CNM: Phil 1110: Intro to Philosophical Thought (Salbato) Summer, 2017

CNM: Phil 1110: Intro to Philosophical Thought (Salbato) Summer, 2017

Opinion Paper Comments Page

See the circled numbers in the margins of your paper to see which comments apply to which of your ideas (although skimming all of them could give you good ideas). These are the beginnings of things your critics might say in response to your Opinion Paper, so these are some of the things you should respond to in your Major Essay. But, remember, when you use any of these criticisms in your Major Essay, do not simply quote these. Be sure that you fully explain these concepts as well as show, in detail, how each applies to you and serves as a criticism of your ideas and life. And, of course, you will need to cite the original source of these ideas from our readings.

1. Please explain this more fully. Your meaning is still unclear and/or I want to hear your reasons.

2. I am sorry, my poor grasshopper, but you’ve skipped a part of the question.

3. You seem to be suffering from one of the most basic narcissistic delusions, the thought that if someone believes something, then their believing it makes it true, as if their mind dictates reality. Yes, people can believe whatever they want, but that also means many people will be completely wrong. Claims that don’t agree with reality, no matter how deeply they are believed, are false. You are stuck in Plato's cave of changing illusions and have no idea about actual truth. This is why yours and everyone else's views change so often. Heidegger would say that your ready-to-hand mode of concern makes you oblivious to all but the tiniest portion of reality, and your perspective and beliefs are solely those of the They. You will make tons of excuses to avoid being wrong, and even threaten the ones who try to help you (poor Jeff), but, eventually, as Zinn explains, most of you are able to admit you're wrong.

4. Because objective reality determines what's true, no matter what illusions someone may believe (like the shadows in Plato's Cave), there is a realm of truth to be found. Reality either agrees or doesn't. Just because tons of people disagree and tons of people are wrong doesn't mean truth doesn't exist or that truth is up for grabs. A bunch of 2 year-olds would all have different answers for "Where do babies come from?", but that doesn't mean there is no truth of the matter. Now just be humble and don't threaten the philosopher who has come back into the cave to help you.
5. Because reality is the final authority on whether a belief is true, a claim that agrees with reality is true even if everyone disagrees and regardless if it has proof. Besides, the vast majority of things you and I believe, even the things that are central to our everyday life choices, from religion to politics to medicine, are believed with little proof.
6. This kind of view would force you to say that we can’t judge the 9-11 terrorists, because they were following their values, so what they did was “right” for them. Also this view would mean people like Jesus, Gandhi, Mandela, or MLK Jr. were immoral for judging what they saw as wrong with cultural, legal, and religious values. And, of course, it would be hypocritical to judge others more critically than we judge ourselves, like how our society rightly condemns terrorism but then says nothing about our own brutality all over the world.
7. Show how such judgments can be done in terms of the author's consistency with the facts and their own (not our own) values so that you can avoid being just another xenophobic jerk. This will demand we listen to their values before we make any judgment. And, of course, this should force us to look at our own values and judge them in the same way.

8. You are suffering from a bad case of what Sartre calls "Bad Faith". (Be sure to clearly explain bad faith and show how your idea fits this as well as how you use this lie to avoid choices.)

9. Anyone that says they don't conform is just posturing. You're just following Heidegger's the They and stay in the ready-to-hand, completely unaware or your life and the world. Of course you have to conform, because, as Fromm says, you don't have a self. And not conforming in clothes, hair, tattoos, music, hobbies, or tastes is unimportant. You conform in ways that will ruin your chances at satisfying your real needs and having a good life, like adopting artificial and unsatisfying replacements of your true needs and working alienating jobs to afford them. See Marcuse. The tricky part is realizing when we are making our own rational decisions versus when we are just rationalizing beliefs and values we think are our own but were really given to us from others. The saddest part is how far we will go to fabricate defenses for these views, and even get angry or lie, in order to protect our egos. The truth is, most of the time we have no idea why we think and act the way we do. See Fromm.

10. Please admit that you care about what most people think, not just certain people. I mean, you act your "role" even when those people aren't around. Your car, your tattoos, your clothes, your hair, your social media self-promotion…are all for impressing strangers, not your mom.

11. Yes, finally one of you is honest. If we are honest and not delusional, we all care about what other people think, because social recognition is one of our basic needs, and it would be immoral and narcissistic not to. In fact, it offends me that people think it is cool to pretend they don't care. The important thing is to only care about things that are valuable, like expressing kindness and a genuine social identity, not some artificial identity. See Sartre's "No Exit" for some examples of the latter.

12. The easiest way to meet all of our needs is to find a genuine, creative career. Try to figure out which forms of Marx's alienation are causing certain jobs and classes to be frustrating and others to be satisfying. Can your future career avoid all four types of alienation? One easy single is asking yourself truthfully if you see mainly content people in your future career, or is this career one full of frustration that people put up with solely for the paycheck? Will your career be fulfilling of your real needs? Or will you try to replace your real need with artificial needs? See Fromm and Marcuse.

13. One thing we will learn from our study of human needs is that the life of caring for others and making a difference in their lives is one of the most satisfying lives.

14. Pretending you don't care sounds like Estelle and Garcin in Sartre's "No Exit". This is not only a bad faith lie you tell yourselves, but it is also an immoral way to think about others. The funniest part of this is that this belief is promoted by TV and advertising so that people can still feel like individuals while they spend a fortune trying to win other peoples’ acceptance by adopting some cookie-cutter lifestyle or online personae. Fromm would say this is just rationalized market orientation. I admit I care what others think and need their acceptance/approval, but then I make sure to manage it by only concerning myself with things that matter, like whether I am portraying kindness. And notice that this even means in the way we visibly portray ourselves. We are always putting on a show for others. The Stoic is the only person who could say they don't care what others think and mean it. Or, well, the sociopath doesn't care, too...so there's a role model for your worldview....zing!

15. People stress, overwork, overspend, obsess over money, and are miserable because of what Marcuse calls false needs. Your idea that you do this to benefit yourself or your loved ones is a rationalization and a socially patterned defect, according to Fromm. Real needs are more satisfying than false ones, and real needs satisfy us in the long-term, which is why they do not need to be constantly replaced, like false ones. “Success” in a society like ours has little to do with happiness, it means competing to have more overpriced brands than your neighbors. Now, a sense of accomplishment/purpose is a real need, as is acceptance or recognition, but you're denying these real needs and replacing them with artificial ones. Epictetus would tell you your life goals are pointless attempts to control things you cannot control. Lao-tzu would tell you to stop striving after any goals.

16. Epictetus will show you what is truly in our control and what is not. I think you will find that the vast majority of the things you spend your time worrying about are things beyond your control - like grade and your career - and that you spend very little effort on things that are within your control. Lao-tzu would tell you that all of this unnatural striving is in opposition to nature and will just cause misery.

17. If “God” isn’t just some weak lucky charm but is, instead, someone with some power over things, then this life of faith should, at the very least, resemble Stoicism.

18. People are frustrated and assume this is normal, because, as Fromm says, they think alienating work and artificial needs are the only options. See also comment 12. Some jobs are deeply fulfilling of our psychological needs, while many of the most desired jobs in our society are completely frustrating of our needs, so it is not just "doing what you want" that makes you happy. And their ready-to-hand everyday lives will blind them to seeing this. Look at my life. I am happier and more satisfied than all of you, and I don’t fit this social pattern. The easiest way to meet our real needs is through genuine, creative labor. For example, my job directly meets most of my social and psychological needs in its very activity. Most Americans have jobs that are alienating and, thus, frustrate their needs and well-being. Then, they use the paycheck from that job to try to make up for these unmet needs in their hobbies and consumption. This produces a cycle where you try to counter your work frustration by buying artificial needs to relieve your frustration, but now you must work more to afford these artificial needs...repeat. This is incredibly inefficient and counter-productive. See Marx, Marcuse, and Fromm.

19. Wait, you keep saying that we need X and Y and then say that any life can be satisfying...?

20. Compare your list of needs to the list we agree to when we discuss them. These are the key to a satisfying life, whereas a person will deteriorate if any go unmet for too long. Be sure to explain how each of these needs can be met fully in your life. The challenge for you will be to honestly apply them to your life to see how these relate directly to your well-being and where you are denying your real needs and replacing them with artificial ones you can buy.

21. Fromm says it is a sign of mental imbalance if you are prone to boredom and laziness. These are only normal to you because you assume alienation is normal.

22. Not any life can be satisfying, because a human being’s mental health deteriorates if a human’s key psychological needs are not met in some way. People may differ in how they seek to get these needs met, depending on their context, but these basic needs are the same for everyone. For example, the poor man in a fishing village often has all of his psychological needs met whereas the rich executive might have none. Real satisfaction is possible if these needs are truly met. See Fromm.

23. Although be careful to not sound like "that American" that thinks he did everything by himself without help from others or from society... I mean, I worked hard to gain my qualifications, but the society provided the safety, rights, schools, roads, water, etc, that I relied on to get to this point in my life, and my teachers, professors, and access to free and cheap books taught me what I know to have this life. All of these things were not paid for by me individually but were collectively paid for by society. I find it incredibly offensive when people try to say they shouldn't have to help others when none of us would be where we are without thousands of people before us providing for us. See Narveson for the theory behind this offensive-yet-popular libertarian view we see in today's politics.

24. Many Americans live hypocritical lives… They put on a façade of goodness for church or for the public, but they have absolutely no concern for these moral and religious values in their work, school, politics, or shopping. Think of how many “nice” people make a living supporting vicious aspects of the military, or work for companies that make the kinds of weapons that will kill innocent civilians, or work in areas of advertising, law, or real estate that exploit hard working people. Heidegger's concept of “ready-to-hand” explains why they are oblivious to their larger impact. They take these jobs because they see wealth and power as moral values in their master morality mindset , because our country’s values have always been the moral values of Nietzsche's “Master Morality”.

25. Be careful to avoid the mistake of equating self-interest with selfishness. The selfish person, will harm others to benefit themselves, whereas self-interest is compatible with moral goodness. I can agree that humans are mostly self-interested, but I do not see selfishness as a core motive in most of us.

26. Rousseau, Quinn, and Smith will argue that our real nature is compassionate, but society corrupts us by encouraging competition and selfishness. If you pay careful attention to the details of Milgram's variations, his experiment does not show what most people think it does but, instead, supports a position like Rousseau's. Grossman's research on war and PTSD will also support this view. We are wired to feel others pain and avoid killing our own species.

27. Plato and Hobbes would agree with you that people are selfish to the point of cruelty. It is only fear that makes them act decent. In short, society makes us better. Rousseau, Quinn, and Smith will counter that people are socialized by the influence of property, Mother Culture, and the deception of ambition, respectively, to be selfish; this isn't innate. Many people would take war and institutional cruelty as evidence of innate human badness, but Grossman & Milgram will show just the opposite.

28. Many people are too quick to say we’re worse now than before. We may be more greedy and less concerned for our neighbors, but do you really think blacks, women, gays, the disabled, communists, atheists, and Jews would really like to go back to the "good old days"?

29. If you read Genesis, people were designed decent and only became bad after the “Fall”. And notice how the results of the Fall coincides with the turn towards agriculture, property, and greed. See Quinn and Rousseau.

30. The typical explanations - capitalism, greed, past abuse, mental disorders - can account for the isolated types of cruelty, but do these explanation account for the much more blatant causes of suffering? Does it explain genocide and war? Soldiers, those of our enemies as well as our own, are often involved in some of the most brutal actions in history, but they are motivated not by cruelty but sacrifice, loyalty, and virtue. They are usually not selfish at all but totally selfless. After all, Hitler didn't kill millions by himself...a bunch of normal people like you and me did his bidding. It is the Eichmann's of the world that cause more evil than any psychos or people with bad lives. Does your view explain why the "teachers" acted so cruelly in Milgram? The cruelty we see in our society is often the result of what Quinn calls Taker culture, and it is making us unhealthy and miserable. Now, when it comes to isolated cruelty, promising explanations are things like inherited lack of self-control or sociopathy, and being mistaken in applying defensive aggression when offended, so that people respond act like their lives are being threatened when only their social identity is being disrespected. This often correlates with people who have inflated and fragile self-esteem (cough, Trump, cough).

31. Religion is just one of several good ideals that have led to cruelty and idiocy… think of how many innocent people have been killed in the name of freedom or democracy or socialism or communism or justice. And then think of all the times that the real reason for a war is greed or resources but propaganda about religion or freedom or fear is used to fool the public and motivate our soldiers...this is true of Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc....and, yes, many Americans butcher the Bible to get it to support war as much as any Muslim group does it with the Quran.
32. If we are neutral, then why would we see these firing rates and combat PTSD? See Grossman. We are wired to feel others pain and avoid killing our own species (just like animals). And the idea that we are “blank slates” is easy to disprove, whether we look at how infants learn through innate sympathy or how genetic twins raised apart have more in common than regular siblings raised together, such as that many of the character traits that trigger aggression are inherited, not taught.
33. One would think the demands of obedience, the kill or be killed situation, and all the justifications that are drilled into them would make soldiers ready to kill and watch killing, but this is just not true for most. See Grossman's research on firing rates, conditioning, and PTSD. Those of you who think we are innately bad or neutral will have a hard time explaining how a soldier, raised and trained to glorify war, will still get PTSD. Trauma that does not contain moral betrayal/guilt does not have the same, lasting effects as combat PTSD, so it is not just fear or stress that causes PTSD. And those of you with loved ones with PTSD or with PTSD yourself should quickly realize that it is a consequence of moral goodness not badness. A bad person wouldn't get PTSD. We will discuss its causes and effects.