality, a scientist must first understand that it is created by God - it is a scientist's moral duty to imagine the Universe as a system managed by an intelligence superior to himself.
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There are two types of human beings:
a) those who when their Values (their basic beliefs: the Principles on which they base their judgments and their actions) do not have a positive effect if applied to reality they work within themselves to find better Principles.
Einstein: “If repeated attempts to change a system fail, it means that there are errors in the principles [in one's own system of values]”. And so you need to take a step back, re-fine-tuning your Values (your criteria for judgment and action) before continuing.
b) people who, when their values do not produce positive results, insist with more energy in applying these values. This is the case with social Ideologies
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Re: Discourse on Human Value Systems
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Re: Discourse on Human Value Systems
Popeye
First let me say that it is good to learn that you survived that beating and had at least a worthwhile experience as partial compensation.I think it was Joseph Campbell that stated, that people were not so much looking for meaning in their lives, but to experience the rapture of being alive.
My interest in philosophy and religion now centers round two basic questions: What is the meaning and purpose of our great universe and the meaning and purpose of life within it including Man? Why has Man as a whole forgotten it?.
We look for the answers in the results but as you know by your interest in whitehead, the meaning and purpose of our universe and life within it lies in the process of existence rather than the results. Discovering the process of existence leads to a new value system. In this way science can influence a new value system by validating the process.
I can see by the often violent resistance of this idea that it may be fifty years before such contemplation is considered acceptable. But right now, in order to avoid having to drink the hemlock, it is possibly wiser to discuss such ideas in private or at least with those sufficiently open minded..
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Re: Discourse on Human Value Systems
Your questions on the meaning and purpose of the universe are interesting. The physical world itself has no meaning unless the meaning is bestowed upon it by consciousness. Now that consciousness is begining to explore what Carl Sagan called, the cosmic shore, we are just on the shore of that cosmic ocean. The purpose of the universe is quite another thing, like evolution itself, I believe there is no purpose, no intent, to entertain such a premise, is to be looking for a god. Purhaps this is disappointing, but I am thinking of the old Buddhist who in front of his students holds up a flower, the gesture is the question, what is its meaning, and indeed there is none, it just is. You ask why man has forgotten, well, he never knew it. it just is.
You'll have to excuse me, for being a little off course, yes the process is an intriguing concept, its a delight knowing all is process. It is intriqueing to think that a new value system could arise from a through knowledge of process, systems thinking is a step forward to that prize, or as Whitehead calls it, the philosophy of organism. This new value system is already in process with systems thinking, it just has to reach a critical mass, it really hasn't reach the man on the street yet. Are you long into Whitehead, I have just recently discovered him, and finding it a little hard going.
I have been away from studying process finding it quite difficult, perhaps we could explore this together over the net. It is easier to maintain one's enthusiasm when one has someone to share ideas on a progressive journey.
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Re: Discourse on Human Value Systems
I don't know what "the fullest" of a life is, but values enable humans to live together in a community with people who are not necessarily blood kin. Shared values also put limits on the range of acceptable behaviour, both toward other people and the world around them; this sometimes curbs the damage humans do to the environment on which they depend for survival.lucabottazzi wrote: ↑March 28th, 2021, 8:33 am The system of Values is what allows the human being to live his life to the fullest.
All social animals have rules and protocols of interaction. That is the basis of what humans later codify as a value system.1) ANIMALS DO NOT HAVE A SYSTEM OF VALUES, because they do not have the great "gift" (or "handicap") of Free will: they are not capable of making decisions, but they do things for an instinct imprinted in their brains since they are born.
Insects and most fish and reptiles do not need to be educated. Birds and mammals do. Social animals, particularly pack hunters, monkeys and apes, need an extensive education in orientation, food recognition, protocol and skills.AND ANIMALS DO NOT NEED TO BE "EDUCATED", while a child is not given an education, he remains in the "animal" state.
True. Each human society has slightly different values and relationships; advanced cultures have so many layers of past experience and religious dogma that they are internally contradictory. And so they have internal conflict; become unstable and sometimes collapse.2) THE SYSTEM OF VALUES IS NOT UNIVERSAL, SOME SYSTEMS ARE IN CONFLICT WITH OTHERS
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Re: Discourse on Human Value Systems
I'm familiar with Alfred North Whitehead but my real intersest is in esoteric or Platonic Christianity which has the ONE described by Plotinus as its originYour questions on the meaning and purpose of the universe are interesting. The physical world itself has no meaning unless the meaning is bestowed upon it by consciousness. Now that consciousness is begining to explore what Carl Sagan called, the cosmic shore, we are just on the shore of that cosmic ocean. The purpose of the universe is quite another thing, like evolution itself, I believe there is no purpose, no intent, to entertain such a premise, is to be looking for a god. Purhaps this is disappointing, but I am thinking of the old Buddhist who in front of his students holds up a flower, the gesture is the question, what is its meaning, and indeed there is none, it just is. You ask why man has forgotten, well, he never knew it. it just is.
https://iep.utm.edu/plotinus/
a. The One
The ‘concept’ of the One is not, properly speaking, a concept at all, since it is never explicitly defined by Plotinus, yet it is nevertheless the foundation and grandest expression of his philosophy. Plotinus does make it clear that no words can do justice to the power of the One; even the name, ‘the One,’ is inadequate, for naming already implies discursive knowledge, and since discursive knowledge divides or separates its objects in order to make them intelligible, the One cannot be known through the process of discursive reasoning (Ennead VI.9.4). Knowledge of the One is achieved through the experience of its ‘power’ (dunamis) and its nature, which is to provide a ‘foundation’ (arkhe) and location (topos) for all existents (VI.9.6). The ‘power’ of the One is not a power in the sense of physical or even mental action; the power of the One, as Plotinus speaks of it, is to be understood as the only adequate description of the ‘manifestation’ of a supreme principle that, by its very nature, transcends all predication and discursive understanding. This ‘power,’ then, is capable of being experienced, or known, only through contemplation (theoria), or the purely intellectual ‘vision’ of the source of all things. The One transcends all beings, and is not itself a being, precisely because all beings owe their existence and subsistence to their eternal contemplation of the dynamic manifestation(s) of the One. The One can be said to be the ‘source’ of all existents only insofar as every existent naturally and (therefore) imperfectly contemplates the various aspects of the One, as they are extended throughout the cosmos, in the form of either sensible or intelligible objects or existents. The perfect contemplation of the One, however, must not be understood as a return to a primal source; for the One is not, strictly speaking, a source or a cause, but rather the eternally present possibility — or active making-possible — of all existence, of Being (V.2.1). According to Plotinus, the unmediated vision of the ‘generative power’ of the One, to which existents are led by the Intelligence (V.9.2), results in an ecstatic dance of inspiration, not in a satiated torpor (VI..); for it is the nature of the One to impart fecundity to existents — that is to say: the One, in its regal, indifferent capacity as undiminishable potentiality of Being, permits both rapt contemplation and ecstatic, creative extension. These twin poles, this ‘stanchion,’ is the manifested framework of existence which the One produces, effortlessly (V.1.6). The One, itself, is best understood as the center about which the ‘stanchion,’ the framework of the cosmos, is erected (VI.9.). This ‘stanchion’ or framework is the result of the contemplative activity of the Intelligence.
The ONE IS. It is the eternal unchanging. Creation is in eternal change. It serves the process of EXISTENCE. It is within the ONE as the body of GOD It is a machine which is eternally serving its purpose as the transformation of substances. Its purpose is determined by the process of the transformation of substances.
The objective purpose of MAN is to serve the process of conscious evolution or the mechanical purpose of dust to dust.
So you can see that like Whitehead I believe in a universal process. But unlike Whitehead I believe its purpose is sustaining the complimentary processes of the three elemental forces away from the ONE and into creation) and evolution or the return flow back to the ONE. Either way, a universal purpose is served
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Re: Discourse on Human Value Systems
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- Posts: 1110
- Joined: October 22nd, 2020, 2:22 am
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Re: Discourse on Human Value Systems
I am afraid I am a little over my head here, but I shall be reading your interactions/reactions in various threads, most interesting!!!
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