Philosophy & Poetry

[sMartins]

DOLLARS & CENTS

Money is more than real, nowadays it is the symbolic generator of all values, and why is it like that? Because we believe in it, or do you perhaps think that a few pieces of paper or ore with numbers written on them are equivalent to food, a house or hard work? Are you by any chance a fool?


Kant said, for example, that man should always be treated as an end, this has never occurred.
Today if an immigrant comes to us, the fact that he is a man is not interesting, he can only be welcomed if he becomes a profit producer, otherwise he has no right to citizenship.
Being a man is insignificant.
As long as there was Christianity, at least theoretically, in your neighbor there was the face of God, today no, there is no longer the face of God in my neighbor.
This becomes collective psychology, because faiths work when they become collective psychologies and morals work when they are internalized psychologically.
For example, sexuality and murder, are internalized psychologically so, if I rape a girl or kill her, you feel the sin, the guilt, the crime but if I don't pay taxes or pollute the earth, you feel little because this kind of religion or morality still has to be internalized, right? It is not yet a real sin? It's still not real trouble, still not something to put me in jail for?

Going back to the speech of the madman, the proclamation that God is dead is not addressed to the atheists, the atheists scoff as well as the believers, he makes it to the merchants, those who have made money the form of history, the symbolic generator of all values, this is the proclamation of God's death, and these things are worth thinking about.

The announcement of the death of God, Nietzsche, has the madman do it, because when you are outside an interpretation of the world, and the bimillennial lie is a powerful interpretation of the world, we cannot deny that Christianity is a powerful interpretation of the world, when you are out of that interpretation, it is clear that you have no reference points left, and the madman is what? It's like the neutral* of a car transmission, when if in neutral you don't go anywhere, neither forward nor backward, there is no reference anymore. Everything is dropped. *(in Italian language, mad is the same word of neutral in a car transmission)
The proclamation, however, is not made to atheists, because atheists are nothing but a form of religiosity, they consist of saying that God does not exist, they hang themselves on the same problem that believers hang themselves on, so they are not an interesting configuration, the atheists. Is there really a need to say that there is no God?
Instead, Nietzsche addresses the proclamation to the merchants, because Nietzsche has already predicted that the new system, the new symbolic generator of values, means what? The one who generates a new interpretation of the world, will be money.

[Odynak]

Money is more than real, nowadays it is the symbolic generator of all values, and why is it like that?

This should go to "Grand List of Simple Questions" topic.

[terechgracz]

Are you trying to prove if Christianity is best thing ever happened to people? Guess what. There were multiple religions/philosophies having same ideas that Christianity did. Some of them were nontheist so god isn't universal best value we had. Calling God "Christian" is just cringe thing nowadays, do you want make a fight with me if I was a for example an Islamist? They do believe you will live eternally so why you talk about "Christianity's genius" idea? Shamans too believed in souls. And that they live in animals and plants forever. Shamans could even talk with them. Shamanism is oldest religion people had.
Check out universalism. Every person have same universal values, they are inside us since we are born. They manifest themselves through different objects. God is parent, Messiah is leader/sage - we have obey our parents and follow the leader/sage. Nowadays we shouldn't focus on bringing back the old "Christian God" as you call it. We should start teaching wholesome stuff in school including philosophy. Change a little bit this institution so maybe people will leave it mentally healthy. Values are still in people, we are just more sick and crave being healthy.

And you wrote something about money. That we are fools for believing that some abstract numbers equals food? We have people working hard to make sure money is equal food. Check out economy and you'll see that we aren't fools for believing so. Or just go to store.

[gravesmerch]

We have people working hard to make sure money is equal food.

lol that depends where you live, but I'm pretty sure most countries nowadays prioritize credit(a.k.a. "faith") above anything else, some went as far as empty their food reserves to please a few exporters, and pandemic/wars are reminding them why food reserves were created in the first place... but again, doesn't matter because as long as money accumulates and go viral, people's suffering is even more irrelevant now that before finance took over

[sMartins]

• "Are you trying to prove if Christianity is best thing ever happened to people?" No
• "do you want make a fight with me if I was a for example an Islamist?" No
• "why you talk about "Christianity's genius" idea?" Because we are Christians, Christianity is first of all a culture, before of being a religion, and we, in the West are all Christians, me, you, the atheists, the psychologists, the scientists, even the Marxists, it is our culture, it is our way of thinking, we speak, think and act as Christians. And also cause Christianity has won the battle of civilizations cause that idea. We are not Shamans nowadays, we are Christians.
  The soul in the West was invented by Plato and it is already very difficult to deeply understand our own culture, do you perhaps pretend to understand cultures that do not belong to us?
• "Values are still in people" Values are what a community identifies as goals to be pursued for the functioning and development of the community.
  Perhaps you are referring to feelings, and I am sorry to disappoint you, but feelings are also not innate, but they are learned. (I could elaborate on this point).
• "That we are fools for believing that some abstract numbers equals food?" Try to imagine yourself in a desperate situation, for example, during a war or maybe you're lost on a trip to Alaska, a thousand miles away from everything, you haven't eaten in days, weeks, you're hungry and thirsty but finally you find a hut with a man inside, you ask him for help, you tell him you're hungry and thirsty and he in response gives you money.
  Do you still think a few pieces of paper or ore are the same thing as food?

[telum12]

ITT: smartins misunderstanding Nietzsche's philosophy so profoundly because, instead of actually learning about it and reading his works, he just reads "God is dead" without context and tries to interpret that.

Nietzsche's philosophy is about how you deal with nihilism and, more importantly, overcome it to your own betterment. It is not some semantic debate about Christianity.

Go read a book instead of posting your ramblings on a video game forum.

[sMartins]

@telum12

Okay, thank you for your interest.

[sMartins]

Let's take a step back.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO THINK? WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

Thinking is not knowing; knowledge is given to us by the sciences. Thinking is something else.

Thinking is subjecting the ideas we have in our heads to verification, because, very often, we have ideas in our heads that we learned in the family, in school or because they are widespread ideas, the television said so, they are habits of mind that when we get old we even call principles.
Thinking means subjecting these ideas, which are actually our prejudices, to scrutiny; in fact, we cannot dispense with prejudices because the first information we had came before our judgment.
Thinking means exercising judgment.

Socrates said that he knew nothing, and spoke of himself as a "learned ignorant" and he was absolutely right.
Philosophy knows nothing; it is the sciences that know things.
Then what philosophy serve for?
Aristotle had answered, " Philosophy doesn't serve to anything because it is not a servant ".
Leaving aside Aristotle's joke, Philosophy has another job to do, the one that Socrates did, who gathered his disciples around him and asked them: what is truth? what is justice? what is beauty? Each answered what he thought about these things. Socrates then said to them, "My task is not to teach you anything, my task is similar to the one who verifies whether the vases are made of true bronze, and he verifies this by tapping with the knuckle of his fingers on these vases, in the same way I verify whether your opinions are the fruit of your prejudices, of the widespread opinions, of the faith you have, of the ideologies to which you belong, or whether they have or have no foundation ".

Philosophy asks you to check your ideas to see if they have foundation.
This is because, you have to know, that we don't only have the body that gets sick, which medicine takes care of, nor even the emotions or feelings, which psychology takes care of, ideas also get sick, you have to take care of them and you have to subject them to verification from time to time.



Let's play a little game to test you.
An easy question, think it through, there is only one correct answer, use your reason.
The first one to answer correctly wins: Does God exist or not exist?

[Clemins]

No matter how bad it seems, it can get worse.

[pagsiu]

Does God exist or not exist?

Probably neither. Infinite ideas can't be described by a finite mind. If I say that God do exist, then I also say he can't not exist, thus stripping him off his omnipotence etc.

Unusual place for such things, but I enjoy reading your posts.