Be yourself....be good

[Gorgo]

Objectively better if you want certain things. If you appreciate clean lungs you won't smoke. That has nothing to do with any kind of morality handed down by god, just a decision that you'd prefer to be healthy.

All I'm saying is that it's fine to say that everything is subjective, but there is an objective reality and the choices made effect that objective reality. I don't think you're disagreeing with that, I just think it's important to say it while we're saying that everything is subjective.

Originally posted by Phil Free, a life unquestions is a life unquestioned, nothing more, nothing less. It is neither objectively better or worse than well thought out life. It's all subjective, is the point.

[Phil Free]

Originally posted by Gorgo, Objectively better if you want certain things. If you appreciate clean lungs you won't smoke. That has nothing to do with any kind of morality handed down by god, just a decision that you'd prefer to be healthy. All I'm saying is that it's fine to say that everything is subjective, but there is an objective reality and the choices made effect that objective reality. I don't think you're disagreeing with that, I just think it's important to say it while we're saying that everything is subjective.

Yep, you're right. But we're still pretty much dealing in the subjectivity area, sort of Objectively, if you want healthy lungs, it's better to not smoke. But it is not objectively better to not smoke (period). But I know what you're saying

[randall patrick]

Phil:

I think the only thing we dissagree on is what we consider "Authentic." Like I said, authenticity doesn't matter much when you die. But it matters to me. And again, like I said, only I can decide what "authenticity" entails... there are no absolutes here, unless I want there to be.

RP:

Authenticity is like everything else: we take out of it what we first put into it: an existentially persuasive and essentially absurd and meaningless "self". In other words, it is situated circumstantially, contextually. The context being our own particular life as it evolves from the cradle to the grave. Being "authentic" matters because in interacting with others we want them to respond to us...to see us in a way that will engender reactions we feel more comfortable with. But if you put 10 different people in the same room to discuss it, it may well come to mean 10 different things. And all it takes is a tumble into an existential landslide to reconfigure our own rendition into a conflicting [or even contradictory] point of view. The crucial point being that authenticity is always fluid and flexible. One size does not fit all.

Phil:

The problem with existentialism IMO is that, really, it solves little. It's like "hunting for a fugitive while banging on a drum." It creates more questions, and more questions, and more questions - without ever really answering much. It's really, (again IMO) simply very intelligent but go-nowhere fluff - if taken into a constant cycle of over-intellectualizing. Seems to me the more we know the less we understand - Truth is always one step ahead of us, and to chase the infinite with the finite (the limited human mind) is recklessness.

RP:

Existentialism is a method for dealing with the madness [or what can be perceived as the madness] of human interaction in an absurd and meaningless world. Authenticity thus revolves not around what you choose to believe or how you choose to live but in acknolwedging how in a Godless universe all choices are ultimately [essentially] interchangable. How are we to live in such a world---a world in which any moral or political agenda can be rationalized as authethic? This is what Camus and Sartre grappled with ferociously respecting the [at times] brutal relationship between the individual and history and political economy. There is no Right or Wrong way...no Authentic way in which live. But you must choose if you choose to live around others because that inherently involves conflict.

Phil:

One more little story fragment comes to mind: a very intelligent philosopher and mathematician was taking a ferry across a large river, all the while expounding on his many theories and the theories of others to the ferryman, when the ferry sprung a leak. Both the ferryman and the philosopher panicked, and the ferryman, just before leaping into the river said, "I hope for all your studying you didn't forget to learn how to swim..."

RP:

This brings to mind how ultimately irrelevant philosophers are in this world. If tomorrow every philosopher on the planet were to vanish, aside from their family and friends, who would notice? The overwhelming preponderance of folks out there in the world are preoccupied with what really counts---earning a living, raising kids, sustaining a family, interacting as citizens, looking for love...and satisfying all those primordial wants and needs and desires that make us what we really are: naked apes.

Randall Patrick