it's called the will to power — BraydenS

i agree that Nietzsche's concepts of will to power, master and slave, recurrence; and finally, the rational vs intuitive man, are the key components to practicing morality. But they're pieces that fit together into a whole and if people understood how they fit together then they would naturally gravitate towards judging all things without judging any people, which in my view is the essence of morality. Obviously, that's a grossly over simplified statement but useful for making my point that people are NOT good at practicing Enlightenment morality because it's perceived as being too complicated. Morality is not too complicated. It simply isn't fully understood yet and that's not because people are stupid. The definition of morality is still incomplete

Listen, just read Nietzsche. You'll thank me later. — BraydenS

I appreciate the comments you left on this post. You're absolutely right with your assumption that I haven't read Nietzsche and I need to. I needed someone to inspire me to do it and you've succeeded. From what I knew about Nietzsche before, I could have just killed the guy. Lol. And I'm not coming from a religious angle with my anger. I came from a place of ignorance.

I'll still be looking for more inspiration, in future, if that's ok. Lol

The slow pace of a moral philosophy emerging in the wake of such considerations is not a flaw but a feature. — Valentinus

I have a different opinion about this. When you have places in the world, for example, where private property rights are being abolished in favour of a "communal good," then morally we're going backwards. So that is an example that relates to human rights, in politics. But it's a phenomenon that seeps through every aspect of western culture, eroding away some very hard earned values that were developed over centuries. One can't destroy a culture in our pursuit of simplifying the practice of morality. Morality needs to adapt to the culture, not the other way around. It is entirely possible.

He centers on Abraham Maslow's idea of peak and plateau experiences. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Sounds interesting.

who has a false god complex? lol — christian2017

LOL

Colin Wilson's New Existentialism — ZzzoneiroCosm

Great, thanks for pointing me in a positive direction.

and that failing in the latter evokes guilt in us — TheMadFool

Guilt - an emotion - is often created when there are two realities that are at such extremes in relation to one another that a person experiencing both realities makes sense of it by bridging the gap between the two extremes with unrealistic information, since they're incapable of doing it with realistic information. It's the way for a person to cope with an unknown, i.e. the understanding that links the two extremes. Guilt is not a bad thing, provided one doesn't get stuck in the unknown and never progress to the known, which is where I'm arguing the existentialists left us.

Earlier when I wrote about guilt, I started off -

And in our modern, anonymous society when we let someone down we feel the same amount of guilt for a stranger that we would feel for a well known acquaintance, which I believe is totally unsustainable. — Rand

So I was implying that when our integrity demands we treat a stranger with the same reverence that we treat someone whom we've had life experiences with, then we create two extremes that can't be linked with realistic reasoning. Instead we create, for example, a god complex to help us to cope with the two extremes, which is not based in reality. If we chose it, only a god complex will give us enough courage to approach our beloved, favourite family member and, for example, a serial killer stranger with the same moral integrity.

Are you suggesting that that everyone's life-goal should be the same — TheMadFool

I'm arguing that moral principles ARE the same regardless of the self's life goals. And morality dictates how we treat people but good moral principles could not dictate that we treat everyone the same. Good moral principles would dictate that we need a balanced approach between rational AND empirical reasoning, allowing for continuous progression between the known and unknown. We have to take experience into account with our moral reasoning to reduce feelings of guilt, for example, by acknowledging that we can't approach the serial killer stranger with the same moral integrity as a beloved, favourite family member that we spend most of our time with.

this is the only thing I can get from this term, a time period — BraydenS

That was really the point.

only a person who has never read Nietzsche could say such things — BraydenS

Nietsche perceived emotions as a response to change.

Change and "no change" are intermittent developmental periods in the self and society. We use emotion and reason intermittently, depending on whether we're responding to change or not. The self or society does not develop only along a gradient from the one to the other, from birth till death.

A glorification of the angst that resulted from Enlightenment overshadows the pathway to regain momentum between societal change or "no change" interactions. It's as if it were never going to be possible to adapt to the newfound understanding of morality. Existentialists made great gains when they questioned the definition of existing morality yet failed in the sense that they provided no pathways to alternatives. We're well into the 21st century and we're without a new understanding of morality; two centuries later!

We don't need a purpose for humanity from anyone. We need a definition of moral principles for everyone, to create our own purpose. The existentialists failed to recognize such a societal need and failed to create self awareness about the risks of their work, which could have pointed the way towards a future that is not only filled with bad but also good. Their failure is resulting in the loss of values in western culture that were hard earned, over many centuries.

i agree with you. — christian2017

Yes I think we're in agreement.

Wasn't Rand a russian lady who came out of Communist Russia? Or is that someone else — christian2017

On this forum I'd like to maintain my anonymity. There's a good and a bad side to everything, including a good side to false god complexes ;)

please drop these pseudo-academic misonomers with the actual names of philosophers you are responding to — BraydenS

In the sense that you're attempting to achieve it, I can't possibly think of any less academic setting than an anonymous online discussion. My goal is to test my theory with reasoning and I welcome the academic exchange of knowledge in its pursuit. But the false context for my inquiry that you're trying to create, by accusing me of using pseudo-academic misnomers, again reflects on the earlier thread I raised in this discussion about a corruption of morality, albeit in a different context than the one used in the earlier discussion. Such a corruption of morality results in false god complexes. But instead of confusing known and unknown experiences, you're obscuring the line between known and unknown knowledge hierarchies to avoid the reality that you don't know me. You need to own the fact that you don't know me or my reasoning for making this inquiry. And morally you don't need to have any guilt for the fact that you probably don't care about my reasoning.

Reason itself is just a type of emotion. — BraydenS

Or emotion is just a type of reason.

I view this general tendency to think that everyone must aim at one single target as a byproduct of self-love which makes us think that what we personally value either is or should be universally appreciated. — TheMadFool

I would like to challenge that statement. Could the general tendency that everyone must aim at one single target be rather because our understanding of morality has been corrupted? Corrupted in the sense that we've learned to treat people the same way, whether they're known or unknown to us? Morally, it's significant whether we know or don't know a person when we factor into our decision making process our relationship with them. We're human and we're fallible beings. And in our modern, anonymous society when we let someone down we feel the same amount of guilt for a stranger that we would feel for a well known acquaintance, which I believe is totally unsustainable. Conceptually, we're turning ourselves into all powerful gods if we think we have the power to cope with that amount of guilt. Could it be that making everyone's aim the same may be a way of failing to minimize our guilt?

This may help some — 3017amen

This is GREAT. Thanks!

Thanks for the detailed reply, Enrique. That's exactly what I was hoping for. It's going to take some time for me to go through it.

I haven't decided yet.

Could you clarify?

and a grand synthesis of disparate rationalist and empiricist strands of investigation — Enrique

And used again -

making rationality and empirical activity of an innovatively systematic form more widespread — Enrique