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choosing subjective values is just the lazy thing to do. It requires no effort or discipline being objectively virtuous requires changing your habits and that's hard doing good is hard, being selfless is hard as it is going against our basic ego animal nature, it is hard!
Hey There i was wondering your opinions and insight on Socratic Ideals and Philosophies specifically his ideas on politics and how to live. as personally i think the Socratic idea of having more intelligent men and women in politics experts in a field can ONLY be a net good right? id love for you to pick it apart or shed more light on this for my own knowledge.
@@markmacvss9951 it would be good if they are experts in a field. The problem with politics though is it attracts a certain type of person to the job and even intelligent people can be corrupted with power. The type of person that would be good to have in politics probably has no interest in ruling or doing what it takes to climb up there, or has the connections. Even if they did end up there people would probably vote for the bigger liar to win, so there's no winning with the current system. Some countries have better systems where politicians rotate so you don't have the same jerks for 4 years
I wanna ask a question.Is our conscience made of morality or deep instincts.The reason why ask this is I want to follow something or why are my actions worth taking?If there is no objective values.Then, do subjectice values matter?I understand that everything might be contextual,but even in that context what are my instructions?Because, I watched one of your videos about your personal experience with pain.It appeared similar to the story of Viktor Frankl.If I understood correctly,he had a sense of higher purpose or transendence. So my question is how can I take some action in any random situation without any foundation?That's why I am asking you whether our conscience is a compass or just a collection of societal values. (Sorry for the english, I am not native speaker.If you didn't understand my question because of my illiteracy,feel free to ask me rewrite the question again..
@@BolatDosbolatov-g3l a good action produces a positive impact on others a bad action produces a negative impact on others. you should accept subjective values only in matters where your actions impact you and yourself alone. if you decide to binge on alcohol everyday in a room by yourself in isolation you do hurt yourself but it doesn't hurt anyone else. If you want to get rid of avoidable suffering objective values are the way to go. The less selfish you are the less you will suffer, the more disciplined you are the less life will rock your boat. Don't be naive and let people take advantage of you and expect nothing in return for a good deed, even insults shouldn't bother you so much if you have "arrived". forgive people and don't get your hands dirty. they will get what they deserve sooner or later, in this life or in the next one.
As far as I’m concerned my own life proves Lewis right. I spent decades as a militant atheist & “values antirealist” (though I didn’t have that name for it). It led me right into the despair and lack of motivation Lewis describes. Since converting to Catholicism 6 years ago, I believe in objective values and, though it is difficult to, it is joyful and fulfilling.
It's because Atheism is pointless without a sense of order and discipline in life, which it does not give by itself intrinsically. Catholicism instills order and discipline by promoting the importance of works and good deeds. Furthermore, religions tend to form stronger communal ties, thus a sense of belonging and purpose. The decline and downfall of civilizations isn't something unique to our modern era, every man across History was likely confronted with it at some point in time, especially if a war was recently lost, etc.
@@SplendidFactorWhat can I say, ignorance is bliss. Religious people are generally more ignorant than atheists/agnostics. After all, it's much easier to believe in a beautiful lie than live your life knowing the not so beautiful truth about reality.
The fact(or assumption) that belief in God leads to a greater well-being of a person, does not lead to God existing being true. And a person who doesn't believe, can't just pretend to. That's the problem. Peace.
@@SplendidFactorI'm not sure if having values aren't an intrinsic property of the human condition. I disagree with Lewis that values can't be instinctive. We are just like other animals and care for our survival, our kin and our species. But if you'd like to replace nature with god, it's just potatoes potato's.
@@daanschone1548 Exaple of a value that is not instinctive is given by Lewis himself in "The Abolition": men sacrificing themselves for their country. It can't be reasoned from well-being, because, well, dying nullifies all your well-being.
Haha! Thank you! It is true I am a bit of an insomniac but mostly it is just that my other work is seasonal and concentrated in the late Summer to early January, so I have a lot of time to spend on the channel at the moment. Though, just between you and me, I have been burning the candle at both ends a lot recently. I am planning a week off soon.
@@unsolicitedadvice9198I've been enriched by your vids & when I see how little you're making off these vids, vs the hours and hours of research they require. You must really love this stuff. And us. 🎉
@@unsolicitedadvice9198I've been enriched by your vids & when I see how little you're making off these vids, vs the hours and hours of research they require. You must really love this stuff. And us. 🎉
The interesting part about objective good is that it is fundamentally correlated with humanity's ability to hope for a better future. In a nihilistic society there is no such thing as 'better' let alone something worth hoping for. Faith is like objective goodness in that your obedience to its tenets leads to your hope becoming the reality. If you believe that humanity is unworthy of continuation and everyday interpersonal relationships with strangers and loved ones are filled with strife and dissatisfaction, then why would you expect anything from that person except for self-destructive behaviors and immediate satisfaction by any means necessary? A sick society is evidence of a hopeless and self-destructive people.
I think it's the other way around. Hopeless and self-destructive people are evidence of coming from a sick society which gives them little to hope for.
@@remiremsar5946 I have grim determination lurking behind the hope, however I'd rather assert hope and try to make it so than force myself into a last-stand mentality prematurely and squander whatever potential I could make of my activism. If that makes me a 'useful idiot' then pray tell who is my idiocy useful for?
There is no objective Good or Evil that is nonsense if Humans didn't exist would object Good or Evil exist Is it Evil for a Tiger to eat a baby animal what is Good a d Evil changes overtime and location is what is wrong the same as what was Wrong in the Roman empire 2000 years ago
Dude . . . This is the best, most concise summary of Abolition of Man I’ve ever heard. As a former Catholic, I’ve always felt the intuition that Lewis had a lot of relevant wisdom for our secular age. I’m glad a fellow agnostic thinks so too
Even thought I might be your generic ex-Christian, or some guy who just tried not to lose Pascal's Wager, I finally saw some decent thinkers. They would be the last thing the Southern Baptist Convention and aligned scumbags would ever want. My favorite thing was the St Thomas Aquinas argument that sex workers must be tolerated. The way I see it, St Thomas Aquinas knew their value the same way a plumber know the value of a safety valve.
I propose two systems for "objective values." 1) Are the people I interact with healthier or less healthy because of interacting with me? To the extent that people are healthier, my values are objectively good. 2) Using Kant's Imperative, if an entire society is theoretically comprised of people like me, is that society likely to grow or eventually die out? To the extent that it's likely to flourish, my values are objectively good. Durkheim proposed something similar as a way to objectively perform cross-cultural sociology: using the suicide rate to determine whether a society is good or bad. I'm no philosopher, so I wonder if my words can be proven philosophically. Even so, doesn't it at least pass the test of common sense?
@@JustMe-vn5pq I often asked if instead of counting those deaths, you could how many people are motivated to stay alive. I often joked that if the USA did not have so many hellfire and brimstone sermons, the self destruct rate would be like that of South Korea.
i struggle with bipolar disorder and i take cs lewis’ position, even though i am not a christian. when your biology constantly fights your intuition of what is good, you learn that there is a very real ruleset that is best to follow. it may not be best for everyone, but i would say that it is for the majority. otherwise, people start asking “why be healthy?” “nothing is objectively good about it.” “why not worsen the populace’s health for profit? what is wrong with greed?”. these are the types of things that make people miserable. community is good, connection is good, creation is good, health is good, action and movement are good. the people who are motivated even though they have no values are simply lucky enough to have their biology reward them for living like that.
I agree, and what you say reminds me of what the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 7 For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.
@@megangilbert3112That's a bad translation. It should be flesh, not sinful nature. Our nature was corrupted at the Fall but not sinful since it was created by God and nothing He created is sinful.
Nobody truly believes in their heart of hearts in subjectivism. You can tell by their anger at those who wrong them. They suddenly become the staunchest of objectivists.
This is why Carl Jung is so important. His work on the collective unconscious is what reconciles the conflicting viewpoint of intellectual and spiritual people.
@@mikesmithz Nope, not even close. An AI is a music box, filled with words we put inside it. In fact, the ENTIRE INTERNET is basically a giant box full of our words and echoes we put there. It simply makes the collective unconscious easier to see, nothing else.
@@mikesmithz lolwut? Society has always been decentralized. The centralization of society was invented by dictators to protect people from war. Your argument is that the internet is bad because we will revert to small communities like we always were? Really? We NEED to decentralize because it is the best defense against a nuclear attack. Cities were invented to protect money and smart people. Now the money is digital and the people can talk by video across the world AND nuclear weapons can destroy them. Cities are obsolete. Redundancy is king now. The term you are looking for is "atomization". The isolation of the individual from the rest of humanity. This IS a problem, but not how you think. The dangers of the internet have nothing to do with the collective unconscious. People who fall into the trap of atomization have a tendency to self-destruct. They are removed from the gene-pool while the people who ignore the internet continue to breed. The collective unconscious is perfectly safe in that regard. Indeed, the dangers of the internet are only towards the individual. The algorithms used by social media are designed to feed you "more of the same". This is inherently unnatural. Humans are supposed to argue, and we are supposed to LOSE those arguments. Losing an argument IS THE MEANS by which we improve and become smarter. Constantly giving you more of the same stunts your intellectual growth. It also encourages segregation. You are told that your opinion is "valid" and that you "don't need to change". Then you are connected only to people who agree with you. This results in online communities being sorted into groups of like-minded people who are never allowed to interact. It's segregation at its purest and most vile. It sounds to me like YOU have been on the internet too long, and that YOU need to get out more. Take a shower, brush your hair, go outside, and start talking to people. You will find that the collective unconscious is doing just fine, once you rejoin with it. In many ways the internet is a trap created by anti-social nerds so they can stay inside, but you can't stay inside forever. You will either kill yourself or go outside.
@@mikesmithz I typed out a long answer to this but UA-cam is refusing to post it. Oh well. TL DR: you need to go outside more. The collective unconscious is just fine. People who believe the internet's lies remove themselves from the gene-pool. It is a self-correcting problem.
@@jacobwiren8142 Current strides in AI are a form of crystallized collective unconsciousness, but it's not humanity's. It's the marketable, scannable, and liftable ideas that the digital realm of capitalism has access to and has so far been able to pin down the definition of- it's its own sort of entity.
As I look around today I see proof of Lewis' thinking in the present "crisis of meaning." I find your video quite thought provoking, and your humility inspiring. Thank you for this work.
One of my tests for evil is that it does whatever it desires in the moment and then finds a post hoc justification. Every once in a while you meet someone who has done this consistently, and they are destructive to themselves and everyone around them, and they have made themselves incapable of understanding why. They become incapable of understanding because they come to believe everything bad that happens around them is the fault of someone or something else.
It's funny. I always thought I was free when I was not bound to any values and no purpose aside from what makes me happy. I was happy for a bit because I got to experience what I thought was freedom, but after a while I just felt empty. For a few years I didn't know what I stood for and changed philosophies as though they were shirts. Now I'm trying to focus on what values are worth pursuing and where I can go in the course of life. I've seen how subjective moralities can destroy people and I don't want any part of that. Instead, I found that diligence, the pursuit of knowledge, and overall just being a good person was more liberating than the "freedom" I had before. But that happened in my early to mid 20s, maybe it's just what we call growing up.
It's scary how real these predictions were. We really have no standard sets of ethics or values, now. It truly is the case that we must create our own values and try to live by them. As all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
well, when you consider that almost all ethics are predicated around religion; given how secular the world is, it would make sense that things have only concentrated/escalated over time as religion has predominantly not changed drastically in that time. It also explains why the "standard" of ethics/values only has overlaps, rather than a singular standard. Until we can separate morality and religion from ethics, this issue will persist.
@@Jamhael1 it's not arbitrary, it comes from a tradition that endured over time; it may not sound good enough for a rationalist, but it's definitely not arbitrary
"Do we now live in unmotivated, egoistic societies worshipping false gods that will never make us full filled? Or are we quite happy with where we are?" I see no contradictions between these statements. A chicken raised in a cage never knows what it is like to walk free, and is most likely quite happy with its daily feed.
Thank you for another excellent video! A story I think you'll like, which is a kind of answer to your final question: I was raised Catholic, but had lost my faith by the end of high school. At the urging/insistence of my mother, I twice went to our parish to talk to the priests about my lack of faith. At the end of high school, I met with a Franciscan monk. A couple years into college, I met with a Jesuit priest. Independently, and years apart, both of these church leaders ended up recommending that I read the same novella: _San Manuel Bueno, Martir_ by Miguel de Unamuno. I dutifully read it, and discovered this was a story about a Catholic priest who had lost his faith yet remained the priest for this village, continuing to preach the Bible even though he personally did not believe in it. He ends up finding a successor, who similarly shares his lack of faith, but who goes on to be the next priest in the village. That's pretty much it. So, I've had two priests respond to my lack of faith with a story about how we should pretend to believe for the sake of the community, even if we don't accept those tenets personally. Since then, I can't help but wonder if this is true of the entire Catholic Church: none of them really believe it, but they think maintaining that illusion in public is necessary for the good of society. Anyway, if you haven't yet read it, I do highly recommend this book- it is apparently the semi-official Catholic answer to your question about whether we should pretend to believe for the sake of others. I'd love to see you discuss it in a video one day, if you have time. Super appreciate your work and this channel!!!
I was a Mormon university student in 2012 when I was assigned this novella in a Spanish language literature course. Changed my life. I had previously committed to following this path in my own religious practice, but after seeing the consequences in the lives of these fictional characters, my courage failed me. I began questioning the existence of God just months later. Powerful stuff happening in this space, thanks for surfacing this work.
Objective values have never existed.. they have always been based on whichever religion or culture they were based on .. but if we actually made values based on relative to a certain outcome we can make moral judgments in realation to that outcome
This sounds like a fancy way bringing up the question, "do the ends justify the means?" Idk if you mean that, if not I would inquire as to what you do mean.
One issue that no one in these circles want to confront is the fact that all notions of human rights in the modern era sit atop the fundamental proposition that "all men are Created equal... and are endowed by their Creator with... unalienable rights". I ask the question Nietzsche asked, "How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? " "God is dead" is no triumphant statement of the imminent age of enlightenment. Can we dispense with the idea of God, and still protect human rights as we know them in the modern era? So far, we've not been doing a good job of it.
You mean rights like we had back in the good old days of slavery and segregation, women not having equal rights, including the right to vote, homosexuality being illegal?
@@michaelnewsham1412 You again? The same comment every single time. I've had this conversation with you for 20 years or so now, and frankly, I'm bored to catatonia with this fake straw man script I've heard 100,000 times. Yawn.
@@NoKidsNoProblem "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Sound familiar?
I'm an old man who won't live much longer. I'm trying to be melodramatic or something but I have tried my damndest to figure out a, a philosophy, a theory, system, whatever you want to call it, a way for people to live together in peace and harmony.... I've contemp!ated and read history for decades. I finally realized something that I didn't want to admit. That is, we, us, humans, homo sapiens, are never, ever going to be able live together without destroying each other. It's hardwired into our brains and nothing is going to change that. There's no religion, or philosophy, or code or commandments that will save us from ourselves. Don't believe it? Don't matter. Just read history. You'll see.
Right, but its only the first step on the way. I have contemplated further, and i found a sence in it. Problem is, that nobody who does not find it by himself would believe it. No philosophy or reading will ever help. Only your very own finding out and understanding means.
Typically religious believers suppose that their "prophets" who warn of cataclysmic, global human destruction in the future, do so because they are special people who are annointed by "God". But perhaps this is really a premonition that many or most ordinary people feel in their bones, even atheists. Perhaps the phenomenon is in realm of things that we do not understand and maybe never will, something about time, consciousness, cause-and-effect that is outside everyday experience, like the weirdness of quantum mechanics or relativity, You get only glimpses and sixth sense of future happenings, on occasions in a lifetime, but the sheer eeriness lets you know that it is not mere coincidence, such as when having an unmistakable and specific image of what was preparing to happen, in the months before Sept 11. Time will tell, but perhaps so many people are starting to go crazy and get so ugly because they know deep down by intuition, not merely from watching news, that unbearably ugly events, beyond our control, are coming. Have really sensed this from childhood, even in relatively stable and "good" times, that a horrible ending awaits. Now, in old age, more clearly understanding why, watching it unfold, before our eyes.
I'd disagree. It's not necessarily a positive portrait to paint, but as the world advances and becomes more interconnected we all slowly become more alike. it's definitely already happening. If corporations/ai/government ever get advanced enough to learn how to control the brainwashing that inadvertaintly happens (accidentally I assume, but it's also intentional to a lesser degree im sure) I'm sure they could gradually "force" people to be more like minded. We aren't near that yet, but it's definitely possible. Humans and all life are simple products of nature vs nurture There will always be outliers, but if you.can control the "nurture" part, you can control how most people behave and conduct themselves. Religion, poverty, and geopolitical issues slow this down immensely. But look at the west. But I could.be wrong and you.could.be right.and we could destroy.ourselves before.this happens. I don't particularly care about either outcome. I'm quite detached from the world. I'm blessed with autism and schizophrenia and have a strong obsession with logic and I think incessantly. Edit: and by its already happening, I mean look at the various parts if the world. They're all becoming more and more like the west. Look at the west in how they mold themselves. Yes, it's very divisive, but that's because at this period in history the world is full of opposing ideals, but most of the world, almost all of it, is moving in one direction. As time goes on, the "political right" becomes more "left" And as AI flourishes, this will probably amplify as AI replaces jobs and dependence is made crucial for more and more people. I could be wrong about all of that except for what's already happening, I don't know the future I just think a lot. And I'm not thinking this will be a fast process at all. I'm not even certain if it will happen, I wouldn't be surprised of we nuked ourselves out of existence before then, lol. And I'm definitely not intentionally implying a unified world is a good thing. I mean I'm sure it'd be good for them masses, lol. But I don't really care one way or the other. I like existing in my own bubble,.cut off from the outside world, left to process myself and said outside world without attachment.
@@alena-qu9vjI'm curious. Could you you point me into the direction you speak of? I really, really like to dig my own tunnels and incorporate whatever I may learn into my understanding.
I only wish I had discovered the joy of philosophizing when I was young. Seems like I was too busy just trying to make a living for that but now that I’m old and retired I’m enjoying making up for lost time and your channel is time well spent.
I hate moral relativism, really relativistic philosophies in general. Because they are useless. Its impossible to argue for anything or reach a conclusion when you have no axis to base your argument upon. "There is no absolute truth" is a self contradictory statement which is no basis for sound philosophy or sound argument.
It sounds like Lewis understood the same thing that Friedrich Nietzsche did about mankind as we know it dying and being reborn with the strong crafting our values. What he's describing in the end sounds a lot like the Ubermacht, Only Lewis fears the Ubermacht and Nietzsche embraces him.
Is Ubermacht the official english translation for Nietsche's "Übermensch"? Because when you translate Übermensch to english it literally turns into Superman, while "macht" in that sense would mean power or force, which can be a completely disembodied thing.
No Nietzsche would have totally loathed a person like C. S. Lewis. Why are Anglos always trying to turn this great german philosopher into a christian? Apparently they can't understand him because they have no philosophers on their own who are not totally whack and sentimental christians.
@@im3phirebird81 No. I know english and german. "Uber" is "Over" or in this sense, superior. "Mensch" is "human", so like "ein Mensch" would translate to "one human". So yeah, superman lol. superior man, better man. "Superior man" would be the most accurate translation, since superior indicates one being above another. Even more accurately you could say "Overman", but no one really uses "over" like that, so "superior man" would be more fitting. "Macht" is pretty much the same as "Might" in english, but even Nietzsche's view on the word "power" is not necessarily the same as people usually tend to associate.
Dude, I've loved work your work for a few months now, and this video essay is just fantastic. CS Lewis is one of my favorite writers, and you depict him fairly here despite disagreeing, and that takes integrity. And the way you took shots at yourself in good humor is a striking example of humility, authenticity, and wit. I love how you always tie multiple philosophers together into a dialogue on any given topic . You've become my favorite UA-cam Philosophy channel, and you have my applause 👏
The part in the video where you talk about lingering habits and values from an objective value system that still govern us when they’re on their way out reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about, an idea of cultural inertia.
1:10 The problem with academics is that the overlap with narcissists: An excess of cognition and a deficit of action; driven by fantasy; and drawing others into that fantasy to gain power. buy academics unlike narcissists have the intention and training to manifest their fantasies. And have balanced conation, will and planning.
I think that's kind of unfair towards academics. Uneducated narcisissts can be quite damaging, too. You don't need a PhD to manipulate people. Vice versa, many academics are just scholars lost in a crumbling system.
I love watching your videos. Your channel is like Clif Notes on philosophy. That you can admit that you’re the target of some of those philosophers is great.
Thank you! Funnily enough I tend to pick philosophers specifically because I feel they call me out. I figure that way I will hopefully avoid being in an echo chamber
Nietzsche wanted us to create our own moral perspective but tell me brother whether our current understanding of things is enough of the requirements.Non existence of Free will can be a very big argument for Nietzsche ideas.And I think there must exist an objective truth for if it wasnt we would just kill each other based on our liking and disliking and later justifying it with either rationality or Utilalitarism. The modern world seems to be descended more into hedonistic pleasure than ever and just that humanity is trying to cope with the Meaninglessnes and trying to survive at the cost of harbouring weakness . I have learnt all of what I have said from your videos so thank you brother
Yeah, we should've probably stuck with plato's and aristotle, modern "philosophers" are just trying to hard to rebel without any actual substance to their philosophy.
I feel like we do see plenty of us killing each other followed by later rationalisations, though. The predictor of subjective morality is observable in thousands of cases recorded in the past, and with certain events going on currently, directly observable now. I mean, plenty of genocides have happened, and almost every one has the governing body rationalising their actions to the populace. Obviously most people don’t and will never kill another person, but we definitely see it happen. I also don’t think we as a species are truly getting more hedonistic as a whole. People have been claiming similar things for thousands of years, and they’re almost always wrong. We just have greater access to desires and a better look at what others are doing than we did previously. It’s much harder to exude an air of temperate virtue when there’s a video of you stuffing your face somewhere online, for example.
12:15 some instincts are momentary and cultural and some are universal. if we compare across cultures there are some core values: Do not murder the helpless; do not diddle kids; do not poison the water. the problem is that the values that are almost universal only tell us a few things not to do, not what to aspire to.
I would argue that these values emerge as a result of life preserving itself, rather than any ethical or moral imperative. A population that habitually poisons/murders/inbreeds with itself is bound to be less healthy than a population that actively avoids those things happening. We can see a lot of these similar traits in animals, like not going to the bathroom near food/water sources, or moving dead bodies away from communal areas, etc. These things are helpful for a species to live, but I don't think we can necessarily ascribe an intrinsic moral or ethical intent to these actions. Values by their nature are aspirational, they are future states, they are metaphysical ideas. As such, they must be created, they cannot exist without a creator, and so any values humanity may have, now or in the future, are chosen based on a subjective view, and as such, finding universal values that everyone agrees on becomes like finding a needle in a haystack.
Wouldn't we just rebel against that standard anyways? how do you get a horse to drink? life being a journey and not a destination really speaks to me. ty for your comment, i was considering this when i was listening to the video so it helped me work out a... better.. conclusion. which i'm sure will never be the best and hopefully made better in time.
@@kezia8027Agreed. A good example of what happens when these aren't followed is how Iceland was almost decimated by blood feuds. I would argue that these so called "objective values" are more akin to societal instincts that are a result of cultural evolution. Lewis is clever and I personally enjoy his writing but it strikes me more as Christian apologetics than honest philosophy. Which of course is fine, he's entitled to his own subjective values as much as anyone, but I personally at least don't find it very convincing.
Hi there. Thank you for putting together this great video. As an agnostic atheist myself, I can see how the lack of objective values can lead one astray or cause mental paralysis. However, I disagree that subjective values necessarily lead to such paralysis. I argue that flexibility of thought and the willingness to change one's mind when presented with a good argument are positive things. Furthermore, my values are grounded in a set of morals that I've constructed for myself; meaning that they're not so easily shaken. I can only speak for myself, but the absence of objective values has liberated me and made me a kinder person. I choose to do good because it generates happiness in others and that in turn makes me feel good. While I'm far from perfect and I could certainly do more, believing in objective values wouldn't make me a better, more altruistic human being. In my opinion, being good in the absence of objective values is more worthy of merit than being good because of the belief in a metaphysical being. That being said, if everybody believed that values are subjective, I can't say for sure that the world would be a better place, so perhaps C.S. Lewis has a good point.
There are "objective" values, but of course we - all being subjects - can only interpret them subjectively. Each of us perceives only as much of the ideal value, as they are "atuned" to. And indeed it is more an emotional than "rational" matter. I feel it not only wrong, but even sick to underestimate and demean the role of emotions in human affairs. "Rationality" without (mastered) emotions is pure evil, promoted mostly by people without emotional and social intelligence.
I absolutely agree! But there is a catch: We've become too materialistic! I believe there must be a balance between what I call the "outer world" (material, action) and "inner world" (thoughts, ideas, emotions, imagination) in order too live happier together.
Wonderful work! Many thanks for your insightful videos. One statement of yours stuck out particularly 3:15 "...that there are no objective moral or aesthetic facts still persists to this day many people myself included are personally quite sympathetic to this viewpoint and while it is rejected by many moral philosophers...". This can be seen as the inevitable consequence of a fully internalized materialism that relegates soul and spirit to mere emergent properties.
I think Lewis hit the nail on the head as we see the current realities of our society. Bearing in mind he came from an atheistic philosophy into a Christian based one. Particularly his description of elites dictating the new value system is a thing we see in action as we speak. The global elites, wef, g17, and a host of others are seeking to do just that with economic and political teeth to their ideologies.
I love your videos! Your a really bright guy and I especially love it when you talk about my favourite author doestoyevsky! Keep it up! And just a small recommendation, I would love to see you do a video on 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' by Leo Tolstoy. Can't wait to see what you do next 👍
choosing subjective values is just the lazy thing to do. It requires no effort or discipline being objectively virtuous requires changing your habits and that's hard doing good is hard being selfless is going against our basic ego animal nature, it is hard!
@@guitarskin9758 yes that right and I see Islam helps people do these things better that's why I advice to read more about it , I am sure it help you in your journey and live a happy life in this life and afterlife .
@@ali_haidar_313 I lean towards Buddhism and Stoicism, "Arthur Schopenhauerism" and thinking for yourself about everything, putting my "beliefs" to test and see what makes sense in practical life without disregarding the possibility of having to deal with karma in a reincarnation or an afterlife. Don't know much about islam but I'll have a look at some point thank you and good luck!
When the fabric of your existence shreds here and there from grief and trauma, spirituality can start to seep in. And when that happens, all the fun philosophizing just dies.
@@OmnivorousOtter101 why are you offering a medal or something? No, the reason I wrote what I did is to challenge your notion that all men hook up either because of loneliness or become lonely after hooking up. I guess you're very fragile and don't like it when people challenge your bs.
Which interpretation of Christianity would you choose? The church has fragmented into many factions from it's origin. The Catholic church was founded by the schism with the Orthodox church. Do you prefer the insanity of the current Evangelicals and Christian Nationalists? The followers of which would gladly subjugate everyone else and put to death those that they deem unworthy. Religions are by their very nature irrational and illogical. You can't reason with someone who takes orders from a supreme being that promises paradise in the afterlife.
A nice presentation of C.S. Lewis. I have been sharing your video's with my Grandson. Always nice to see honest explanations and unfortunately so rare.
"the whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, But that is only the ugly. The whole world recognizes the good as the good, But that is only the bad ... lao tzu
bs, civilization goes in waves, we are now in downhill part, the new dark ages are around the corner, it will be about low life expectancy and survival...unless we annihilate oneselves in nuclear fire which putin threatens at least europe on almost weekly basis. Whether we will be able to rise up again, given the woke lunacy consuming the world and the digital tech that is able to follow us absolutely everywhere, I do not know. In any case, good times are over
No it starts in povity and barbarity. Things improve and people try to make it better till you get luxury for masses of people. Unfortunately luxury produces decadence in the elite and society crashes after one to many problems. Three quarters the population is wiped out and we try again. There have Only been 12 luxury capable civilizations in the last 12 thousand years.
@@MisterTutor2010 Can only name a handful from memory. Egyptian, Canaanite, Greek, Roman, Medieval European, Modern European, Persian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese. These are capable of producing advancements and luxury independently. When they suffer a collapse mass famine and chaos follows. Late bronze age collapse affected Egyptian and Canaanite half population wipped out. No written language for 200 years. Greek empire based on city states collapse. population collapse and no written records for 150 years. Roman empire collapsed, In my country citys lost 90% of populations no new civilization and new writing for 400 years. China has had 29 collapses with half population wiped out each time. takes 50 to 100 years for Chines civilization to reform. More like walking up hills to mountains of advancement then falling off a cliff. I read a very interesting history book about the 12 advanced civilizations compared to 200+ poor civilizations.
@@BeachandHills-hb2pq The Bronze Age Collapse is fascinating subject. Several civilizations disappeared seemingly overnight. I read about when I was doing my postdoctoral fellowship a few years ago. Not to nitpick but Medieval Europe is generally regarded as the precursor to the Renaissance in which European Civilization recovered from the fall of Rome. Also although China and Japan have had ups and downs through the centuries, they still exist. Also "Modern Europe" refers to Europe as it is now. Also last time I check, Russia didn't go anywhere. What exactly do you mean by luxury? Your writing seems to have suggested that luxury for the masses was when civilizations started to decline but then it seems to have jumped over to decadence of the elites. Also I should have clarified my original point about the perpetual decline of civilization. It was in reference to my observation that every time anything changes in slightest, anything new appears, or anything old in questioned, there always seems to be chicken littles claiming the sky is falling. This seems to be a pattern across societies throughout history. I never heard a preacher claim that we're on a moral upswing. They'll always claim that society in degenerating and this pattern persists generation after generation, century after century. If people like this were to be always believed, civilization has always been in a state of decline.
Finally, I got my Philosophy guru ... Got your first video almost a week ago but was scrolling and watching each bit of video on Neitchsche' ubermensch and will to power and many others ....so got you .... highly rated on my UA-cam list❤
I was once a fellow traveler, brother. Despite decades of material success and many, many temporal pleasures, I came to realize that there is no inherent worth or meaning to all of it beyond Jesus Christ. Lovecraft's vision of the cosmos is the most accurate opposite vision, the logical conclusion to a universe with no objective rules. No society can operate for long under such a paradigm.
Great video. I’m 47 and had a very catholic upbringing. My 20’s were about Buddhism which led me to atheism, something I always felt within me. As I aged I realised that the reason Christianity lasted and ended up dominating for periods of time is because it is the one true religion that is made for man experience in this realm. Jesus is now my king and saviour. I am a solid Christian. It’s lonely in todays world but fulfilling. I’ve studied philosophy and theology as a hobby for decades, deep diving into different states. I know understand why and my purpose. God bless your journey and it’s thinking :)
"...we will be puppeted by a small minority of powerful people, even after they die..." The irony of this statement is THAT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. Christianity is the puppeteering of the Apostle Paul and the Catholic church, stretched across 2 thousand years. Hinduism is the puppeteering of Manu and its other founders. Buddhism is the puppeteering of Buddha and his followers. This sort of phenomenon happens ALL THE TIME, EVERYWHERE. It is a normal and necessary component of human existence. The world becomes a nihilistic place. Then, a small minority of exceptional people imagine a better world and codify their method for creating it. That idea gains popularity in the absence of other values. Then, drawn by the promise of social power, an organized governing body forms around the idea to enforce it. Then the idea is widely implemented over generations. Over those generations more and more flaws are revealed. People become disillusioned with the idea. Then the world becomes a nihilistic place again and the cycle repeats. The Assyrians enslaved their neighbors for a thousand years until they were defeated and destroyed. The Jews developed a culture around resisting slavery in response. When Jewish custom declined, Christianity was introduced. Now, Christianity is in decline, and we will soon choose another idea to implement. This si the natural and inevitable progression of humanity.
Should an ape clan decide they despise the pupeteering of the alpha male and, for that matter, there are no objective values and rules, we could be spared our misery. And the planet too, at least I hope the species replacing the extinct apes would behave better.
It's as if Lewis was a British humorist, but a poor writer because no one gets his joke. He's writing to an audience who considered themselves modern and post-religion already, which means they knew full well that the Bible was written by men, and knew because religious education was still common, that the god of the Bible commits atrocities (flood, plagues, etc.) and orders atrocities (genocides, genital mutilation, blood sacrifices, etc.) and makes a deal called the covenant with a specific local people only, an insignificant fraction of the world's population, imposed on them without their consent, so not a valid contract legally, that they must follow a set of hundreds of commandments, mostly ritual, and if they don't, then that god will bring terrible suffering and ruin upon them, and if they do, then that god will bring terrible suffering and ruin on all the other nations of the world. They also knew that Christians tried to soften that, in what they would claim publicly about morality, but it's all still in there, in the Christian prophecies too, and worse is in there: eternal torment for anyone who doesn't get the message and believe and bow down to it. They also knew that they were in the middle of a war, even a series of wars, where total war, inhumane atrocities with no limit, was being practiced, on all sides, regardless of which interpretation of the Bible the participants claimed to be supporting, or other prophecies written by men, such as Marx. In the middle of all that, Lewis writes an argument that's flimsy and facetious seeming, making a strawman of any alternative ethics or morality, to support, at the surface level, maintaining traditional Christian morality of his time, and writing that without that, we would no longer be men. No one gets the joke, probably because it isn't funny.
And it's so clearly facetious, because he literally calls what he's advocating the "Tao" all through the book, then he has an appendix, of verses presumably chosen by him, from various cultures, Roman and Christian and Chinese and many others, cherry picked to be those statements that sound moral to him, leaving out the context of the religions and philosophies in which those quotations originated, including any context of Christian beliefs. He only has about 5 specifically Christian sourced verses, out of about 100 verses total. (I"m just estimating, but you can check for yourself. Christian verses are rare there, whole pages without a mention of a Christian source.) So it's unfair to claim that he was supporting Christianity or Christian morality, when what he was supporting was whatever sounded good to a Brit of his time, from the library they had at hand at the time of various literature they supposed was ancient.
There is a world of difference between saying that statements of value are objectively TRUE and saying that believieving in their objectivity is USEFUL from the practical point of view.
I often cyncially say that religion is needed. Otherwise, only stupid people breed in significant numbers. "Go forth and multiply or burn in Hell" sermons may have been a tool for preventing Idiocracy or at least delaying it.
In United States, we are now told that we have to unquestioningly accept the most ludicrous nonsense because it represents some illiterate’s “learned experience.” No matter how divorced from reality, no matter how illogical, we mustn’t disagree. Any attempt to explain why some idiocy is counter factual is casually dismissed as “mansplaining.” We put dunces in positions of power and then we are told that we cannot disagree with anything they do.
The' mystic' scientist Rupert Sheldrake talks of HIS long atheistic stage in his books. From 15-34 I was an atheist too, I can't exactly say when or where it went, although I passed through Stoicism en route. I have PTSD, so it's definitely possible that the new mindset began as a crutch. I would describe myself as a Gnostic Christian (of RC heritage) now - and certainly that materialism and chasing after passing whims has almost vanished.
Thank you for another thoroughly insightful video. CS Lewis was a prophet of sorts. And “abolition of man” has stood the test of time. I believe any student of history has to be skeptical of what life would look like post Christian Society. I’m afraid it would look a lot like pre-Christian society.
or it could make christian society look like pre- christian society. i think thats the beauty of subjective views, and why its so desperately needed in our modern society.
One important point that I don't think got touched on: Believing that there are objective values is not the same as believing we know accurately what they are or have a monopoly on understanding them (i.e. be humble and listen, then do your best to align with your best understanding of right/good).
It appears that many of them are coming true. Im only 28 but already feeling broken by laws, systems, others acting selfishly and without care... I honestly think that its now or never, to reeducate our society and rid of corrupt egoists and psychos.
There are sometimes sponsors and patrons behind philosophers who can fund and influence movements and books and new philosophies into mainstream thought. It's political and usually culturally subversive- there were and are many enemies of The Church who wanted less influence from the church and more influence for them.
My new favorite youtube channel. A lot of interesting subject that I need my notebook next to me and pause, to think and write. Keep up the jewel in this jungle modern world!
I rather enjoyed and hated your video. The thoughts you put forward paint a concise picture of what lies ahead for humanity as I, and many are seeing now. It brings back to me a paradoxical question I've asked many time and of few people before; "Would you rather know the future and be powerless to change it, or would you rather not know, and believe that you can?"
"the silverchair" really freaked me out as a kid. it seemed way to dark to fit with the rest of Narnia, and when I try to recall the book it seems dreamlike and mixed with all the other tails of evil underground societies.
I do believe this topic is a perfect example of where the debating style of philosophy often goes astray. It tends to boil an idea down to an ever increasing granular level until it can be disproved or debunked, then proceeds to throw out the whole statement or idea as false. In disregard of other factors influencing the idea of concept. I believe this to be astray from the true usefulness of philosophy. Granular analytical direction of ideas in this manner should not be with the intent of "debunking" or "proving it wrong". I think the usefulness of this granular examination is in helping each person, individually, to better understand our personal motivations in our thoughts and actions, and to help us explore the ramifications of those motivations allowed to go to extremes. The fewer the motivating factors you take into account, the less applicable the conclusions drawn are to our personal, and to societal, derived course of actions. Granular examination is essential, but trying to use that granularity to define our actions is absurd. It is like deciding if it is safe to cross the street by only looking directly ahead and not seeing any cars.
Not all people can accept something as "true", meaning there will always be people who consider something "false". So since morality is based on truth, morality will always be subjective. This doesn't mean there isn't an objective morality in the universe, just that what we consider "objective" is, in truth, subjective in relation to us, the individual. The truth will always prevail, meaning that if something is actually beneficial, those who agree on it will benefit. If something is actually harmful, those who believe in it will be harmed. So across time, truth will prevail. The only way to truly harness objective morality, is by putting it to the test of time. Nietzsche's ubermensch is what we have always been essentially, or atleast in part. The ubermensch is our natural path as human individuals, and by extension, it is the ubermensch that progresses our societies as a whole. It just so happens that the truth, which shapes our morals, is revealed to us across time. Societies are built on the morals, which are shaped by the truth that is known at the time (or generally accepted). It's almost like the entirety of human society is a living breathing thing, that evolves across time. It can get stuck or even regress due to bad habits (dictatorships, dogma), which limit our freedom and creativity as individuals, thus making it difficult to reach out to find the truth, but naturally it will always progress. But as an individual, the only way to be as moraly objective as possible and live as authentically as possible, is by maximazing your search for truth and living according to it.
I would argue that strong minded people can live without objective values, like a healthy person can walk without crutches. While weak people might benefit from believing that morality is indeed objective.
Hm... that does only work out if "objective values" is read as "arbitrary laws of behaviour". But if I read it as "main principles and goals", the strong minded person would become erratic and irrational.
People in power and of influence have always imposed their values upon society. In the past, when almost everyone was or pretended to be religious, most people didn't bother to critically reflect on traditional values ( by which I mean old ideals, principles and standards) because they were too bussy working, trying not to starve or offend those in power. I think we could still learn much from underrated ideas from epicureanism and psychological egoism.
@@bennygohome4576 Alan Turing was found guilty of homosexuality and had to submit to chemical castration; many women writers up to the 1950s had to submit their works with male names' Isaac Newton had to have his friends conceal his unitarianism so he could teach at Oxford; Heinrich Marx had to convert to Lutheranism so his son could be admitted to university-like all European and American universities at the time, no Jews allowed (or, of course, women). But now you complain because you can't make offensive jokes at work.
I think what is key is that the values are stable and unquestionable- or at least very very resistant to be disregarded or challenged. Nothing about this is modern - the fundamental import aspects of human life haven’t changed at all. The problem is with thinkers who believe that things have changed. Abrahamic Religion has lost authority in that it is easily discredited in its ability to explain the world. I’m of the opinion that Buddhism is more sustainable, but also perhaps less dogmatic.
The last argument makes much more sense given the fact it was written during the periods of WW- II.As revolutions passed down and the fall of the conventional monarchy occurred, they were all driven by a lead figure who ultimately became leaders and presidents of new republics. They enforced their own morals and values over "newly independent people" who thought to have been unlocked from their prisons and swayed away into the hands of "democracy" or so called "freedom". I dont agree Lewis's no subjective morality since humanity is so diverse but yet so accompanied over all the centuries we've lived by. According to me, freedom could be achieved if we stick to objective morals in our interaction with others and the subjective into our psyche (even if they're fragile, we're equally concious and not ashamed of it). What do you think of it? I'd like to hear your viewpoints onto my argument and discuss it more! And once again, great video and work!! You make philosophy so interactive and enjoyable. Cheers 🥂
The Deconstruction of values in the late 20th century was not about discarding all objectivity of values, but to understand why and how there to be such a difference. Values exist only through subjects. People believing in them and following them. I can see your point that creating an agreement of values may be important, but this still doesn't undermine their subjectivity. And we should rather come to include all values, even though their logical inconsistency make this point of view a relativistic one.
I wonder when we stopped listening to our underlying feelings of unease that triggered a healthy objective inquiry, and decided to stew in our 'feels'? We've been fed so many ideals and divisive topics that, it appears to me, we can't see who or what we actually are and that our needs as creatures need to be met, but aren't. Don't take the universe too seriously. It isn't taking you seriously.
Wisdom is teleological in scope. If listened too. It warns and guides. Don't take that road, take that one. Itt safer, thieves have been known to rob outside London town. Or simply the book of Proverbs. Knowledge without wisdom. Is like person that forgot to wear his cloak on a blustery day. Or a soldier that forgot his sword. Or the merchant that fell for the allure of thr village girl, and robbed of wallet. Or the building of weapons forgetting they will be used in the will for power. And these are evidentiary knowable situations of value.
@@pierrelabounty9917 And wise maxims are an aid, not an unbreakable law, they apply to certain or general circumstances, the understanding of the circumstances and how to act meets the same human limits of evidence, induction and necessary assumption, "murder is wrong" is immediately accepted, but it is easy to devise a counterexample where death is in service of a greater good, thus a weighing of values has already occurred and it must be admit that however close insight may approach to the objective moral, the apprehension of physical objectivity(empiricism) is already limited in scope by our faculties, modes of understanding, thus morality a more advanced form of knowledge naturally exists with greater constraints. The immediate apprehension of an object sitting on the table is direct, but it is unverified and counterexamples are possible, a further investigation must occur to understand the object sitting on my table objectively, and none of this tells me about the object with respect to itself, always with respect to the frame of reference I use. The cultivation and immediate reference to morality is more difficult than seeing an object sitting on the table, and direct knowledge of its inner nature, perfect morality with respect to perfect morality, is also impossible, but just as objects sitting on the table are very real, they and morals, are not subjective.
I think Lewis was pretty much spot on with "The man will be free to chose but will have not choice". You can see the world realise in real time on day to day basis.
The older I get in the more knowledge, I unpack the more the value of religion becomes blindingly apparent more specifically Judeo Christian when I was younger I looked at it and took it at face value and argued with it because everything needed to make sense logically and rationally. as I got older, it’s like I grew a new set of eyes and a new set of tears, and begin to see and hear things differently, and I fully believe that a society with Christianity at its core will always be infinitely better off in a society without it now if you want to argue the details of, what you believe and don’t believe that’s a whole Nother conversation but the point that I am making is the quality of life of a society. The objective values of that society are always better than a society without it. and it’s almost like damn we thought we were so smart but now we’re starting to figure out why religion is everywhere and has always been everywhere and such a big part of humanity because without it, people evolve into pure chaos with no hope and it’s like we’re backsliding into chaos and it’s becoming apparent why we need religion but the question is how bad does it need to get before the majority of people realize it. I mean you can argue the spiritual aspects all you want I’m simply saying that society is better with it than without it in an objective way, and you can even look at America over the past four decades, and as it removed Christianity more and more from public spaces, and it went from being a country where it literally had God in the Pledge of Allegiance, and in God, we trust written on our money to the country of atheist, that is more favorable of foreign religions than their own Christian religion. They were born into and walked away from that they never actually really knew because so much of America is just lukewarm Christianity. Not very many people really ever knew it. We all had some weird Catholic upbringing cases, which isn’t even really Christianity.
Recently I thought about how the Roman political class didn't argue whether religion was real or not, it argued if it was useful or not. Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. - Seneca Sometimes even though I am an agnostic atheist type, I can see a value to having a certain amount of religiosity. I often argue that it is a way to motivate the non-Idiocracy to have more kids.
Frederick Buechner: “We have freedom to the degree that the master whom we obey grants it to us in return for our obedience. We do well to choose a master in terms of how much freedom we get for how much obedience. To obey the law of the land leaves us our constitutional freedom, but not the freedom to follow our own consciences wherever they lead. To obey the dictates of our own consciences leaves us freedom from the sense of moral guilt, but not the freedom to gratify our own strongest appetites. To obey our strongest appetites for drink, sex, power, revenge, or whatever leaves us the freedom of an animal to take what we want when we want it, but not the freedom of a human being to be human. The old prayer speaks of God ‘in whose service is perfect freedom.’ The paradox is not as opaque as it sounds. It means that to obey Love itself, which above all else wishes us well, leaves us the freedom to be the best and gladdest that we have it in us to become. The only freedom Love denies us is the freedom to destroy ourselves ultimately.”
C J Lewis was quite right in his mental trend. What he and other writers had encountered can easily be summarized in 3 words. According to the Buddha’s teachings: Impermanence and nonself. Not understanding these 3 words will trap us in this shackles and suffering for indefinite time. Good luck everyone.
Objective truth is, essentially, public truth. "Objective" is a referent to a thing outside ourselves, that is, something seen by those who look. So, objective values are those we hold in common. As such, they have been examined, and remain held. Hope this helps.
I think that for Lewis that would not quite be objectivity. He might call that “intersubjectivity”. Objectivity for him would be something that would exist independent of agreement
Any asserted objective truth has a context or scope. It is conditional. There are objective truths with a universal scope, that is, a truth for which no exception can be found. Is this what you mean?
I think for Lewis it is more that the believed truth-maker for the proposition does not depend on human perspectives. Under this conception truths of limited scope and conditionals can still be objective (e.g., if x is a prime number, then x is odd)
Lewis is talking about truth as given by the Diety. These truth statements are universal and absolute from that perspective. However, there are truths based on human perception, which, while conditional, are absolute in context. Universal gravitation for example. We don't understand what gravity is, but we can identify it.
This channel is incredible. In a world full of pointless and irrelevant content, yours is a gem. Seriously, your work here is very admirable and I hope your channel gets more and more attention from people.
Nihilism is hell. I,ve been there and returned. To abandon objectivism is to abandon philosophy, religion, purpose. There is nothing left but hedonism which leads to diminishing returns, and eventual self destruction.
This was really well put together. It’s making me rethink some of these concepts. What I don’t recall was the Lewis though object values were a pragmatic necessity rather than a fact. Could be though. If so, it seems a bit pragmatic in nature. As if it’s true because it works and the opposite doesn’t work. Is that right that it seems like pragmatic philosophy in that sense, or just me not connecting the dots correctly? Can’t the collective subjective opinion be equated to an objective fact? If everyone goes to visit a national park for its beauty, can’t we conclude it’s objectively beautiful and that’s why it’s a park? How isn’t consensus opinion not a fact on a certain level?
Lewis in fact believed that it was true and that fact made it work. He would have no truck with crass pragmatism. He has other arguments, including a very important one set out in 'Miracles', for a view of the world that implies value objectivism.
personally, i find your content very empowering and insightful. If you ever release a podcast on Spotify I'll definitely never miss a damn episode again
Question: To the person with no objective values, who also accepts the belief of having no objective values will lead to disaster, what should they do? A: Because the individual has caught themselves in a psychological paradox, where their preferred state of operation is being fundamentally challenged as detrimental, they must acknowledge the situation occurring to them as it is, and how they the individual have sculpted their life in a particular way to arrive there. This will be a practice similar to self-reflection, where the individual accepts their own value structure is harmful, there could be another way of being that is beneficial, and a change of mental state that moves the individual in that direction. Ultimately, the individual needs to learn that the objective value in life is derived from a life lived with positively crafted subjective values.
I think "objective values" are not a defendable position in itself. Rather like morals through religion, it is through evolved values that you can effectively defend this position.
"He who is becoming belongs in the desert or in a prison, for he is beyond human. If men want to become, they behave like animals. No one saves us from the evil of becoming, unless we choose to go through hell."
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choosing subjective values is just the lazy thing to do. It requires no effort or discipline
being objectively virtuous requires changing your habits and that's hard doing good is hard, being selfless is hard as it is going against our basic ego animal nature, it is hard!
Hey There i was wondering your opinions and insight on Socratic Ideals and Philosophies specifically his ideas on politics and how to live. as personally i think the Socratic idea of having more intelligent men and women in politics experts in a field can ONLY be a net good right? id love for you to pick it apart or shed more light on this for my own knowledge.
@@markmacvss9951 it would be good
if they are experts in a field.
The problem with politics though is it attracts a certain type of person to the job and even intelligent people can be corrupted with power.
The type of person that would be good to have in politics probably has no interest in ruling or doing what it takes to climb up there, or has the connections.
Even if they did end up there people would probably vote for the bigger liar to win, so there's no winning with the current system.
Some countries have better systems where politicians rotate so you don't have the same jerks for 4 years
I wanna ask a question.Is our conscience made of morality or deep instincts.The reason why ask this is I want to follow something or why are my actions worth taking?If there is no objective values.Then, do subjectice values matter?I understand that everything might be contextual,but even in that context what are my instructions?Because, I watched one of your videos about your personal experience with pain.It appeared similar to the story of Viktor Frankl.If I understood correctly,he had a sense of higher purpose or transendence.
So my question is how can I take some action in any random situation without any foundation?That's why I am asking you whether our conscience is a compass or just a collection of societal values.
(Sorry for the english, I am not native speaker.If you didn't understand my question because of my illiteracy,feel free to ask me rewrite the question again..
@@BolatDosbolatov-g3l a good action produces a positive impact on others a bad action produces a negative impact on others. you should accept subjective values only in matters where your actions impact you and yourself alone. if you decide to binge on alcohol everyday in a room by yourself in isolation you do hurt yourself but it doesn't hurt anyone else.
If you want to get rid of avoidable suffering objective values are the way to go.
The less selfish you are the less you will suffer, the more disciplined you are the less life will rock your boat. Don't be naive and let people take advantage of you and expect nothing in return for a good deed, even insults shouldn't bother you so much if you have "arrived". forgive people and don't get your hands dirty.
they will get what they deserve sooner or later, in this life or in the next one.
As far as I’m concerned my own life proves Lewis right. I spent decades as a militant atheist & “values antirealist” (though I didn’t have that name for it). It led me right into the despair and lack of motivation Lewis describes. Since converting to Catholicism 6 years ago, I believe in objective values and, though it is difficult to, it is joyful and fulfilling.
It's because Atheism is pointless without a sense of order and discipline in life, which it does not give by itself intrinsically. Catholicism instills order and discipline by promoting the importance of works and good deeds. Furthermore, religions tend to form stronger communal ties, thus a sense of belonging and purpose. The decline and downfall of civilizations isn't something unique to our modern era, every man across History was likely confronted with it at some point in time, especially if a war was recently lost, etc.
@@SplendidFactorWhat can I say, ignorance is bliss. Religious people are generally more ignorant than atheists/agnostics. After all, it's much easier to believe in a beautiful lie than live your life knowing the not so beautiful truth about reality.
The fact(or assumption) that belief in God leads to a greater well-being of a person, does not lead to God existing being true. And a person who doesn't believe, can't just pretend to. That's the problem.
Peace.
@@SplendidFactorI'm not sure if having values aren't an intrinsic property of the human condition. I disagree with Lewis that values can't be instinctive. We are just like other animals and care for our survival, our kin and our species. But if you'd like to replace nature with god, it's just potatoes potato's.
@@daanschone1548 Exaple of a value that is not instinctive is given by Lewis himself in "The Abolition": men sacrificing themselves for their country. It can't be reasoned from well-being, because, well, dying nullifies all your well-being.
Be honest. You don't sleep right? How can you consistently create such great videos? I love it!
Haha! Thank you! It is true I am a bit of an insomniac but mostly it is just that my other work is seasonal and concentrated in the late Summer to early January, so I have a lot of time to spend on the channel at the moment.
Though, just between you and me, I have been burning the candle at both ends a lot recently. I am planning a week off soon.
Probably has the sleep schedule of Batman!!
@@unsolicitedadvice9198I've been enriched by your vids & when I see how little you're making off these vids, vs the hours and hours of research they require. You must really love this stuff. And us. 🎉
@@unsolicitedadvice9198I've been enriched by your vids & when I see how little you're making off these vids, vs the hours and hours of research they require. You must really love this stuff. And us. 🎉
No sleep for the weary. Ur are a genius. 🤺
U don't have time to sleep only sheep do.
Brilliant young man, illuminating the whirld.
Carry on....
🌬️💙🌀
The interesting part about objective good is that it is fundamentally correlated with humanity's ability to hope for a better future. In a nihilistic society there is no such thing as 'better' let alone something worth hoping for. Faith is like objective goodness in that your obedience to its tenets leads to your hope becoming the reality.
If you believe that humanity is unworthy of continuation and everyday interpersonal relationships with strangers and loved ones are filled with strife and dissatisfaction, then why would you expect anything from that person except for self-destructive behaviors and immediate satisfaction by any means necessary?
A sick society is evidence of a hopeless and self-destructive people.
I think it's the other way around. Hopeless and self-destructive people are evidence of coming from a sick society which gives them little to hope for.
@@beansworth5694 Giving up on hope and finding a way to thrill without it is the smartest decition in today's society.
@@remiremsar5946 I have grim determination lurking behind the hope, however I'd rather assert hope and try to make it so than force myself into a last-stand mentality prematurely and squander whatever potential I could make of my activism. If that makes me a 'useful idiot' then pray tell who is my idiocy useful for?
@@beansworth5694 for the sake of everyone, let it not be useful for rotten capitalism.
There is no objective Good or Evil that is nonsense if Humans didn't exist would object Good or Evil exist Is it Evil for a Tiger to eat a baby animal what is Good a d Evil changes overtime and location is what is wrong the same as what was Wrong in the Roman empire 2000 years ago
Dude . . . This is the best, most concise summary of Abolition of Man I’ve ever heard. As a former Catholic, I’ve always felt the intuition that Lewis had a lot of relevant wisdom for our secular age. I’m glad a fellow agnostic thinks so too
Even thought I might be your generic ex-Christian, or some guy who just tried not to lose Pascal's Wager, I finally saw some decent thinkers. They would be the last thing the Southern Baptist Convention and aligned scumbags would ever want.
My favorite thing was the St Thomas Aquinas argument that sex workers must be tolerated. The way I see it, St Thomas Aquinas knew their value the same way a plumber know the value of a safety valve.
Why leave the Church?
I propose two systems for "objective values." 1) Are the people I interact with healthier or less healthy because of interacting with me? To the extent that people are healthier, my values are objectively good. 2) Using Kant's Imperative, if an entire society is theoretically comprised of people like me, is that society likely to grow or eventually die out? To the extent that it's likely to flourish, my values are objectively good.
Durkheim proposed something similar as a way to objectively perform cross-cultural sociology: using the suicide rate to determine whether a society is good or bad. I'm no philosopher, so I wonder if my words can be proven philosophically. Even so, doesn't it at least pass the test of common sense?
@@JustMe-vn5pq I often asked if instead of counting those deaths, you could how many people are motivated to stay alive. I often joked that if the USA did not have so many hellfire and brimstone sermons, the self destruct rate would be like that of South Korea.
i struggle with bipolar disorder and i take cs lewis’ position, even though i am not a christian. when your biology constantly fights your intuition of what is good, you learn that there is a very real ruleset that is best to follow. it may not be best for everyone, but i would say that it is for the majority.
otherwise, people start asking “why be healthy?” “nothing is objectively good about it.” “why not worsen the populace’s health for profit? what is wrong with greed?”. these are the types of things that make people miserable.
community is good, connection is good, creation is good, health is good, action and movement are good.
the people who are motivated even though they have no values are simply lucky enough to have their biology reward them for living like that.
And above all, balance is good. Healthy balance between altruism and egoism in the first place.
I agree, and what you say reminds me of what the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 7
For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.
@@megangilbert3112That's a bad translation. It should be flesh, not sinful nature. Our nature was corrupted at the Fall but not sinful since it was created by God and nothing He created is sinful.
@@ElonMuskrat-my8jy God created our flesh too 🤔
@@ElonMuskrat-my8jyall Translations are bound to be Bad.
Nobody truly believes in their heart of hearts in subjectivism. You can tell by their anger at those who wrong them. They suddenly become the staunchest of objectivists.
When somebody objects to being wronged they are objecting to someone breaking the social contract. Without such an agreement, there is no
This is why Carl Jung is so important. His work on the collective unconscious is what reconciles the conflicting viewpoint of intellectual and spiritual people.
It worked for me!
@@mikesmithz Nope, not even close. An AI is a music box, filled with words we put inside it. In fact, the ENTIRE INTERNET is basically a giant box full of our words and echoes we put there. It simply makes the collective unconscious easier to see, nothing else.
@@mikesmithz lolwut? Society has always been decentralized. The centralization of society was invented by dictators to protect people from war. Your argument is that the internet is bad because we will revert to small communities like we always were? Really? We NEED to decentralize because it is the best defense against a nuclear attack. Cities were invented to protect money and smart people. Now the money is digital and the people can talk by video across the world AND nuclear weapons can destroy them. Cities are obsolete. Redundancy is king now.
The term you are looking for is "atomization". The isolation of the individual from the rest of humanity. This IS a problem, but not how you think.
The dangers of the internet have nothing to do with the collective unconscious. People who fall into the trap of atomization have a tendency to self-destruct. They are removed from the gene-pool while the people who ignore the internet continue to breed. The collective unconscious is perfectly safe in that regard. Indeed, the dangers of the internet are only towards the individual. The algorithms used by social media are designed to feed you "more of the same". This is inherently unnatural. Humans are supposed to argue, and we are supposed to LOSE those arguments. Losing an argument IS THE MEANS by which we improve and become smarter. Constantly giving you more of the same stunts your intellectual growth. It also encourages segregation. You are told that your opinion is "valid" and that you "don't need to change". Then you are connected only to people who agree with you. This results in online communities being sorted into groups of like-minded people who are never allowed to interact. It's segregation at its purest and most vile.
It sounds to me like YOU have been on the internet too long, and that YOU need to get out more. Take a shower, brush your hair, go outside, and start talking to people. You will find that the collective unconscious is doing just fine, once you rejoin with it. In many ways the internet is a trap created by anti-social nerds so they can stay inside, but you can't stay inside forever. You will either kill yourself or go outside.
@@mikesmithz I typed out a long answer to this but UA-cam is refusing to post it. Oh well. TL DR: you need to go outside more. The collective unconscious is just fine. People who believe the internet's lies remove themselves from the gene-pool. It is a self-correcting problem.
@@jacobwiren8142 Current strides in AI are a form of crystallized collective unconsciousness, but it's not humanity's. It's the marketable, scannable, and liftable ideas that the digital realm of capitalism has access to and has so far been able to pin down the definition of- it's its own sort of entity.
As I look around today I see proof of Lewis' thinking in the present "crisis of meaning." I find your video quite thought provoking, and your humility inspiring. Thank you for this work.
Thank you! That’s very kind!
I like the ancient answer: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
Jesus 🕺
One of my tests for evil is that it does whatever it desires in the moment and then finds a post hoc justification.
Every once in a while you meet someone who has done this consistently, and they are destructive to themselves and everyone around them, and they have made themselves incapable of understanding why. They become incapable of understanding because they come to believe everything bad that happens around them is the fault of someone or something else.
It's funny. I always thought I was free when I was not bound to any values and no purpose aside from what makes me happy. I was happy for a bit because I got to experience what I thought was freedom, but after a while I just felt empty. For a few years I didn't know what I stood for and changed philosophies as though they were shirts. Now I'm trying to focus on what values are worth pursuing and where I can go in the course of life. I've seen how subjective moralities can destroy people and I don't want any part of that. Instead, I found that diligence, the pursuit of knowledge, and overall just being a good person was more liberating than the "freedom" I had before.
But that happened in my early to mid 20s, maybe it's just what we call growing up.
It's scary how real these predictions were. We really have no standard sets of ethics or values, now. It truly is the case that we must create our own values and try to live by them. As all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
well, when you consider that almost all ethics are predicated around religion; given how secular the world is, it would make sense that things have only concentrated/escalated over time as religion has predominantly not changed drastically in that time. It also explains why the "standard" of ethics/values only has overlaps, rather than a singular standard. Until we can separate morality and religion from ethics, this issue will persist.
The problem lies in the problem that religious morality is ARBITRARY as well, with the justification of "god said so".
So, not much better...
@@Jamhael1 it's not arbitrary, it comes from a tradition that endured over time; it may not sound good enough for a rationalist, but it's definitely not arbitrary
@@bogdanpopescu1401 and they based those principles upon what?
Because just like religious morality, TRADITION is also based in arbitrary rules.
@@Jamhael1 how is tradition based on arbitrary rules? looks more like being based on organic growth and outcompeting inferior/losing traditions
"Do we now live in unmotivated, egoistic societies worshipping false gods that will never make us full filled? Or are we quite happy with where we are?" I see no contradictions between these statements. A chicken raised in a cage never knows what it is like to walk free, and is most likely quite happy with its daily feed.
A banana sticked on the wall with a tape in the name of art... I'll always call that waste of good banana.
Thank you for another excellent video! A story I think you'll like, which is a kind of answer to your final question:
I was raised Catholic, but had lost my faith by the end of high school. At the urging/insistence of my mother, I twice went to our parish to talk to the priests about my lack of faith. At the end of high school, I met with a Franciscan monk. A couple years into college, I met with a Jesuit priest.
Independently, and years apart, both of these church leaders ended up recommending that I read the same novella: _San Manuel Bueno, Martir_ by Miguel de Unamuno.
I dutifully read it, and discovered this was a story about a Catholic priest who had lost his faith yet remained the priest for this village, continuing to preach the Bible even though he personally did not believe in it. He ends up finding a successor, who similarly shares his lack of faith, but who goes on to be the next priest in the village.
That's pretty much it. So, I've had two priests respond to my lack of faith with a story about how we should pretend to believe for the sake of the community, even if we don't accept those tenets personally. Since then, I can't help but wonder if this is true of the entire Catholic Church: none of them really believe it, but they think maintaining that illusion in public is necessary for the good of society.
Anyway, if you haven't yet read it, I do highly recommend this book- it is apparently the semi-official Catholic answer to your question about whether we should pretend to believe for the sake of others. I'd love to see you discuss it in a video one day, if you have time.
Super appreciate your work and this channel!!!
I was a Mormon university student in 2012 when I was assigned this novella in a Spanish language literature course. Changed my life. I had previously committed to following this path in my own religious practice, but after seeing the consequences in the lives of these fictional characters, my courage failed me. I began questioning the existence of God just months later. Powerful stuff happening in this space, thanks for surfacing this work.
Objective values have never existed.. they have always been based on whichever religion or culture they were based on .. but if we actually made values based on relative to a certain outcome we can make moral judgments in realation to that outcome
They "feel" something is wrong with Catholicism. Because Catholicism is just bunch of picked up lies, along the way, twisted together with paganism.
This sounds like a fancy way bringing up the question, "do the ends justify the means?" Idk if you mean that, if not I would inquire as to what you do mean.
Also kinda sounds like politicians. Or corporate leaders.
This world is evil.
One issue that no one in these circles want to confront is the fact that all notions of human rights in the modern era sit atop the fundamental proposition that "all men are Created equal... and are endowed by their Creator with... unalienable rights". I ask the question Nietzsche asked, "How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? " "God is dead" is no triumphant statement of the imminent age of enlightenment. Can we dispense with the idea of God, and still protect human rights as we know them in the modern era? So far, we've not been doing a good job of it.
You mean rights like we had back in the good old days of slavery and segregation, women not having equal rights, including the right to vote, homosexuality being illegal?
@@michaelnewsham1412 You again? The same comment every single time. I've had this conversation with you for 20 years or so now, and frankly, I'm bored to catatonia with this fake straw man script I've heard 100,000 times. Yawn.
@@tedlogan4867what rights specifically are you talking about?
@@NoKidsNoProblem "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Sound familiar?
@@tedlogan4867 I know all of these, I'm just asking what does "liberty" and "pursuit of happiness" mean.
I'm an old man who won't live much longer. I'm trying to be melodramatic or something but I have tried my damndest to figure out a, a philosophy, a theory, system, whatever you want to call it, a way for people to live together in peace and harmony.... I've contemp!ated and read history for decades.
I finally realized something that I didn't want to admit. That is, we, us, humans, homo sapiens, are never, ever going to be able live together without destroying each other. It's hardwired into our brains and nothing is going to change that. There's no religion, or philosophy, or code or commandments that will save us from ourselves.
Don't believe it? Don't matter. Just read history. You'll see.
Right, but its only the first step on the way. I have contemplated further, and i found a sence in it. Problem is, that nobody who does not find it by himself would believe it. No philosophy or reading will ever help. Only your very own finding out and understanding means.
Typically religious believers suppose that their "prophets" who warn of cataclysmic, global human destruction in the future, do so because they are special people who are annointed by "God". But perhaps this is really a premonition that many or most ordinary people feel in their bones, even atheists. Perhaps the phenomenon is in realm of things that we do not understand and maybe never will, something about time, consciousness, cause-and-effect that is outside everyday experience, like the weirdness of quantum mechanics or relativity,
You get only glimpses and sixth sense of future happenings, on occasions in a lifetime, but the sheer eeriness lets you know that it is not mere coincidence, such as when having an unmistakable and specific image of what was preparing to happen, in the months before Sept 11.
Time will tell, but perhaps so many people are starting to go crazy and get so ugly because they know deep down by intuition, not merely from watching news, that unbearably ugly events, beyond our control, are coming. Have really sensed this from childhood, even in relatively stable and "good" times, that a horrible ending awaits. Now, in old age, more clearly understanding why, watching it unfold, before our eyes.
Defeatism only leads to defeat.
I'd disagree. It's not necessarily a positive portrait to paint, but as the world advances and becomes more interconnected we all slowly become more alike. it's definitely already happening.
If corporations/ai/government ever get advanced enough to learn how to control the brainwashing that inadvertaintly happens (accidentally I assume, but it's also intentional to a lesser degree im sure) I'm sure they could gradually "force" people to be more like minded. We aren't near that yet, but it's definitely possible.
Humans and all life are simple products of nature vs nurture
There will always be outliers, but if you.can control the "nurture" part, you can control how most people behave and conduct themselves.
Religion, poverty, and geopolitical issues slow this down immensely. But look at the west.
But I could.be wrong and you.could.be right.and we could destroy.ourselves before.this happens. I don't particularly care about either outcome. I'm quite detached from the world. I'm blessed with autism and schizophrenia and have a strong obsession with logic and I think incessantly.
Edit: and by its already happening, I mean look at the various parts if the world. They're all becoming more and more like the west. Look at the west in how they mold themselves. Yes, it's very divisive, but that's because at this period in history the world is full of opposing ideals, but most of the world, almost all of it, is moving in one direction. As time goes on, the "political right" becomes more "left"
And as AI flourishes, this will probably amplify as AI replaces jobs and dependence is made crucial for more and more people.
I could be wrong about all of that except for what's already happening, I don't know the future
I just think a lot. And I'm not thinking this will be a fast process at all. I'm not even certain if it will happen, I wouldn't be surprised of we nuked ourselves out of existence before then, lol.
And I'm definitely not intentionally implying a unified world is a good thing. I mean I'm sure it'd be good for them masses, lol. But I don't really care one way or the other. I like existing in my own bubble,.cut off from the outside world, left to process myself and said outside world without attachment.
@@alena-qu9vjI'm curious. Could you you point me into the direction you speak of?
I really, really like to dig my own tunnels and incorporate whatever I may learn into my understanding.
I only wish I had discovered the joy of philosophizing when I was young. Seems like I was too busy just trying to make a living for that but now that I’m old and retired I’m enjoying making up for lost time and your channel is time well spent.
ima 12 hehehhe
@@A-Clear_Viewdon't get to caught up in it when yout so young.
C.S. Lewis put words to what we are all feeling deep within our souls. This was an excellent review!
Sorry, I am not feeling this deep within my soul.
Lewis' book "That Hideous Strength" was his fictional account of these ideas and where they could lead.
I hate moral relativism, really relativistic philosophies in general. Because they are useless. Its impossible to argue for anything or reach a conclusion when you have no axis to base your argument upon. "There is no absolute truth" is a self contradictory statement which is no basis for sound philosophy or sound argument.
Exactly.
As opposed to "There is an absolute truth. and it just happens to exactly what I already believed."
@@michaelnewsham1412 You can't justify logic or knowledge outside of Christ.
There is no absolute truth. Nobody is in control. Nobody knows what to do.
@@Alex-pg1gt You made a positive absolute statement about the non-existance of absolute truth. You contradicted and refuted yourself.
It sounds like Lewis understood the same thing that Friedrich Nietzsche did about mankind as we know it dying and being reborn with the strong crafting our values. What he's describing in the end sounds a lot like the Ubermacht, Only Lewis fears the Ubermacht and Nietzsche embraces him.
Is Ubermacht the official english translation for Nietsche's "Übermensch"? Because when you translate Übermensch to english it literally turns into Superman, while "macht" in that sense would mean power or force, which can be a completely disembodied thing.
No Nietzsche would have totally loathed a person like C. S. Lewis. Why are Anglos always trying to turn this great german philosopher into a christian? Apparently they can't understand him because they have no philosophers on their own who are not totally whack and sentimental christians.
@@im3phirebird81 No. I know english and german. "Uber" is "Over" or in this sense, superior. "Mensch" is "human", so like "ein Mensch" would translate to "one human". So yeah, superman lol. superior man, better man. "Superior man" would be the most accurate translation, since superior indicates one being above another. Even more accurately you could say "Overman", but no one really uses "over" like that, so "superior man" would be more fitting. "Macht" is pretty much the same as "Might" in english, but even Nietzsche's view on the word "power" is not necessarily the same as people usually tend to associate.
Rather, we have the utterly weak, dark and perverted creating the anti-values of the mob.
Dude, I've loved work your work for a few months now, and this video essay is just fantastic. CS Lewis is one of my favorite writers, and you depict him fairly here despite disagreeing, and that takes integrity. And the way you took shots at yourself in good humor is a striking example of humility, authenticity, and wit. I love how you always tie multiple philosophers together into a dialogue on any given topic . You've become my favorite UA-cam Philosophy channel, and you have my applause 👏
Are you aware of him warning us of the current technocracy in That Hideous Strength?
@@ElonMuskrat-my8jy Oooh yes, That Hideous Strength is a masterpiece, and very timely appropriate
Literally a prophecy haha@@ElonMuskrat-my8jy
The part in the video where you talk about lingering habits and values from an objective value system that still govern us when they’re on their way out reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about, an idea of cultural inertia.
Would you explain a bit more about cultural inertia and how you see this in your society?
@@ronnywijngaarde7555 i wish
1:10 The problem with academics is that the overlap with narcissists: An excess of cognition and a deficit of action; driven by fantasy; and drawing others into that fantasy to gain power.
buy academics unlike narcissists have the intention and training to manifest their fantasies. And have balanced conation, will and planning.
I think that's kind of unfair towards academics. Uneducated narcisissts can be quite damaging, too. You don't need a PhD to manipulate people. Vice versa, many academics are just scholars lost in a crumbling system.
@@justachannel8600 Some academics are just scholars lost in an already broken system*
Fixed it for ya...
My favorite comment about academia was the Moldbug Cathedral.
C.S. Lewis, being a Fellow of Oxford and Chair at Magdalene College in Cambridge, was, of course, not an academic.
I love watching your videos. Your channel is like Clif Notes on philosophy. That you can admit that you’re the target of some of those philosophers is great.
Thank you! Funnily enough I tend to pick philosophers specifically because I feel they call me out. I figure that way I will hopefully avoid being in an echo chamber
Nietzsche wanted us to create our own moral perspective but tell me brother whether our current understanding of things is enough of the requirements.Non existence of Free will can be a very big argument for Nietzsche ideas.And I think there must exist an objective truth for if it wasnt we would just kill each other based on our liking and disliking and later justifying it with either rationality or Utilalitarism. The modern world seems to be descended more into hedonistic pleasure than ever and just that humanity is trying to cope with the Meaninglessnes and trying to survive at the cost of harbouring weakness . I have learnt all of what I have said from your videos so thank you brother
Yeah, we should've probably stuck with plato's and aristotle, modern "philosophers" are just trying to hard to rebel without any actual substance to their philosophy.
Yeah you summed it up for me. Thank you
I feel like we do see plenty of us killing each other followed by later rationalisations, though. The predictor of subjective morality is observable in thousands of cases recorded in the past, and with certain events going on currently, directly observable now. I mean, plenty of genocides have happened, and almost every one has the governing body rationalising their actions to the populace. Obviously most people don’t and will never kill another person, but we definitely see it happen.
I also don’t think we as a species are truly getting more hedonistic as a whole. People have been claiming similar things for thousands of years, and they’re almost always wrong. We just have greater access to desires and a better look at what others are doing than we did previously. It’s much harder to exude an air of temperate virtue when there’s a video of you stuffing your face somewhere online, for example.
12:15 some instincts are momentary and cultural and some are universal. if we compare across cultures there are some core values: Do not murder the helpless; do not diddle kids; do not poison the water.
the problem is that the values that are almost universal only tell us a few things not to do, not what to aspire to.
I would argue that these values emerge as a result of life preserving itself, rather than any ethical or moral imperative. A population that habitually poisons/murders/inbreeds with itself is bound to be less healthy than a population that actively avoids those things happening. We can see a lot of these similar traits in animals, like not going to the bathroom near food/water sources, or moving dead bodies away from communal areas, etc.
These things are helpful for a species to live, but I don't think we can necessarily ascribe an intrinsic moral or ethical intent to these actions.
Values by their nature are aspirational, they are future states, they are metaphysical ideas. As such, they must be created, they cannot exist without a creator, and so any values humanity may have, now or in the future, are chosen based on a subjective view, and as such, finding universal values that everyone agrees on becomes like finding a needle in a haystack.
Wouldn't we just rebel against that standard anyways?
how do you get a horse to drink?
life being a journey and not a destination really speaks to me.
ty for your comment, i was considering this when i was listening to the video so it helped me work out a... better.. conclusion. which i'm sure will never be the best and hopefully made better in time.
Surely we could aspire to be someone who would not do those things?
@@kezia8027Agreed. A good example of what happens when these aren't followed is how Iceland was almost decimated by blood feuds. I would argue that these so called "objective values" are more akin to societal instincts that are a result of cultural evolution.
Lewis is clever and I personally enjoy his writing but it strikes me more as Christian apologetics than honest philosophy. Which of course is fine, he's entitled to his own subjective values as much as anyone, but I personally at least don't find it very convincing.
Hi there. Thank you for putting together this great video. As an agnostic atheist myself, I can see how the lack of objective values can lead one astray or cause mental paralysis. However, I disagree that subjective values necessarily lead to such paralysis. I argue that flexibility of thought and the willingness to change one's mind when presented with a good argument are positive things. Furthermore, my values are grounded in a set of morals that I've constructed for myself; meaning that they're not so easily shaken. I can only speak for myself, but the absence of objective values has liberated me and made me a kinder person. I choose to do good because it generates happiness in others and that in turn makes me feel good. While I'm far from perfect and I could certainly do more, believing in objective values wouldn't make me a better, more altruistic human being. In my opinion, being good in the absence of objective values is more worthy of merit than being good because of the belief in a metaphysical being. That being said, if everybody believed that values are subjective, I can't say for sure that the world would be a better place, so perhaps C.S. Lewis has a good point.
There are "objective" values, but of course we - all being subjects - can only interpret them subjectively. Each of us perceives only as much of the ideal value, as they are "atuned" to. And indeed it is more an emotional than "rational" matter. I feel it not only wrong, but even sick to underestimate and demean the role of emotions in human affairs. "Rationality" without (mastered) emotions is pure evil, promoted mostly by people without emotional and social intelligence.
I absolutely agree! But there is a catch: We've become too materialistic! I believe there must be a balance between what I call the "outer world" (material, action) and "inner world" (thoughts, ideas, emotions, imagination) in order too live happier together.
Dont worry the future will be very bright, but only for a short moment.
Blimey! That is a dire prediction
😓😓😢
@@unsolicitedadvice9198 Yes but not to worry i always hold christ dear to my heart and utter amor fati.
"It's the bomb that will bring us together." - Morrisey
Lmfao
Wonderful work! Many thanks for your insightful videos. One statement of yours stuck out particularly 3:15 "...that there are no objective moral or aesthetic facts still persists to this day many people myself included are personally quite sympathetic to this viewpoint and while it is rejected by many moral philosophers...". This can be seen as the inevitable consequence of a fully internalized materialism that relegates soul and spirit to mere emergent properties.
“I’m right that there’s no such thing as right” is a logical contradiction.
Yes, but “It is true that there are no moral facts” is not
Thank you for being consistently brilliant. Food for thought whenever I need it.
Thank you! That’s very kind
Just because something leads to destruction doesn't mean it's untrue, just because a belief is conducive to a "social good" doesn't make it true.
I think Lewis hit the nail on the head as we see the current realities of our society. Bearing in mind he came from an atheistic philosophy into a Christian based one. Particularly his description of elites dictating the new value system is a thing we see in action as we speak. The global elites, wef, g17, and a host of others are seeking to do just that with economic and political teeth to their ideologies.
People like Donald Trump, Elon Musk. Rupert Murdoch etc being excluded from the 'global elite', of course.
Lewis & Tolkien knew about the Dark Side. The Colbitar were the last true free thinkers.
I love your videos! Your a really bright guy and I especially love it when you talk about my favourite author doestoyevsky! Keep it up! And just a small recommendation, I would love to see you do a video on 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' by Leo Tolstoy. Can't wait to see what you do next 👍
Thank you! And I would love to! I need to re-read it and look into the philosophies most applicable to it, but it is certainly on my list
Thanks you 😊
Funnily enough I just found my old notes on it, so I may make a video on it pretty soon
Nice essay. cs Lewis is right. this idea is the story of my life and after 50 years this philosophy literately became and is my existence.
choosing subjective values is just the lazy thing to do. It requires no effort or discipline
being objectively virtuous requires changing your habits and that's hard doing good is hard being selfless is going against our basic ego animal nature, it is hard!
Just because it is hard doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do it, and I advice you to read more about Islam and hope guidance for you .
@@ali_haidar_313 I think you misunderstood me I said the easy thing to do was lazy, I try to do the hard thing because it's better
@@guitarskin9758
yes that right and I see Islam helps people do these things better that's why I advice to read more about it , I am sure it help you in your journey and live a happy life in this life and afterlife .
@@ali_haidar_313 I lean towards Buddhism and Stoicism, "Arthur Schopenhauerism" and thinking for yourself about everything, putting my "beliefs" to test and see what makes sense in practical life without disregarding the possibility of having to deal with karma in a reincarnation or an afterlife.
Don't know much about islam but I'll have a look at some point
thank you and good luck!
When the fabric of your existence shreds here and there from grief and trauma, spirituality can start to seep in. And when that happens, all the fun philosophizing just dies.
You deserve million of subs, not gonna lie.
Thank you! That is very kind!
Lewis' story 'that hideous strength' is the narrative counterpart to the abolition of man and it feels very prophetic about the times we're living in!
He was in contact with the ones planning our Fabian socialist technocracy. That's how he knew them so well.
Hookup culture is driving people mad lonely
I'm not lonely even though I hook up.
@@NoKidsNoProblem good for you? you want a medal or smth?
@@OmnivorousOtter101 why are you offering a medal or something? No, the reason I wrote what I did is to challenge your notion that all men hook up either because of loneliness or become lonely after hooking up. I guess you're very fragile and don't like it when people challenge your bs.
@@NoKidsNoProblem I'm so challenged right now thank you so much. How am i gonna sleep tonight?
@@OmnivorousOtter101 I suppose not thinking how you are wrong about this will help you sleep.
"If you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem." ~George Carlin
If you think George Carlin is intelligent, you're part of the problem.
I’ll stick with Christian values. If this new world is progress I’ll pass.
You are not alone in this. 👑
Like taking over countries with genocide
Which interpretation of Christianity would you choose? The church has fragmented into many factions from it's origin. The Catholic church was founded by the schism with the Orthodox church.
Do you prefer the insanity of the current Evangelicals and Christian Nationalists? The followers of which would gladly subjugate everyone else and put to death those that they deem unworthy.
Religions are by their very nature irrational and illogical. You can't reason with someone who takes orders from a supreme being that promises paradise in the afterlife.
The ironic thing is that Christianity overthrew the one of the most terrible empires of all time, but is now their enabler.
Agree
Our biggest problem was crawling out of the mud. Existence is just too much of a problem. I don't worry about values, I wonder why.
Well presented.
A nice presentation of C.S. Lewis. I have been sharing your video's with my Grandson. Always nice to see honest explanations and unfortunately so rare.
"the whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful,
But that is only the ugly.
The whole world recognizes the good as the good,
But that is only the bad ...
lao tzu
I will stick with Jesus.
It's not even a difficult decision. May God have mercy on the souls of the deceived ❤
gk chesterton is another guy who is worth revisiting.
Civilization has been in decline for as long as there has been civilization.
bs, civilization goes in waves, we are now in downhill part, the new dark ages are around the corner, it will be about low life expectancy and survival...unless we annihilate oneselves in nuclear fire which putin threatens at least europe on almost weekly basis. Whether we will be able to rise up again, given the woke lunacy consuming the world and the digital tech that is able to follow us absolutely everywhere, I do not know. In any case, good times are over
No it starts in povity and barbarity. Things improve and people try to make it better till you get luxury for masses of people. Unfortunately luxury produces decadence in the elite and society crashes after one to many problems. Three quarters the population is wiped out and we try again. There have Only been 12 luxury capable civilizations in the last 12 thousand years.
@@BeachandHills-hb2pq and these twelve are?
@@MisterTutor2010 Can only name a handful from memory. Egyptian, Canaanite, Greek, Roman, Medieval European, Modern European, Persian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese. These are capable of producing advancements and luxury independently. When they suffer a collapse mass famine and chaos follows. Late bronze age collapse affected Egyptian and Canaanite half population wipped out. No written language for 200 years. Greek empire based on city states collapse. population collapse and no written records for 150 years. Roman empire collapsed, In my country citys lost 90% of populations no new civilization and new writing for 400 years. China has had 29 collapses with half population wiped out each time. takes 50 to 100 years for Chines civilization to reform. More like walking up hills to mountains of advancement then falling off a cliff. I read a very interesting history book about the 12 advanced civilizations compared to 200+ poor civilizations.
@@BeachandHills-hb2pq The Bronze Age Collapse is fascinating subject. Several civilizations disappeared seemingly overnight. I read about when I was doing my postdoctoral fellowship a few years ago.
Not to nitpick but Medieval Europe is generally regarded as the precursor to the Renaissance in which European Civilization recovered from the fall of Rome. Also although China and Japan have had ups and downs through the centuries, they still exist. Also "Modern Europe" refers to Europe as it is now. Also last time I check, Russia didn't go anywhere.
What exactly do you mean by luxury? Your writing seems to have suggested that luxury for the masses was when civilizations started to decline but then it seems to have jumped over to decadence of the elites.
Also I should have clarified my original point about the perpetual decline of civilization. It was in reference to my observation that every time anything changes in slightest, anything new appears, or anything old in questioned, there always seems to be chicken littles claiming the sky is falling. This seems to be a pattern across societies throughout history. I never heard a preacher claim that we're on a moral upswing. They'll always claim that society in degenerating and this pattern persists generation after generation, century after century. If people like this were to be always believed, civilization has always been in a state of decline.
Finally, I got my Philosophy guru ... Got your first video almost a week ago but was scrolling and watching each bit of video on Neitchsche' ubermensch and will to power and many others ....so got you .... highly rated on my UA-cam list❤
I was once a fellow traveler, brother. Despite decades of material success and many, many temporal pleasures, I came to realize that there is no inherent worth or meaning to all of it beyond Jesus Christ. Lovecraft's vision of the cosmos is the most accurate opposite vision, the logical conclusion to a universe with no objective rules. No society can operate for long under such a paradigm.
prove it
Great video. I’m 47 and had a very catholic upbringing. My 20’s were about Buddhism which led me to atheism, something I always felt within me. As I aged I realised that the reason Christianity lasted and ended up dominating for periods of time is because it is the one true religion that is made for man experience in this realm. Jesus is now my king and saviour. I am a solid Christian. It’s lonely in todays world but fulfilling.
I’ve studied philosophy and theology as a hobby for decades, deep diving into different states. I know understand why and my purpose.
God bless your journey and it’s thinking :)
Same sometimes its lonely but also fulfilling at the same time. Not suprised about buddhism, it always lead to that haha
"...we will be puppeted by a small minority of powerful people, even after they die..."
The irony of this statement is THAT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. Christianity is the puppeteering of the Apostle Paul and the Catholic church, stretched across 2 thousand years. Hinduism is the puppeteering of Manu and its other founders. Buddhism is the puppeteering of Buddha and his followers. This sort of phenomenon happens ALL THE TIME, EVERYWHERE. It is a normal and necessary component of human existence.
The world becomes a nihilistic place. Then, a small minority of exceptional people imagine a better world and codify their method for creating it. That idea gains popularity in the absence of other values. Then, drawn by the promise of social power, an organized governing body forms around the idea to enforce it. Then the idea is widely implemented over generations. Over those generations more and more flaws are revealed. People become disillusioned with the idea. Then the world becomes a nihilistic place again and the cycle repeats.
The Assyrians enslaved their neighbors for a thousand years until they were defeated and destroyed. The Jews developed a culture around resisting slavery in response. When Jewish custom declined, Christianity was introduced. Now, Christianity is in decline, and we will soon choose another idea to implement. This si the natural and inevitable progression of humanity.
Should an ape clan decide they despise the pupeteering of the alpha male and, for that matter, there are no objective values and rules, we could be spared our misery. And the planet too, at least I hope the species replacing the extinct apes would behave better.
It's as if Lewis was a British humorist, but a poor writer because no one gets his joke. He's writing to an audience who considered themselves modern and post-religion already, which means they knew full well that the Bible was written by men, and knew because religious education was still common, that the god of the Bible commits atrocities (flood, plagues, etc.) and orders atrocities (genocides, genital mutilation, blood sacrifices, etc.) and makes a deal called the covenant with a specific local people only, an insignificant fraction of the world's population, imposed on them without their consent, so not a valid contract legally, that they must follow a set of hundreds of commandments, mostly ritual, and if they don't, then that god will bring terrible suffering and ruin upon them, and if they do, then that god will bring terrible suffering and ruin on all the other nations of the world.
They also knew that Christians tried to soften that, in what they would claim publicly about morality, but it's all still in there, in the Christian prophecies too, and worse is in there: eternal torment for anyone who doesn't get the message and believe and bow down to it. They also knew that they were in the middle of a war, even a series of wars, where total war, inhumane atrocities with no limit, was being practiced, on all sides, regardless of which interpretation of the Bible the participants claimed to be supporting, or other prophecies written by men, such as Marx.
In the middle of all that, Lewis writes an argument that's flimsy and facetious seeming, making a strawman of any alternative ethics or morality, to support, at the surface level, maintaining traditional Christian morality of his time, and writing that without that, we would no longer be men. No one gets the joke, probably because it isn't funny.
And it's so clearly facetious, because he literally calls what he's advocating the "Tao" all through the book, then he has an appendix, of verses presumably chosen by him, from various cultures, Roman and Christian and Chinese and many others, cherry picked to be those statements that sound moral to him, leaving out the context of the religions and philosophies in which those quotations originated, including any context of Christian beliefs. He only has about 5 specifically Christian sourced verses, out of about 100 verses total. (I"m just estimating, but you can check for yourself. Christian verses are rare there, whole pages without a mention of a Christian source.) So it's unfair to claim that he was supporting Christianity or Christian morality, when what he was supporting was whatever sounded good to a Brit of his time, from the library they had at hand at the time of various literature they supposed was ancient.
@@SonnyMoonie Well said on both comments! Truly a grand joke. Biggest joke of all is humanity.
There is a world of difference between saying that statements of value are objectively TRUE and saying that believieving in their objectivity is USEFUL from the practical point of view.
I often cyncially say that religion is needed. Otherwise, only stupid people breed in significant numbers. "Go forth and multiply or burn in Hell" sermons may have been a tool for preventing Idiocracy or at least delaying it.
In United States, we are now told that we have to unquestioningly accept the most ludicrous nonsense because it represents some illiterate’s “learned experience.” No matter how divorced from reality, no matter how illogical, we mustn’t disagree. Any attempt to explain why some idiocy is counter factual is casually dismissed as “mansplaining.” We put dunces in positions of power and then we are told that we cannot disagree with anything they do.
The' mystic' scientist Rupert Sheldrake talks of HIS long atheistic stage in his books. From 15-34 I was an atheist too, I can't exactly say when or where it went, although I passed through Stoicism en route. I have PTSD, so it's definitely possible that the new mindset began as a crutch. I would describe myself as a Gnostic Christian (of RC heritage) now - and certainly that materialism and chasing after passing whims has almost vanished.
Thank you for another thoroughly insightful video. CS Lewis was a prophet of sorts. And “abolition of man” has stood the test of time. I believe any student of history has to be skeptical of what life would look like post Christian Society.
I’m afraid it would look a lot like
pre-Christian society.
or it could make christian society look like pre- christian society. i think thats the beauty of subjective views, and why its so desperately needed in our modern society.
@@Anotherhumanbean12345umm no
One important point that I don't think got touched on: Believing that there are objective values is not the same as believing we know accurately what they are or have a monopoly on understanding them (i.e. be humble and listen, then do your best to align with your best understanding of right/good).
It appears that many of them are coming true. Im only 28 but already feeling broken by laws, systems, others acting selfishly and without care... I honestly think that its now or never, to reeducate our society and rid of corrupt egoists and psychos.
I can see in your eyes that something is bothering. Dont let it. You cant change it. I love you
your videos are very enjoyable. i am sure there is a lot of effort going into them. thanks
Thank you! I do sink a lot of hours into them, and I appreciate the kind words
There are sometimes sponsors and patrons behind philosophers who can fund and influence movements and books and new philosophies into mainstream thought. It's political and usually culturally subversive- there were and are many enemies of The Church who wanted less influence from the church and more influence for them.
My new favorite youtube channel. A lot of interesting subject that I need my notebook next to me and pause, to think and write. Keep up the jewel in this jungle modern world!
I rather enjoyed and hated your video. The thoughts you put forward paint a concise picture of what lies ahead for humanity as I, and many are seeing now. It brings back to me a paradoxical question I've asked many time and of few people before; "Would you rather know the future and be powerless to change it, or would you rather not know, and believe that you can?"
Despair is never the answer. We can change the future through changing ourselves so the latter although I don't really like hypotheticals.
False dichotomies are mental cancer. They keep you in a box and keep you from discovering truth.
Lewis is one of my absolute favorite thinkers of the 20th century
"the silverchair" really freaked me out as a kid. it seemed way to dark to fit with the rest of Narnia, and when I try to recall the book it seems dreamlike and mixed with all the other tails of evil underground societies.
I do believe this topic is a perfect example of where the debating style of philosophy often goes astray.
It tends to boil an idea down to an ever increasing granular level until it can be disproved or debunked, then proceeds to throw out the whole statement or idea as false. In disregard of other factors influencing the idea of concept.
I believe this to be astray from the true usefulness of philosophy. Granular analytical direction of ideas in this manner should not be with the intent of "debunking" or "proving it wrong".
I think the usefulness of this granular examination is in helping each person, individually, to better understand our personal motivations in our thoughts and actions, and to help us explore the ramifications of those motivations allowed to go to extremes.
The fewer the motivating factors you take into account, the less applicable the conclusions drawn are to our personal, and to societal, derived course of actions.
Granular examination is essential, but trying to use that granularity to define our actions is absurd. It is like deciding if it is safe to cross the street by only looking directly ahead and not seeing any cars.
Not all people can accept something as "true", meaning there will always be people who consider something "false". So since morality is based on truth, morality will always be subjective. This doesn't mean there isn't an objective morality in the universe, just that what we consider "objective" is, in truth, subjective in relation to us, the individual. The truth will always prevail, meaning that if something is actually beneficial, those who agree on it will benefit. If something is actually harmful, those who believe in it will be harmed. So across time, truth will prevail. The only way to truly harness objective morality, is by putting it to the test of time. Nietzsche's ubermensch is what we have always been essentially, or atleast in part. The ubermensch is our natural path as human individuals, and by extension, it is the ubermensch that progresses our societies as a whole. It just so happens that the truth, which shapes our morals, is revealed to us across time. Societies are built on the morals, which are shaped by the truth that is known at the time (or generally accepted). It's almost like the entirety of human society is a living breathing thing, that evolves across time. It can get stuck or even regress due to bad habits (dictatorships, dogma), which limit our freedom and creativity as individuals, thus making it difficult to reach out to find the truth, but naturally it will always progress. But as an individual, the only way to be as moraly objective as possible and live as authentically as possible, is by maximazing your search for truth and living according to it.
I would argue that strong minded people can live without objective values, like a healthy person can walk without crutches. While weak people might benefit from believing that morality is indeed objective.
Hm... that does only work out if "objective values" is read as "arbitrary laws of behaviour". But if I read it as "main principles and goals", the strong minded person would become erratic and irrational.
People in power and of influence have always imposed their values upon society. In the past, when almost everyone was or pretended to be religious, most people didn't bother to critically reflect on traditional values ( by which I mean old ideals, principles and standards) because they were too bussy working, trying not to starve or offend those in power. I think we could still learn much from underrated ideas from epicureanism and psychological egoism.
Probably we could, problem is only few would.
I often argue that such ideas are are reduced in size, because it might hurt the people on the top of the pyramid.
You’re way more likely to lose your job for criticizing the new morality then you would’ve been to criticize proper morals in the past
@@bennygohome4576 Alan Turing was found guilty of homosexuality and had to submit to chemical castration; many women writers up to the 1950s had to submit their works with male names'
Isaac Newton had to have his friends conceal his unitarianism so he could teach at Oxford; Heinrich Marx had to convert to Lutheranism so his son could be admitted to university-like all European and American universities at the time, no Jews allowed (or, of course, women).
But now you complain because you can't make offensive jokes at work.
I think what is key is that the values are stable and unquestionable- or at least very very resistant to be disregarded or challenged. Nothing about this is modern - the fundamental import aspects of human life haven’t changed at all. The problem is with thinkers who believe that things have changed. Abrahamic Religion has lost authority in that it is easily discredited in its ability to explain the world. I’m of the opinion that Buddhism is more sustainable, but also perhaps less dogmatic.
The last argument makes much more sense given the fact it was written during the periods of WW- II.As revolutions passed down and the fall of the conventional monarchy occurred, they were all driven by a lead figure who ultimately became leaders and presidents of new republics. They enforced their own morals and values over "newly independent people" who thought to have been unlocked from their prisons and swayed away into the hands of "democracy" or so called "freedom".
I dont agree Lewis's no subjective morality since humanity is so diverse but yet so accompanied over all the centuries we've lived by. According to me, freedom could be achieved if we stick to objective morals in our interaction with others and the subjective into our psyche (even if they're fragile, we're equally concious and not ashamed of it).
What do you think of it? I'd like to hear your viewpoints onto my argument and discuss it more! And once again, great video and work!! You make philosophy so interactive and enjoyable. Cheers 🥂
The Deconstruction of values in the late 20th century was not about discarding all objectivity of values, but to understand why and how there to be such a difference. Values exist only through subjects. People believing in them and following them. I can see your point that creating an agreement of values may be important, but this still doesn't undermine their subjectivity.
And we should rather come to include all values, even though their logical inconsistency make this point of view a relativistic one.
I wonder when we stopped listening to our underlying feelings of unease that triggered a healthy objective inquiry, and decided to stew in our 'feels'? We've been fed so many ideals and divisive topics that, it appears to me, we can't see who or what we actually are and that our needs as creatures need to be met, but aren't. Don't take the universe too seriously. It isn't taking you seriously.
Values can be objective without being directly evidentiary knowable, a wisdom approached as asymptotically
Wisdom is teleological in scope. If listened too. It warns and guides. Don't take that road, take that one. Itt safer, thieves have been known to rob outside London town. Or simply the book of Proverbs. Knowledge without wisdom. Is like person that forgot to wear his cloak on a blustery day. Or a soldier that forgot his sword. Or the merchant that fell for the allure of thr village girl, and robbed of wallet. Or the building of weapons forgetting they will be used in the will for power. And these are evidentiary knowable situations of value.
@@pierrelabounty9917 And wise maxims are an aid, not an unbreakable law, they apply to certain or general circumstances, the understanding of the circumstances and how to act meets the same human limits of evidence, induction and necessary assumption, "murder is wrong" is immediately accepted, but it is easy to devise a counterexample where death is in service of a greater good, thus a weighing of values has already occurred and it must be admit that however close insight may approach to the objective moral, the apprehension of physical objectivity(empiricism) is already limited in scope by our faculties, modes of understanding, thus morality a more advanced form of knowledge naturally exists with greater constraints.
The immediate apprehension of an object sitting on the table is direct, but it is unverified and counterexamples are possible, a further investigation must occur to understand the object sitting on my table objectively, and none of this tells me about the object with respect to itself, always with respect to the frame of reference I use.
The cultivation and immediate reference to morality is more difficult than seeing an object sitting on the table, and direct knowledge of its inner nature, perfect morality with respect to perfect morality, is also impossible, but just as objects sitting on the table are very real, they and morals, are not subjective.
Another wonderful video. I really appreciate those unsolicited advices!
I think Lewis was pretty much spot on with "The man will be free to chose but will have not choice".
You can see the world realise in real time on day to day basis.
The older I get in the more knowledge, I unpack the more the value of religion becomes blindingly apparent more specifically Judeo Christian when I was younger I looked at it and took it at face value and argued with it because everything needed to make sense logically and rationally. as I got older, it’s like I grew a new set of eyes and a new set of tears, and begin to see and hear things differently, and I fully believe that a society with Christianity at its core will always be infinitely better off in a society without it now if you want to argue the details of, what you believe and don’t believe that’s a whole Nother conversation but the point that I am making is the quality of life of a society. The objective values of that society are always better than a society without it. and it’s almost like damn we thought we were so smart but now we’re starting to figure out why religion is everywhere and has always been everywhere and such a big part of humanity because without it, people evolve into pure chaos with no hope and it’s like we’re backsliding into chaos and it’s becoming apparent why we need religion but the question is how bad does it need to get before the majority of people realize it. I mean you can argue the spiritual aspects all you want I’m simply saying that society is better with it than without it in an objective way, and you can even look at America over the past four decades, and as it removed Christianity more and more from public spaces, and it went from being a country where it literally had God in the Pledge of Allegiance, and in God, we trust written on our money to the country of atheist, that is more favorable of foreign religions than their own Christian religion. They were born into and walked away from that they never actually really knew because so much of America is just lukewarm Christianity. Not very many people really ever knew it. We all had some weird Catholic upbringing cases, which isn’t even really Christianity.
“Judeo-Christian”, “Catholics aren’t Christian”
Thanks man, I needed a good laugh
Recently I thought about how the Roman political class didn't argue whether religion was real or not, it argued if it was useful or not.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. - Seneca
Sometimes even though I am an agnostic atheist type, I can see a value to having a certain amount of religiosity. I often argue that it is a way to motivate the non-Idiocracy to have more kids.
He was right. In fact he undersold it.
Frederick Buechner:
“We have freedom to the degree that the master whom we obey grants it to us in return for our obedience. We do well to choose a master in terms of how much freedom we get for how much obedience. To obey the law of the land leaves us our constitutional freedom, but not the freedom to follow our own consciences wherever they lead. To obey the dictates of our own consciences leaves us freedom from the sense of moral guilt, but not the freedom to gratify our own strongest appetites. To obey our strongest appetites for drink, sex, power, revenge, or whatever leaves us the freedom of an animal to take what we want when we want it, but not the freedom of a human being to be human. The old prayer speaks of God ‘in whose service is perfect freedom.’ The paradox is not as opaque as it sounds. It means that to obey Love itself, which above all else wishes us well, leaves us the freedom to be the best and gladdest that we have it in us to become. The only freedom Love denies us is the freedom to destroy ourselves ultimately.”
C J Lewis was quite right in his mental trend. What he and other writers had encountered can easily be summarized in 3 words. According to the Buddha’s teachings: Impermanence and nonself. Not understanding these 3 words will trap us in this shackles and suffering for indefinite time. Good luck everyone.
Objective truth is, essentially, public truth. "Objective" is a referent to a thing outside ourselves, that is, something seen by those who look. So, objective values are those we hold in common. As such, they have been examined, and remain held. Hope this helps.
I think that for Lewis that would not quite be objectivity. He might call that “intersubjectivity”. Objectivity for him would be something that would exist independent of agreement
Any asserted objective truth has a context or scope. It is conditional. There are objective truths with a universal scope, that is, a truth for which no exception can be found. Is this what you mean?
I think for Lewis it is more that the believed truth-maker for the proposition does not depend on human perspectives.
Under this conception truths of limited scope and conditionals can still be objective (e.g., if x is a prime number, then x is odd)
Lewis is talking about truth as given by the Diety. These truth statements are universal and absolute from that perspective. However, there are truths based on human perception, which, while conditional, are absolute in context. Universal gravitation for example. We don't understand what gravity is, but we can identify it.
This channel is incredible. In a world full of pointless and irrelevant content, yours is a gem. Seriously, your work here is very admirable and I hope your channel gets more and more attention from people.
Nihilism is hell. I,ve been there and returned. To abandon objectivism is to abandon philosophy, religion, purpose. There is nothing left but hedonism which leads to diminishing returns, and eventual self destruction.
Thank you for having an honest talk about C. S. Lewis without demonizing him. I enjoyed the listen.
Your gestures speak all !!! Such passion 😍
Thank you!
And we have the most unlikely of all candidates: Science! Science has changed MASSIVELY over the past few decades.
ive been telling people this for years now. people will wake up when its time for them to wake up. and sometimes that time will just be too late.
This was really well put together. It’s making me rethink some of these concepts. What I don’t recall was the Lewis though object values were a pragmatic necessity rather than a fact. Could be though. If so, it seems a bit pragmatic in nature. As if it’s true because it works and the opposite doesn’t work. Is that right that it seems like pragmatic philosophy in that sense, or just me not connecting the dots correctly?
Can’t the collective subjective opinion be equated to an objective fact? If everyone goes to visit a national park for its beauty, can’t we conclude it’s objectively beautiful and that’s why it’s a park? How isn’t consensus opinion not a fact on a certain level?
Lewis in fact believed that it was true and that fact made it work. He would have no truck with crass pragmatism. He has other arguments, including a very important one set out in 'Miracles', for a view of the world that implies value objectivism.
personally, i find your content very empowering and insightful. If you ever release a podcast on Spotify I'll definitely never miss a damn episode again
Some values are subjective, some values are universal.
Nice work always
Thank you!
Beneath the veneer of civility lurks the monsters we all are.
Question: To the person with no objective values, who also accepts the belief of having no objective values will lead to disaster, what should they do?
A: Because the individual has caught themselves in a psychological paradox, where their preferred state of operation is being fundamentally challenged as detrimental, they must acknowledge the situation occurring to them as it is, and how they the individual have sculpted their life in a particular way to arrive there. This will be a practice similar to self-reflection, where the individual accepts their own value structure is harmful, there could be another way of being that is beneficial, and a change of mental state that moves the individual in that direction. Ultimately, the individual needs to learn that the objective value in life is derived from a life lived with positively crafted subjective values.
I think "objective values" are not a defendable position in itself. Rather like morals through religion, it is through evolved values that you can effectively defend this position.
"He who is becoming belongs in the desert or in a prison, for he is beyond human. If men want to become, they behave like animals. No one saves us from the evil of becoming, unless we choose to go through hell."
The Ten Commandments. The most enduring set of of Objective values extant.