Have we (modern culture) lost the art of speculation?
It seems that we have become so preoccupied with practicalities that we have lost touch with the abstract and speculative. Religion, while perhaps no longer a productive avenue for speculation, at least offered a framework for considering the world in a more imaginative way. The monotony of our daily tasks - from crunching numbers and programming data to constructing material objects - may be necessary for the functioning of society, but it leaves little room for speculation. Even drug experiences, or escapist entertainment such as movies, have become our go-to for exploring the non-mundane. Unfortunately, speculation about the nature of existence and metaphysics, is not popular and remains a niche pursuit.
Before anyone starts railing about how the minutia-stuff of programming/crunching/building IS its own kind of speculative thinking, let me explain how these differ:
Hard tasks such as crunching numbers/ programming often require a great deal of concentration and focus, and the satisfaction they provide comes from the mastery of a specific skill or the accomplishment of a well-defined goal. In this sense, they are practical and tangible pursuits.
Speculation, on the other hand, involves a more abstract and imaginative kind of thinking. It is about exploring ideas and concepts that are not immediately concrete or tangible, and the satisfaction it provides comes from the mental stimulation and creative exploration of abstract concepts. This type of speculation often involves questioning assumptions, considering alternative perspectives, and pondering the mysteries of existence.
In other words, the pleasure of hard tasks is rooted in the accomplishment of a specific, concrete goal, while the pleasure of speculation is rooted in the stimulation of abstract and imaginative thinking. Both can be enjoyable and rewarding, but they offer different types of satisfaction and involve different types of thinking.
Before anyone starts railing about how the minutia-stuff of programming/crunching/building IS its own kind of speculative thinking, let me explain how these differ:
Hard tasks such as crunching numbers/ programming often require a great deal of concentration and focus, and the satisfaction they provide comes from the mastery of a specific skill or the accomplishment of a well-defined goal. In this sense, they are practical and tangible pursuits.
Speculation, on the other hand, involves a more abstract and imaginative kind of thinking. It is about exploring ideas and concepts that are not immediately concrete or tangible, and the satisfaction it provides comes from the mental stimulation and creative exploration of abstract concepts. This type of speculation often involves questioning assumptions, considering alternative perspectives, and pondering the mysteries of existence.
In other words, the pleasure of hard tasks is rooted in the accomplishment of a specific, concrete goal, while the pleasure of speculation is rooted in the stimulation of abstract and imaginative thinking. Both can be enjoyable and rewarding, but they offer different types of satisfaction and involve different types of thinking.
Comments (67)
Wait a minute. When did "speculation about the nature of existence and metaphysics" have great appeal? What exactly are you referencing here? Literature? Philosophy? Film? Beer hall conversation?
You might be right, but I'm not sure what you are claiming.
My reading of history and literature leads me to think that "speculation about the nature of existence and metaphysics" has always been a niche activity.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Indeed, and that pleasure has been enjoyed for quite a long time -- especially by the people supervising or profiting from the hard work of accomplishment. Not sure how much the grunts working away in the pits felt about it.
Spinoza made lenses for a living and was still able to produce some musings during his short life.
I changed the OP. I think you're right and I don't want that to be the focus (then and now). Rather, simply that we focus on the minutia-mongering more than the speculative and abstract in general- explaining what those are as context.
Quoting BC
Yes it has.
Quoting BC
This I agree with wholeheartedly. I have a feeling there is a convergence of grunts wanting the concentration and flow, come home, decompress and [place entertainment-pursuit here] without too much into abstract thinking. There have always been exceptions pointing towards that niche, as you mentioned.
Indeed he did. I'm not claiming that these are mutually exclusive, nor that a niche group of people think of speculative things. Nor is Spinoza modern, so also wrong era. Obviously, philosophers are indeed part of that niche.
However, a critical task of "revolutionary socialists" ought to be imagining a society operating under socialist principles. What is "heaven on earth" going to be like? Some socialists, at least, stop before they do any speculation and say that it will be up to the existing people in the would-be revolutionary society to decide what they want. All well and good. However, I think people need a vision to inspire struggle. Maybe they need a vision just to keep on keeping on, Else, it might very well all be for naught.
Dystopias seem to be a more popular topic for speculation for some reason. It might motivate corporate leaders to try harder at achieving decarbonizing goals, if they speculated more about bad things could (and probably will) get 25 years down the line or 100 years. B. F. Skinner, the behaviorist, wrote a book--Walden Two--about a utopian society operating with behavioral psychology principles. Seemed lie a dull place to live. Brave New World, of course--but was that utopian or dystopian speculation?
Another way in which speculation takes on more importance is that AI and automation stand a good chance at taking over activities that we find challenging and/or satisfying. If they take over speculation as well, then we're totally screwed, like the sorcerer's apprentice who knew enough magic to start the broom working on its own, but not enough magic to stop it.
Are Descartes, Hobbes & Leibniz modern?
Quoting BC
:fire:
Not how I'm defining it no. Early Modern, sure in certain contexts that phrase would be appropriate. I'll say, after the advent of the "second" industrial revolution...Seems to be beside the point of the OP though.
Does practical = better? The way you phrase "fun way" "lazy", and "appalling track record".. Let me give you a scenario.. What if everyday everybody did all the things to stay alive, with no thought to speculation? You coded the code, hammered the nail, crunched the number, but that's it. Consumed your consumption. Repeat. Oh wait, that is much of what goes on anyways. I don't see how that's any less pernicious.
I should've been clearer. I didn't mean to say life, including but not limited to speculation, is fun; I meant people seem to think/believe it's a fun activity. I have a lot of plans, but life always has other plans for me. The Game (of Life), I'm forced to play, as we all are, oui mon ami?
'Religion' is not and has never been a monolithic entity, a single thing. When it's used in this context, it denotes the Enlightenment schema of philosophy, religion and science, each with their own magisteria, and with religion the waning voice of premodernity. But in pre-modern and archaic times there was no separately-defined sphere known as 'religion' - it was simply 'the law' which encompassed every aspect of life, governing social relations, the rythm of the days, months and years, and providing the cosmic backdrop against which the affairs of humans played out. But within these vast and ancient cultural lifeforms, there are still encoded many of the dramas and mysteries of the psyche, and of birth life and death. Think the Greek Myths and the Bhagavad Gita and other epics.
The second thing is, what is often called 'speculative metaphysics' was birthed out of the visionary experiences of prophets, sages, shamans and seers. These often shattering and epoch-making visionary episodes were then conveyed, often aurally, for millenia, to become crystalised in the 'axial age' where they began to be preserved in writing. What we see now as 'religions' are almost lke the fossilised remnants of those ancient codexes, although still with a pulse.
The reason i make that point is because speculative metaphysics is (or at least might be) informed by an insight or intuition into the nature of being - not simply a 'I wonder if there's a teapot in orbit between Mars and Venus.'
I think the very oldest strata of what was to become Greek philosophy contains, or maybe conceals, the remnants of such visionary states. (Here's a review of maverick scholar Peter Kingsley's exegesis of what he sees as the mystical visionary Pythagoras. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I think it's a perspective to be aware of.)
So - I sense what you sense is lacking, and I think it's heading in a good direction, but I thnk it will involve a long journey.
:up:
Clearly, that was my interpretation, but I am kind of sympathetic to Schopenhauer's take which is that religion is simply a vessel for deeper truths. it just comes in the form of these myths.
Quoting Wayfarer
What makes you think it's heading in a good direction? There are niches for sure, but the broad mass of people, and frankly, the technocratic practicality of the Western values, is that what make 010100101 push electrical impulses.. and what balances debits and credits, and pushes materials from point a to b, c, and d is really what counts.
Indeed! as am I, clearly.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I meant I thought you were heading in a good direction in respect of this OP.
Amazin' grace! Allahu Akbar!
Philosophy was never a "popular" pursuit at any given time in history. But it started before atoms were discovered. Speculation, in the classical sense, changed once we had achieved advancements in all aspects of human activities.
But it doesn't mean we stopped all philosophical inquiries as to the nature of self and existence. Meaning and being, for example, are now being probed through the methodologies of logic, analytics, and even phenomenology -- which, of course, had stripped our philosophy off of its depth and the beauty of critiques.
Yes, that's what really counts in the marketplace. The market place is very big and billions of people do their material thing there and there everything is reduced to the cash nexus. Nothing new about the, and I expect it will continue on until there is no more future.
As dominant as it is, most people are still not merely functionaries in the marketplace, and if they can be coaxed away from their smartphone tethers and social media flowage, there is still the possibility of ideas taking flight.
Ah, don't ask me how to make that happen.
So, what are the best genres in which to speculate?
Religion of an open-ended sort
Philosophy as long as we're not rehashing Plato till the cows come home
Literature is not always speculative, but it certainly can be
History requires speculation, imagination, to put flesh on the bare bones of fact
and ??? there must be more
Music? Art? Surely.
So, the art of speculative thought has NOT been lost -- it just doesn't rate mention in the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal.
We can and we must. I've done me part mon ami. Time to pass on the baton to younger, more optimistic, folks. There are plenty of 'em around. As for the lion, I can feel its fangs on me jugular.
Philosophers are the thought police of consumer society, and materialism declares all such talk useless and therefore meaningless. This is amply demonstrated by the impossibility of understanding the meaning of even the simple word 'modern' without a material definition giving the date of modernity's advent.
Edit: In the sense that the op has used it, I would date 'modern' to be about the end of the Victorian period and to correspond to the abolition of death as a topic in polite society - replaced of course by sex. The awareness of one's mortality is a great stimulus to unpractical speculations.
:up:
Let me reframe this. I really mean to get at, that in our daily lives, there seems to be lack of "meaningfulness in the mundane", whereby the meaningful informs the mundane. Again, religion tried to inject that (but usually one day a week in Western culture, and in a poorly delivered way to the masses). However, there is something about the minutia-mongering aspect of the post-industrial that does its best to take this away. The "workplace" (a social construct just like any other, but one whereby the majority of people garner their subsistence to maintain their material comforts and very survival), is often a killing floor for connecting what one does to anything broader, "mysteries of the universe" or otherwise. It is soul-crushing, demoralizing, and indeed leads to things like "End Stage Capitalism" and "Boring Dystopia". But it's more than just your token memes of ridiculous societal behavior, but the very connection of one's actions with the cosmos.
Yes, I can se BC coming in with some joke regarding the last sentence, something about scanning groceries at the checkout line and its connection with Plato's Forms, but I think you know what I am getting at. And yes, even that should be connected :grin:.
Well! I would have made a great joke if you hadn't already told it! Thanks a lot!
Quoting schopenhauer1
Wasn't the "Protestant work ethic" an effort to make the mundane meaningful? The idea was that all work was as sacred as the labor of priests. So, scanning groceries was a service to God and Man, alike.
As far as I know, from personal experience and good authority, the Protestant Work Ethic is dead, ground up in the gears of alienating industrial labor, soulless bureaucratic paper processing, the treadmill of consumption for the sake of production, and more besides. As far as the religious interpretation goes, the religious establishment's connection to the masses, and the masses' utilization of 'mainline religious teaching' is all pretty much dying or dead.
This all didn't happen yesterday -- more like a many decades long process.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Absolutely!
Can alienated people in an alienating culture overcome their alienation? I don't know if they can or not.
In various discussions around here about the meaningless universe it has been repeatedly asserted that man can impose, import, invent, invoke, create ... meaning.
How well is that working? Reasonably well.
BUT if one feels mired in anomie, alienation, meaninglessness, soullessness, etc. it is natural to believe that everyone is in the same hopeless boat. If one is NOT mired in the dark swamp, it is difficult to understand why some people are. I have had some long episodes of feeling alienated, meaningless, soulless, etc. in the past; and I have had some long episodes of feeling connected to and part of a solid meaning system.
What made the difference, moving from one state to another. Well, I don't know, exactly. Grace is as good an explanation as I can find.
About as inspiring as a manager giving an ice cream social. If the PWE was the start, no wonder we didn't get much better! Management takes the role of dutiful Puritan leader, making sure all is making the hay for God's glory (and the bottom line that is).
Quoting BC
And waiting in long lines is a penance.
Quoting BC
How about changes at a societal level? Work itself can transform into an environment that provides meaning as its goal rather than profit? Oh, I know, off to Utopian trashbin.
Your answer is indicative of the general trend towards radical individualism- the one that self-help books thrive on. It is YOUR fault that you feel alienated. In no way must we question the broader socio-cultural phenomenon.. Now buy this book and series of videos for $39.95.
If they do not they will manifest Armageddon. "The term Armageddon has often been used by Protestant fundamentalists to refer to an impending cataclysmic struggle between the forces of good and evil." Robert E. Lerner.
Germany was the Holy Roman Empire and also our world war enemy. It was not lack of Christianity that caused evil to erupt, but that horror was possibly the result of Germany's model of education for technology and Christianity. That same education the US has had since the 1958 National Defense Education Act created another nation that believes God favors them and wills them to go to war in places like Iraq where the US waged war against evil. Bringing us to a new reality of having more national enemies than ever before. This really matters when the world starts dividing and those who hate us start uniting forces. Perhaps replacing our liberal education with education for technology for military and industrial purposes has a downside. Kind of like Athens becoming a military power and the nation to take out.
The US is not the united nation it once was but it has been uniting nations against the US and a man who made us feel good about putting the US first became our president and thugs fought to keep him in power and 6 year old takes a gun to school and intentionally shots his teacher. Something has gone very wrong.
To be fair, in many places, no education is taking place. But fair enough- in upper-middle class areas, this may be true enough about emphasis on tech over liberal education. As far as bombs and such, you can replace that with any X products. You make boring things, you perhaps make boring people. "Work hard/ play hard".. Is like "Code hard/ game hard" or "Code hard and drink hard". "Enter stuff into forms", "Answer trivial emails", "Crunch numbers and make spread sheets" Repeat.
I think I do not know enough of your thought to understand it.
Why is anything made?
There are two ways to have social control, culture or authority over the people. The US stopped transmitting its culture when it began educating for a technological society with unknown values. Now we are scrabbling to have social order with authority over the people.
When the bottom line is the dollar, and ethics go out the window, what happens to how we feel about ourselves and others?
OUCH! That's pretty painful.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting BC
The vision of a better, more humane - human - society comes from a) criticism of the existing society, and speculation about a better society. Any meaningful change in society has to be collective rather than individual. Just because I feel better now. than I used to doesn't mean I think it is up to individuals to solve these problems alone.
For instance, I welcome automation. A lot of boring tedious work really should be done by computers and robots. Coupled with automation should be a universal basic income system to avoid poverty among the displaced workers.
Of course, some people like doing routinized work -- I don't understand it, but they do.
There is the idea that people who have been relieved of boring routinized jobs can shift over to fascinating fulfilling work. Whether any such thing can, or would happen, isn't clear to me. Maybe it is a mistake to suppose that people would fill their days with fulfilling work. Maybe they would do what otherwise unoccupied people have always done: socialize, play, eat, etc. And that would be just fine.
:100: :up:
Quoting BC
I think it's even more radical than that that has to happen. You are an old socialist, so maybe this might appeal to your sense of what could be... but imagine if work was a place of shared knowledge rather than bottom line individualism. It operated more like a seminar than output farm. But the donuts have to be made I get it. I don't know how to integrate the two necessities, but this would be something in some worker's utopia fantasy, only slightly different than our world in most other respects except how a "normal" place of "work" operates:
Here is a sample itinerary of a workplace that fosters learning and exploration:
8:00 am - Arrival: Employees arrive at work and are welcomed by a spacious and open office environment.
8:15 am - Morning Reflection: Employees start the day with a short meditation or reflection session to set their minds and focus for the day ahead.
9:00 am - Team Meetings: Teams hold their daily meetings to go over priorities and check-ins.
10:00 am - Workshops/Seminars: Employees attend in-house workshops or seminars on a range of subjects, from emerging technologies to philosophical debates.
12:00 pm - Lunch & Learn: Employees gather for lunch and listen to guest speakers or engage in discussions on topics of interest.
1:00 pm - Collaborative Work: Teams work on projects together, sharing ideas and knowledge, and encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration.
3:00 pm - Personal Learning Time: Employees have dedicated time to pursue their own interests and learning, either individually or in groups.
4:30 pm - Show & Tell: Employees gather to share what they have learned during their personal learning time.
5:00 pm - Wrap-up: Teams wrap up their work for the day and plan for the next day.
5:30 pm - Departure: Employees head home, with their minds and spirits refreshed and reinvigorated.
This itinerary provides a snapshot of a workplace that prioritizes learning and exploration. By incorporating educational opportunities and personal time into the workday, employees are able to broaden their perspectives and connect with what they do in a deeper, more meaningful way.
Most workplaces exist for business-for-profit activities. Some fields are more privileged than others -- the arts, for example, in which artists can demonstrate their interpretation of the world through their arts. If people are inclined to actually include contemplation of the world into their working hours, and find cosmos meaning in what they do, they'd be disappointed.
We say things like "work-life balance" for a reason. It means, you put in the recommended hours a week to your work, then use the remaining hours for your personal activities.
:vomit: Check please!
Don't forget to tip in north america.
Agreed. Not just ethics, but whole swaths of how we see value in things, life, and each other.
:wink:
I'm not sure if this has been covered, but for what reason do you think this is not happening as often today?
Quoting L'éléphant
Fair point - also many people who work in the health sectors, psychology, education, community work, where reflective practice and questioning of assumptions about mainstream culture and values is frequently undertaken.
A walk into many bookshops in my town is to be confronted by hundreds of popular books all about philosophy and spirituality, and alternative values, etc. In my experience, the world seems far more interested and tolerant of this material today then it was 30-40 years ago.
Quoting schopenhauer1
During my hiatus from the forum last year I discovered John Vervaeke, a Canadian lecturer in cognitive science and psychology, who's channel is called 'Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.' This is precisely what he's talking about. You can find an introduction here.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This has always been the focus of my interest in philosophy, although it's certainly not the focus of academic philosophy.
Quoting BC
I think not. It was specifically Protestant in having been shaped by Calvinism in particular, with its emphasis on 'the elect' and the impossibility of knowing whether you were among the saved. 'Protestants, beginning with Martin Luther, conceptualized worldly work as a duty which benefits both the individual and society as a whole. Thus, the Catholic idea of good works was transformed into an obligation to consistently work diligently as a sign of grace. Whereas Catholicism teaches that good works are required of Catholics as a necessary manifestation of the faith they received, and that faith apart from works is dead and barren, the Calvinist theologians taught that only those who were predestined to be saved would be saved.' This was just as much a source of a kind of deep existential anxiety as it was of meaning.
Quoting David Loy, Terror in the God-Shaped Hole
All of this has the effect of 'subjectivising' or 'privatizing' the notion of meaning, so that it becomes an attribute of the individual's search for truth, in an otherwise mechanical and inherently meaningless universe knowledge of which is mediated solely by science.
Yes good analysis.
No you don't get it. Your schedule indicates that the donuts aren't going to be made until 1:00 in the afternoon. The best sales period (early morning) will have been missed. Workers elsewhere will be deprived of the irreplaceable fried glazed-raised to go with their coffee. The entire city will be negatively affected. I'm calling a group criticism meeting, Herr Schopenhauer, and you will be Topic Numero Uno.
I believe I see your point. We're dissatisfied with the mundane and it is exactly that which we encounter in our daily lives. Every single moment we're reminded of how small we are while our hearts & minds yearn for the great. Soul-crushing it is (for those who recognize the problem).
:100: :fire:
When were people closer to truth? What truth?
What if our culture blinds us to truth because our culture does do not give us the perspective we need to know truth and the authorities are the only legitimate truth sayers?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I had two jobs that both achieved your goals. One was in the AIDS Prevention program at the Minnesota AIDS Project starting around 1987. Our work day was loosely structured, and some of us had work which was done outside the building. We collaborated a lot, shared information, worked together on editing pamphlets, and so on. We could still smoke indoors at the time, so the smoking lounge was the place to take the pulse of the agency.
The critical piece was the sense that we were involved in a common struggle, and while there were major differences in education background, no one pulled rank. Crisis-urgency helped us, of course. Many AIDS programs around the country had similar highly successful years before AIDS became deeply established. By the time it became clear that HIV was here to stay, and then became somewhat treatable, then very treatable (but not curable) the sense of elan was gone. Then it became humdrum public health work.
The other very good job was in the media center of a college library -- early 70s. This job taught me a lot. There was no crisis here, no life or death issues. The program leader was immensely enthusiastic about all sorts of instructional technology, and engaged faculty in his projects. Possibilities were wide open and co-workers were encouraged -- more like compelled -- to try out anything that seemed like it might work. It wasn't a 3 ring circus -- this was, after all, an over-all tightly wrapped Catholic men's college, and there were people in the hierarchy who didn't hesitate to slam on the brakes if they didn't like something, We would have been successful instructional technology revolutionaries if the Internet, wide bandwidth, and more powerful desktop computers had been available to us. It's what we were reaching toward.
I won't go into the assorted crummy jobs, but they were alienating and alienated; dull; routinized; tradition bound, discouraged innovation; hierarchical, and so on.
Well, yes. What's the point of being a powerful authority if you can't decide what is true? "We'll decide what the Truth is, thank you, and perhaps we will provide you with an abbreviated, sanitized version at some point in the future, depending on our estimate of what you need to know. People don't like being burdened with disturbing information. In any case, don't call us, we'll call you."
Who gave you permission to go to Sydney?
Wow, I really enjoyed that and bookmarked it so I can return to it. I have a lot of thinking to do with that information. Thank you.
__
I wonder if the following rings a bell?
Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin (4 February [O.S. 23 January] 1889 10 February 1968) was a Russian American sociologist and political activist, who contributed to the social cycle theory.
[quote=The Visionary Theories of Pitirim Sorokin; https://satyagraha.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/pitirim-sorkin-crisis-of-modernity/]Sensate (Materialistic) Culture
Sensate/Materialist culture has these features:
The defining cultural principle is that true reality is sensory only the material world is real. There is no other reality or source of values. This becomes the organizing principle of society. It permeates every aspect of culture and defines the basic mentality. People are unable to think in any other terms.
Sensate culture pursues science and technology, but dedicates little creative thought to spirituality or religion.
Dominant values are wealth, health, bodily comfort, sensual pleasures, power and fame.
Ethics, politics, and economics are utilitarian and hedonistic. All ethical and legal precepts are considered mere man-made conventions, relative and changeable.
Art and entertainment emphasize sensory stimulation. In the decadent stages of Sensate culture there is a frenzied emphasis on the new and the shocking (literally, sensationalism).
Religious institutions are mere relics of previous epochs, stripped of their original substance, and tending to fundamentalism and exaggerated fideism (the view that faith is not compatible with reason).[/quote]
Nailed it, Dude. :cry:
:lol:
:lol: Random shots do hit the bullseye on occasion.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think these are different questions. One is about the dying art of abstract speculation, and the other is about the lack of meaning.
The end of abstract speculation: Kant signalled the end of speculative metaphysics. Thereafter, abstract speculation was replaced by science and mathematics.
The lack of meaning: Weber, and Horkheimer and Adorno, described the disenchantment, desacralization, and intrumental rationality of the Enlightenment and of capitalism.
Both of these came out of the Enlightenment, so how do they go together?
In the enchanted world of religiously-dominated, pre-Enlightenment society, most people were not in the habit of engaging in abstract speculation--the so-called enchantment of the world amounted in the field and the marketplace to a set of hard socio-economic limits to freedom and thought. But the meaning inherent in the world according to religion--your "meaning in the mundane"--made it reasonable for educated elites to subject it to rational speculation, rather than leaving the world to experimental scientist-technicians as would happen later. (Of course, religion imposed limits on the content of this speculation, but the very idea of abstract speculation was legitimate).
In the disenchanted world of the Enlightenment, even the educated elites found there were limits on their ability to speculate--intellectual and ideological ones, imposed respectively by the increasing success of science and the instrumental rationality of capitalism. Abstract speculation didn't cut it any more, and nothing had to be meaningful anyway. (On the other hand one could equally say that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were part of one of the most fertile periods in philosophy, almost as if this transient crossover between philosophy and science stimulated speculation in a way that religion could not do--and from that point of view I'm tempted to view it, very vaguely, as a crucial lost opportunity, as the period may have ultimately been in politics also).
How have things changed in our postmodern world? On the face of it, all of the above has merely accelerated. In the post-industrial, consumer society, the last vestiges of meaning have been eroded too: social institutions, civic life, and the very idea that society can be changed through collective action, leaving us with "capitalist realism".
I don't know if I'm terribly concerned about the lack of abstract speculation in ordinary life, unless this is taken to mean that most people remain excluded from the world of ideas and do not have the leisure or education to take part in intellectual discussion. What would be nice are two things: (1) a non-religious re-enchantment of the world, and (2) a re-organization of society to make this possible.
That's extremely simplistic and cartoonish, but there it is.
:up:
Agree with analysis.
Quoting Jamal
See my utopian workplace itinerary post above in response to BC.
To expand on this, I think it's more definitive death blow was the growing Analytic Philosophy of Frege, Russell, and positivists. Throughly atomizing the speculative to mathematical proof-based ideas and language analysis. However, I find it poetic justice that Whitehead, one of the big Analytic players, steeped in logic and math proofs, had one of the most speculative of speculative philosophy's metaphysics in his Process and Reality ("occasions of experience" anyone??).
Also, not that I am completely onboard, but the Speculative Realists, and traditional idealists in the Continental variety (Badiou, Deleuze, etc.) are still pretty speculative on the academic level.
Of course, speculative thinking in general is just not part of everyday speech in any logical form. It indeed is relegated to the fancies of "metaphysics" and "spiritualism" books, traditional religion (barely), and again, academia.
But certainly, people aren't connecting computer code, TPS reports, and accounting with anything other than their grueling repetitive tasks to be done with. The same with the trade-jobs, manufacturing, and the rest. Daily life gets in the way of meaning. As you stated:
Quoting Jamal
What's sad, is the Self-Help gurus co-option of the Existentialism to make people subjugated to the menial but explaining to them, childishly, that there is meaning in the mundane by simply going through the gauntlet of life itself. As long as trends like "yoga" , "meditation", "vacation destinations", and "leisure time" is added, WhAt iS So WrOng WiTh tHiS ArraNgeMent!!!???
Meaning is shorn due to the internal workings of the socio-economic system, as it played out since the rise of industrialism and post-industrialism. Modernity is atomized thoroughly, to the point that we have internalized the atomization as thus good. Goods have obscured the Good. Also, simply stating "consumerism is bad" is a superficial attempt to get at this point. It's not just consumptive aspects, it is the PRODUCTION modes, which are obscuring meaning in daily life!!!! The focus on consumerism is likely a holdover from the Protestant Work Ethic's idea that work, even in atomized, meaningless form is best and sacred. Consumption must be the problem then, not production. But that is a deceptive ruse.
I wonder what @BC has to say on this.
:lol: Yes I remember something about Athenians believing their heroes are chosen by the gods, and not all of the chosen have the arete to live up to the calling but remain as the herd dependent on the Shepard. A concern about democracy is the masses being as cattle because they avoid thinking as you say but can be easily lead in the wrong direction. Interestingly, although Greek philosophers discussed education they did not take the education of children seriously.
It's the structure that makes us cattle. But it's a double-bind, as the structure creates the goods and services you so love (like electricity, plastics, medicine, various materials, mining, food production, electronics, furniture, fixtures, goods of all varieties, heating, buildings, infrastructure, transportation, roads, ANYTHING). So unless you forgo that, back to the cattle pens we go as we monger minutia in the cattle feed.
I agree that there's a Protestant aspect to the critique of consumerism and I'm really not on board with it either. Socialism has always had a puritan stream, but Marx seems to have seen the expansion of new needs in a positive light.
Not sure what to think of Marxism, because it relies so heavily on the utopian dream being automated so we can pursue more meaningful things. But that requires even more digging into the minutia-mongering in the meantime. Also, I think the divide isn't necessarily "capitalists", it's also a knowledge divide. Having a deeper understanding of technology can provide individuals with a greater sense of agency and control over their lives and the world around them. This understanding goes beyond just using technology and involves knowledge of the materials, components, and processes that make it work. Scientists, engineers, and inventors, for example, often have this more comprehensive understanding and as a result, have more control and meaning over the technology they work with and the whole system in general. On the other hand, the average person may have a more limited understanding and tend to focus on the superficial aspects of technology, rather than its underlying mechanisms. This subsequently leads to simply minutia-mongering and leaving us more like babbling children lost in the big human-created forces that we can never fully understand or control (yet which others have more understanding and control of)- a sort of double-bind for the modern average person.
The notion of false needs has been popular among Marxists since the Frankfurt School, and their analysis has moved on from Marx to suit the times, as it should. All the same, I still find myself more sympathetic to Marx himself:
[quote=Marx, Grundrisse]It is characteristic of the economists that Storch expresses this thusly: the material of money should should have direct value but on the basis of an artificial need. Artificial need is what the economist calls, firstly, the needs which arise out of the social existence of the individual; secondly, those which do not flow from its naked existence as a natural object. This shows the inner, desperate poverty which forms the basis of bourgeois wealth and of its science.[/quote]
Even if I'm comparing apples and oranges, because Marx and Marcuse were writing about different things, I still tend to think that the comparison reflects the way that theoretical Marxism moved from the staunch advocacy of the ambitions of the working class to a basic disappointment in and suspicion of that class.
I won't take this digression any further.
Your comment sent me looking for more information and I am thrilled with this site https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010.12.59/
The author of the review of the book Susan A. Curry, quotes Pierre Bourdieu a system of internalized schemes that have the capacity to generate all thoughts, perceptions, and actions characteristic of a culture
Back in the day, the technological advancements you mention did not exist and to my surprise, the ownership of cattle and a sacred economy went together, and their internalized schemes came out of herding cattle, not living as we live today. I am thrilled by how this information can increase our awareness of our own internalized and economy.
How might things be different if we had a sacred economy? Do we have any examples of a sacred economy today? How about the Mormons maintaining a supply of food, or futher back, Puritan business and fincial practices? What is lurking our subconscious as we speak of the reality we experience today?
Ancient Greeks had a sacred economy based on the gods and herding cattle even after they became city dwellers and raised cattle on communal land, making the cattle commonwealth, not just an individual's wealth. Oh, oh the Jews dealt with this transition from herding to being settled and having private property.
Yipes I got a little off topic so I will tie back into the topic. What is in our subconscious that gives form to our speculations? What happens to our liberty when we are trapped by our desires?