Reddit reviews What We Owe to Each Other
We found 8 Reddit comments about What We Owe to Each Other. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Reddit reviews What We Owe to Each OtherWe found 8 Reddit comments about What We Owe to Each Other. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
George Orwell: 1984. Essential to understanding the Totalitarian Left, and ideas that have now entered our language and are becoming more relevant by the day, such as doublethink, thoughtcrime, and newspeak.
Donald J. Boudreaux: The Essential Hayek. (also Hayek's original works, eg The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty, but they are much more expensive. This is a good introduction to the Austrian School of economics).
Carroll Quigley: Tragedy & Hope: a history of the world in our time.
http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Tragedy_and_Hope.pdf
> One of these persistent questions is typical of the twentieth century rather than of earlier times: Can our way of life survive? Is our civilization doomed to vanish, as did that of the Incas, the Sumerians, and the Romans? From Giovanni Battista Vico in the early eighteenth century to Oswald Spengler in the early twentieth century and Arnold J Toynbee in our own day, men have been puzzling over the problem of whether civilizations have a life cycle and follow a similar pattern of change. from this discussion emerged a fairly general agreement that men live in separately organized societies, each with its own distinct culture; that some of these societies, having writing and city life, exist on a higher level of culture than the rest, and should be called by the different term "civilizations"; and that these civilizations tend to pass through a common pattern of experience.
Carroll Quigley: The Evolution of Civilizations. http://www.archive.org/stream/CarrollQuigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizations-AnIntroductionTo/CarrollQuigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizations-AnIntroductionToHistoricalAnalysis1979#page/n1/mode/2up
> In this perceptive look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations, Professor Quigley seeks to establish the analytical tools necessary for understanding history. He examines the application of scientific method to the social sciences, then establishes his historical hypotheses. He poses a division of culture into six levels, from the more abstract to the more concrete—intellectual, religious, social, political, economic, and military—and he identifies seven stages of historical change for all civilizations: mixture, gestation, expansion, conflict, universal empire, decay, and invasion.
J.C. Unwin: Sex and Culture
https://archive.org/details/b20442580
> With care-free open-mindedness I decided to test, by a reference to human records, a somewhat startling conjecture that had been made by analytical psychologists. This suggestion was that if the social regulations forbid direct satisfaction of the sexual impulses the emotional conflict is expressed in another way, and that what we call 'civilization' has always been built up by compulsory sacrifices in the gratification of innate desires.
Sir John Glubb: The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival. http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
> d) The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to be:
>The Age of Pioneers (outburst)
> The Age of Conquests
>The Age of Commerce
>The Age of Affluence
>The Age of Intellect
>The Age of Decadence.
>(e) Decadence is marked by:
>Defensiveness
>Pessimism
>Materialism
>Frivolity
>An influx of foreigners
>The Welfare State
>A weakening of religion.
>(f) Decadence is due to:
>Too long a period of wealth and power
>Selfishness
>Love of money
>The loss of a sense of duty.
>(g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors.
E. Belfort Bax: The Fraud of Feminism. http://www.angryharry.com/FraudOfFeminism.htm (written in 1913, it clearly shows that there was no 'golden age' of feminism, and that feminists can never be satisfied).
> Though women have been conceded all the rights of men, their privileges as females have remained untouched, while the sentimental "pull" they have over men, and the favouritism shown them in the courts, civil and criminal, often in flagrant violation of elementary justice, continues as before. The result of their position on juries, as evinced in certain trials, has rather confirmed the remarks made in Chapter II. anent [concerning] hysteria than otherwise. The sex-bias of men in favour of women and the love of the advanced woman towards her sex-self show no sign of abatement.
And two recent important works in political philosophy that are therefore not available for free.
John Rawls. A Theory of Justice. A seminal book providing an alternative to Utilitarianism. "Rawls's "Theory of Justice" is widely and justly regarded as this century's most important work of political philosophy. "
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0674000781/
T.M. Scanlon. What We Owe to Each Other. Following on from Rawls' insights, and applying them more broadly than only to justice, to what underpins a society working together. "What do we owe to each other? What obligations of honesty, respect, trust and consideration exist between people?"
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/067400423X/
Finally
Jonathan Haidt: Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Haidt shows that there are at least 6 foundations of what people see as social good. Of these, the Left see 'Caring' as the good, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Libertarians see 'Liberty' as the good, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Conservatives are fairly evenly balanced across the 6, and have the easiest time understanding the perspective of the others as a result. See also http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0042366 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONUM4akzLGE. You might know Haidt from this talk: http://www.sciencevsfeminism.com/the-myth-of-equality/jonathan-haidt-coddling-u-strengthening-u/
What We Owe To Each Other
There's a book with the same title as Chidi's lecture, What We Owe To Each Other. I've always been of the mindset that we are here for each other. When a friend lost his house and cats to fire, something truly devastating to him, he had a breakdown about how he could possibly move forward. If everything can be taken from you in a moment, what's the fucking point?
The point is to be there for each other. The point is that we're not really here for any reason. We just are. And that's okay. Make the most of it. Make someone smile. Do any small thing. It could mean nothing to anyone. And it could mean everything to just one.
Give a little love.
The Book
Imagine how much food and water a million dollars can buy.
Imagine how many people will die from hunger or disease or thirst during the time you watch the video of this opulence.
The internet has forced the world to face itself. This kind of behaviour when the rest of the species and the rest of the planet is in such a godawful state is nothing but a drain on our total capacity for improvement. Sure it's their "right" to blow their billions that they "earned" from the fortunes their parents left behind on whatever they want, but I sure don't have to respect any of them for it.
Since the whole basis of our monetary system favours those that already have it, and money is now the driving force behind improvement in the world, from the moral, ethical and socially contractual viewpoint we're all taught defines right from wrong, the rich have a duty to their fellow man now that more suffering than ever is visible to the world audience.
If our civilisation is to continue much longer, "being rich" needs to stop being a life goal and an excuse for people to bury their heads in the sand and ignore the suffering of others. People are forced into selling their bodies because it's the only thing they have to sell, whether they choose to do that or are forced to make money for others, just to survive, or maybe to wish they were already dead for all the terrible deeds done to them by others, and this prick's gold plated cigar humidor is supposed to make me see them as a better, more positive human being? It's utterly repugnant.
T.M. Scanlon - What We Owe To Each Other.
If anything, modern philosophers argue that we owe kindness to those around us. This is a good book about it.
The hell I can't.
I know how to do philosophy, I don't need your advice.
People spend entire books defending views such as the one above. Do you really think I'm going to spend hours on reddit outlining such a position?
If you want a fully fledged answer you should read books or articles, or at the least ask for sources.
One plausible view that centers around the concept of rational agency is Scanlon's contractualism:
SEP article
What We Owe to Each Other
Moral Dimensions
You mean:
>There's a book with the same title as Chidi's lecture, What We Owe To Each Other. I've always been of the mindset that we are here for each other. When a friend lost his house and cats to fire, something truly devastating to him, he had a breakdown about how he could possibly move forward. If everything can be taken from you in a moment, what's the forking point?
>
>The point is to be there for each other. The point is that we're not really here for any reason. We just are. And that's okay. Make the most of it. Make someone smile. Do any small thing. It could mean nothing to anyone. And it could mean everything to just one.
>
>Give a little love.
>
>The Book
> What constitutes an permissible objection (e.g. is a poor person asking for welfare justifiable?) and how does one determine its weight? How does one account for the number of people with objections?
Your answers can be found here.
> Defining murder as tautologically wrong isn't a particularly compelling answer to the question.
That part wasn't me answering the question, but pointing out a problem with the way it was asked.