From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Fri Apr 15 2005 - 01:48:01 BST
Hi Wim --
And thanks for reviewing my current essay. You ask:
> Do I miss something essential when I summarize your essay at
> www.essentialism.net/balance.htm in the following quotes?
> 1) 'the rejection of transcendence deprives at least 16% of our population
> of any meaning or purpose for the life-experience'
If the Harris poll is correct, 84% of adult Americans believe in some form
of "psychic continuity" following physical death. That would leave 16%
without such a belief.
> 2) 'man is the only animal equipped to contemplate his fate and
discriminate
> among life's values'
What is your problem with that? Do you believe there's another known
creature capable of contemplating its fate?
> 3) 'were we to have a choice to continue in any form thereafter, it would
be
> only natural to choose affirmatively'
This has proven to be true, based on the responses I've been getting from my
immediate associates as well as the MoQ MD.
> 4) 'it is survival over death ... which represents the core of man's
belief
> system'
That is my contention. I can't see any other factor that registers with the
impact of personal transcendence in some form.
> 5) 'If you believe that your conscious awareness may end at physical
death,
> you are accepting the idea that "nothing" may follow death, and you are by
> definition accepting the possibility that nihilism is correct.'
Inasmuch as nihilism is the rejection of values or meaning, I see no
inconsistency in that statement.
> 6) 'I see the thrust of philosophy today as a futile effort to make
nihilism
> credible. There is no extension of consciousness beyond death, except in
the
> "collective" or socio-biological sense'
Again, I think this statement is self-evident.
> 7) 'For the Essentialist, the logic of evolutionary theory is quite
> compatible with a supernatural Source.'
Since I am the author of Essentialism, I endorse this statement.
> 8) 'So long as we insist in believing that there ... is no reality apart
> from the physical world, that there is no primary cause or ultimate
> meaning ... > we are doomed to fulfill Nietzsche's prophecy of a
> culture without belief, a life without purpose.'
> I'm afraid I have to question your reasoning.
> 1) Transcendence (understood as 'life after death') is not the only
possible
> way of giving/finding meaning or purpose to life. Lots of people give/find
> meaning or purpose in contributing to something they leave behind after
> dying: children who are better off than they themselves, a stronger
> community, visible artifacts, a healthy organization etc..
That is true. But "secondary immortality" in these terms leaves much to be
desired. I stand by my statement that the survival of some aspect of
propietary awareness heads the list of man's values.
> 3) It is only natural to choose continuation after death to the extent
that
> you identify with individual characteristics that seem to require a
physical
> body and/or a consciousness that in our experience depends on the
well-being
> of that body. To the extent that you identify with a collective, it will
> (usually) continue anyway after individual death. It is even possible that
> the collective will be better off because of your individual death. In
some
> cultures old and ill people choose death voluntarily in order to relieve
> their community of a burden.
I agree with Ayn Rand's axiom that "There is no such thing as a collective
brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement
reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many
individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act--the
process of reason--must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a
meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach."
> 4) Only in very individualistic cultures can survival over death be the
core
> of belief systems.
That may be a sociological truth. But, in the end, man in every culture is
an autonomous agent. It is a metaphysical principle of Essentialism that
reality is anthropocentric and that the individual is the locus of
existential reality. It is the individual who "believes"'; a society
collectively only reflects the belief of its individual constituents.
> 5) Consciousness is not everything, so the end of it doesn't imply that
> "nothing" follows death. I experience people (and 'creation' more
generally)
> as essentially connected, whether I or they are (continuously) conscious
of
> it or not.
Insofar as transcendence is concerned, proprietary sensibility is the
essential factor.
> I don't know whether I am an essentialist (how do you define one?), but I
> agree that
> 7) the logic of evolutionary theory is compatible what that of a common
> source, of 'creation' and
> 8) belief (i.e. trust in fate/providence) and purposeful life requires
> understanding that reality is more than 1st and 2nd level static patterns
of
> value.
In my opinion, "trust in fate" is a feeble substitute for philosophical
belief. If a philosophy cannot address the question of death, it is
incapable of providing meaning for the life-experience. Would you not
agree that this is a shortcoming of the MoQ?
Appreciate the opportunity, Wim.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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