Morality, Existentialism and the Social Dialectic

Morality is what people actually do and consider philosophically, in the abstract,  what the correct patterns or responses to stimuli behaviorally are. Apparently some wish to posit innate moral principles as if they were microcode written in to a cpu while development of more complex moral code from assembler language installed by a program designer permits higher- level languages of moral development as maturity occurs.

Personal choices for intervention occur in a criterion that deserves circumspection.

I like Jean Paul Sartre's Critique of DIalectical Reason quite a bit. It is a large and ponderous book yet the core of it is fairly simple and applies to morality in my opinion, as well or better than to epistemology.

It is a continuation of the existentialist work Being and Nothingness. That book describes the individual point of view of life and notes the reef of solipsism each individual exists within. The Critique describes how so many individuals interact socially- dialectically in life, in various settings; i.e. factories, colonies etc.

Individuals born into existence experience reality and learn to communicate in it. The existential experience of the social dialectic involves learning feedback rules of its operations and of what works. The social dialectic for-itself develops the most effective rule structure. People may form their own opinions about it- and of course they are doomed to do so actually. yet the social dialectic is not within any individual except as it might be compared to electrical current from a phenomenal source that no individual encompasses.

Like evolution paradigms that exists outside any particular species or individual, the social dialectic and its causality exists beyond the total control of individuals or determinist actions. Individuals and organizations may affect change to the social dialectic yet the responsive new state may have  (the time factor) changes different than those intended by agents of change.

Physical beings seeking to exist find physical conditions within which they need conform or perish. One cannot survive jumping into strontium 90 in a pool of sharks from the top of a 100 story building without a parachute (or with). Physical characteristics of being evolved in a species have some behavioral and learning capacities innately (original sin is the problem of temporal and entropic beingness). One may regard innate behavior and learning characteristics as moral behavior, in the sense that the behavior is what people generally actually do.

While existing, individuals and society may seek to upgrade their moral or behavioral tool-kit. That is the general good of society, and seeking the general good, is a continuum project. One may find instances of individuals, groups and even nations that require intervention; individuals phenomenally challenged to make responses for the general good may choose to do so for sundry subjective reasons (including Aretaic and Christian ethics). In any case the empirical environment is small enough globally that failure to make the right 'moral' choices and evaluations of what the best implementation is or opportunity for increasing the general good is, may have proximal, adverse responses (examples are global warming, mass species extinction and reform of capitalism to reinforce egalitarianism, competition and environmental economics).

Even when individuals reply to particular situations to change a state of affairs toward a recognizably better end, it may be a futile action for various reasons, and the entire circumstance perhaps should be changed. The Millennial Project of the U.N. to make Africa produces a little more food might have worked to improve things a bit yet wasn't funded adequately. When entire systems are corrupt or ineffective, when challenges for change are great and intellectually challenging to entire social classes; that is strange to behold, and one understands better the experience of philosophical phenomenalism that does perhaps become more the social norm than existentialism, in the aftermath of events of great mass destruction (such as WW II).

Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason describes the way individuals interact collectively- each from within their own existential perspective. Societies do evolve their own moral behaviors adapted to the circumstances. The social dialectic is itself an ongoing construction and one might go so far as to call it an ossified praxis continuing to add on and morph the way numbers do. Natural numbers, rational numbers, real numbers etc.

Individuals do not choose to create the social dialectic; they encounter it phenomenally. Each soul lives within their own reef of solipsism; Sartre wrote that he would need the power of God to view himself through the eyes and mind of the other while remaining himself. Like signs posted along a highway the social dialectic pre-exists one's birth (one might infer).

I.M.O the social dialectic exists because people are social beings. Reproduction, food consumption and so forth are necessary for the continuum of human beingness to exist. Like trophic orders around a waterhole human beings have evolved rules and customary practices of behavior to allow their interactive bio-mass to continue to exist. 

Today the social dialectic of the human biomass is partially dysfunctional; many have problems in understanding that concatenated individual behaviors and practices may not work or keep the world ecosystem viable though for individuals the practices may not be in themselves harmful. If Archie Bunker's car won't destroy life on Earth through greenhouse gassing, he cannot understand that a billion cars might. The social dialectic that exists to allow human community in positive defensive struggle against the environment and other distal groups is maladapted toward protecting the environment itself for the benefit of the group. That is an economic method and moral challenge.

A Comment on Consequentialism

Consequentialism is, as was noted, a form of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism does have rules (rule based utilitarianism) that those with that moral system need to use universally. It is comparable to the course concept of deontological moral systems.

A rule-based utilitarian would rigorously work for the greatest good for the greatest number and crush resistance to the happiness of the majority, even when the majority are delusional concerning what happiness is, if that were possible (in a kind of emotional equivalence of superficial Epicureanism). A rule based consequentialist perhaps could be said to be willing to use any premises (antecedent) that would yield the conclusion (consequent).

Consequentialism is more along the lines of act-based utilitarianism instead of rule-based utilitarianism. Unfortunately the evaluation of consequents render the consequent subject to value interpretation concerning the nature of what is good and what isn't etc. Socrates brought out those themes in his dialogues.

Deontology follows from ontology. Philosophers use those as variables these days in language and logic. The late W.V.O. Quine wrote a collection of essay-lectures on Creative Ontology. Ontologies may be regarded as linguistic sets with premises from which rules may be inferred. One may of course structure an ontology such that its rules are variable, although when determined, or decohered from a coherent set of premises (as in quantum uncertainty), one using the ontology must need follow the steady state or thick inferences/conclusions regarding moral right or wrongness. In a sense, that is analogous to fundamental syllogistic logic whereby valid premises generally yield valid conclusions .

Should U.S. Rep's Tlaib and Omar Be Democrats First?

It is something of a paradox that U.S. Representatives against abortion, homosexual marriage and ostensibly at least, something else that some people do, should be elected as Democrats. If a white, straight male were to run with anti-abortion, anti-homosexual marriage planks he very likely wouldn't finish first in a Democratic primary. So what is the secret ingredient that got the two Muslims elected you might ask. The answer is simple; they are women.

Running with a non-Christian, foreign-centered religion is popular with godless, pro-abortion, pro-dope, pro-homosexual marriage, neo-socialist Democrat Party voters. It is probable that Reps Tlaib and Omar, that may be regarded as the Twin Towers of Islam in America, are also against legal dope. Of course they could have practiced Taqiyya to fool trubes in the Dar al Harb . Alternatively they might actually be pro-dope, pro-homosexual/lesbian, evolving pro-abortion Muslims.

For some political observers the Twin Towers should be regarded as conservatives. To Democrats they are liberals perhaps for being anti-establishment, anti-insider. So were Osama Bin Ladin and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.

FBI image of KSM

Democrats evidently would like to establish a strong Islamic base in the U.S.A. as an opposition group to insiders. It is possible that Mormons could innovate some sort of requirement that worships bow toward Salt Lake City twice a day in order to upgrade their competition with those genuflecting toward Mecca. Academia in America prefers the Asian religions since they believe the yin-yang of things avoids conflict. Day and night may not be in conflict however they are mutually exclusive except within twilight zones.
Democrats seem fundamentally confused and contradictory regard several key party positions and approaches to foreign and domestic policy. Asian religious criteria would require them to harmonize things a little better and that would be in fundamental contradiction to heir implicit predilection for conflict under the key example of Marxist dialectical clash/clash/synthesis.


Maybe the internal Muslim proletariat will start being converted to Republicanism and stand more clearly in opposition to socialism; they general have in the Middle East.

Temporal Cross Currents; free download

This science fiction book of mine; Temporal Cross Currents, is now free to download in epub.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/temporal-cross-currents/ebook/product-24053292.html

The Marines; the Too Many, etc.

Fighting against Marines might be compared to something in The Alien II? Marines have become too large of a military element in an era with zero ship to ship individual combat fighting (they used to board like pirates swinging on ropes (or Brits) I would guess) and very few beach landings. Vietnam was a cluster F without National Guard support and too many different military elements working bureaucratically at cross purposes.

Marines convey an impression of having a nearly sociopathic demeanor; if the Robert Hare test were given to the several military branches the Marines would probably score highest. Sometimes it is useful to throw the more wild element at the enemy.

There are numerous marine fighting forces in the world. Poland has Marines that are an elite force. Taiwan, Britain and other nations have elite special forces. Russian has naval infantry. I wonder if they are not rather similar in outlook and job performance?

There was a good book written about 1994 about a European war with Russia that was quite realistic. Marines took huge casualties in getting onto the beach and inland. Explosives all around, there is something rather unnatural required of individuals to be in a naval vessel and then landing craft (personally I like to be on deck and see the horizon in troubled waters) before hitting the beach for war in a fight to get a few miles inland. Very tough.

Modern tactical technology is advancing so well- especially with A.I. and drones, that the prospects for battle with underdeveloped countries and forces where Marines might use more ancient military techniques are the best for that. When did people use satellites and saturated air surveillance of individual units during general wars in times past?

I.M.O. the Marines should be downgraded to more of a dedicated rapid response force for land and sea while a new Black Ops force equivalent to the Russian Spetznatz should be started with excess qualified Marines transferred into it. Marines are not airborne enough presently, nor appropriately socialized for a large Black Ops unconventional warfare unified force structure such as might have been used to intervene in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. I am quite skeptical of troop transport helicopters and Ospreys in modern combat with peer nations; personal ground to air missiles fly quite a bit faster.

The United States and World Civilization

The United States of itself isn’t a civilization. The historian Arnold Toynbee in his final work; Mankind and Mother Earth, provided the opinion that there is just one world civilization remaining on the planet. In his earlier A Study of History, Toynbee studied the civilizations of world history; their rise and fall, to discover similar challenges and responses they encountered in their life cycles. Toynbee believed Western Civilization overcame the remaining others predominantly and merged with them into one world civilization.

Human ideas are shared as was and is technology. The practice of tool kit crossing the globe is as ancient as mankind’s expansion and development. For example, Karl Marx was a Jewish westerner and his ideas became politically influential throughout the globe. Marx was a student of G.W.. Hegel who was in turn the author of the philosophical time The Phenomenology of Mind. Hegelian evolution was modeled in some respects on Christian millennialism stages across history evolving to a pre-determined end. Karl Marx thus got his ideas indirectly from a Hegelian and therefore Christian paradigm ironically. Those philosophical ideas as well as those of Adam Smith were not inventions of the arrested Muslim civilization or the Chinese.

Ideas are shared regardless of their later failure to live up to their initial and optimistic prospects. Corrections to wrong ideas are shared too. Civilization mines ideas the way extraction industries prospect for minerals and oil; globally. Ideas from every culture are sought and brought in to world civilization thought not inevitably with appropriate measure. The United States continues to be greatly influential, as should many nations that keep a sovereign identity though existing within an ad hoc and informal world civilization with an existential political ontology of a common language.

The United States could evolve to a lack of cohesive national identity and that would be a world loss. With the right ecospheric infrastructure leadership by example the prospects for reversing net loss of habitat, mass species extinction and global warming would rise solidly. Nations can be experimental laboratories as were states in the young United States. Instead of forcing a global mono-culture under one overweening dictatorship of world governing authority, nations that are able to control capitalism enough to serve national democracy and political self-determination can show by example with the will of voters to adapt economic and life style modes to the empirical environmental challenges of the day.

World civilization can assuredly end from a variety of causes along with life on Earth including human. Whatever political direction humanity chooses fate could contradict or enhance destructively wrong choices to accelerate the final days of mankind. Reason would indicate that intentional rectification of wrong economic methods that have outgrown the environment is an obligation and duty for political leaders. Yet good human leadership is the challenge. It is so difficult to find leadership with enough experience and education to guide humanity onto a better egalitarian course.

United States’ Foreign Policy Bungled Iran and Russia Relations

Americans have a foreign policy of never admitting error or unforeseen policy drift and that can be costly. There were reasons the United States choose to orchestrate a coup against Iran’s lawfully elected Prime Minister during the Eisenhower administration. The Shah was restored and decades of antipathy followed.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/10/pompeo-rand-paul-iran-war-1266526

The Shah restored was the son of an ersatz Shah whom had been a military officer before making himself Shah in a minor Napoleonic redux. The United States until the overthrow of the Shah tended to regard Iranians as a little inferior. Iranians that worked in hospitals for Americans weren't allowed treatment in them. Oil and gas exploitation as well as keeping communists at bay were the prime interests in Iran. Iranian sensibilities were trampled. The United States never understood that it created much of it’s future problems with Iran.

The left supported the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution against the Shah as he and the secret police agency SAVAK were soundly hated. When the Ayatollah took over the communists were liquidated directly. They made a wrong choice of who to support in that revolution.

With Russia, the United States just failed to recognize historical Russian interests in or ownership of the Ukraine and Crimea. The Obama administration and President Bush before threw away the opportunity given with God’s grace and President Reagan to end the cold war with the Soviet Union and establish a friendly democracy in Russia. The left in the United States soundly hates Russia in response to the end of communism and socialism and have sought to restore the Cold War relationship with it- largely with success. The left hate Donald Trump as an unrepentant capitalist and Russia for for giving up socialism.

Those policies were errors and reinforced with accusations against Russia and Iran. The dynamic in Washington are to hate both nations by either Democrats and Republicans or both at various times. The media is for and against the bifurcated policy ineptitude that is their own.

The Military-Industrial complex probably doesn’t need a Cold War with Russia to stimulate weapons development and sales for China alone is enough to keep that business growing (China is perceived as a long-range threat as well as business partner- another odd policy).

Because the left have been attacking President Trump for years trying to show that he is in collusion with President Putin or associates to be elected, the President hasn’t been realistically able to increase friendly relations with Russia. President Putin has utilized the opportunity to send military forces to Venezuela to reinforce a corrupt socialist President. President Putin likes the tropical products in Moscow, can use a base close to the U.S. in the event the United States increases adverse relations to the brink of war, and knows the left in the United States won’t be too critical because he is after all supporting a socialist regime.

When the American intelligence establishment is so uncreative and maladroit, one wonders how people muddle through these things without megadeath. American leaders seem to be playing two-dimensional chess on a three dimensional holographic board.

Clean Up After Oil in Alberta; $70 Billion

Alaskans should think twice about allowing big oil to sprawl across the state, If Alberta can be used as an example, the estimated cost of $70 billion to clean up 100,000 wells and remediate another 3000 could be more than the value of the Permanent Fund.

Extraction industry businesses as corporation can go bankrupt or sell to a shell corporation and leave the public holding the bag on clean up costs sometimes required by Federal or State law. With oil and gas being greenhouse accelerating items a better investment for Alaska would be in the field of hydrogen fuel cells, wind and solar (and geothermal if it is safe enough). Fracking and water pollution are additional concerns regarding oil.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/orphan-wells-alberta-aldp-aer-1.5089254

M87 Black Hole Pic Resembles My Solar Eclipse Photo

I took some low-quality pictures of the solar eclipse last summer that resemble the black hole event horizon at the center of the M87 galaxy just published. The black hole at least eclipse the space beyond.

(Image credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration)

Democrats Lack Loyalty, Purity and Respect

I am learning about some of the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats aka Conservatives and Liberals. In a free online course from Yale University named Moralities of Everyday Life.

There are five fundemental elements of morality that are mentioned in the course. Those are
1) harm-care
2) fairness-reciprocity
3) in-group loyalty
4) authority-respect
5) purity-sanctity

Liberals are said to value the first two elements and downgrade the latter three while conservatives are fair and balanced and regard all five equally.

I should point out that the course has a moderately leftist center of balance. A unstated assumption is that God isn't active or existent. Science is godless and thus its investigations need start from the point of view of godless objectivity. Unfortunately that may be wrong with those blinders on.

There was a portrayal of Immanuel Kant as the prime representative of deontological morality (as opposed to moral relativism or consequentialism that is an offspring of act-based utilitarianism). Kant's essential value to philosophers was in epistemology more so than morality.  

In the Bible wicked is the term used for what we call evil. Natural disasters are called evil. Another nit to pick is the use of the word sin. To sin means to miss the mark of, as in archery. Sin means people are going off course, wrong and perhaps finally so. It is not a simple list of bad or permissible acts.

Kant of course felt he could infer moral systems from epistemological considerations; inaccurately I guess. What was remarkable about Kant was his delineation of perception, reasoning and knowledge into three categories regarding what is known or can be known; epistemology.

The course has a good Yale Prof of Psychology inquiring into the nature of what morality is. Some in the field would like to find a scientific basis of morality. Even inquiring into innate moral laws reminds me of Marcus Tullius Cicero's Treatise on Natural Law. Nothing new in that. It is quite possible to make erroneous judgments regarding observation of experimental results concerning causality and the criterion of occurrence.

Anyway to make short work of this note, and to the point. Liberals aka Democrats are against authority and establishment, haven't loyalty to the United States and want existential change because they regard themselves as impure. Dirtycrats were thus pro-homo marriage. They usurped a rational heterosexual role and put on that dress for-themselves in an effort to remove the stains of impurity.

Democrats were for the malfeasant Obamacare because of concern about harm to the down-dogs. The rash Obamacare missed the mark of creating a free national health care walk-in system for the poor and those middle-class untouchables denied insurance coverage because of pre-exiting conditions. All that needed to be done was to expand the V.A. Hospital system and link it with poor peoples clinics around the nation and screen prospective patients through a worker's comp kind of interview.

Democrats are against border security, job security and pragmatic national democracy because it isn't socialist enough and they are disloyal and hate the insider-group that is already here. Democrats prefer to revolt to put the down-dogs on the top through radical change. So it is easy to understand Democrats.

That party and the Republicans lack education sufficient to bring about ecological economic reform. 

I have enjoyed the course thus far. The content seems to lack philosophical depth in understanding ontologies (see W.V.O. Quine) and epistemology. Another common error is to fail historical knowledge concerning civilization and its changes. Yet another is the lack of solid theological education such that they comprehend the facts about Christianity, meaningfully. It is much deeper than they view it ordinarily.

I would guess that at some point moral considerations should include mention of the role of mass agents of socialization in foisting new moral balances upon the people of the United States. The very rich own the broadcast media and train the public to accept the moral norms they program them with.