One of the most wishy-washy, bourgeois philosophy out there. Bitch I know I exist, now how is that going to help us get rid of capitalism.

  • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]M
    ·
    3 years ago

    Existentialism has nothing to do with "knowing that you exist," and people are going to be pondering the "purpose" of life and determining the way they should lead their lives if we exist under capitalism, communism, or something else. Not all philosophy or religion has to orient itself towards overthrowing the current mode of production, nor should it. Life is much more than smashing capitalism.

    • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      people are going to be pondering the “purpose” of life and determining the way they should lead their lives if we exist under capitalism, communism, or something else

      Yeah but under communism or something else we're guaranteed to come up with better philosophy than existentialism. Furthermore, in 1 gorillion years time once we find out how the universe was created we could know by extension what the "purpose" of life is, so its not always going to be a care.

      • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]M
        ·
        3 years ago

        Evaluating philosophies by "truth" and "better" isn't really what's going on here, comrade. There's never going to be an agreed upon "purpose" for life in an uncaring universe, and it doesn't matter how long we live; humans will always ponder the circumstances of their own lives.

        • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          humans will always ponder the circumstances of their own lives.

          When we find out exactly how we became sentient, the nature of consciousness, the nature of subatomic particles, the nature of the universe and the nature of reality itself, then we will know the truth about our lives and the "purpose" of existence.

          Some philosophies are objectively worse than others too, existentialism being better than fundamentalist christianity, for instance.

          • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]M
            ·
            3 years ago

            Similar to how somebody inside the Matrix can never truly "understand" it until they are taken out, I don't think humans are every going to "understand" or "find out" things like "the nature of reality or the universe."

            • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
              ·
              3 years ago

              10K years ago when we lived in caves we probably couldn't even conceive of the possibility of there being an "outer space", much less so for flight for that matter. It must have been an unknowable boundary for our ancestors.

              By that same token, it will be possible for humans to "take ourselves out" of the "Matrix", so speak, once we have developed the proper theories and technologies, possibly in the far future. Once there is a tool to measure something, we have a chance of understanding it, and possibly controlling it, through the scientific method.

              • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]M
                ·
                3 years ago

                Yes, but the difference is the things you've listed here are within reality, and are just extensions of what we can already intuit. It's not that hard to imagine there being other planets because we already live on one. We can conceptualize flight because we see birds do it. Humans have been thinking about flying and what lays in the stars for as long as we've existed. It's much more difficult to gain understanding for the very thing we are enmeshed in, using tools that only exist inside that thing. Beware scientism comrade; it's a model like any other, and a Western-centric one at that. Not all things can be proved by the scientific method, nor should we strive to do so.

                  • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    The steady march of human knowledge towards knowing everything about the universe there is to know can only be started under communism. Science is a wonderful tool when put to use for enhancing human quality of life and ensuring resources for all, but it really does suck under capitalism.

                • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  It’s much more difficult to gain understanding for the very thing we are enmeshed in, using tools that only exist inside that thing.

                  Large Hadron Collidor go bzzzzzz

                  But it is true that the LHC does qualify as a tool which exists in the universe studying matter which makes up the said universe, by smashing pieces of it together and seeing what happens. However, while it is more difficult to understand the true nature of matter using tools made of matter, I am sure it is not impossible. Maybe we will find a way to overcome after we have gained the ability to manipulate the interactions between subatomic particles and solved the mystery of time. Who knows, but I have full faith in our descendants to kill god once and for all by overcoming the fundamental ignorance that we have towards reality which you outlined.

                  Not all things can be proved by the scientific method, nor should we strive to do so.

                  I partially agree since there is no use in proving shit with the scientific method when people are dying from hunger in a world full of resources. However, maybe in the future we can come up with another better system of thought which will unlock the secrets of our universe.

            • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
              ·
              3 years ago

              stephen pinker is a stupid geriatric cuck to the elite who thinks technology alone will solve all of humanity's current problems when in the hands of the "right people (TM)" and is under the delusion that human "progress" up to this moment has been accelerating.

              His rotten liberal brain cannot comprehend the fact that an accelerating technological development in the pursuit of increasing human wellbeing and understanding of reality would be a good thing only in the hands of a communist world system.

              • Mrtryfe [none/use name]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Pinker sure does suck, I agree. The issue is that the essence of what the likes of Pinker assume about the progress of science isn't all that different from what you're saying either. Even under a communist world, I doubt that science will be able to solve a local issue, in our closed system, like the hard problem of consciousness because of emergent facets of consciousness that are the conditions of its own possibility. I'm not the smartest dude but that seems like a loop we aren't going to get ourselves out of

            • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
              ·
              3 years ago

              The problem is, the universe is constantly changing.

              Im not sure what dialectics are yet, however, Im sure that when the day comes that our ideas about the universe are advanced enough, we will have developed a good enough theoretical model to be able to predict this change and thus the next "state" of the universe.

      • WalterBongjammin [they/them,comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        Understanding how something is created or how it works on a mechanical level doesn't necessarily help you form a purpose as a conscious being. We broadly understand the biological processes around sex, both as they relate to individual births and the development of a species, but that doesn't give us a good template to assess the meaning of life. The political projects that have attempted to reduce humanity in that way have been irredeemably fascist.