Whenever I mention (and this happens A Lot) that is is non-optional that mainstream modern people should explicitly discover and critique their own fundamental assumptions (i.e. we need to do metaphysics); the response comes that most people just can't do this.
It isn't true. Masses or ordinary people have done metaphysics at many times and places in human history, and this is recorded. Of course they didn't so it in the exact way that modern people would - but they did it.
Much of this was in terms of religion and theology. It was complained, for example, that the streets of Constantinople were at one point clogged with masses of people arguing about the fundamental nature of Jesus Christ.
But even as recently as the middle 20th century, there was a lot of public mainstream debate in journalism and books (also novels, plays, movies) concerning "existentialism" or the nature of reality -- to the point that such discussion was part of fashionable youth cults such as the Beats and Hippies.
None of this went anywhere much, because it didn't go deep enough and got mixed-up with institutional imperatives and incentives. However, the record shows that people can and did discuss fundamental assumptions in a way that almost never happened in the past several decades - so that people have come to believe it is nigh impossible!
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Yet things have indeed changed, with the corruption and collapse of public and institutional discourse; which is now rotted by corruption and dishonesty to the point that it does more harm than good.
In the past, it made some kind of sense to claim that stuff like science, education, law, economics and the like were important; but now these are important mostly for the harm they inflict and the malign brainwashing induced by participation.
What this means is that not only is metaphysics important, but it has become just-about the Only important thing - in public discourse.
The rest of public discourse in 2025 is light-entertainment at best - passing the time between our birth and death-annihilation in a more-or-less pleasant or exciting fashion; but the norm is that these social domains are a cancer on human existence and Western civilization.
It's time people stopped making excuses! Most people consume vast quantities of their finite resources and money, and their limited life-energies, on malign trivialities or futile self-aggrandisements.
It's time more people started doing what they must do...
"Must", at any rate, if this mortal life is not to have been a literal waste of time; leading on to a post-mortal existence in which such people have - on the basis of their own unexamined and false assumptions - chosen something much worse than this life.
Note added: Just to clarify or emphasize - I am talking about public discourse. IN personal and private discourse there are Many things important, as well as metaphysics. What I'm saying is that the surface level of public discourse is now so corrupted and inverted, that it should not ever be regarded as Good. To get good from public discourse now, entails considering its assumptions. Otherwise it is bound to do net harm.
3 comments:
The way I see it now is that there are three separate 'worlds', the world of ideas and concepts, the physical universe and the world of my experiences. What unites then is that contents from all three are represented in my mind. So this is what metaphysics is, a theory of representations, a dream world. It's the world Jesus was addressing with his parables.
One insight came recently after the discussion of AI. Given that only coherent entities and ideas can be perceived, forming part of a joyous whole, unlimited in number: there are also ideas which are real and have effects yet can't be perceived or played out in the imagination. I guess this is how evil operates unseen (if not unfelt) and that AI may be capable of generating such ideas.
@Ron - I would regard that as too abstract to be ultimately true. The world of divine creation is not divided like this.
For instance, by my understanding, ideas and concepts are not realities - they don't exist of themselves - but are an abstraction of a reality which is rooted in relationships between Beings.
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No it's OK. The first three worlds are useful categories for reasoning purposes but the world of representations is primary. It's the only place we have direct access to and it is populated by beings/spirits. Which is why everything is alive. I agree that ideas and concepts are abstractions. The physical universe is an abstraction too; it wasn't discovered until Aristotle as I understand it.
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