Today has kind of been a rough day. I've done nothing but fight with myself all day long. Now that I'm out of my house, I forgot my jacket at home so I'm freezing when I'm outside. It doesn't matter though, hipothermia is a myth created by the summer lovers to make us winter lovers be all heavy when we go out.
Anthony asked me to write down my philosophy, because, in the end, he's a "Letters" guy, unlike me, a "Sciences" guy who prefers much more arrows and organization.
So, let's fucking start with it.
So, let's start with this shit. Our philosophy teacher of this year introduced our course by talking about Parmenides and Heraclitus, and the Parmenides' problem with change. She even read a fun paragraph from a book (I should ask her the name). My solution to the problem is what I call "histeme".
Histeme is the fundamental composition of the universe, it's inmortal, indestructible, and irreplaceable. Everything, matter, energy, dark matter, antimatter, all of it is just histeme behaving in different ways between itself. Why? Because histeme has infinite variables, all making up it's definition. So, the solution to the Parmenides' problem is that histeme is inmortal, yet, it's variables can change.
This takes us to how the universe was created. Initially, there was a "State of Nothing", in which all histeme is undefined. This complete indefinition made it so the universe was disorganized, in such fundamental levels, like, for example, two pieces of histeme sharing the same position, aka same variable.
This superposition caused the universe to go "Ok, so what the fuck?" and start organizing itself, kickstarting change. Change made time start running, and so, the universe as we know it was born. Slowly, the universe is organizing itself, and the past order is what rules in the future. Imagine it like a bookshelf, that you put books in. You're not going back to revise the books that are already organized, you just keep putting more into the bookshelf.
When the universe finally reaches its perfect state, where all the histeme is organized, time stops, since there's no more changes to be done. This is called the "State of Everything". And so, time goes undefined. And this causes a reaction in all of the universe, making all the variables go undefined too. Imagine the bookshelf from before, and you finally have no more books to put in it. Suddenly, the bookshelf falls down from the weight, disorganizing the books again.
The universe, therefore, is a loop, where it goes through a state of organization, and when it's finally organized, it all crashes down. That doesn't mean life in earth is determined!! Like a lot of authors believe. Humans have free will, but, since we can't change histeme, we actually can't do anything to change this cycle. Can a butterfly trapped in a box still cause a hurricane?
To end metaphysics, I'll put a pin on potential. Each object, each piece of histeme, has the ability to change in some ways, naturally, under different conditions. For example, an apple can go from young, to ripe, to rotten. And the potential is what the object will become under the present circumstances and it's capacities.
Update: So Wheatley told me to specify what the potential was. Each object has capacities, the capacity to change in different ways, by itself. For example, a seed can either grow or stay the same. But, it also had potential, and this potential depends on the circumstances the object is in. For example, the seed from before has those capacities, but when it's buried in a healthy and moistened soil, its potential is to grow, but if it's in a desert, its potential is to stay the same.
Before we go down to Epistemology, we gotta do a small stop at Anthropology, because the way we are made is essential to the way we know the world.
Okay, so the human is divided in 5 total parts:
Now we enter with Epistemology. As histeme is made up of variables, we, as humans, can only get signals to get a glimpse into those variables. The steps to get knowledge are:
So, there's like a constant back and forth with the signals, which makes up all our life. And everyone has different enviroments, minds and capacities, so that means everyone knows in a different way.
How do we know what an object is?
DAMN, I almost forgot one of the most important parts. Aristotle and Plato's problem of universals and particulars! I'm in philosophy class studying Kant.
Look, I lean towards the Aristotelian solution, but instead of establishing 45,000 types of change to separate different objects, I use the variables that the histeme has. For example:
And that's how we differentiate between objects, they have different variables, and they can be any of those. Now, if we know how to differentiate particulars... how do we know universals? Well, by establishing concepts, or ideas, as the Platonists call them. None of that World of Ideas stuff, we simply take a bunch of variables and give them a label, we give them a name. For example, imagine an orange. Buddy, at least I associate these things with the concept "orange":
Orange:
And the same with all concepts. Each person associates different variables with different concepts, and it's through dialogue that we agree on variables for a single concept.
The Paradox of Infinite Knowledge: See, variables are infinite. We could, for example, classify a bunch of grass blades in a lawn. You could classify them by hue of green, length... or amount of Honda Accords they own! What tells you that one of them doesn't? Or, maybe, length, but instead of in centimeters, on light years. This incredible variability of variables makes the variables that you can know infinite, and so, you can't know everything, because, you would have to know EVERYTHING (and we can't even grasp that concept.
The Bubble Theory: Each human in this Earth has a bubble. A bubble of knowledge. It slowly expands as the person knows more and more, with their individual knowledge. But, if every person has different enviroments, how can we agree when something's true or not? That's how we get to collective knowledge.
How do we get collective knowledge? Well, each one of us has bubbles, yes, but that doesn't mean two different bubbles have the knowledge of one thing. Sure, the perspective is not the same, but the variables are. What do we do, then? Easy, we speak, and try to agree on a collective truth. That's it. What we agree is what we think is true, and so, it is true. Let's say for example, that there's a thing called Grablglagar. And this grablglagar is made of bookiediavinium. Do you agree? If yes, well, we now share a truth, a collective truth. That's how the world works. It's not a perfect system, but that's the only way we can even remotely agree on something.
Also, I have to add, imposing your views in someone else won't change what they think is true or not. The only way they can is by making them agree.
This is why I include the enviroment into the parts of a human! The bubble each person has has so many ways in changing a person's life, to the point where it can be the only difference between two people.
Let's continue, and return to Anthropology.
Now, returning to the human, I'll first take the senses, the limbs and the instinct and group them all into one, the body. So we have three parts of the human, the body, the mind, and the environment.
Let's start comparing a bit! After all, Plato had three body parts, which he represented with the myth of the Chariot, Aristotle had three bodily functions, and like that, I have those three parts. And like Plato, the three of them are fighting for control, but there's a key difference with Plato.
You see, I've come to the realization that unlike Plato says, that there's one single unruly part, the three parts are in constant fighting.
Update: I also wanted to add, the mind is not capable of evil by itself. The mind, in fact, has empathy preinstalled. Why? Well, the body, for one, only cares about itself. If we didn't have a mind, we would be fully selfish and not care about the necessities of others if they hinder ours. It's the mind, that sees the pattern between itself and the other person which has empathy. And it's not just with people, with animals too. Our mind sees variables in it and says "Huh, we're not so different", and then, rationally, gives us the sensation of empathy out of our likeness with that person, animal, character or even object. The mind only does evil if it pleases the body or the enviroment and it's working for them.
How should you act in this constant struggle? Well, that's how we get to the...
When we talk about the struggle of the human, we inherently talk about suffering. It's easy, and I already explained it in another entry. We humans ask ourselves: "Why aren't we perfect?" And it's from the suffering that we have, we become perfect to our eyes, patching up our imperfections, or erasing them.
Update: Okay, so I forgot one of the most important parts about suffering. All of these perfection is actually just perceived. So, it's never true perfection, just us feeling like it is. And so, there's always an "enough" level of perfection for us. For example, if you feel your nails are not to your liking, that's an imperfection, but if you don't feel like cutting them, then you just solved that imperfection by ignoring it. And you will never have perfect nails for everyone, and exactly like you would like them, but there's a level of perfection in which you say "Okay, I like it." and you stop suffering.
This suffering, amd this question of "Why aren't we perfect?" is caused by the fight between the three sides of the human. Body, environment and mind try to take over completely, erasing the other from existence. We should favor the mind, because, as it is the rational part, is the only one that best understands what is good for you, not completely, but best. Still, erasing one of the two parts is impossible, and that is not bad, because even the mind needs a limit. You could do something fruitless, and the enviroment would stop you, or autodestructive, and the body would stop you. It's a balance in which the mind should thrive and the body and enviroment be limiters to it.
This is incredibly important. The human is destined to suffer, and it's thruough this suffering in which finally we can find meaning and purpose. We shouldn't avoid the suffering, but we shouldn't embrace it and accept it either. The point is not to stay in the hole and make it your new home. The point is to get out, and when you look down, you smile proudly at your advance.
Each step of suffering will force you to find a why to keep moving forward. And it's that why which makes us keep going, and it's crucial to have one for any person.
Now, taking the epistemology into account, there's one principle that rules over all. Since the bubbles of everyone are different, you can't know what is good for that person. Not even that person may know at times, so how would you? So, the imposition of values, actions or morals is completely and utterly unjustifiable, and wrong. This means, the best path for you to take is to help others, or at least, not intervening.
As stated earlier, each person has a potential (remember I pinned it for later?). And each individual should strive to reach the maximum potential for itself, finding happiness in the process. Reaching your maximum potential while being happy has a name, and it's called "personal realization".
So, in summary, and uniting all those principles, I state: "Acting morally means trying to reach your self realization while helping others find theirs."
A note I would like to give:
Economic Ethics: Like we said earlier, intervening in another person's life is wrong, which means that the best and only moral economic system is Free- market capitalism. Yay!
Look, I have a very strong beef with the Catholic church. I personally am an atheist, and it's obvious that I try to make my philosophy atheistic. But there's no way a God can exist! Of any kind, of any religion (at least the monotheistic ones). The main examples of monotheistic religions (the Abrahamic ones, because I'm not going to get into investigating weird Asian religions) define their god as an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient being, meaning they can do everything and know everything.
The problem is, what is everything? Because to know an EVERYTHING, well, you would have to know, as I said before, how many Honda Accords each blade of grass has, but not only that, which is already an absurd amount of knowledge, but also, you would have to know how to say it in Nahuatl, and taking into account all possible time, including what hasn't happened yet. That is, you have to be outside of time, but if you're outside of time, you can't be histeme, and if histeme is everything that exists, then you don't exist.
Furthermore, the Abrahamic religions add that this God is benevolent, but there are clearly many Bible stories where God intervenes against an individual's will, and as I demonstrated that he can't know everything if he exists, his intervention is immoral.
Update: I wanna add to the God Problem that my model perfectly can suit any other God, just that not the abrahamic God. I made this part just because I have beef with the catholic church, and that makes me believe that no god must exist, or makes itself present in any way, and if it exists, I don't wanna worship it because it's probably evil anyway.
You saw it coming. I'm a dirty libertarian, you should have seen it coming miles away. The politics that exist in the world are in an triangle, mirroring the three parts of the human, and in each political system, one of the parts rules over the others.
The problem with all these models is, subduing two of the three parts of the human body is impossible, so, what happens is that implementing any of the models listed here ideally is impossible. But, like said before in ethics, the most moral action would be maximizing freedom, which means, the most moral and efficient model for every individual is Minarchy. Note that the state of Minarchy is still inmoral, but it has a small justification, which is that it serves the job of what the body and the enviroment do for the human body, limiting everything to go out of control into chaos.
Now, Marx had it kind of right about something, but not quite. He says that history is marked by class struggle. While it's true, he often gives riches a much deeper importance that it really has. The real division between the classes is violence, and how they may use it, and it is like that how it all finally fits. All of history is determined by who controls violence, and who has the power to use it.
So, we can divide the classes into three now:
Think about it! Every big advancement we have had since the invention of agriculture has either been related to war, connected to war directly, or used for weapons to better wage that war. Suddenly, the whole hostory of the world makes sense, as the ideological facade comes to crumble. There was nothing different between Mao, Stalin, or any medieval king. The framework was the same, who used violence to control a certain patch of land with an iron fist. Violence is the common denominator between all regimes.
Marx thought of history and classes being defined by wealth. But his ideological views were higher than his reason, so he overlooked the state he defended completely. There were nobles, for example, that got less wealth than rich merchants. What's the difference then, between classes? Were suddenly those nobles the underdogs? The proletariats? No, because apart from a fancy title, what differentiated the noble from the rich bourgeois is that the noble could kill someone and say it was in the name of the king, and would probably be spared. The bourgeois didn't have that power.
As I stated earlier, the framework of my philosophy makes capitalism the most moral of systems. So, not only did Marx get it wrong, Marx got it completely flipped! He says that our world is inherently run by wealth, when it's run by violence, and he says we should end the reign of wealth, when actually, the reign of wealth is the most ethical and efficient system!
You see, as the Austrian School of Economics teaches us, money is voice, the voice you earn in the market as you produce value. So, inherently, it distributes the voice of each person according to their potential, that is, their capacity and decisions. If we embrace a system run by wealth an not by violence, we would be killing two birds on one stone, those two birds being the state and any monopoly or accomplices of the state. We should strive for a world where violence isn't needed for human organization, instead, basing human existence in consent and agreement. That world is called "Anarchism". To sum it all up in a single phrase, like the marxists did with theirs: "The history of the world is a history of violent domination and the struggle to transcend it."
One thing I can see coming. I don't overlook soft power. The accomplices are in charge of controlling soft power (media, religion, knowledge...), that's why normally they stick tight to the state, the violent director. Any changes brought with soft power came either from fear of violence, or from a struggle in the directors' control. For example, the civil rights movement was also accompanied by more radical groups like the Black Panthers. The indian Gandhi movement came because of a radicalized population and the incapacity of Britain to crush the situation, both of those examples paired with a pacifist leader. Those changes happened in the right circumstances in which a change can occur not with violence as a base, but certainly a playing factor. A movement done only with soft power ends up as the Sunday Massacre before the 1905 revolution in Russia.
The Spanish-American War is the best example of the interaction between the three classes of my model. Let's go through them one by one:
Directors:
Accomplices:
Oppressed:
Well, they were the ones who rose up and died, what do you want me to tell you.
So, in this political and historical framework, there's a necessity to redefine anarchism, since some may see the inclusion of capitalism as inherently contradictory. So, let's redefine it:
Anarchism: "A political model based on consent, and the absence of force, or any institutions based on coercion."
That's it. That's what it is. And, you see, this could very well include capitalism or not. If you and your friends want to, you could go to an island and make your communist utopia. But, since there would be no imposition involved, all trade you wanted to do would follow the subjective theory of value, and all transactions would be agreed upon. In essence, eliminating all coercion eliminates interventionism, and so, it would be a market so free that it would organize in what we could call "free market capitalism", but one so free, I can't even grasp how it would work, I'm getting a freedom overload.
I guess that's it. I started this in the 8th and finished it in the 10th. I still left off a lot, so I'll update it more and more.