ANSWERS:

https://www.quora.com/How-can-philosophy-solve-the-issues-of-the-world/answer/Mortimer-MacManus

I don’t understand the question, nor will I, for there’s nothing to question about it. As for the answer – that science solves the problems, whereas philosophy does not (as though each could be personified in such an allegory) – I don’t think there’s something to be Understood ABOUT it. Consider just a few philosophical perspectives:

1.         Deleuze says that the philosopher produces an Idea in the same manner as the artist produces a work of art, and the function of this Idea is to solve a Problem.

2.         Marcel insists that all problems are relatively superficial by contrast with Mysteries, and this in itself is a problem which is peculiar to Modernity.

3.         The Buddha alleged that all problems are internal. The function of philosophy is therefore to decide what phenomena we are to regard as problems and what phenomena we are to regard as values. No solution can be imagined without this, and all solutions will therefore be resolved philosophically, for their ultimate identity abides within the mind.

These are just a few ways of saying the same thing: were it not for philosophy, we would not even KNOW what our problems ARE. The first step is admitting the problem.

4.         Marx admitted that the state of capitalism created problems for the Working Class.

5.         Camus admitted that the state of Absurdity creates the temptation towards suicide, one of the greatest problems of which is that philosophers cannot agree about the moral efficacy of such a solution to the problem(s) of Life.

6.         Foucault and Nietzsche admitted to the problem(s) of Power.

7.         Theologians admitted to the problem(s) of Evil.

8.         Sartre admitted to the problem of Freedom.

9.         Wallace addresses the problem of suicide, though his solution was markedly more escapist than that of his fellow water-signs Sartre and Camus. His ultimate solution was a tragic one.

10.    MacIntyre admits to the problem that people make moral statements outside of their original sociological context.

None of these problems, to be admitted, require science, and a great many of them have little to DO with science, since they concern matters of Ethical Imperative. MacIntyre attempts to resolve this problem by arguing against Hume.

11.    Hume admits to the problem that ethics cannot be derived from facts.

12.    Ayer, that rascal, uses Hume’s logic to draw a definite line between science and morality.

13.    MacIntyre attempts to reconcile science and morality by challenging Hume.

It may appear to be tautological to do so, but I must contribute a problem of my own:

14.    Millennials tend to regard Philosophy as though it were inadequate to solve Problems, which thereby renders it irrelevant.

They have a lot of authorities to warrant this nihilism. For instance, Zizek insists that Philosophy ought only to reorient our subjective attitudes towards problems, though he presumes, with an extravert’s arrogance, that the problems remain the same and that science can be used to solve them. Yet even one of the staunchest technocrats, Peter Joseph, cannot escape philosophical necessities:

15.    The American Upper Class has the capacity to feed and house every human being on the planet, but it has no inclination to do so, and any attempt to change this state of affairs, either by appeal to the conscience of the Elite or by unification against the Elite, is squandered by the Protestant Work Ethic that drives Production and therefore oversees distribution.

It’s not that we don’t have the science and technology to solve World Hunger; it’s just that the presumption that we OUGHT to, at this moment, remains a dogma without warrant. Ayer would say, “I may PREFER to feed the poor, but that is simply the expression of my own emotive preferences, for which no science exists to necessitate an absolute.”

Yet does any science exist to necessitate that SC!ENCE is an absolute?? I mean: is that not a tautology in itself? Science may be deified as though it were omnipotent, but is it generous? Is it righteous? Science has no autonomy; it is a tool. It does not produce ethical statements, whatever MacIntyre may say to the contrary. And its applications are not universally good.

16.    Huxley admits to the problem that within a hundred years of his time the World may fall under the rule of a technocratic dictatorship wherein people are stratified based upon genetic predispositions, pacified by drugs and entertainment, and forgetful of their common history.

When you hear someone call someone an “Alpha” or a “Beta”, that’s just ONE example. Then we must recall the quotation: “For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.” Is this not what you mean to say when you dismiss Philosophy?

Science is pathetically impoverished by design; Jung writes: “Scientific method must serve; it errs when it usurps a throne. [...] Science is not, indeed, a perfect instrument, but it is a superior and indispensable one that works harm only when taken as an end in itself.” This in itself expresses a problem:

17.    If we are to depend upon a technocratic view of the World, wherein Science Alone defines what problems ARE and Science Alone is employed in finding a Solution, we are caught within a vicious cycle so perverse that we wouldn’t even know that our most basic presuppositions about Life were mere tautologies.

A tautology, by definition, is a circular argument, and you might see how this sort of technocratic Wheel of Samsara would produce such delusions.

Zizek is admirable in this regard: he admits that in our day and age we ought to stop acting and to start thinking. Too many people are literally running about putting theory into action. Some of them are warranted by God, but others are warranted by Science. Why should one be less neurotic than the other? The former is a Platonic episteme, whereas the latter is Aristotelian. Both have been corrupted by social stratification and capitalism. One comes out of privilege; the other comes out of desperation. Neither can be reconciled with the other without Philosophy. In fact, Philosophy Alone has been able to bring religion and science into harmony, precisely because Philosophy is the parent of both.

You can delight yourself in whatever it is that you choose to worship. Wallace says that we will all worship SOMETH!NG; he echoes Jung in his refusal to undervalue the Religious Instinct, and Wallace’s addictions serve as context for his conviction, since Jungians had founded Alcoholics Anonymous on Jung’s observation that spirits are a surrogate for the Spirit. Religions are not merely “proto-Scientific” attempts to “explain the Universe”; a cosmology is only ONE of MANY problems, and Science was developed not even to solve those many problems but to UNDERSTAND them. How it was that Science and Philosophy switched roles in Common Sense I cannot know. As far as I’m aware, philosophers have solved more problems than any scientist. Technology also ought not to be equated with Science; it precedes it by thousands of years, and its growth is also morally ambivalent. If we are to decide on WHAT we would even L!KE TO SOLVE, we must philosophize. Even if we cannot solve all the problems we consent to regard, we ought not to presume upon an answer to come out of Science. A Nietzschean Ubermensch is far more likely to save us, because technology does not require us to think, and how we think is the danger. Let me leave with just a FEW problems to ponder:

18.    Immunology can create a vaccine to kill a virus, but few will deny that autism and brain cists are possible side-effects. Furthermore, the vaccine is purported only to work in “herds” wherein everyone is vaccinated, irrespective of personal conviction. Critics of this are marginalized and treated as though they were threats; they are the modern equivalent of witches, and all of the superstitions of witch hunts are projected upon these critics as well, despite evidence that witchcraft itself exists.

19.    The U.S. military uses science to develop a sort of drone that acts almost as efficiently as the Shinigami Notebook in the popular animated series Death Note. These little buggers can identify their targets from miles away, and they are designed to swoop in and to drop a tiny explosive on the head of anyone who has that face.

20.    Clinical psychiatry dismisses all forms of radical, epistemological subjectivity in favour of an industry which profits off of the sale of experimental mind-altering drugs. While young people use psychedelics illegally to alter their perspectives, individuals suffering emotional distress in a society afflicted with depression, anxiety, alienation, meaningless, and suicide are diagnosed, often by nurses instead of doctors, and within very narrow time limits, as having one to several of about three hundred disorders. While patients diagnosed this way are subject to experimental treatments, alienated from their societies, Drug Cartels become militarized through the sale of narcotics, which remain illegal. (Despite the fact that some of the most prevalent drugs, such as heroin, were initially synthesized for medical purposes, and numerous psychiatric drugs remain more addictive than most scheduled substances.)

Science does not solve these problems; IT CREATES THEM. People only presume AFTER the fact that mental illness was “always a problem”, that war is “ultimately inevitable”, and that people are “inherently herd animals”. Only philosophers have the gall and indignation to challenge technocratic paradigms which restrict our freedoms and demoralize us in these ways. If Philosophy can have only one external benefit, it is in alerting us to THESE problems, by doing what it always has: upsetting the irrational power projections which every State and Clergy, whether democratic or authoritarian, secular or spiritual, has employed in order to oppress us. In short: if you cannot even find T!ME for philosophy, you are already so hopelessly enslaved that you falsely believe yourself to be Free. If the simple INTERNAL Good of knowing yourself and examining your own life is not enough to stimulate you, for you are too busy producing new chemical solutions to abstract information about Global Warming, (brought to you by Industry, partnered with Modern, Scientific Production!!) then you are already part of the EXTERNAL problem which only philosophy can solve.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

A. Einstein.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

DERR!DA:

I’m not sure if you remember Jacques Derrida, but I do. He pioneered Deconstruction in the latter half of the twentieth century. Arguably, his most salient contribution was in the discussion of race. If you will pardon my flippancy, Deconstruction probably did more for black people than Reconstruction did.

In order to understand Deconstruction, it helps to know Derrida’s backstory. Scholars posit that he was inspired to deconstruct reality because he was rejected from University; well into his later years, he advocated for the rights of high school students to a philosophical education. The reasons for Derrida’s initial rejection lay in his ethnic background; the school had a quota for Jews, and it was over capacity. By contemporary standards, we might say that this brilliant man was a victim of institutional racism; we would even go to considerable lengths in making that label absolutely final. But I have to wonder: had he been born in America, and had he applied to a University here, what would we call it if he was rejected for being white? I mean: CLEARLY that’s just as Absurd, from an Individual standpoint. It would be as if the Individual were no more than the figurehead of its colony, containing all of the colony’s history, but nothing more.

The irony wouldn’t be lost on someone like Camus, but what would Derrida himself have said? The tricky thing is that Derrida went to some considerable lengths to obscure his own public identity; we know not even why, so he remains mysterious to us. Besides: he had quite the temper, especially in regard to public figures who (mis)interpreted(?) his work. Not only don’t we know even what we don’t know about him, but what is more: we don’t even know if we do or do not know that.

This much, at least, we know is true: that Derrida proved, indefinitely but consequentially, that race does not fundamentally exist. His work is often cited as contributive to the end of Apartheid in South Africa. What boggles my mind is this: that even staunch Derrideans who deny the objective quality of Truth still support policies such as Affirmative Action.

Regarding my previous question, I can say with some certainty that the Derridean deconstruction of race can be used to challenge Affirmative Action. If the same man might face the same discrimination for being white as he does for being Jewish, the context of the offence does not matter, for not only DON’T the ends justify the means in such matters, (lest we become proto-Fascists,) but the tendency to classify a man AS either a Jew or a white man is equally “logocentric” in both cases. (Though I must confess that, from a certain point of view, I am speaking as the expression of both categories, and Derrida’s contemporary Deleuze would not hesitate to string my various group identities together in classifying my subjectivity.)

All of this might seem like some graduate-level stuff, but it’s not uncommon as an UNCONSCIOUS tendency, for which poststructuralists frequently act as apologists, far more so than they apologize for them. People who defend Affirmative Action operate according to Group Identity. It used to be the function of philosophy to transcend this tendency, but the problem with the poststructuralists is that they have reached a pact with it. Derrida himself spoke to a group of white, South African college students who expressed a common feeling of guilt for being born white, and yet he did not console them as one would expect a father figure to do, saying: “I did not feel bad for being Jewish.”

Incredibly, the only man I’ve known to even draw a parallel between one form of marginalization and another is Jordan Peterson. Peterson might not understand Marxist economics, but he certainly understands the tendency to render people “irrelevant by pedestalization”, which was how Alan Watts described Jesus Christ and the failures of the Christian Church to imitate their Lord and Saviour. (Watts was applauded uproariously for that observation; if you ever find the audio from that lecture online, you’ll hear it.)

Foucault and Deleuze were perhaps the two intellectual figures who “understood” Derrida the best, often citing him and writing forewords. The new French clique tried to transcend the loneliness of their existentialist forefathers by representing ALL cliques, so Derrida’s methods were employed to deconstruct the Individual Itself. “Man” was reduced to the sum of his group identities, and now here we are; it has become common sense in schools and streets alike.

The tragedy of Derrida is not remembered as a sort of Kafkaesque tale (again, pardon my Jewish leanings) of a rational man contending with an impersonal, Absurd bureaucracy. The Absurd Hero has also been swallowed up in the stream of signification and redefinition. The tragedy was purely institutional. It is as though the victims of institutional racism were not individuals but the institutions themselves, in whose interest “we” (a pronoun Derrida outspokenly shied away from) must reform them. Corporate neoliberalism, of the sort that Charles Reich describes as Consciousness II, at most a cocoon state by which to reach the Hippy Mind, loves to perpetuate itself via Deconstruction.

One has to be a bit suspicious when one attends a stage production wherein half the cast is black and the other half is white. Statistically, this is not a proportionate representation of the State of Nature, wherein black people comprise only 12.3 per cent of the American population, and this is significant considering that the United States is among the most diversified of nations. Now, of course, it is a formal fallacy to presume that the state of Nature dictates the Way Things Ought to Be, though critics such as MacIntyre challenge the identity of the Naturalist Fallacy as a fallacy and writers such as, say, Shakespeare declared, however indirectly, through the voice of an adolescent, that theatre ought to hold the “mirror up to [N]ature”. When you see a cast that is an Oreo (about half-white and half-black), you can be willing to bet that something is artificial, unless of course it just so happened that the casting call was put out in a community with a disproportionate amount of African Americans (through no fault of their own).

It’s one thing when directors tokenize a group by including a few characters of that group, and it’s another when the characters are written to look the part, as in Porgy and Bess, which is almost entirely a black cast. Yet there is something fishy going on wherever, say, a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has an “equally representative” choir. It proves that somewhere, SOMEONE, from a position of influence, decided that this is how the World ought to look: Half-black, half-white, and with exclusion to the middle. It implies that SOMEONE POWERFUL believes in race in a pre-Derridean sense, and though he or she means to champion the end of racism, he or she will use racism towards it. It implies that blacks and whites are fundamentally born separate, that our melanin can be categorized two ways, but that we can go no further, even in an age of subatomic quantum physics that refuses all manner of absolute atomization. Finally, the implication is that this is the state that we are born into, that it is the state of Nature, though Derrida said in an interview that one of his central goals is not to naturalize the artificial world; he even reminded the interviewer and his audience that the very film set which housed the interview was entirely artificial.

Ask neoliberals this: if something as quintessential and universal as GENDER can be called a social construct, why can’t race? Why can we switch gender at will, but we cannot wear face-paint or use regional vernacular belonging to minority groups? Above all, why can the Individual no longer aspire towards a moral objectivity, irrespective of the identity of the speaker, as MacIntyre aspires towards? Is it because even MacIntyre seeks to reduce us to the mere representation of our tribes?

I suppose that this is why Sartre was called the last intellectual; most of his philosophy was used to disidentify. If a school rejects me because it has too many Russians, it’s bad faith to say: “The school knows what it’s doing; let’s rejoice that I am represented by my fellows, to an optimum capacity, so that I might return and please my family to know that our nationality is honoured.”  Only in an extremely privileged society would this even be thinkable; in the Philippines, (I’m told, by Joseph) I would probably be dead, unless I found some alternative to education in order to eat.

The Jungian argument, as employed by Peterson, for which alone we might pardon his reactionary intrusiveness, is to expose the INNER contradiction of Affirmative Action. Yet sociologically it’s not hard to imagine the external dangers. What made the O.J. Simpson trial so outrageous was that it demonstrated that, as Howard Beale declared at the end of Network, some twenty years earlier, “the individual is finished”. The Ideal Law, the likes of which Kim Wexler and Charles McGill represent, in different ways and to varying extents, (though Saul Goodman comes to identify one with the other) in Better Call Saul, promises to protect each Individual Life from the tyranny of institutions, the barbarism of mobs, and the villainy of other individuals. Yet when someone like Johnny Cochran can exonerate his client, who was “dead to rights”, by playing the Race Card, turning a murder case into a racial issue, it’s the ultimate postmodern miscarriage of justice.

This is the Darker Side of Deconstruction: that just as easily as one can deconstruct race, one can RECONSTRUCT it, in a new context wherein the Rights of the Individual and the Individual’s Family have yet to BE Reconstructed. Derrida insisted that a Truth will always re-emerge sooner or later, though his goal is to forestall this for as long as possible. If he had to defend Cochran, as though the lawyer were himself on trial for the criminal litigation, (if ever a criminal lawyer was a “criminal lawyer”, in the Saul Goodman sense, it was Cochran, and that alone allows me to forgive him even slightly, as a conman,) Derrida would probably say this: “It was inevitable that the Race Card would eventually be played, and history ought to be ready to receive it. Take comfort in the fact that, just as inevitably, individual rights will yet again be reconstructed; though you may not enjoy a victory on behalf of your lost loved one today, know that someone, somewhere, will. Yet if we are to prioritize YOUR plight and YOUR nostalgia for the life of an innocent individual victim over the victimhood of an entire RACE, then we will simply be resisting the natural process of differance*, and such an artificial imposition will only ensure that our legal institution will regress to its hierarchical origins as a slave state.”

*Though Word does not recognize this word, scholars ought to.

Of course, it is impossible to put words in Derrida’s mouth, but one can see how the premises play out. The evils of Deconstruction ought not to be understated; any one of us can imagine the institutional and moblike applications. The trick is in this: to use Deconstruction as the Eastern mystics did, many millennia before Derrida wrote and spoke. We must deconstruct illusions such as race, laying them to rest PERMANENTLY, at least until the end of the next Yuga Cycle, while all the while reconstructing Sacred Truths which we can live by. This implies an epistemology whereby artificial forms of divisions are supplanted so as to make ROOM for NATURAL KNOWLEDGE, that ideals such as Justice and Individuality might be regarded as no less, nor even equal to, illusions such as hatred and prejudice, except perhaps in that final state of Enlightenment wherein all ignorance is fundamentally forgiven and the practitioner, no longer physically necessary, passes into Nirvana.

Absolute poststructuralism offers us No Exit, even more so than Sartre[anism] did, and both French schools deny this Transcendental Plane, though one seeks to “confront” Reality while the other demolishes it. Yet it is my feeling and intuition that, despite our mass confusion, our generation is ready to embrace the Domain of the Transcendent Reality Again. Conversations with college students who meditate give me Hope. Thus, I seek to expose the lies while reconstructing the Truths, and even as those Truths are also deconstructed as the lies were I shall cling to them, for they are my approximation of Being. So long as enough well-meaning and intelligent men and women join me in this venture, the results will inevitably produce healing.

[({DM.A.A.)}]

1213 Words:

This poem verily summarized my entire ethic. We MUST be Good, at all times, both waking and asleep, that we might treat Others fairly, and we MUST also be passionate, on behalf of our own needs, that we might treat Ourselves fairly and thereby perpetuate the process. It follows logically that there is but ONE way to get anything you want, and that is by being Good, for Goodness is a constant, as is Desire. Anyone who is Good to you must never be questioned, for those who are Good constantly must always be in such a predicament, and they deserve least to be suspected of insincerity, while those who are insincere must be rewarded so as to BECOME sincere, for they must learn that only Goodness CAN be rewarded. Those who are inconsistent must only be punished for their lapses in Goodness; they must never come to power by evil means, for then they enthrone evil, reducing Goodness to something conditional and treating the condition as though THAT were the measure of a Goodness that TRULY must be unconditional. Life is twofold: we must remain innocent in order to preserve that to which we are entitled by birth, and we must use Noble Means, the likes of which would never contradict our Innocence, to acquire those things which we need but to which we are (somehow, nonetheless) NOT intrinsically entitled. Any lesser way of life is not worth living.

I know that you are proud of me.

Namaste.

Dmytri A.A.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

P.S.: You know what’s wild? When I first typed up the poem in Calibri it numbered exactly 19 pages, and it cut off, just as it does now, with the signature dangling alone on the last page. Now, reset to Bembo, it is 18 pages, but it cuts off in precisely the same manner. NEAT.

It started with an injury.

I had done nothing wrong.

Though no one would give in to me

Nor sing along to such a song.

Instead, the chorus:

They abhor us.

For our vanity.

They say: there is no way

There’s nothing for us

Waiting from humanity.

And I protest:

I past the test!

And I was totally

Devout and true.

And they contest:

Give it a rest.

The world does not

Revolve about just

You.

And I reply:

I know. But I

Was innocent

And undeserving

Of this pain.

They say: you are quite

Insolent to claim you

Owned it. This you

Claim only in vain.

So I explain:

I’ve known that.

But the pain of

Deprivation

Surely must contain

Within it plainly

The entire

Situation.

If, by the denial

Of desire in its

Consummation I

Were thus to be unjustly

Hurt, would you not

Say we must be

Far more trusting

Of the ones whom

We so lustfully

Desert?

Instead: the chorus

Sings the score thus:

We have owed you

Nothing more.

So though you

Had done nothing

To offend us

There is nothing

To defend within

Your store.

And I implore this at the door:

I must confess it to be so!!

But if there’s something I can do

To earn this, do please let me

Know.

For I was innocent

Of all wrongdoing

Yet if doing nothing

Wrong was not

Enough,

Then show me

What I needed to

Be doing and I

Promise I’ll

Be tough.

And yet they say:

There is no way

There’s nothing for us

Waiting from humanity.

And if your vanity

Should peak then you

Will seem quite weak

In strength and sanity.

For you are meek to even ask

If you should seek to bask

Within this glory

Why then even bother

To inquire of the task?

Is it not higher to be father

Of your own, inspired

Story?

And I say:

Okay. But there

Must be a way

That most of

My peers

Play.

How can they get away,

So few in years, with

What they do and

Say?

I never knew

Such cleverness

That could start

Families in teens.

I did not dare to

Sever this pursuit from

My most noble

Means.

But oh, how destitute am I

If every year I die a bit inside.

Wondering why I have to hide

And must abide by someone

Else’s pride.

How is it justified?

If I am snide, then

Please: I’m open wide

Upon my knees just

Tell me how am

I to cure this

Insecure

And self-

Assured disease?

And then the chorus

That deplore us

Simply roll their

Eyes.

And they say something

Of the Human Soul

That I cannot control

However wise.

And still, once more,

They say: there is

No way. No way,

No how. You can’t

BECOME entitled

To the consummation

Of your vital functions

In this day and age.

Not now.

And hence I rage:

But have I not

Been kind? Have

I no mind? And

Is it not

Refined by

Value?

Shall you tell me

I’m defined

By vices I

Had never learned?

The fire of desire

For all those I have

Admired

Left me mired in the

Pyre of an aspiration

Burned!!

And they say:

If you would

Require virtue

To have been the

Wood to fuel your

Flame, don’t be surprised

That those who had

Admired it desert you

All the same.

For shame!! For if you

Would so sear your

Inner good to forge a

Spear, don’t be surprised

When, analyzed,

You will prove to have been

Disguised and insincere.

And then I scream up to the skies:

My Dear!! How can I hence be

Analyzed? I am incensed

By this pretense: that

To tell Truth excessively

Is tantamount

To telling lies.

If am honest in my prime

And I am noble in my deed

If I am all of this and all the

Time, how am I then

To feed my basic, universal

Need?

Such a reversal is absurd:

That having proven

True of word,

My kindness makes

Me less attractive

And I find this

Retroactive:

That for even

Trying to attract

As if defying

Our most

Universal pact,

I’ve rendered suspect

That same circumspect

Intent towards which

Alone I have ever

Been prone and bent.

And they say:

This is why you

Stand alone.

For you demand

It to be known.

That you would never

Sin if you could help it.

But you’d win each time

You yelp it.

Like a whelp, and it’s

Ironic. In your genius

You are moronic.

For you see in this

The irony but you

Refuse to be.

For you confuse

Your dignity for

That attraction

Which we can

Produce not by

Some righteous action

But by breaking rank

And shifting faction

Just by the most

Subtle fraction.

My rebuttal: Yes.

To you, you would

Possess your goodness

As a tool.

And me: I am possessed BY

Goodness like I am its

Fool.

You would easily

Withdraw it

From the table

If it made you

Able to persuade

Each other how

To get along.

But I

I cannot justify

It. So I live

And I die

By it.

And you seek

To quiet me.

But why

Should I thus

Speak to thee?

For everything

That you would say

To get your way

Might be a lie.

You’re right;

There truly is

No way

[To justify it.

Nay.

Goodbye.]

[({Dm.A.A.)}]