idlecuriosity wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:07 am
@Topic starter
This isn't a disparity between the two competing philosophical frameworks imho as much as it is more of a symptom of how our society fosters us to perceive things as the end result of a cascading matroshka of hierarchy that started with top down tribes, became abrahamic religion and finally has converged now on globe spanning ideologies. The more I read and think about this, the more I feel it's important to understand that while the gift of cognition might be best purveyed from a monist consideration, we do have an individual sense and feelings atop of that and need to account for the idiosyncrasies between us this results in - as well as the ones created by how congruently someone is or isn't able to interpret idealistic monism in their thought. 20 and 19 may both be numbers that're conceptual representations of volume and are very close to one another but only one of them is the right answer to 10 plus 10 and that same answer (20.) is at least closer to 25 than 19 is, so the end result of a person like me being unwieldy in my ability to discern or conjugate philosophy is obviously going to produce a different end result individual.
Religion and later laws and even later still, ideological materialism, attempt to tar us all with the same feather for the physical end goal of upholding order. I'd argue compassion from a stranger on a practical basis doesn't really help someone too much unless you're in dire need of materialistic assistance because our society has egregiously ill considered the drawbacks of seeing everyone as equal to oneself, (referring to our physical existences purely.) When I have kids I'll make it clear I don't expect them to love me (though I'd appreciate it heartily) but I do expect them to be competent and able to be ready for any fits and starts of fortune that life can visit upon them. In terms of materialistic concerns, having a bunch of strangers lavish empathy upon you isn't going to help you in the long run pragmatically. As far as people here have talked about spiritual considerations, a lot of them seem to say the journey must be undertook individually anyway so there's little reason or need to expect that idealism would (or needs to) serve that duty.
The reason you feel the world may run afoul of losing compassion is that you're expecting this from two perceived competing ideas that represent broad groups of people, most of whom you've never met personally. Build a net of friends and a family and then see if your view merits your current skepticism of meaning.
I'll dutifully abscond from the sisyphean feat of proselytizing further since I do not even know if this concern was an abstraction or something borne of doubts about your own future, but my offering is just an absolution for any existential burdens you might have if it's the latter and it's potential is to be discovered by choices only you can make.
Much, if not all, of the confusion surrounding these things in the modern age is our refusal to take evolution, a scientific framework adopted by idealists, materialists, and generally anyone who claims to do science, seriously. We forget about evolution as soon as we move from the domain of biology to
anything else, including cognition, culture, and ethics. The individual, with ego-consciousness, is a product of this evolutionary process. So we do definitely need to undertake our moral development as individuals who are sovereign and responsible for ourselves, yet we don't need to throw out any Wisdom from the past in that undertaking. We only need to become more discerning of how that Wisdom was conditioned on the past evolutionary states of our ancestors and, in distinction to that, what essential principles were underlying it. As usual, the key tool for modern man's moral imagination and spiritual freedom resides in discerning judgment i.e. Thinking.
Hegel wrote:The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.