Inspired by the Pomocon gang, now posting at their new digs at Culture11. This is also deeply influenced by my notes from a class, so all respect and credit to my great teacher, Dr. Eleanor Godway.
1. My first responsibility, and my greatest priority, is my own existence.
2. I will recognize that this existence has no inherent meaning, but that my actions will give it meaning. Nothing and no one can instill my life with meaning, not philosophy, creed, code, honor, family, community, country or God.
3. My existence will therefore be forever mutable. I will always be able, for good or for bad, to change what the meaning of my life entails. Kierkegaard wrote of a monk who lived on a mountain and drank nothing but dew. One day he traveled down to town, had a single drink and became an alcoholic. I likewise live on a precipice, where everything I value about myself is at constant risk. There is no consignment to a meaning I do not want, but likewise there is no rest.
4. I will likewise judge those around me solely by their actions alone, and not by their associations, their attributes, or their utterances.
5. I will remember that like myself those around me are always mutable and changing. They have never become anything. They are in the process of becoming.
6. My responsibility for the choices I make amounts to no less than this: as man has no meaning and no purpose beyond the meaning and purpose men make, I must be an exemplar for man-- in my actions I not only create the meaning of my own life, I define what I believe it means to be a man.
7. I must remember that I will fail again and again to create the meaning of my own life in a way consonant with my beliefs about morality, ethics, interpersonal relationships, justice and fairness.
8. The recognition of this failure will in no way excuse it.
9. This above all: I will find within myself the courage to be human, even while everything around me asks me to be otherwise.
How do these beliefs effect my political beliefs? Forthcoming, I hope.
2 comments:
For number 4, don't some utterances count as actions? For instance, you brought up George Allen in a post below, and there you appeared to hold some sort of judgment as to his racist remark and to his apology later. According to your views, can some speech be judged while other speech cannot, and if so, how do you distinguish between the two? Or have I hopelessly misunderstood your point?
PS: I found your blog through The American Scene, and I'm a big fan.
You're not misunderstanding. This is a difficult question.
I do, practically speaking, judge people by what they say, just as I do tend casually to think of someone as "a good guy" or "an asshole"-- in other words, I also violate my own rules in terms of considering a person "at an end", at least temporarily. (I make them an object in the world, I remove their agency in my own mind.) So, let it be said clearly and loudly that I fail at my own philosophical aims often.
However the question is bigger and more intractable than just saying "I screw up sometimes." Because, indeed, I think that it is appropriate to judge people by their words sometimes, though we must always remember that anyone can change. I think the thing to say is that, where words are descriptive, actions are revelatory. While I will listen to words and try to take them into account, actions are ultimately dispositive. I understand that this is unsatisfying, and I apologize. It's a difficult point.
Incidentally, I firmly, firmly side with the idea that words are NOT actions when considering freedom of speech. I consider being a civil libertarian my most profound political duty, and I believe that we can't constrain freedom of speech by imagining that psychic or emotional injury is the equivalent of physical.
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