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A related thing that seems unthinkable for many people now is how dynamic opinions are. Like, not intelectually, but from experience understanding that my world
by k0k0r0 4y ago
A related thing that seems unthinkable for many people now is how dynamic opinions are. Like, not intelectually, but from experience understanding that my world view currently firmly stands on a foundation that might very well fall apart some day... I feel that experience deeply shaped my character. Funnily, I think my opinions are now standing on even firmer grounds since I stopped expecting them to hold forever.
People talk about their opinion as if it was some static thing that was always like this and will always be. Completely unaware how their own opinion evolved throughout their life and might evolve if they allow too. Also completely unaware of how irrelevant their opinion is, except for the consequences that follow from acting according to it.
"[...] But that's just my opinion. [...]", as if anybody should care. And, as if protecting their world view from the debate that might rip it apart. As if that'd be a painful and scary experience. (No even talking about how people use that sentence in order to spread fear, anger or hatred.) As if they'd need to put their whole life into question if they'd changed some if their opinions.
Often I think in the past there were people that lived according to this wisdom. I am not sure to what extend that's true, but I do not often meet such people now. Even in intelectual spheres, where some people even might talk about wisdom like this it often feels hollow to me if they do.
- noduerme 4y agoOne thing I find exceptional about your statement and also about a number of similar treatises of recent years is the seeming hopelessness of finding your own self clear of the endless subjectivity of others' conflicting opinions. You may find it terrible, but I actually believe in objective reality. I believe I know good and evil when I see them... and I can do this without access to the supernatural or recourse to religion. I believe in better and worse outcomes for individuals and for societies. I believe some societies are better than others, because I've lived in 34 countries over 20 years and I can make honest comparisons about the pros and cons of each. Nowhere is perfect, but some actually are better -- objectively, if you believe that being expressive and embracing diversity and freedom of thought is a good thing. Personally I think good==complexity and evil==destruction, and so anything that kills life is destroying complexity that the universe demands, so is necessarily a kind of evil. The Achilles heel of people younger than me is that they think opinions on the internet actually mean something... and the younger they are the less they seem to believe in the objective truth of the world. Call it the corrupting influence of Instagram, I guess. But I think it's due for a major backlash, because no one wants to have their morals dictated to them that way... and the objective world remains. It always remains. True things are true, false are false; evil is hypocrisy, and it's rampant. It is not a subjective, religious pronouncement.. it's a thing that is fucking right there. 2+2=4
- l33t2328 4y agoThese comments are all over the place. I can’t identify a coherent point.
- the_only_law 4y agoSounds like some weird form of Dualism for HN nerds. Either that or a convenient way to label people who’s values differ from your own as evil.
- aaronblohowiak 4y ago+100. Relativism is liberalism for intellectually malnourished
- noduerme 4y agoAlso your opinion strikes me as very Japanese... and to argue why individual rights are important or why you should develop strong, objective, even antisocial anti-government personal opinions is, on a Japanese level, an entirely different conversation from me trying to convince a westerner that objective reality exists and has ethics whether we want it to or not.