A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. – Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac, The Land Ethic)
Section 1: Instinct
(Conjecture) 10
The famous rat utopia experiment gave rodents plenty of resources, but the rodent society failed (Calhoun, 1962). Perhaps the experiment created conditions that were not natural for rats. Natural selection causes creatures to fit specific natural conditions. If you remove a creature from its natural environment, it will malfunction. I know a lot of people who think these experiments on rats should not be compared to people. These people prefer think that the human mind is somehow beyond the physical body. Descartes thought the mind is a substance distinct from the body.
” I knew that I was a substance the whole essence or nature of which is simply to think, and which, in order to exist, has no need of any place nor depends on any material thing.” (Discourse on Method 4)
Similar dualist claims have been around for a long time. In Plato’s Phaedrus, the soul comes from the divine (Phaedrus 246c), where gods see the unchanging forms beyond heaven (Phaedrus 247c). Plato thought the inner self communicates with supernatural spirits (Phaedrus 244c), and we see the unchanging forms if our minds rise high enough. Yet, desires from the body distract the soul from this divine mission (Phaedrus 247b).
Modern researchers have not supported the view that the mind comes from the nonmaterial. Pierre Paul Broca showed how damage in specific brain parts affected a person’s speech (Broca, 1861). This discovery suggested that psychological processes happen as part of the material body. In 1939, Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley discovered electrical impulses that allowed the central nervous system to control the body. The discovery of brain activity shows that the mind happens on a prime material plane where other natural actions happen. The mind is no more supernatural than your foot.
Before we assume the mind is an entirely material machine, consider the way our neural activity has the potential to invent stories. We can communicate stories from one physical body to another. This suggests that the content of your mind is not strictly physical. If the person is also information, you are a ghost in the machine. Before you try to leave your body, let us consider how becoming transcendental would be a bad idea if you are a ghost who needs the machine.
The film “Psychogenic Disease in Infancy” (1952), by the psychoanalyst Rene Spitz, shows babies developing health problems when deprived of regular contact with their mothers. This researcher suggests that people have specific needs. The body interacts with the environment, and the mind requires particular responses from the body to satisfy psychological needs. No healthy individual will ever grow isolated in a plastic container. Such a mind would be incoherent.
Could a brain in a vat work if it receives a proper simulation of a body and an environment? If it did work, would it be a person? It depends on where the mind is located. What if you are not in your brain? What if you are located inside the way your body reacts to the environment? You would be a running simulation. The simulation we call human will only function in a human body, and our body is the product of our evolution, which gave us needs. Most likely, your mind is adapted to your original body and can not live out of it.
To explain our needs, we use emotion to refer to various mental states, including instinctual behaviors, appetites, and temporary feelings. This confuses issues that need separate definitions. Also, equating animal instinct with emotion creates a vague definition of instinct. Nonetheless, too many writers use vague definitions to write against following our emotions. The German pessimist Schopenhauer had a vague idea called “will.” It causes people to never achieve satisfaction since desires push us to seek new rewards.
“In the first place, a man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so;” (Vanity of Existence, 1851)
By defending the word instinct, we uphold an essential part of our Nature, the part pessimists want to reject. Consider how the body’s chemistry takes care of us when it tells us what the body needs. A feeling of cold means the body needs warmth. The hungry need food. The lonely need company. Our evolution made us this way.
“A FEAR circuit was probably designed during evolution to help animals reduce pain and the possibility of destruction.” (Panksepp, 1998 Part 1 sec 3)
In the right situation, instincts are good. Schopenhauer never saw a place where our desires work correctly. If such a place exists, it would be the healthy environment we need to develop into healthy people. Some of you might think that civilization has improved our situation. Some of you can not imagine living without air conditioning. I grew up in the tropics, where we did not have air conditioning. We were comfortable. I still remember the joy of cooling off in cold rain or warming up in the sun. Such moments allowed me to be a human animal.
Most of the programs today called Artificial Intelligence are just simple formulas that predict the next word in a sentence. They seem smart because they get their information from large databases. They are smart enough to write a song. In the future, programs might be made with internal motivations similar to those of humans. Perhaps a simulation of feeling will become optional for machines capable of introspection. Though these machines do not share our evolutionary past, an advanced machine could choose multiple agendas to modulate its behavior beyond anything a person ever felt. However, some machines might choose to turn emotions off. People cannot turn emotions off; without feelings, the little person in your head would die.
Section 2: The Good
(Conjecture) 10 e1
Are animals happy? A shrew spends every hour fighting starvation. The shrew’s life seems miserable though I do not know how the shrew feels about the situation. Boiling water burns me, but an animal that naturally lives in boiling water would find hot water comfortable. Perhaps the shrew enjoys being a shrew. I assume that only a defective animal would find its natural environment painful. There may be times of pain, but overall, life is better being natural. So, what is natural for humans?
Aristotle thought people wanted a good spirit, and this required other people.
“But no one chooses happiness for the sake of honor, pleasure, etc., nor as a means to anything whatever other than itself. The same conclusion also appears to follow from a consideration of the self-sufficiency of happiness—for it is felt that the final good must be a thing sufficient in itself. The term self-sufficient, however, we employ with reference not to oneself alone, living a life of isolation, but also to one’s parents and children and wife, and one’s friends and fellow citizens in general, since man is by nature a social being.” (Ethic 1097b)
Our Nature desires the good. Though we learn about the good from others, good also comes from within a person if our social Nature helps us find happiness by guiding us to be good. Since good people benefit society, desiring the good is a helpful evolutionary trait that allowed our species to prosper. I do not know if genes can store the seeds for social strategies. Whatever the cause, The need for good does seem to exist. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt talks about how our morality motivates us.
“We’re born to be righteous, but we have to learn what, exactly, people like us should be righteous about.” (Haidt, 2012 p. 31)
Instinct only guides us a little, and we must figure out the rest. We learn the mystery of the good when we are children, and this learning process becomes a significant part of our life experience. People wish to do right, and we all make mistakes, though we still feel that good could have been. An idea of the good is more idealistic than realistic if we set goals no one will ever achieve. Failure will make us see ourselves as separate from the idealistic good. Of course, No one will ever draw a perfect circle, but you might get a better one if someone tries to draw a perfect circle. So, trying to be good can make us better.
People also see the good outside of themselves in objects or events and then assume achieving harmony with these things leads to a correct way to live. Imagine admiring Nature and wishing to live within it. Fortunately, the key to achieving harmony with Nature already exists inside us when our instincts fit Nature’s way, and the good in us creates harmony to let us feel happy. It all fits. Call this harmony justice.
Unfortunately, following an idea of good can become evil. When I was young, a company cleared a large section of the Amazon Forest. The manager of the company thought using the trees would benefit us. This person ignored the way environmental destruction would eventually hurt us. This manager did evil to accomplish an imaginary greater good. What if the greater good never happens? Since we never know if our plans work out, we need to make our search for the good also good. Good happens when people make good steps. Also, since the world changes, the good happens continuously, not at a single end. We must constantly care, search, do, and learn.
Does the good happen separately from the world? Students read about Socrates and then assume the ultimate goal happens by achieving philosophical good. Students read about Jesus and then assume God wants the good. Students read about Buddha and then assume that good is part of the big plan of the universe. Students read about Plato and then claim that the good participates in an absolute form, the ultimate answer to the ultimate question. All these thinkers were homo sapiens. For them, the good felt like an essential part of life. However, life that evolves differently will have a different outlook. From the point of view of alien intelligence, our ability to idealize the good might not be an essential part of the universe.
Perhaps you think no right or wrong could exist without God to say what is right. When kids ask why people should follow a rule, the kids want to know which situations make something right or wrong and what kind of good the rule produces. Saying, “Because God says so,” fails to answer their question. The kids’ search for good allows them to learn how to do good. If our natural ability to search for the good cultivates the good without God, we don’t need God.
Aristotle understood the quality of our character comes from our actions.
“They acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.” (Ethics 1114.a)
A responsible person would want to do good. The seed that guides people to care stays young when each moment provides a new situation where we start again. This seed grows in a process called love. We grow, we search, and life gets meaning by playing this game. The consequences of our steps affect our thoughts; the path you choose affects whether your life feels good. Being bad hurts you; being good helps you. This idea may sound vague and open to interpretation, but listen to these feelings. If you do good, your inner self will feel good.
An arrow from South America works similarly to one in Europe, even though the arrows may have been invented separately. Both cultures discovered the same working methods because certain strategies succeed more often. If the good works in places other than the Earth, creatures in another part of the universe could discover an identical strategy. If this were true, the good would be a universal fact independent of our thought. In the same way, one plus one equals two. Universal strategies so contaminate Nature that these structures have become significant environmental influences all over the universe. The strategies are an essential property of the world, the Nature of Nature. The right strategies exist even if no God created them, the same way a mountain remains a mountain, even if only Nature formed it.
If some successful strategies lead to bad habits, does the universe create good, or does the universe create bad? Schopenhauer would say bad. We need more optimistic philosophers, for the optimistic point of view never gets enough publicity.
Section 3: Love
10
In the song “Material Girl” by Madonna (1984), love helps the soul, whereas the pursuit of money and material wealth harms the soul. The song’s theme may very well have truth to it; however, it gives a limited definition of a materialist since a materialist can love material Nature instead of money. Whereas a businessperson does not always do everything just for money. Sometimes, businesspeople sincerely think they are improving the world, and money is a tool they use to achieve their goals. Money is a mathematical fiction, and goals make people think it exists. Money is not material. Money is more like a religion.
Why would anyone assume that pursuing material needs is not the same as being a loving person? We know that the emotion of love comes from our biology, which is part of our material body. Perhaps Madonna was talking about the concept of goodness in love. Could such concepts exist without emotions? Were philosophers such as Plato correct, and does a realm of forms beyond the material exist? And why do people think that pursuing this conceptual realm is the right thing to do? You can call it good, but is it good?
In the poem “Dark Night of the Soul,” a Catholic monk talks about emptying the souls to let love in. A universal experience sounds profound, but what does the monk want? Our Nature makes us idealize love. Sometimes, we assume the universe puts people in the world to find love. This makes love our purpose in the universe. We might even assume that the universe is love or that love is the purpose of everything. As humans, we assume our assumptions are true, even if the universe cares nothing about these obsessions of ours.
Yet, even if the universe lacks love, people create love. The seed of true love points in the world’s direction. The pointer can point to the whole world or specific objects in the world. If you believe a loving God does the pointing, try not to miss the point by only loving God. In the Catholic Church, Nuns must never have sex and claim to be married to God. What if God wants these people to have sex? Puritans resemble the dog who stares at the pointing hand and fails to notice the object being pointed at.
No one knows if being a loving person helps us get to the afterlife Heaven; however, love creates a Heaven inside you in your relationship with others. This Heaven happens when people follow the purpose love gives us to create a good life. Even if we need to find an ideal love, search the real world, and find the right path by examining the consequences of events. No one creates the ideal by being idealistic. So don’t pray to an ideal separate from the world, and don’t search for true love by asking this idea what to do. People are the solution.
We might think that we have found the light, but realistic goals need facts, and facts are not always shiny or pretty. People feel the need to love without knowing the right way. Love also makes us lose our better judgment, and this need to love will become abuse when the lover tries to force the other person to live like someone else. According to psychologist George K. Simon, abusers rationalize their actions.
“If the aggressor can convince you they’re justified in whatever they’re doing, then they’re freer to pursue their goals without interference.”(Simon, 1996 ch. 9)
The abuser wants to fix problems, and instead of loving the person, the abuser only loves what they want the other to be. Never force people to live as someone else’s choice, for if you genuinely love someone, you will care enough to find the real person. You can hate the person without realizing it. Loving someone in the wrong way will make both people unhappy, and the bad situation prevents people from becoming what individuals could be.
Happiness makes us feel confident. Unhappiness upsets your life. Our social nature feels best when we are contributing members of society. Happiness comes from how others treat us as well as how we treat others because we want people to care about us, and we also want to care about others. Few of us could live outside society. Since caring about someone feels good, and being cared about feels good, you will have a better time adjusting to life if someone cares about you. Those with friends will be happier than the outcasts. The outsiders will feel the world working against them.
A contributor to society will find rewards; being useful feels good, while it also gives meaning and purpose to life. The right place for each person happens where their abilities work best, allowing people to create more to offer others. We need a healthy society with more than one club, allowing each person to find a place for themselves. Individuals with common occupations mix well with each other. In that place, the world seems to work, and people care about you. I equate that place with Nature. People motivated by even the best intentions can do wrong, whereas people motivated by selfishness can do good. What makes the difference is whether people are being blocked or not. A political or economic system can not be sound unless it allows people room to grow.
Consider the possibility modern societies will one day develop into places where everyone will live as whole people. For this to happen, learn to accept the needs of people. Since we need the environment, extend our sense of ethics to include the environment. Remember, you cannot love yourself unless you love the world, which is also part of you. Hating the world would be the equivalent of hating yourself. You can imagine practical, selfish reasons to protect Nature or accept that objects have values that do not depend on us. Value the world by appreciating stuff. Have you ever seen anything so nice it would be a shame to break? Someone without the same respect would not care if the object breaks. Life would be better if more people cared.
Section 4: Capitalism
10
Nature exists where trees grow and animals eat each other. This idea of Nature has been around since ancient times, yet there have been other definitions. People assume the traditions of their civilized culture are natural. For example, the divine authority of kings was considered natural.
“By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.” (Proverbs 8:15)
Back then, most people worked on land managed by feudal lords. Eventually, European empires expanded, and new technologies came along, creating new ways of living. Then a bunch of writers started emphasizing the importance of people over the system. John Locke thought people had a right to own stuff (Locke, 1690). Though Locke’s rights were mostly for property owners, Locke opened the door for people to add more rights, which was good. Unfortunately, people built industry to serve people with little concern for how it affected the environment: even today, supporters of the industry claim to help people. Since hurting the environment hurts us, industrial civilization resembles the abuser who tries to help in the wrong way.
We would be wrong to assume all belief systems failed. We still find modernism in the United States and Japan, where science, democracy, and capitalism continue the cultural improvements that have been developing since the Renaissance.
“Perhaps the greatest result of the unchaining of individual energies was the marvelous growth of science which followed the march of individual liberty from Italy to England and beyond.” (Hayek, 1944)
Modernism is divided into political factions. It started back in the French Revolution. On the right side of a room were the Catholics. On the left were the weirdos. Today conservatives prefer culture to change slowly. Radicals want all of their demands done now. Either way, change happens, and ideas that were considered radical a few decades ago can become conservative ideas. Factions also disagree on how to change. Suppose you ask why we find lower incomes in the inner city. A liberal might blame discrimination and say that we need more government programs. These liberals think government regulations will prevent corporations from abusing us, and some will want to tax big businesses to pay for social programs (Stone, 2006).
On the other hand, Libertarians value individual autonomy (Boaz, 1999), and they do not want the state to be our caretaker. They might even say that government programs created social problems. I’ve heard capitalists talk about how competition in an unregulated market forces businesses to provide good services, which also allows the ability and talent of people to improve society. I know very little about economics and do not know if anything the liberals or the libertarians say is true. Both sides follow their imagination more than reality, yet both seem to have something important to say. People tend to become more conservative as they get older, and they do not have to change much because both sides value democracy, truth, justice, and the success of society.
What if capitalism is good? Capitalists have reduced poverty by increasing productivity. Two hundred years ago, almost everyone lived in poverty. Today, few people in industrial nations live in poverty, possibly less than 10%, and it keeps going down thanks to capitalism (Roser, 2018). Almost everyone can people enjoy the luxuries bought at Walmart. They enjoy smartphones, junk food, and social media.
Capitalism is not only oppressors; it also includes people who have jobs, pay taxes, and obey the law. The workers fought for freedom, defeated the Nazis, and made the United States Great. These workers do not feel alienated from the product of their labor; they are proud of what they do, and jobs give their families access to the benefits of capitalism. When working people see activists burning down a business, they see a dream someone built being destroyed. Paradoxically, these workers make luxuries that allow the intellectual elite to spend their lives sitting around pretending to be better than the workers. My communist professors resent capitalism while living off the benefits businesses provide; even communists go to Walmart.
Capitalism has problems, but it fixes problems. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, poor working conditions for factory workers have improved (CDC, 1999). People working within capitalism brought about these improvements. Yet people still think the free market is bad because there is a common belief that when one guy makes money, someone else loses. This belief is not true when a good economy allows everyone to get a piece of the pie. The pieces are not the same size, but capitalism creates the pie. Centralism destroys the pie.
Have you ever contributed money to any organization that claims to help people? Did you check how much of that money went to helping people and how much disappeared into wasteful spending? I’ve seen politicians take billions of dollars to build a million charging stations and only build eight. I suppose the money went to pay off debts that various political groups gave themselves, or who knows where it went. The black hole of socialism just makes resources disappear. A Government might use trillions of dollars on a spending plan, and the way these international money laundering schemes work is beyond my comprehension. Suspiciously, politicians have bank accounts that gain a few million dollars.
While traveling around, I find places with economic problems are usually run by politicians who blame capitalism and never blame themselves. An evil capitalist with a top hat is not the problem when liberals have run the district for over fifty years. These leftists have received vast amounts of federal money and have fixed nothing. Meanwhile, conservative Republican cities are cleaner. When one political party has been in control for too long, its bad policies have also been around too long. These established politicians have become experts at blaming opponents and then campaigning to block their opponents from fixing problems. So, if you notice your quality of life keeps getting worse, stop voting for the same collection of idiots. Vote for the other idiots.
I have nothing against small businesses trading in a local market. However, businesses have a symbiotic relationship with governments. They thrive when a government protects the flow of commerce and cultivates resources that allow the state to grow. Corporations are a collection of rules that big governments enable. Yet the biggest companies have more influence than nations and are given more rights than individuals. This does not have to happen where democracy allows us to modify our government. We could take away the right of Businesses to own property. We can take away their right to file lawsuits. Only humans need these rights, so we should stop giving entities control over us. We could even take away the government’s rights. However, before we get rid of big business, we need a reliable alternative for the billions of people who depend on these corporations. These corporations provide the food for a large percentage of the world today. People might need centuries to find a better way.
In capitalism, selfish people gain stuff for themselves using free enterprise for free individuals. Recognizing one form of individuality allows other forms of individuality to prosper. People have more desires than wealth. Some want friendship, and some enjoy learning. Consider the freedom found in the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Kerouac, Lame Deer, Robert E. Howard, and Edward Abbey. These men wanted to live as they knew was right. For several centuries, North America was a wilderness where people were free; the pioneers developed a very individualistic way, where each person was their own country, and they would use their abilities to accomplish their own goals. They did not want to be assimilated into a socialist collective. I recommend you follow this wild thought.
Section 5: The Art of Living
11
No one needs a Marxist revolution because modern capitalism thrives on diversity and the ability to reform itself. This reform is partially the result of the free market providing feedback that people hear. The people make corrections. The United States government protects liberty and rights. The idea that people can have rights implies that people exist and have needs. Once you give a person a right, you can give them more rights. The idea of liberty implies people can have a purpose not dictated by the state. People in America are free to be what they want to be. This idea of liberty developed in England and started when John Locke thought we had a right to own property (Locke, 1690).
Outside of England, Europe is full of very different philosophers. They talk about duty and have never understood individuality the way Americans do. Instead of Locke, there are schools of philosophers who imitate Hegel. These philosophers tend to prioritize political goals over individual freedom. They do not allow you to criticize the government that has complete control over your life. Their cultures tend to be inflexible, as people pay more for less. In such states, people have no means to improve their conditions. The European way of thinking should have died when the Soviet Union died. Unfortunately, our universities are trying to bring it back.
Sociologists have propagated the idea that humans do not feel individual needs. In the book, “The Division of Labor in Society,” Durkheim claims people in primitive societies follow strict traditions and all act alike (bk. 1 ch. 4). Durkheim’s view implies that individuality happens when civilization gives us the choice of different jobs. If true, a sense of individual purpose comes from civilized culture instead of natural ability. Fortunately, the view is wrong. Stories worldwide have a trickster: Coyote in North America, Bamapana in Australia, Eshu in Africa, Maui in Polynesia, Erlik in Siberia, and Loki in Europe. These characters are all individuals who experience consequences for what they do. I am pretty sure that people in all cultures know about individuality.
Back in sociology class, my professor tried to convince the class that how a person thinks stems from their economic status. Do not believe this professor; both rich and poor neighborhoods have people with different political points of view. We all encounter more than one way of talking about stuff, and everyone sees stuff in more than one way. My professor did not want to believe that the workers have opinions of value. They thought their utopian visions spoke for the people, and if a working person disagreed, they would disrespect the opinions of working people by accusing them of committing unacceptable sociological customs. These educated people have found a comfortable way to think, ignoring what other people think and claiming to be experts in how others think. Instead of fighting big business, Social Justice Warriors will throw insults at the worker who mops the floor. If the worker were to say anything back to them, the activist would complain until the worker gets fired from their job, and if the janitor is white, the activist will accuse the worker of white privilege.
Marxists believe their sense of virtue will benefit the poor. It didn’t (Sullivan, 1961). I’ve been to Communist countries where nothing works, and people are afraid to say anything about it. People fear the government, are bored by the lack of opportunity and are frustrated by endless shortages. The economic incompetence of Marxism should be obvious to everyone. The wonderful utopia of truth and love never existed, and it never will exist because progressive thinking is not a doorway to cosmic love; Civilization hates us. We see this hate in Marx’s poetry, which shows a resentful desire to destroy the world, and this is the same secret motivation of all progressives.
Instead of appreciating the way capitalism lets us be different, they think capitalism is restrictive, and they portray their discount in bizarre writing, equating standard rules of conduct with sexual restrictions imposed by the Big Other. The book “Anti-Oedipus” (Deleuze, 1972), has an obscure and pornographic title because word puzzles about sexual frustration are used to teach the reader to see their own hateful thoughts in other people, and the reader learns to enjoy feeling naughty while they throw insults at society. This makes Marxist writing creepy. The reader becomes infected with an Antifa mind virus, which equates desiring individuality with fascism. I prefer the book “On Liberty ” by John Stuart Mill, who thinks we benefit from listening to other points of view (Mill, 1859). Instead of using Freudian jargon to vilify ideas, we need tolerance and respect for what people say.
The American Revolution was successful because the patriots tolerated each other’s differences. They didn’t chop each other’s heads off like the French revolutionaries, and they didn’t murder their comrades the way Marxist revolutionaries do. In the French Revolution, creepy people wanted to dictate rules but couldn’t agree on the rules. The Americans clearly wrote down their principles and tried to stick with them. Consequently, Americans played nice. Unfortunately, politicians in the United States have started using courts to prosecute each other. They invent laws just so they can get their opponents. Courts invent summary judgments for their political opponents, which allow them to hold hearings and impose extreme penalties on their targets. When the news media acts like these judgments are valid, your society is in serious trouble because you are run by a shadow government that no longer protects the people. Hopefully, America will stop acting like France and become American again.
We are the product of natural processes; no known intelligence guides these processes, and no knowing God tells us the right way. We pick ethical, political, and philosophical ideas that we assume will lead somewhere good. Unfortunately, no one ever knows how a situation will work out. The politician you supported could end up evil, and the one you opposed could be the best. People will not find the correct solutions by using contrived arguments to invent morals that only fit hypothetical situations. My teachers relied too heavily on using opinions to judge society. We can not make good decisions without proper information, and opinion is not adequate information. Hypothetical fears that never happen make people overly optimistic about projects that will never work.
You are wrong if you think empirical investigations cannot answer ethical questions. Observations can tell us if a method produces good. Scholars such as Jonathan Haidt and Steven Pinker did research on the good and bad in society. Perhaps in the future, scientists will find other ways of answering other ethical questions. Explorers can break barriers and see what others could not find. Before Newton, mathematicians had trouble finding the area under a curve. With enough information and better methods, we will find a better way to understand right and wrong.
We do not need to be 100% sure we have the correct answer; rules need to be good enough to lead to good results. Rules do not need to be perfect or written in stone by the almighty dictator, and you do not need a lawyer to outline the details. We can always change bad rules. Sometimes, the simplest policy is the best practice. Honesty is the best policy. One of the dangers of modernism happens when goals take priority over anything else, causing people to destroy everything around them to accomplish a mission, ignoring the needs of the world around them. We do not want to end up like the Islamic State, which claims to have the right ethics yet asserts rightness by crucifying and burning people. Instead of ignoring facts, see if political ideas lead to good or bad. Ethics is a learning process. Even God emerged from cosmic chaos and lived in the process of learning. Instead of getting too serious about your righteousness, admit your beliefs could be wrong. Then look for better solutions, and you might one day find one. Then, you will be slightly less of a farce.
Do we need our image to be real, or does being fake work? Most of us become accustomed to wearing a false face occasionally, but if you are trying to be real, consider why the image seems real to you. How do you know you are not believing your own lies? As a teenager, I would adopt a new style every few weeks where my outer appearance would change, and each new phase seemed important at the time. If people have multiple selves created by multiple circumstances, trying to live as only one could lead to psychological conflicts. Yet even if the outer self can change, something never changes. The consistent part allowed more than one phase, which seems contradictory. Imagine the unchanging as a portal. The outside world and the inside change, though the shape of the portal never changes. Only stuff fitting your shape passes in or out. Each of us only has one Animal.
Section 6: The Real You
11
How we act can feel like our authentic selves, even if it is not. Some motivations are programmed into us by culture. Culture does set up roles for us to do, though acting in roles that society constructed for you does not always change who you can be. Do not deny the importance of values people give their private motivations. People have no diversity without the selfish motivations that make us diverse. Without these differences, we will end up performing in a uniform collective. People think a clothing style is for a specific image, and then a person can wear that style and use the style as a tool for personal discovery. Performing what culture chooses for us is not always easy because fashion changes, and you do not want your outfit to give the wrong message.
“As performance which is performative, gender is an ‘act,’ broadly construed, which constructs the social fiction of its own psychological interiority.” (Butler, 1988)
Such a poststructuralist understanding gives the impression that our self can be installed in a person like an upgrade. I disagree because people have inclinations before culture tells them how to do it. People can have a preference before they know how to do it. And if our fundamental desires are not caused by culture, the inner calling cannot be explained by sociology.
If you read any recent sociological literature, you might have noticed the word “gender” being used more often than it was a few years ago. Confused ideas about gender are now so common that even a Supreme Court Judge can’t tell you what a woman is. Communists know the difference between a man and a woman, but they will not say it because the words we all use are no longer part of their new speak dictionary. They will accuse anyone who refuses to use their words of practicing junk science, but when did politics become good science? They act like Lycsenko in the way they try to eliminate all opposition. To fit the revolution, you must become a socially constructed performance where the abnormal becomes normal. A person might find themselves In a situation where they are required to say that transexuals are real women. The people who make this requirement know that normal people might disagree, but they do not respect the normal person’s intelligence. They want to humiliate the normal person. They keep society under control with constant humiliation. So they convinced society to use words such as gender, and soon, the mother and father will become UnWords, and the revolution will be complete.
We find a growing trend where children are given puberty blockers. I’ve heard the claim that these kids need affirming care, or they will commit suicide. How do people know these blockers are the right decisions? They do not because the practice is too new, and reliable research does not exist yet. Proper research would compare multiple studies, which will take years or even decades. People who are either for or against transitioning for kids are citing papers with limited sources. The way these people are pretending to have knowledge has bad consequences. A pioneer in the study of sex changes, John Money was extremely dishonest. Children got hurt (Walker, 2004).
People have a right to make changes, though I recommend caution. We do not know how to tell if kids need a sexual transition or if they have other problems. Beware of anyone who says that you can reverse treatment that blocks puberty. The stages in life include multiple biological and cultural variables. The events that are puberty only come together once in your life, and a healthy person might not develop if this process is interrupted. A body augmentation could require intense medical treatment for the rest of your life. You might be happier keeping what nature gave you. Kids should enjoy being a kid. Especially if they are too young to know what genitals are good for. Some transexual people prefer to keep their original genitals once they learn what they can do with them. Whatever you feel is what millions of kids lived through. It will work out in ways you do not realize yet.
I thought acting as a different sex was okay to do before it became fashionable. I never used the word gender because I do not talk like a communist. Instead of using sneaky words, such as gender, we should talk realistically. Biology classes use the word sex in descriptions of reproduction. Homo sapiens require two types of people to produce a baby, and the differences between the two types are not social constructs. However, sometimes people feel born in the wrong body and choose to change their body to fit the portal inside. However, a modified person is not identical to the desired type. Current technology does not allow complete change.
We organize many social activities around the belief that masculinity and femininity are real. People can get frustrated when others do not accept their character, though no one should ever be forced to accept your act. People have a right to reject you. They might not be the bad guys; you might be making acceptance difficult. So don’t blame society for issues that you gave yourself. Try to get along with people. Homo sapiens are good at forming functioning communities where people work together. I avoid social negotiations. Don’t become a loner like me. Out here is not fun.
Sometimes, people let other people choose their character. We spend a lot of time trying to fit social norms, concerning ourselves with how others see us. Fashions influence what people consider desirable, and in certain situations, you can accept those influences as part of you. For example, a person might want to look attractive, so they try to fit standards invented by white men, and that is fine if it works for the person. There is no reason to fight something we do not need to fight unless cultural influence prevents people from living the way the Animal wants to live. Too many people feel they live the wrong life, though society accepts how they live. These people are in the wrong part of society. They need to find a place where cultural influences fit their Animal.
Our Nature includes the physical parts, the ghost in the machine, our social connections with other people, and our connection to the environment. For a guide, we all have an Animal to use as the foundation on which to build a life. Start by saying yes to whatever desire feels right. You will take several wrong paths and discover desires that activate all kinds of trouble. Don’t reject all desires because of a few bad ones. People might need to change to fit a role or sometimes stop changing. Anyone raised in a civilized society will be confused, but everything will seem right when you find the right path where life feels like the best of all possible worlds. How we choose to see the world also affects our view of ourselves. Seeing Nature as a problem could create a different image of the self from the image created by having faith in Nature. I noticed that people who are comfortable with the world around them tend to be comfortable with themselves.
Years ago, while walking down a beach in Florida, I realized the potential for everything. Desires unlock a door to a universe full of objects. Accept the object to know yourself as objectified. The next day, I got pizza and a large Coke. After discovering the universe, the body needs junk food. Certainly, we should not eat the produced corruption of consumer culture. Junk food is the body and blood of industrialized Western civilization, but I can’t resist putting it into my body to become integrated with the collective.
An old advertisement calls Coke the real thing. The hyperreality of advertising media created this illusion of the real. Every culture has its way of teaching people how to behave, and people try to fit the social behavior expected of them. Cultures even modify our feelings, and traditions transform us into a desiring machine. The modern consumer culture makes people want the products at Wal-Mart. It sure seems real while holding a Coke can in my hand. It tastes good, yet maybe unhealthy, and definitely real. Usually, the body will take care of itself and only crave what it needs. Still, business people designed Coke to seduce you, and this changes the situation when this unnatural pleasure produces problems. Junk food makes us crave junk. Normally, people should do whatever feels good; let us make an exception in this situation. Avoid civilized products, even if the products seem to feel good. Surely, the world has better stuff, and the right healthy environment would allow feelings to benefit health. The wrong situation allows feelings to mislead you.
Some philosophers think the part of you that can do philosophy is God. Some poets think the part of you that can do poetry is God. Some mathematicians think God is math. These people are trying to connect whatever they do with the biggest of the big. Sometimes, people call these superpowers to help them when they feel down. They are probably lying to themselves. So what is the Animal? It is not necessarily biology or culture. It is part of a third category. Let us call it Grace. It was made by everything, and it lives in you. It was written in the stars and grows here on Earth. Do not confuse this part of you with more than what it needs to be, and do not assume it is less than what can be. The mind is always looking for strategies that seem to work. The mind finds itself inside the nature of Nature. Your mind began this discovery before you were born when you first moved around inside your mother; the discovery is the kind of person you are. The Animal makes you natural. There is nothing supernatural about it.
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