This Cato Institute 2019 poll has some telling results about the state of people’s feelings toward a meaningful existence. What does it mean to have a meaningful existence? Religion, of course, says that a meaningful existence can only happen through religion. Without religion, people seem to seek meaning through politics. Once politics is seen for what it really is – a soul-shaped cavity overflowing with fetid swamp water where dreams go to die – people are left with nothing but hollow materialistic consumerism. When that fails to satisfy the need for purpose, the meaning-wheel comes full circle and people seek a metaphysics to explain how the world works. The most popular of which currently is identity politics.
life
Human Rights, Virtue Ethics, and Tyranny
If there are no human rights a priori of government force, how can tyranny be avoided? In the absence of any deontological justification for normative ethics, there is only virtue ethics.
More CRISPR Gene Editing Babies
Nature reported that Russian molecular biologist Denis Rebrikov is planning to perform CRISPR experiments on human embryos. He’s running the experiments on the same CCR5 gene as Chinese scientist He Jiankui in 2018. This is once again raising questions on the ethics of human genetic experimentation.
Structure of the Mind
Consciousness and qualia are problems that are still unsolved by philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. My way of viewing consciousness and qualia is that consciousness is the process by which our brains organize the world into working models and qualia is the ‘stuff’ that consciousness uses to generate those models. For better or worse, both of these exist due to evolutionary forces. That means they’re fine tuned to a very specific sort of survival, not for any pure understanding of the world or ourselves. In order to understand the limitations of our own minds, we need to know the inner workings of how the world is organized in our minds on a fundamental level. That requires knowing the structure of our minds.
Jordan Peterson and God: Truth, Myth, and the Bible
In this post, I am going to write a response/review of Jordan Peteron’s 2017 lecture titled Biblical Series I: Introduction to the Idea of God, which is available to watch on Youtube.
Should LGBTQ+ Characters in Literature Always Make a Cultural Statement?
I am a heterosexual, cisgender, white male. A character in my novel “Incarnate: Existence” is a Japanese transgender woman. For some people this is probably already ‘problematic’ – I, of course, do not and cannot know the experiences of a non-white and transgender person. That could certainly be an article all in itself, whether someone like me should be “allowed” to write this kind of character, and I’ve tangentially written about this idea before. But that’s not what this article is about. I’m interested if, in general, a character in a creative work (book, movie, TV show, etc.) who is LGBTQ+ should always and necessarily be written to make a political or cultural statement, or can the character exist as they are without attempting to make a statement?
How to Give People a Living Wage Without Raising the Minimum Wage
The current minimum wage is thought to be too low for someone to meet their basic needs. However, it’s also thought that increasing minimum wage will cause businesses to hire fewer people and invest more in automation. What if I were to tell you there is a way to pay a living wage without touching the minimum wage?
What is the Meaning of Death?
I recently watched an episode of the Mind Field series by Vsauce titled “Should I Die?” In it, the host Michael Stevens talks to people from a cryonics firm and a mortician. He ultimately decides that he wants to die. The reasoning seems to be that our finite existence is what gives meaning to our lives. Death, in other words, has a meaning. But what is that meaning?
Motivation
What drives people to do the things they do? I often wonder about this, because I have issues with motivation. I have a difficult time getting motivated to do things, even things I know I will enjoy one I begin them. Other people seem to have a much easier time getting motivated to do things. Some people are even so motivated that they can’t not be doing something. For me, I can waste days, even weeks, of time without ever feeling any strong impetus to be productive. Sure, I’ll internally chastise myself for having not done anything, but this rarely translates into future action. Thus, a spiral of depression begins, where I do nothing, feel bad about doing nothing, and that just makes me feel even less motivated. This is why my posts in this blog are so sporadic.
For the past few months, I have been in one of these spirals. I wasted a lot of time playing Diablo 3, attempting not to think about anything. It’s only been in the last week or so that I have begun peeking my head out of this mental-emotional trough, attempting to pump some motivation and inspiration back into myself. It has been difficult to do. I have the competing voices of depression and inspiration debating in my mind, the former telling me that it will be easier to continue doing nothing and that none of it matters anyway, the latter telling me that I will be happier in the long run if do those things that challenge me intellectually and creatively.
I’m hoping to make more blog posts – as well do the other things I enjoy – from now on. I hope that voice of depression doesn’t keep winning the debate.