I remember first having this revelation as something along the lines of: “You know when you’re in love or overcome by anger, and you do stupid things, and afterward you wonder what the hell you were thinking? Well, your ‘normal’ emotional states are just like that, except you never get that moment of reflection to wonder what the hell you were thinking.” I tried to resolve it with the kind of reflective deliberation that I think you’re prescribing here. Later I adopted a sort of happy fatalism: We’re trapped inside our own psychology and that’s fine!
Not long after, I read the obscurantist French philosopher Alain Badiou (who I do not recommend!), and was inspired by his account of truth. Badiou takes truth to be “fidelity to the event.” We are witness to a transformative event and take it upon ourselves to alter the world in its name. What I realized was (and not to disappoint my fans) the only thing that can interrupt business-as-usual for us is science. Science is the only thing truly alien to us; it’s the only thing that can rupture the fatalistic clockwork playing-out of our psychology on our environment. The potential of science lies in its ability to transform us. So I adopted a sort of utilitarianism where the goal is to maximize the amount of science being done and maximize the degree to which it transforms our lives.
I remember first having this revelation as something along the lines of: “You know when you’re in love or overcome by anger, and you do stupid things, and afterward you wonder what the hell you were thinking? Well, your ‘normal’ emotional states are just like that, except you never get that moment of reflection to wonder what the hell you were thinking.” I tried to resolve it with the kind of reflective deliberation that I think you’re prescribing here. Later I adopted a sort of happy fatalism: We’re trapped inside our own psychology and that’s fine!
Not long after, I read the obscurantist French philosopher Alain Badiou (who I do not recommend!), and was inspired by his account of truth. Badiou takes truth to be “fidelity to the event.” We are witness to a transformative event and take it upon ourselves to alter the world in its name. What I realized was (and not to disappoint my fans) the only thing that can interrupt business-as-usual for us is science. Science is the only thing truly alien to us; it’s the only thing that can rupture the fatalistic clockwork playing-out of our psychology on our environment. The potential of science lies in its ability to transform us. So I adopted a sort of utilitarianism where the goal is to maximize the amount of science being done and maximize the degree to which it transforms our lives.
That’s enough morality for me.