I've never had an issue valuing my life knowing that it has no eternally persistent meaning. A poor analogy, but I like to explain a finite life's meaning by asking if a movie is any less enjoyable knowing that it's going to end.
Sure, eventually our existence is rendered meaningless but that doesn't make it meaningless for me, now. Call that an illusion if you want, but it's as concrete as anything you can prove. Besides, what would a "not-ultimately-meaningless" existence look like? I haven't heard any proposals that sound appealing to me.
In a certian way of thinking, an externally persistent meaning is just an enforcement mechanism for slavery. When people talk about wanting to serve something bigger than themselves, they are implying that they aren't worth serving, that they can only achieve value by contributing to something, anything which is not like themselves. Is this personal devaulation necessary for a satisfying life?
Another attitude is to embrace existence as we come into it, to love ourselves as we are. We can still love other people and things that are not like us. Appreciation for the world can even be enhanced by beginning with embracing ourselves as we are because we're part of the world and it's part of us. When we make the world a better place, we make our world a better place. Selfish behavior is almost always short-sighted behavior. When we expand our perception of the universe, the difference between self and other is weaker than it might seem.
>Selfish behavior is almost always short-sighted behavior.
Only with the assumption that leaving the world in a "better" state (and bearing in mind opinions differ wildly on what that means) is the correct thing to do in terms of value/meaning.
Like, to the extremist - violent pursuit of their ideology gives their lives meaning. Vilifying selfishness is a weird position to my mind.
I'm not trying to villify selfishness, only address the criticism that usually follows this kind of statement. People look at any philosophy that says love yourself first and say it's just embelished selfishness, self-worship, narcisissm. They imagine it might lead to a Mad Max style dystopia of perpetual war.
There's a time for destroying and rebuilding things, but the kind of hostility that people usually associate with selfishness like corporations prioritizing short-term profits over the well-being of their workers is more a symptom of lack of long-term planning. What I'm saying is that it's possible to love yourself and serve yourself while still making things better for everyone without any kind of contradiction in motivation.
If I'm the richest person in the world and everyone else is fighting for survival, I still have to live in that world and suffer the consequences. If I contribute to my environment, I'm improving my own situation. There's no need to choose one or the other.
> If I contribute to my environment, I'm improving my own situation.
Yes, but a truly selfish person could improve their personal situation much more effectively by pillaging the commons, since any contribution you make to the environment is shared, but any money you can put in your pocket is for you alone.
The fact that you even think about the environment shows that you either don't have a easy way to profit from environmental degradation, or you're not a rational purely selfish utilitarian.
> What I'm saying is that it's possible to love yourself and serve yourself while still making things better for everyone without any kind of contradiction in motivation.
It's possible, but that just shows that you're not a truly selfish person since doing that takes more work. Truly selfish people think of ways to benefit themselves first, without regard for its impact on others.
> more a symptom of lack of long-term planning
If that were really the case, then over a long period of time you'd expect corporations that were bad at long term planning to get evolutionarily selected out. The fact that this doesn't happen means that either you're wrong, or there are very strong evolutionary forces that support short-term thinking.
Corporations with poor long term planning get weeded out and bought out all the time, even when they're among the most powerful in the world. It takes a global system of neoliberal economics intertwined with politics just to support the ones that do survive. Of course, we have a very limited frame of reference, as there are very few corporations even a few hundred years old, which in the very short span of human history isn't even a very long time.
I never claimed to be anything in particular. But I did state that there's an argument against the idea of needing to serve a higher cause to validate one's existence, that it seems very much like a motivational technique to coerce people into giving up their autonomy and intrinsic self-worth for the sake of someone else's interest. For a perfect example of this, look at Soviet propaganda, always emphasizing sacrifice for the greater global workers' struggle. Everyone was expected to be a little miserable as they worked together for the greater good. They didn't invent this idea, and it's been used many times throughout history.
I do think that with a wider perspective on the universe, the distinct line between self and other blurs. The meaning of selfishness changes when a person sees the people and things around them as an essential part of themselves. It's not just a matter of not being able to profit from pillaging the commons but rather a sense of personal loss when the commons are pillaged.
For example, I'm looking forward to all the scientific and medical advances that will happen in my lifetime. I know that increasing poverty, incequality, and war can be barriers to that advancement because the people who might push them forward will be denied access or killed. I might be motivated to make money selling weapons to regions suffering from war for a short-term profit, but I might be denying myself much more in the future. Maybe the person who was going to make the breakthrough to reverse aging was killed by one of my weapons. As one animal that can't survive outside of a nourishing ecosystem and a supportive community, I have strong disincentives for sabotaging my planet and my community, and I can't even know which acts of destruction might deny myself benefits later. I can only know that the only way to guarantee the best possible future is to do as little harm as possible.
> > What I'm saying is that it's possible to love yourself and serve yourself while still making things better for everyone without any kind of contradiction in motivation.
I think I was just trying to make a very narrow point, which is that our society does not actually perfectly align self interest with group interest, and so truly selfish agents would actually wreak havok.
You're saying it's possible to serve both at the same time, but purely selfish agents wouldn't care about that, which is why I don't think it's a good idea to encourage pure selfishness.
> The meaning of selfishness changes when a person sees the people and things around them as an essential part of themselves.
Yes, but that's generally not what people would hear if you tell them 'love yourself first'. Randian Objectivists seem like a bunch of selfish assholes to me :)
> For a perfect example of this, look at Soviet propaganda, always emphasizing sacrifice for the greater global workers' struggle.
It's human nature to look towards selfish interests first. It's completely natural that states, which need to mobilize people to work together, would urge otherwise.
The genius of modern capitalism is that it claims we can have our cake and eat it too -- look towards your own interests, and you will also benefit society. What people have forgotten is that is only true within a framework where capitalism is tightly constrained and controlled.
Serving something bigger than yourself lets you be part of something greater than you could achieve on your own. No one man could have built the Golden Gate Bridge, or the IBM PC.
This isn't an argument against collaboration. It's an argument against the idea that you are inherently worthless until you contribute to something greater than yourself. We can work together because we feel meaningless on our own or we can work together because we are confident in our ability to contribute and appreciate that ability in others as well. They might lead to the same result, but one is starting from a position of shame and the other is starting from a position of self-respect.
The fact that if it fails to cause a fast death, it causes a big deal of suffering to the individual is not out of irony. But is still not a problem for it.
I think that's using too narrow a definition of pleasurable. Isn't the (pleasurable) time spent with your parents worth the trade-off of caring for them?
Hedonism isn't necessarily restricted to physical pleasure. There are emotional and intellectual pleasures as well.
You can move around the definition of pleasure, but then you end up with situations where pain as a means to pleasure is indistinguishable from pain as equal to pleasure, which undermines the whole premise of hedonism (that only pleasure has value).
How could you possibly end up in a situation where pain is equal to pleasure? I think pain would only be considered positive when it leads to greater pleasure.
Epicurus' philosophy is based on the theory that all good and bad derive
from the sensations of what he defined as pleasure and pain: What is good
is what is pleasurable, and what is bad is what is painful. If pain is
chosen over pleasure in some cases it is only because it leads to a greater
pleasure. Epicurus explicitly warned against overindulgence because it often
leads to pain.
Although Epicurus has been commonly misunderstood to advocate the rampant
pursuit of pleasure, his teachings were more about striving for an absence
of pain and suffering, both physical and mental, and a state of satiation
and tranquility that was free of the fear of death and the retribution of
the gods.
Humans have a wide range of pleasures, of varying degrees of richness and sophistication. People sometimes object to hedonism on the grounds that it makes us no better than swine in the mud. But I think that reflects a poor opinion of humanity. Don't we get pleasure from symphonies, poetry, and great works of art?
Epicurus himself said he could be content with water, bread, weak wine and a "pot of cheese".
hedonism can look great when it's practiced by people who believe that the greatest pleasure comes from appreciating art. but it can look horrible for example in the case of suicide bombers, who i believe to be rational agents (i don't believe that they're mentally handicapped or on drugs or something). these are men who are completely convinced that they're doing the victims a great favor and that they will be rewarded with the highest pleasure imaginable. so in this case, the definition of pleasure has been moved so far that what is meant to be an expression of the highest pleasure imaginable is indistinguishable (to an outside observer) from pain.
maybe that's too extreme of an example, but it illustrates the point that the hedonist notion of good and bad is vastly ambiguous and can lead to undesirable situations, most notably in cases where people try to optimize for the afterlife, but also in varying degrees in other cases. so i think it ultimately it fails in practice as a moral philosophy.
I also think hedonism tends to stigmatize pain to an impractical degree. i think experiencing and accepting pain is an important part of life, not because it leads to greater pleasure, but because pain is a part of the human condition and there's value in observing it and recognizing its importance. in regards to art, there can't be catharsis without pain, so it doesn't make sense to me to say that pleasure is somehow better than pain in that sense. i think pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin.
On the other hand, whilst hedonists may shirk some responsibilities, perhaps their focus on pleasure also ends up improving their ability at finding pleasure in the situations they find themselves in. If you intend to find pleasure, you may find it easier to recognise the opportunities to create it when they arise.
So to go back to your example of looking after parents when they get old, perhaps a hedonist would be resistant if that involved acting as a servant, but may be good company for them by playing games, telling stories, etc... Not all acts of compassion require self-sacrifice.
Finding value in pleasure is different than saying that only pleasure has value. It seems to me that a hedonist would not bother playing games or telling stories with senile parents, since only the games and the (pleasant) stories have value, and that they would do these things in more pleasant company instead.
Either way, there just doesn't seem to be any reason to deny that accepting and knowing pain is an important part of the human experience.
Hedonist - "a person who believes that the pursuit of pleasure is the most important thing in life; a pleasure-seeker."
For the hedonist, pleasure is something to pursue. By having this focus, it gives you more experience of creating pleasure.
"a hedonist would not bother playing games or telling stories with senile parents"
Do you know any hedonists? I know some. They look to make situations more fun (for themselves, but this tends to involve taking others along for the ride). Perhaps you don't believe it's possible to have fun with old senile people, I'd say it's more than possible and I'm not even a hedonist (i.e. someone who looks for fun in a high proportion of their time, someone who is good at doing so).
"Psychological or motivational hedonism claims that only pleasure or pain motivates us. Ethical or evaluative hedonism claims that only pleasure has worth or value and only pain or displeasure has disvalue or the opposite of worth."
I'm mainly concerned with the second category, since the first is more of a question for psychology and neuroscience. Anyway, you're constructing a false ideal. Even if we use Google's poorly defined and colloquial version of hedonism, the more representative real world examples are cases of pain avoidance, overeating, risky behavior, gambling/shopping addiction, and so on.
> Perhaps you don't believe it's possible to have fun with old senile people
> "http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hedonism/
"Psychological or motivational hedonism claims that only pleasure or pain motivates us. Ethical or evaluative hedonism claims that only pleasure has worth or value and only pain or displeasure has disvalue or the opposite of worth."
I'm mainly concerned with the second category, since the first is more of a question for psychology and neuroscience. Anyway, you're constructing a false ideal. Even if we use Google's poorly defined and colloquial version of hedonism, the more representative real world examples are cases of pain avoidance, overeating, risky behavior, gambling/shopping addiction, and so on."
In my experience, hedonists don't tend to be philosophers, they aren't concerned with providing academic claims about what motivates us, they're much more focused on pleasure in the here and now, rather than making claims that they're living life in the right way. If you want to study hedonism as a philosopher, be my guest, but it doesn't match what I've seen from the behaviour of hedonists.
Furthermore, they aren't 'pain avoidant' they are 'pleasure seeking', there's a big difference. Pleasure seeking people will chase pleasure even if there's a risk of pain along the way, pain avoidant people will avoid trying anything that may cause them pain.
> "What?"
I don't think what I said was unclear. The implication you made was that hedonists would avoid old relatives. In my experience, hedonists are 'omnivores' when it comes to pleasure, it doesn't matter whether it's playing cards with old people or going out clubbing smashed off their face, they go for everything with gusto. That's my experience of hedonists, they want to have fun and they want to bring you along for the ride.
Sure, eventually our existence is rendered meaningless but that doesn't make it meaningless for me, now. Call that an illusion if you want, but it's as concrete as anything you can prove. Besides, what would a "not-ultimately-meaningless" existence look like? I haven't heard any proposals that sound appealing to me.