On the other hand, I'm working on my sister blog (not to be confused with my sister's blog) and hope to get it up and running in the next couple weeks. It's called The Socialist Agenda and the goal is to be about not only social observations, but suggestions. I'm currently looking at education as I believe it is the single most important element to maintaining a moral and intelligent democracy. In the future, I hope to talk about numerous other things including the legal system, economy, advertising, immigration, religion, drugs, sex, the media, and all of those huge monstrous institutions that we feel insignificant compared to.
Too often we have to just accept the bullshit of life, but too often in order to deal with that acceptance, we justify the acceptance and encourage others to do the same. How often have you had a conversation with someone about sweatshops and they say "Well, every thing you buy promotes some sort of evil." This isn't really true. Like people, there are good companies and bad ones. We all make compromises and give money to businesses that go against our interests, but we should at least be aware of when we are doing that so we can find alternatives. For example, I shop at Target which makes large contributions to the Republican party. I could go to K-Mart, but they support the Republican party too and they are crap. I have proudly never even been in a Wal-Mart and refuse to shop there because they make much larger donations to the Republican party, actively work to discourage unionization, and use the more sweatshop labor than any single business.Getting back to sweatshops, why are we so blazé about these things? We say "sweatshop" casually as if it were synonymous with "crappy job" but the working conditions are dangerous, often employ women and children, employees have no rights, and no matter how much they work, they are still poor. Now, some people tell me that it's better that they have low wages than no wages. What they don't seem to get is that we are instituting sustained poverty, a method that has little difference from slavery. Unlike the Mexican immigrants that are picking our oranges (and underming our way of life, or whatever), the workers we legally pay do not make enough money to take care of their families.
Someone once said that if the law isn't moral, it isn't any good. I think that applies here.Anyway, getting back to my original point, I need a place to put all of these sorts of ideas so they don't just sit in my head making me depressed. I can't help but feel that this is a form of evolution. My consciousness is extending outside my brain and onto the internet, spilling out of its confines. Of course, language (particularly the written word) has long allowed us to do this, but this is the age of information and a personal experience to boot.
A primary idea in philosophy is "Who or what am I?" The natural answers are "I am my body" (pragmatic atheism), "I am my mind" (modern intellectualism), or "I am my soul" (Platonic spiritualism).
"I am my body" is the oldest conception of self because it is so definable and physical. It is a definition based on observation. "I live, I act, I speak, I eat, I am." However, when the physical limitations of the body is challenged, the identity of self is changed. For example, if someone loses an arm, are they less than they were before? Politely, we say no. Rationally, we probably say yes. Interestingly, though, the mind often compensates for loss of body, hence the "phantom limb" phenomenon.
But more interesting to me is the driver phenomenon whereby driving a car, we are prone to think of the car as an extension of the body. Recall learning how to drive. If you were anything like me, it was awkward to operate the controls... much like a baby learning to walk, but now I do it instinctively. If I'm driving and I get into an accident, I'm libel to say "He hit me!" instead of the more accurate "His car hit my car!" It seems to me that the relationship between the self and the body is more like a vehicle... although whether or not we are dependent upon it for the continuation of our consciousness, I don't know.
The idea of a soul is based in Platonic philosophy. One of Plato's major theories was the Theory of Forms, which I think has held back Western development more than it has done otherwise. The essential concept is that every object or idea has a divinely perfect form (presumably contained in the ether), but when these forms manifest in our imperfect world, they take on an imperfect shape. Therefore, there is a perfect form of man and woman and we are all imperfect reflections of that form. He extended this concept to good and evil and even man-made objects like chairs. The Buddhist tradition holds that a chair is merely a chair because that is how we define it. If we break it, is it any less a chair? They would reply that it is no more or less a chair than it was before. It is only our relationship with the object which has changed.This subtle difference of definition is relevent because Plato proposes a reality whereby there are perfect goals to be achieved, but these goals are not perceptible because they do not exist in our imperfect world. Therefore, Plato ascribed definition to the intangible based on observation, i.e. "Good is being nice to people," but is it still good if you are nice to Hitler?
Plato's problem was trying to make reality conform to words instead of the other way around. If "table" was to have meaning to Plato, there would have to be essential "tableness" by which he could define what is and is not a table. However, what his student Aristotle believed is that language is a product of function.
Plato was mathematician and physicist grounded in the rules of cause and effect as well as precision of thought. Aristotle was a biologist, trained in function. If you think about biology, one organ has a particular function in the operation of the whole organism. It is dependent upon other organs and other organs are dependent upon it. In Aristotilian philosophy, the table is a product of human need and function. It's definition is active and impermanent, not absolute.
Historically, philosophy and science are not fond of impermanence, but with the mainstream acceptance of quantum physics, we've had to learn to accept it.
But to make a long story short (too late), the transcendental form (or soul) assumes an absolute, which it cannot produce any evidence of, based on a need for consciousness to overcome physical reality. Naturally, a philosopher would have a conceit for preferring his intellectual constructs to the complexity of reality. However, this idea is at the foundation of the human conception of a soul.
"I am my mind" is the fall back position for the atheist or pragmatic agnostic. It's the best of both worlds between spiritualism and rationalism. However, the mind is always in a state of flux. It is influenced by the biological processes of the body and numerous mood manipulators both known and unknown. It is also subject to distortion and information loss. Therefore, if it is the real you, when is it the real you? If you are on a drug, is it still the real you? Could it possibly more you than you are while sober?
In the end, I decided that self is the point at which one views the universe and the extent of the individual's ability to effect the universe around them. If it can be argued that the self is the body, then why can't the self also be the car? If the computer becomes a place where I store my ideas, is it not an extension of my mind and therefore an extension of my self? And by using the computer to access information, it becomes an extension of my senses. As I begin to produce more creative material (even a blog), I influence people (albeit currently a few people in small ways) which changes the way they behave in the world, therefore I have extended a piece of myself further out into the world than it would normally go.
So here's to the continuation of the expansion of individual consciousness without which I would feel like I was wasting my time a lot more than I currently am.
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