I try to write philosophy. I make this attempt because philosophy oversees all human knowledge. Philosophy is the pinnacle of the human effort to comprehend. The view from these lofty heights generally has been taken to be awe inspiringly dreary, though this generally is not my own view.
My view is that philosophy has more to teach the world, more than most are capable of grasping even in an open-ended sense. In this sense the view from atop the philosophic mountain is a dreary view only in so far as there is a broad landscape of mountainous terrain to be traversed ahead of us. But it is not an impossible task before us. It is merely a challenge. It is a challenge I have already shown can be both exhilarating and rewarding. Great strides can be made. I have made them in the face of all odds. And for me shaping the world with philosophy has become the meaning of the end of my life.
Believe me. My life has been exquisitely wonderful, and, since I discovered philosophy, I have paid back everything I have been given to the fullest extent possible. This is a wonderful feeling. Life only gets better every day.
There are some who would contest my assertions about philosophy reigning from the pinnacle of all human knowledge. They do so out of ignorance, and I alone have written enough to expose their vast mistake. Mathematics is but a toy, entirely removed from the real world as it is. And the broad spectrum of all the sciences and the quasi would-be sciences, all empirical thought is but a skewed aberration of historic convention.
And politics, the science of the political is but an aberration left intentionally devious. All the above is all easily proven by philosophy. I have done it myself with a meager formal education, little in terms of finances and with nothing but words typed into a computer keyboard and posted up on the Internet. This is indeed the age of information. And, it has cost you all absolutely nothing, not even a vote for me.
Philosophy steps back from all this. It steps back to ask of ourselves, who among all these players is fooling whom? And, the answer is, they are all fooling each other. It is so horrific a revelation, most recoil from it instinctually. But, it is true. It is certainly true of the political. They all stand upon shifting sand. The political know nothing of categorical knowledge.
For those who recover from the shock of our ignorance the question then arises, what do we do? How can we improve upon human knowledge and make of this menagerie of historic mistakes something that is indeed worthy enough to be called human knowledge?
Regardless of whether it comes from my Western heritage or not, there is morality. And, the only moral relativism is in the minds of deviant and self-deluding thinkers, and especially in the political who scheme to no end. I have written enough upon morality to have reshaped the landscape of philosophy and that of human knowledge built upon morality to occupy humanity for the coming thousand years. This is a very positive development for which I will be remembered as long as there are memories of human beings existing. There now is no doubt of that now remaining. The die is cast.
No philosopher ever had the perspective or the audacity to say that before. But if you read my work, and then you re-read that statement as if you were reading it a hundred years after my death, you will see it is true. This is why I say it. There will be no vanity to shame me after my own death.
There is more to do though, before it is a hundred years after my death and there is no more to read from this philosopher. So, how do we fit morality into the current landscape of human desperation and the gasping revulsion at the sure knowledge of the barbarity of ourselves?
Social activists have had an instinct about the barbarity of humanity for a very long time. There is a long tradition of social activism, all of which has been utterly misguided. This long and glorious tradition of social activism has been misguided because it has been worked up from the minds of those who only had an instinct about morality. The instincts of social activists have been good. But they have had but a lodestone compass sense of morality. They tacked back and forth upon the ocean of humanity like sailors into the wind and unsure of the right human course.
Today we know better. For the first time in the history of our humanity we have the moral imperative staring each of us boldly in the face and providing GPS-like bearings upon our course. I gave a rough draft of it in A Brief Schematic of Morality, Prioritizing Moral Reason. This was enough, for the mathematics of ideas is not constrained by numbers exponential or otherwise.
There is no chance now of either the social activists or any other believers in any other ethic ever again mistaking their good intentions for a moral path. It all needs merely to be worked out from the perspective of the moral imperative.
It is the working out part that seems the great hurdle before us now. Much, it is easy to see has changed in light of the new morality forced upon us by the moral imperative. We live in a complex pre-existing world where many mistakes have been historically made. It seems necessary to hypothetically stop all thinking, and erase it before addressing any problem. Mistakes too often crop up in the assumptive givens otherwise.
There is a Chinese proverb, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime." that can be used to illustrate just how fouled our thinking has become, and why we all must begin to think out all our thoughts about society with categorical knowledge, that knowledge that is always true in every instance.
The Chinese proverb is attributed to both Lao Tse and Confucius. Its true source here is unimportant. Its antiquity and widespread acceptance as wise knowledge are however, because this proverb illustrates the trap of most accepted human knowledge today.
First of all this Chinese proverb, is widely used as a model in the U.S. for social activism. It is both naive and intrinsically a repetition of the very problem social activists seek to address, circumstances that give rise to hunger, famine and suffering.
If a man lives next to a small lake with a limited supply of fish, by teaching him to fish, you will eventually deplete the lake of fish leaving the man, and perhaps his now larger family, hungry and suffering. You will neither feed him for a lifetime, nor perform any of the social good necessary to accomplish your intended ends, the alleviation of suffering.
More important to our discussion of categorical knowledge and just how we must change our way of thinking, is the notion that with five billion people on the planet, even all the oceans combined amount to the small lake when we account for the hunger of the entire human population of the planet.
Fishing has fed a great many people throughout humanity's existence. Many families have grown, nations have arisen and cultures have flourished due to the bounty of the sea. The imminent collapse of all the fisheries of the oceans is the end result. The earth's disgorgement of scores of hundreds of millions of humans by starvation is going to provide the ultimate lesson of this Chinese proverb.
If you teach a man to fish, he will prosper and multiply, but only for a while. And then he will suffer far worse and far more extensively than if you never taught him to fish in the first place.
This final statement as simple and as trite as it may seem, is categorical knowledge. It is always true in every instance of what is taught. Go ahead, let your instinct cause you horror. It is true. And if you think your horror is too great to withstand, consider mine. I did not just read it. I found it to be the truth.
This is what the mystics mean when they say, let go of everything. They are right, but they are also fools. There is categorical knowledge, and no one discovers categorical knowledge with mysticism.
Beginning to look at every problem with an eye for categorical knowledge is the challenge of philosophy that in turn is being given to every endeavor of mankind, for philosophy is indeed the pinnacle of human knowledge.
Philosophers need take no prisoners, for everyone is already by definition a prisoner of philosophy.
We are not through with the analysis of this Chinese proverb however. The final analysis, that, "If you teach a man to fish, he will prosper and multiply, but only for a while," has only a net negative of advice for humanity. Something positive may come of it, but the analysis must go much deeper.
The statement has many components, fish, man, teaching, prosper and multiply, depletion of a finite resource, and, finally the imminent demise by starvation of hundreds of millions of people.
The philosophic knowledge requiring we know everything to know anything is beginning to surface here. We need only consider something new to see just how fallible and dangerous non-categorical knowledge is for humanity. The knowledge of fishing as it is taught, is easily transformed into a knowledge of snaring when the fish run out, and perhaps long before that as well.
Our concern for the suffering of others, and our moral instinct to address these problems has always invariably ended up the cause of more suffering. It is folly to believe we can address the symptomatic source of the suffering and alleviate the suffering of humanity. Such an approach ignores the varied and living nature of humanity.
In her article posted here on Thomas Paine's Corner, Un-President's Day: Until You Change How Money Works, You Change Nothing, Carolyn Baker gives us all a good glimpse of social activist thinking. Her moral instincts are very strong, and she makes for us all the beginning of a very cogent social activist argument.
The underlying problems of poverty and suffering are mostly caused by the misanthrope of humanitarian sympathy without thinking about the structure of the problem and the topic of their concern. What we are looking at here is a failure of the morality of humanists, the last great bastion of classical Christian morality, and, the Golden Rule, which is a wholly selfish interpretation of moral responsibility. It is selfish because it forces us to dwell upon the suffering of today to the detriment of tomorrow. These are always only temporary fixes that cause in their own way, even more suffering by extending the range of humanity's suffering.
In order to alleviate any of the suffering of humanity, we need to teach humanity how not to suffer first. The path to this is through the understanding of the moral imperative, and, a focus upon the future for the sake of the future only.
The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world.
The moral imperative has many intrinsic statements within it.
Perhaps the most important is that life is good, and there is no reason to suffer through it. Life is that good.
Secondly, the moral imperative implies we can make the world a better place than that which we found. This will not be done by teaching men how to fish, so much so as it will be accomplished by teaching them how not to fish. We should instead focus on how good life is, moving only to ensure it remains so.
Finally, the moral imperative implies for all of us, this is our opportunity to make of the world a better place for future generations. This will not be done by creating more inventions, or, effecting more cures. The world will be made better by sacrificing our own want of these inventions, these cures and ever more progeny without the guile to look with hatred upon others whose own misguided self-indulgence endangers, over-populates and poisons the surroundings in which we must all live.
Using the moral imperative, it is not hatred to point to something and say it is immoral. It is a concern we all share for the future, not ourselves or even anyone we know who is suffering. Our moral concern cannot be selfish hatred. That is not an example to set for the future.
For this final group mentioned in the last paragraph, those who commit immoral acts, we need only feel remorse, pity and disgust. Their numbers will rapidly diminish. And, this is where our story here takes a turn, for I too am a social activist. I am a social activist for the future, and my tools are categorical knowledge.
And I promise everyone here. The tide has turned of its own accord. Many of this immoral group, the group who chooses to endanger humanity will be led to the gallows soon enough by George W. Bush, and, certainly before his term as President is up. It will only be left to us to determine how far the carnage will go before we are sure the point has been made about the morality of politicians.
I have read enough philosophy to know, and I note here for future philosophers, that I have eclipsed them all. I did so merely by getting lucky in life. This should tell you, enter philosophy with an open and inquisitive mind, and you too might touch the faces of the immortals about which we all have read.
None of us is immortal. We cannot fret the loss of a single immoral President to the gallows. He has lived long and elegantly enough. There can be no remorse at his demise except by the foolish who cannot see the brighter lesson for all humanity to come of it. The man is a mass murderer who has killed unknown hundreds of thousands of our brethren throughout the world. He now seeks to kill even more.
I have twice written publicly to the most honest United States Senator I know, Susan Collins, A Letter to My Senator, Susan Collins, and, Stop the War with Iran AND Other Acts of US State-Sponsored Terrorism: I have had no response from Susan despite my invitation to her and her staff to address those who read Thomas Paine's Corner.
I have written warning the President what he is bringing upon himself as well as those around him, Mr. President, LOOK OUT!
I am neither so vain or so proud I demand a response and a change of course simply for myself. I am a philosopher. I am vain only to my death. I am never too proud. My philosophic views however are as cogent as any on the planet. My moral views right now reign supreme. It is a mistake for any philosophic knave to ignore philosophy.
But this President lied us into a war with Saddam Hussein having made us fear his Yellow-Cake nuclear weapons. Now that his plan has been revealed, a plan to steal all the Middle Eastern oil in a War on Islam, and now that the U.S. faces the very real danger of nuclear attack from countries that do have nuclear weapons, well... I say it's time the boy is paid an official visit.
Any among us can become the greatest of philosophers. And, I can tell each of you, such an accomplishment is worth more than all the gold on the planet. I have already given more away than all the philanthropists combined and with an even greater good, the result. Philosophy makes a king of a commoner as am I. It may only take a philosopher to make a fool of someone, but it also only takes fool ignoring philosophy to make deadly the mistakes of such a fool.
And the President has been just such a fool. No one in Congress or the military will let him continue in his escapades for oil in Iraq that are now teetering into Iran one moment longer. It simply is his foolish mistake to think anyone in Congress or the Military will stand by any longer and let him do this at the peril of atomic weaponry being used against U.S. cities in retaliation for such an idiotic move. It is time to take the war hawk down from his lofty perch.
And so today, because so many worldwide hunger for it, I give you the head of a President. If that is what you want, it shall be yours. It is plainly here for all to see in the title to this article. And the moral imperative demands it for the future of all humanity.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
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