I think the real issue is the plebeification of royalty (!). But this is complex and unpalatable to put into words, so it's easier to focus on some racist aspect.

You don't know whether I should kill some random stranger? Or you don't know whether I must have a reason not to kill some random stranger to refrain from doing so? — Ciceronianus the White

I don't know whether you need to give a justification or not.
I don't know whether there is someone to whom you need to justify your moral principles, or whether there is no such person.

This does not remove the basic problem: what to do next. Ought one to love god? Saying "yes - because god says so" is quite circular. — Banno

Well, religious people generally don't seem to have any problems with circularity. So this one is on us, the outsiders.

Why must I justify the fact that I won't kill some random stranger? Do you believe I should do that? Do you think I must have some reason not to kill some random stranger to refrain from doing so? If so, explain why. If not, don't ask me for a justification. — Ciceronianus the White

I don't know. Like I said, I can't imagine what that is like, to live in a world where one isn't demanded to justify one's moral principles to others. I simply haven't lived in such a world. I suppose it's a nice world to live in.

She's following a classic toxic female script.
— fishfry

What is that and why is this perspective not sexist? — frank

Because it doesn't imply that all women are like this, but that some women are like this.

I don't make a point of thinking of humans as animals, so this doesn't touch me they way it apparently touches you.
— baker

But this is the most important point and informs the other objections you were raising. So it isn't a particular but any society that is being perpetuated by procreation. However, we can evaluate and assign negative value to things. At each decision, we have to put a justification for why we do or don't do anything. It's usually for reportedly "practical" reasons, but even those are justifications. Other animals do not need that. They just "live". I recognize they have preferences perhaps, but they don't need justifications. That is important. At any moment, we can negatively value doing any task of the superstructure (work, chore, task, etc.). — schopenhauer1

I think this awareness and ambivalence are inherently human.

Yet this doesn't matter to procreation sympathizers (or agnostics).

Not sure what you mean here. Do you envy them their "animalistic", thoughtless, going-through-the-motions way of life?

Apparently, perpetuating the structure is deemed more important than any individual potentially having negative evaluations of the very structures needed to survive.

Are you sure they put that much of this kind of thought into their acts of procreation? Or did they "just do it"?

Art viewed as escapism—how very naïve. — Nagel

There's a simple cure for this naivete: Enroll in a college course to earn a degree in art.

So, my question: Is there a dividing line between low probability events and the Supernatural? Is it just a matter of the degree of probability or should one apply other criteria to an event to qualify it as 'Supernatural’? — Jacob-B

Per Clarke's Third Law, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
IOW, if it seems like magic (or the "supernatural"), it's just a sufficiently advanced technology.

Nihil admirari!

not that it's absolutely wrong, but that it's unhealthy. Note that I am using the word 'escape' here, but escaping from what? Duties, work, personal problems,...etc. All forms of art have the capacity to sooth one from the daily frustrations of living, and it is that temptation to abandon one's real life situation for a pleasure-based consumption of art that I am concerned with. Reading a Shakespearean book /.../ — Nagel

As far as literature goes (and this has implications for other forms of art): Studying literary theory can go a long way in both demistifying art and in making one aware of one's place in relation to it (thus making it less likely that one will be a mindless consumer of it).

For example, an introductory book like John Sutherland's How Literature Works: 50 Key Concepts can be very helpful for this.

I wonder what the implications of the above sentence are for Plato's view that we're all chained to the floor of a cave, forced to perceive only the shadows of truth? If the mind itself is susceptible to and does create its own false reality, what hope do we have? — TheMadFool

But for Plato, that doesn't matter, does it? Humanses are ephemeral, but it's the ideas that are eternal, and this is all that matters.

Do you speak German? I don't know any English sources directly for this.

In the same vein, people agree that there is such a thing as the familiar and the alien, the understandable and the strange. The problem is that morality , and its judgments of what is right and what is wrong , generally comes down to these dichotomies, so that morality is just another word for the drive to enforce
conformity. — Joshs

Absolutely!

But you could justify it to yourself, and I don't know if most people really need a philosophical justification to do good things anyway. — Dharmi

Since there is such moral diversity in the world, in order to navigate said diversity, one might acutely feel the need to justify one's sense of morality.

Further, other people may be intolerant of one and demand that one justifies one's morality to them. Such as when Christians demand that non-Christians justify themselves to them.

Doing what is right for fear of punishment is ethics for three-year-olds. Adults take responsibility. — Banno

To which theists tend to respond along the lines that one ought to do what God commands not out of fear of punishment, but out of love of God -- that this is how one takes reponsibility.

What need is there to justify morality, by the way?

Questioner: "Prove that you should be moral, Ciceronianus!"
Ciceronianus: "Why should I do that?"
/.../ — Ciceronianus the White

Unfortunately it is much easier to follow rules than to engage in self reflection and improvement. Especially when you can pay for a lawyer. Or Bishop.

And so we have a common way of thinking about ethics that is assumed in Franz Liszt's OP, where the key question is not "how can I become a better person?" but "Which rules should I follow?"

Can you justify morality without religion? The notion that one might need to justify doing the right thing is ridiculous. — Banno

For example, when I was a vegetarian, a Christian made clear to me that I was wrong to be a vegetarian, and he said, and this is from memory, but almost verbatim, that I am allowed to be a vegetarian, provided I concur that it is wrong to be one.
I kid you not.
I was so taken aback by what he said that I remembered it.
And this isn't the only such instance.
As long as I can remember, many people in my life demanded me to justify my moral principles.
And just look at forums like this: Posters demand justification of some other poster's morality.


Personal anecdotes aside, I don't see how one would be in a position of not feeling compelled to justify one's morality. It seems it takes a pretty strong, solid ego/sense of self to feel above such need for justification.

Why don't you ask them? Christianity is more complex and subtle than you might imagine. — Tom Storm

I asked them. They aren't open to discussion.

Most Christians accept evolution. — Tom Storm

Then how can they possibly believe in God? Metaphorically?

It seems just as reasonable to assert that humans became interested in the source of their existence and the cause of everything (metaphysics) prior to their interest in right and wrong (ethics) and therefore God was inserted at that earlier stage. — Hanover

What if God placed that interest in the hearts of men to begin with?

God entered the scene, so to speak, only after or, more accurately, only within long-established societies; it follows, does it not?, that morality preceded humanity's encounter with the idea of the divine. — TheMadFool

That's taking for granted the theory of evolution. I'm not going to do that, I need something more robust, something that isn't at the whim of empirical data and its interpretation.

Also, it requires being a hard atheist, which is just another a dogmatic position.

So another big point here is that bringing a child into the world isn't "just" this...bringing an individual into the world. Rather, it is perpetuating the ideology of the superstructure and reinforcing that superstructure. So I can't emphasize enough this becomes a political issue due to this broader societal nature of procreation. It isn't just, "A child is born". It is also, "And the institutions, values, and ways of life of the society shall be enacted and reinforced again and again with each new child". Our mode of production/consumption/trade/survival/comfort-seeking/entertainment is all wrapped up in the socio-economic-cultural superstructure. Birth is a clear YAY in its perpetuation. — schopenhauer1

It's no so indiscriminate, though.

An upper class pronatalist surely isn't glad if a lower class woman gives birth. And vice versa.
White pronatalists aren't happy about black people having children. And vice versa.
And so on.

And further, it's not like pronatalists typically want to have as many children as physiologically possible. It seems they typically want to have a set number of children.

How do you account for that? You said, "And the institutions, values, and ways of life of the society shall be enacted and reinforced again and again with each new child". But given the above considerations, this holds only in the sense that there are many superstructures, some of them opposite to eachother.
So that, for example, the white supremacist pronatalist supports one superstructure, while the black supremacist pronatalist supports another one, and the two are in conflict, each wanting to eradicate the other.

The closest comparison is tribal competition and warfare.

So combining this all together, by perpetuating more people (aka procreation) it is de facto akin to saying: The needs of perpetuating the superstructure are more important than any negative evaluations that can be had of any given task or aspect of said superstructure.

Or maybe Plato was right and it's all about ideas.

As Ligotti wrote over and over.. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to be, no one to know one to know (or something like that). Yet, we do need this as you explain. As Schopenhauer pointed out, if life was fully positive, we would not want for anything. We would just "be" and there would be no lack. The main point though is that we are an animal like all others, yet we KNOW what we are doing AS we are doing it. It is an odd paradox. To KNOW one can dislike the very tasks necessary to survive. So then the burden of justification is needed. — schopenhauer1

I don't make a point of thinking of humans as animals, so this doesn't touch me they way it apparently touches you.

There's a difference between remaining silent and uttering the words, "I don't want to say anything". — TheMadFool

Note that replying "I don't want to say anything" and similar metacommunicative utterances indicate that the power relationship between the communicating parties is equal, or that the prospective replier is not subordinated or doesn't consider themselves to be subordinated to the other one.

Remaining silent can indicate one's (assumed) superiority, or (assumed) inferiority, so there is an ambivalence to be resolved. Making at least some kind of reply, even if it is just a metacommunicative verbal or non-verbal expression signals the replier is not subordinated or doesn't consider themselves to be subordinated to the other one.


On an important further note: The importance of the nonverbal. In face to face interactions, the nonverbal can, ideally, be seen and read accordingly. Rolling one's eyes or a facepalm gesture can be the nonverbal equivalent of "no comment". But for a person who has to act professionally, colloquial nonverbal expressions are not an option, which is why such a person has to put things into words.

Putting things into words also minimizes the possibility of misinterpretation.

All that said, the firsr order of business seems to be to clarify what race means. — TheMadFool

There are no true Scotsmen!

Why then is there this trend to say "no comment" when silence would've achieved the same thing? — TheMadFool

It wouldn't. One has to make one's silence heard, in order to distinguish one's silence from one's absence.

Replying "no comment" signals that you actually heard the question and considered it. If you remained silent, this could also be simply due to not having heard the question to begin with.

I am assuming that, empirically and socially, the actions of a person that are directed by a genuine belief must be measurably different from those of a person promulgating a false belief. Presumably things like long-term consistency, cogency of presentation, tendency to evoke comprehension in others. I am assuming that "the truth will out" in some sense, or more precisely, "the false will out," and reveal its own falsity. It is an hypothesis.

If you are dissimulating, you are intentionally mis-communicating. If you are practicing authenticity, then the possibility of understanding is greatest. That would have significance for coordinated group planning and action, for example. — Pantagruel

Take, for example, Christians and their professed belief in the Ten Commandments, or their professed belief in "love thy neighbor". How would you go about measuring, assessing any of that, based on their words and actions?

But it's not socially unacceptable to be attracted to someone of a different race. — Metaphysician Undercover

Where???
Where I live, it's quite unacceptable, it earns one a stigma.

Many though, would argue that it is morally unacceptable to be attracted to someone solely by their visual appearance.

Eh? Who are those "many"?
Pfft. Looks matter. A lot.

Morality involves adapting your personal taste, desires, inclinations, and attractions, to socially accepted standards. — Metaphysician Undercover

Which would make sense in a monoculture, but not in most modern culturally and racially diverse societies.

If one feels attracted to an elf or a mermaid, is one racist ...

Personally, I assume there are manifestations of genuine belief that distinguish it from fake belief. That's what the bit you quoted suggests. Authenticity, credibility, efficacy, communicability, comprehensibility. — Pantagruel

I don't see how this works in practice.
I don't see how one could see through a person's strategizing and cunning.

Ah, putting hopes in the "final solution".

I live in a traditionally Catholic country. Catholics officially abhor suicide. And yet traditionally, people typically had an oleander plant at their house, and esp. at the local church. Oleander is not native to these places, and it has to be moved indoors for the winter, it's too cold for it outside.
Mind you, oleander is highly toxic, fatally. At first glance, death by oleandrin poisoning looks like a heart attack.
But apparently, people here have had a tradition of keeping a means for suicide and murder ready. It's not a topic open for public discussion. Perhaps it has made their lives easier, having the means for the final solution so readily at hand, by making the choice absolutely clear, each and every day.

As for the nexus between god and morality, all I can say is morality necessarily had to precede god for it didn't we wouldn't have gotten to the point where we gave the matter of god any serious thought. — TheMadFool

This is interesting! Can you say more about it?

Very good insights here. Do people who believe in the Protestant Work Ethic, really sustain this thinking throughout their work life? At no point does the good Protestant worker go, "God I really don't care today to do this"? — schopenhauer1

People who grew up with the PWE probably also have a deeply ingrained contempt for idleness and failure. So I don't think they are likely to engage in thoughts of idleness or the justification of it.

Also can one be in what is considered really "necessary" line of industry (a doctor for example) and still find it to be unfulfilling to do the work?

The idea that work should be "fulfilling" seems to be rather new, a relatively modern invention.
I gather that in earlier times, people didn't look to work as something "fulfilling" or "unfulfilling".

Is the Prot. Work Ethic just a way to get certain people to not think about the existence itself?

That's a good one! As far as the religious component goes, I'm not so sure. This:

In the good old days, religion provided an anodyne for this discomfort. It provided meaning for people's lives. — Bitter Crank

I don't believe this, not at all, at least not as far as the ordinary, illiterate masses are concerned. For the ordinary person, religion/religiosity is an externally imposed chore, a ritual, a keeping up of appearances, not something they would actually take to heart or with the help of which they would make sense of the world.

Zapffe observed that all humans have the ability to access the truth that we don't need to do anything at all, that we know our existential dilemma.. — schopenhauer1

It is also true that we cannot not do something. One way or another, as long as one lives, one will do something, even if it means rocking back and forth in a chair.

The question isn't whether to do or not to do, it's what to do and what not to do.

isn't the PWE just another trope to get people to limit their thoughts. to anchor them so that they don't run into an existential meltdown?

Sure, it can be a useful heuristic, provided one has internalized it early enough in life.

True.. but how can this topic be elevated from these practical reasons to be seen as actually a political choice? By having the child, you are promoting the fact that someone else needs to experience life, and that they should engage with the soci-economic-cultural superstructure. This idea though seems so remote to certain mindsets. Why do you suppose some people cannot think in these more abstract terms? I guess socio-economic status and environment have a lot to do with it. If one isn't exposed to philosophical thinking, one doesn't engage with it naturally.. — schopenhauer1

Well, it suffices to be a barren young married woman or an aging spinster, and one is thrown into the matter at the deep end.

What interests me too is molding this social mindset in becoming a compliant worker for an entity. We can't but NOT do this if we need to survive as we humans do (by social effort), yet just as the OP states, here we are KNOWING and EVALUATING dislike for this effort WHILE we do it. What an insane world. Have you ever read Peter Zapffe? He talks about how we have an "over abundance of consciousness" that provides us more evaluative reflective capacities than is needed for an animal to survive. This meta-evaluation gives us that much more to grapple with. We don't just "do". We don't just go from garbage can to garbage can looking for food, and finding shade under a tree like a racoon. We KNOW we are doing something and can say, "Ah shit, not this X task again...". Why!?

The Early Buddhists would probably reply to this that human life is a "mixed bag".

Yes, it is the forgetting that is the mystery here. What does one do once it is exposed? I am advocating for communities of catharsis, of commiseration.. What does it mean for the superstructure itself? Of work? Of needing to survive? Of still having to live life knowing these ideas? — schopenhauer1

(This is also in reply to several other questions and points by you:)
The matter appears to be so complex that only a massive and complex superstructure on the level of religion can handle it. Such as, for example, Buddhism in traditionally Buddhist countries. There, there exists a socially accepted (and even respected!) option of ordaining as a monk (or, to a lesser extent, nun) and exiting the usual business of life.

But without such a massive and complex superstructure, AN seems to be doomed to failure.

What if this is the mistake, thinking that ad populum/ad baculum is "just political"?
— baker

Can you explain? I just mean that people think because the majority thinks it, it must be the right course of action. The political consequence is that the YAYs win out by default by voting with their procreation.

It's something I've been wondering about for a while. I think philosophy is a kind of la-la land, advocating for principles of reasoning that usually just don't work IRL with real people. In general, people don't give a rat's ass about "critical thinking". The argument from power is the strongest one.

I'd like to believe this isn't the final word on this, but I'm afraid it is.

Exactly. There is a correspondence between the quality of belief and the quality of the presentation (enactment) of the belief. — Pantagruel

But how can we know what a person truly believes?
If we ask them point blank, how can we be sure they won't lie or otherwise give a deceptive answer?

We somehow need to account for strategizing and cunning, on the level of verbal expressions and on the level of actions.

Fiktionalitätskompetenz (roughly translated as "fictionality competence") is what one needs in order to interact with art wisely.

The question assumes that people must justify themselves to other people.
This is an assumption based on moral realism. One might as well cut the crap and declare supremacy.

That could useful if I were talking about how hardship is overcome but I'm not. — Tom Storm

That's too bad.

The fact is, we as humans can evaluate something as negative while we are doing those things. — schopenhauer1

We can, but this doesn't already mean we do or that we will.

This isn't limited to having children, it's much more general: from career planning to retirement planning, in failing to prevent a bad habit from forming, in making poor choices in terms of romantic or business partners, ...

Rather, I am framing the usual view of life as a political view, not just a life choice or a preference or a lifestyle choice. To have children is to squarely believe life to be worth continuing and expanding, and perpetuating. — schopenhauer1

No, it's more complex than that.
In first-world countries, about a half of all pregnancies is unplanned, and about a half of all pregnancies is aborted. So that doesn't look very pronatalist.
Secondly, if you talk to parents in more detail, they will possibly have misgivings about having children at all, but they would not say so right away or in public.
Further, many people have children for some practical reason: to have someone who will look after them when they're old, to produce workers who will help them with their business, to gain social influence over other people. Some are more insidious: to collect child support or welfare, for a woman to prevent her boyfriend from abandoning her. So people who have children for such practical reasons don't believe in pronatalism per se, but in their practical reasons, even if those people are nominally pronatalists.

All in all, I have the impression that people are generally ambivalent about having children, but will rarely admit to this ambivalence in public.

It seems to me that by the time people realize they shouldn't have children or not that many children, it's too late, because they've already produced them.
And it's generally not considered a nice thing to tell your child, regardless of their age, that you wish you didn't have them.

I think many pronatalists are also defending their past bad choices, rationalizing them, so as to make it easier to live with them. This can explain their vitriol toward antinatalists.

If politics is about how to get large groups of people to do things, if we compare the antinatalist to the procreationist sympathizer, the antinatalist does not force anything on anyone, the procreationist sympathizer does. — schopenhauer1

The procreationist sympathizer probably feels otherwise, feels that the antinatalist is forcing on them their view.

If you like the whole "project" of the socio-cultural-economic enterprise of human existence, why must then others be pressed into this?

Because it's a big project that requires the cooperation of many many people.

Ad populum doesn't mean anything here to me as justification just that might makes right. Again, that is just political then. — schopenhauer1

What if this is the mistake, thinking that ad populum/ad baculum is "just political"?

Have you seen The Truman Show?
— baker

Yes, but what is the tie in? — schopenhauer1

So there is this character Truman who is living on a set of a tv show -- except that he's the only one who doesn't know it, he thinks he's living in the real world. Millions of people are watching this show. Then, he begins to discover that something isn't quite right, like when a reflector falls from the sky, or people keep moving in predictable patterns. And he pursues this, he wants to figure out what's gong on. And the tv viewers are cheering him on, rooting for him, they are thoroughly enthusiastic. Then he escapes the set. The tv audiences go crazy, they are sooooo happy for him. Go Truman! Then their elation wanes, in a matter of minutes. And then they forget about him. Completely. Switch to another channel. A character they have followed for years, and they forget about him in seconds, and move on to other things.

You said:

I want to understand the origins of this group-think, deconstruct it, show it bare for what it is, and expose the harmful political assumptions of perpetuating this package. — schopenhauer1

And I'm thinking that your doing the above, "showing it bare for what it is, and expose the harmful political assumptions of perpetuating this package" would go over like Truman's discovery of the real world and departing the fictional one: your deconstruction of group-think, your showing it bare for what it is, your exposing of harmful political assumptions of perpetuating that package would likely be met at first with elation, enthusiasm, that "Yes! This is the truth!" -- and then forgotten about it.

Baker, I'm assuming you're jesting, right? — Tom Storm

Most certainly not. You keep missing my point.

My point is that hardship will be easier to overcome if the person is prepared for it. And that without such a preparation in advance, a person is less likely to overcome hardship.

Can you relate to that?

*sigh*

Jeez, Baker - the point I made has nothing to do about chronology. — Tom Storm

Indeed, which is where your mistake is.

was born in the experiences of the concentration camp.

Frankl didn't go into the camp unprepared. He didn't invent logotherapy from scratch while he was in the camp.

It's used in so many ways and has some application in helping people recover from substance use and anxiety.

Yes, such is its intention, but I'm pointing out its major shortcoming: it "works" only for people who already believe it.