Discussion: Philosophy an Art form rather than science

Just no internalizing of it.

Ah, but don’t you see, our traditional philosophical edifice is what’s justifying our actual continued, rather thoughtless destruction of this Earth’s biosphere, the thing that enabled our modern human society to develop. Not to mention man’s continued inhumanity to their fellow men and woman and children.

I’m not the one doing the destroying, though my existence does produce another burden upon the Earth’s systems, at least I’m willing to face the fact and strive to minimize it.

Survival instinct depends on everything else.
Now that doesn’t make much sense.

Are you saying “survival instinct” is a thing?

Heck are you saying, single cells don’t have a survival instinct?

Seems to me survival instinct (for some mysterious reason) was there from, well from where? Probably it wasn’t there when White Smoker vents created the chemical electrical conditions to create the Kerbs Cycle out of the appropriate elemental atoms, which Nick Lane does a wonderful job of explaining. But certainly it was there by the time cell walls and internal structures developed, even before the fantastical Eukaryotic cells came around.

It’s impossible to image how such a complex metropolis of coordinated directed organelles and proteins and genes and all sorts of other housekeeping stuff could have been organized.

Of course, just like the sexual exchange of genetic material in increasingly complex creatures, the more layers of intricacies evolution could lay upon that originating framework, the more interesting and fun that sexual exchange gets.


Had a new thought last night - since today’s philosophical outlook remains trapped in a medieval self-centered mindset (humanity is all that matters, Earth is ours to consume as fast as we can manage it, God decreed it.), It worked great for a world with limitless frontiers and resources -
but though most are excellent at ignoring it, that time in human history is over - that’s fact based on a ton of physical evidence that’s available, but that most don’t like, still not liking it, isn’t enough to make it go away.

Humanity, like it or not (and I certainly don’t like it, but honesty and facts require I face them and accept them and understand it best I can), is entering the age of diminishing and before it’s over the survivors will see our billions whittled down by the billions.

That is the new reality that’s steadily entering center stage of the human drama - it’s going to require a new way of thinking,
hiding philosophy in its traditional world of metaphysical musing (always seeking “god”, even if it’s in math, or microtubule, or the notion ‘greed is good’), and our never ending fascination with the boundary waters between matter and background energy. All the while avoiding the basic lessons of our macroscopic world.

I wish I knew how to pretty it up.