Month: August 2020

Critique of Social Justice and Critical Theory

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: August 31st 2020

Popularization of social justice in recent times has had profound effects upon the totality of culture and society across the world. Its intentions are pure, and it in itself is something to be championed. The problem is that many of these advocates for liberal change are focusing on both problems and solutions which seem to escape justification by a critical eye in the domain of “truly” representing our situation. Many ideas and methodologies are falling short of meaningful change, and pragmatic utility in the long term.

Here I wish to delineate and articulate explanations of several major categories in the movement towards social justice, and those areas of popular culture that are being advocated as effective that I happen to disagree with for philosophical reasons. I will attempt to critique the areas I believe deserve an honest exposure of their flaws, and how I believe they can be optimized or disregarded – in the name of pragmatic utility, morality, and “truth” in reflecting an optimal navigation of the political and social landscape going forward.

Liberalism in itself is the progressive change within a society towards novel manners of living, towards new rules, towards rectifying outdated regulations, and in optimizing the government – by proxy its people – by altering its customs, standards, and regulations to be in alignment with the “new” values of the people which deserve representation. While all of the critiqued content herein appears to be on the liberal side of the political spectrum, I am in no way degrading the necessity of the liberal party in its useful and beneficial role in progressing the government, pointing out conserved aspects of our social systems which no longer represent the beliefs of the people, and in the general process of “change”. Here I only critique those elements of change I believe to be not founded on rationality, philosophical rigor, and proper moral consideration. I want to look into why these disagreeable (to me) ideas are propagated, based on the personality types of many of their constituents, and why they come to the conclusions they do. In many cases that appear malevolent to a large portion of society, it is often merely due to ignorance in the “perpetrators”. I by no means wish to attribute ill-will on behalf of any advocate of these ideas, I merely wish to expand upon a more nuanced view of their tactics, their “problems, and their “solutions. The issues most disagreed upon are those that are simultaneously the most complex, and it is this complexity that necessitates ignorance – both in the expression and description of problems, is source, and solutions.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR PERSONALITY TYPE ANALYSIS

It seems to be a reoccurring trend that many people who identify and embody the modern social justice movement are of a certain personality type which favors an application of critical theory. Many of these individuals are of higher class upbringing and have experiences which are characterized by less externally derived suffering than what the average working class citizen undergoes. Given this societal position, they are quick to recognize the disparity, and posit solutions with perceived moral benefit to those “worse off”, those who experience more environmental suffering. Many of those who identify as social justice warriors that hail from a “higher class upbringing” received more parental attention and individual catering in their upbringing than those they wish to see alleviated from suffering based on social position, and they often have a substantial edge in terms of educational opportunity. This educating, attention, and external economic stability in relation to members of lower classes provides a unique perspective upon the modern social system and its flaws, and has both its ups and downs. The problem which is often neglected, is that they lack the experiential wisdom of someone who has actually been raised within the lower economic classes.

Ignorance of any individual to the experience of any other individual necessitates misunderstandings, especially in regards to the optimal solution for the others benefit. Extrapolated to group identity, and class solution, the complexity grows substantially, and the disparity between perceived optimal solutions and actual pragmatic solutions likewise grows. This makes the perception of those outside of the system which is claimed to need aide often lacking of the knowledge of the actual root of problems, and includes a deficiency in perspective in terms of what pragmatic benefit can actually be provided towards improvement. Good intentions often pave the way to hell, and those who attempt to pave the road for people with whom they have never walked, often pave that hell bent road unknowingly.

People who find themselves identifying with the modern SJW movement often aim at altruistic goals and attempt to better the lot of humankind, especially for the more historically oppressed groups. While almost everyone holds these goals and are in agreement that we ought to raise the tide for everyone, many of the loudest voices of the self-identified SJW group members advocate for methods of doing so which has become disagreeable to many, and there are several flaws in their appropriating of the philosophical method of critical theory. Many who receive the most societal infiltration are doing so through applying critical theory in their attempt to alleviate the suffering of those who are less fortunate than themselves, and they posit massive societal problems for certain groups of people, at the hands of other groups of people, and the media spreads the message of outrage and injustice across the nation. While these proclamations sometimes are rational, just, and morally justified, often times they fail in proper application of critical theory to identify problems without taking into consideration the opportunity benefit the cause of them produces.

These ideas are propagating shortsighted, narrowly defined, and altogether unscientifically grounded solutions to problems that themselves may or may not exist. Often times these critical theory derivations provide the wrong pragmatic solutions to problems rightly uncovered, and in more cases then not, the simplification does a great disservice to reality, and fails to recognize the complexity of situations.

Naivety seems to be the marker of the ideas most pervasively spread by some social justice warriors recently, and this naivety has costly repercussions, not only for society as a whole, but also for those exact groups which they are attempting at helping. While fighting for social justice isn’t intrinsically problematic, on the contrary, it is quite an admirable task, the newest popularizing of its tactics is marked by ignorance of the historicity of systems and institutions, as well as the benefits they accrue to us. It is one thing to fight for social justice and bring forth a progressing of the cultural milieu to be more inclusive, it is another thing to label a population, act, law, regulation, institution, or movement as supporting the oppression of disadvantaged populations when in effect the solutions commit more damage than utility.

Given the “privileged” lifestyle of some of the SJW type advocates, in comparison to the “oppressed” proletariat, they swing far left into liberal socialism to provide monetary relief to lift the tide of the impoverished, they extrapolate individual injustices to apply to the entire system; they publicly denounce the government, education system, police forces, and society at large for being guilty of the crimes of individuals. The group is taken as the unit of measurement, both for the activist’s self-image, and in the projected image of the group, characterizing its members by the worst in the group, and using that as a basis for rhetoric arguing towards either the destruction or reformation of the institution. This is a fallacy of category error, the group must not be mischaracterized by an individual and simultaneously optimized to discover and correct for individual problems. While individual problems must be addressed, and opportunities for their re-education, and growth to being a productive citizen ought to be provided, the generalizing of their actions across a group of people, and the application of restrictive measures across that group, is unjust to those individuals who do not partake in whatever injustice the individual members have proliferated. This can be seen in the recent cases of police brutality and the attempt to criminalize the entire group of police, or in the conversations about reparations being levied against all white individuals, for the crimes of individuals who no longer exist. The primary object of importance in any society, government, or institution is necessarily the individual, and it must be optimized as such. While the bottom up system must be our priority, we cannot, as many social justice advocates frequently – yet correctly – state, ignore the top down influence. Both systems are cybernetically influenced by the manifestation of each other in the present moment, constantly recalibrating and updating, much as consciousness and governments do.

In the area of good intentions, the SJW type are ahead of the pack, yet in terms of naivety and solutions, many of the loudest voices within this movement are lagging behind. The societal division caused by their either correct or incorrect awareness of injustice appears to be causing more harm to the nation than benefit, making us wonder, is abstaining from asking the question a wiser choice? Or is it merely the way in which the message is received producing the division and lack of cohesive unity which we require to adequately solve the problem? Is the effect on the social milieu worth all the claims of injustice, does every claim of social inequity ought to be taken seriously? Or are the systems which propagate such injustice already being optimized, and is there a better way to do it?

This is probably giving too much credit, for I’m assuming the issues in hand by the few justice warriors with legitimate criticisms applies to the totality of those under the heading, which is far from being true. While there is a spectrum of differentiation between every individual in any group, thus far I’ve been focused on those individuals in the group with specific claims, but, there is a much larger group of members within the self-appointed SJW identification tag that have claims that themselves appear to be of criticism for racism, sexism, injustice, and oppression, but are merely based on either wrong data, wrong interpretation of data, and wrong interpretation of the causality of data, such as we see in the wage gap between men and women. Any singular attribution of causality, especially in such complex issues, we can be sure of as being incorrect, as the factors which influence human behavior, over spans of time, are innumerable in scope, and their analysis can be taken on from a multitude of different perspectives, and explained through many frameworks.

CRITICAL THEORY

If applied properly, critical theory can reveal areas of improvement. If you take society as a whole, or any subgroup, whether it’s an institution, government, corporation, or even ideology, and set out with the task of looking for moral shortcomings, whether it be in power inconsistencies, oppression, racism, whatever, and find there to be something, you can take that finding and apply it outside of the critical examination, to apply to the consequences of changing the organization of the “group”. The problem is, if you find this disparity, contradiction, or oppression, yet fail to compare it to the benefit of the whole, or fail to accurately determine its underpinnings, or causal connections, that’s where you get into trouble by attempting to find a solution to a problem that isn’t itself a problem, or a problem that is outweighed by the “positive” sides of the “group”, yet failing to take those into consideration.

Critical theory applied to the aviation industry may find that the seats aren’t designed for overweight people, and that can be seen as oppressive to them. Should the airplane designers take this into consideration? An ideologically possessed person might say that the white male privilege in affording to have the time, trainers, diet, enables more of the “wealthy” or “oppressive” population to be skinny, thus influencing the design of the airplane. I would say there are a lot of partial truths here, but the airplane industry isn’t actually doing anything with negative intentions towards “overweight” people, it may just be economically more feasible, with the given supply and demand, to make airplane seats that way. It just happens to be an unfortunate consequence of capitalism. Can they decide to lose money to be more accommodating? Sure, capitalism allows it. Do I think they should? No, but that’s due to my own belief in the value of exercise and personal health to be incentive rather than allowing reservations for those who voluntarily decide not to. If you look at just the criticism, which is uncovered through critical theory, but don’t apply the correct reasoning, comparison to the benefits, or consideration of a long term value system, and instead come up with a solution that follows an incorrect conceptualization of the “problem” – there obviously will be negative effects.

While alleviating problems to the impoverished, underrepresented, less educated, and those with less opportunities always sounds good, the means by which critical theorists attempt to do so are often not beneficial, and don’t take into consideration the full complexity of the situation. Factors such as those who benefit from the institutions, the economic tide-raising, the trickle-down effect from those who benefit to those who appear not to benefit, all are neglected in examining a system only for its shortcomings. Potential reduction in wellbeing by governmental intervention in these cases can be applied to those on the receiving end as well, as many are apt to instinctively point out.

Racism as the sole cause of criminality in the black conviction rate, sexism as the sole cause of the wage gap, corruption as the sole cause for the 1% being wealthier than the 99%, are all single factor claims that we ought to reevaluate. Where these claims are backed by “good” intentions, they make the mistake of simplicity, generalization, and naivety, and the claims they have, as viewed by an audience who is less educated on the subject than necessary to accurately depict its causality, is swayed by their off base interpretations and attributions of rationale. A simplistic interpretation claiming to be the source of all troubles, has its mass appeal, for obvious reasons. This in turn affects the public milieu towards advocacy of the systemic issues based on causal terms which are obviously not the whole story, sometimes beneficial and crucial to the story, yet, many times, irrelevant to the perceived issue at hand, and even on occasion the issue at hand isn’t even an issue.

Racism in cops is part of the story of conviction rates of minorities, part of. The benefit of the rich in educational opportunities is real, but not unjust. Sexism doesn’t optimally account for the wage gap, but rather a difference in interest can better be attributed to a biological interpretation.

Critical theory is great, but must be applied wisely. Critical thinking, experience, and philosophical consistency in alignment with scientific data is the answer to correctly account for issues in society, political philosophy, cybernetics, and morality, all of which are necessary for optimal politicking. Every issue that faces the world in such a vastly interconnected society is extremely complex to grasp as the factors contributing, and their contributions, are difficult to discern and difficult to evaluate as to their weight in attribution to the outcome. The situation gets even more complicated in discerning an optimal solution, or a system’s alteration and optimizing, and we ought to all work together, in an interdisciplinary way, to find solutions and progress as a society, nation, and world.

The biggest issue with critical theory is it fails to see the useful and beneficial aspects of society, in short, it is in its essential nature to be ignorant of the totality of factors, contributions, and effects of a system. It loses sight of the broad and beneficial for the narrow and destructive. I get that its aimed at what is a problem for society, with an interest to rectify it, but in making that assessment you have to take into account the positive side as well, there’s an opportunity cost in focusing only on the negative and that which is able to be criticized, while it surely is important and valid. If you presuppose injustice or immorality in an institution, domain, or society at large, and have intentions of rectifying it, it appears you are doing something morally justified – and you’re likely to find some downside in every institution. The problem is with the presupposition and if it is improperly formulated the whole enterprise ends up with rational ends that follow from irrational premises. When this happens the solution no longer is beneficial, useful, or moral when taken out of the framework the critical theory is being applied to.

Critical theory promotes looking for problems with discrimination and power imbalance of all kinds, which may not be uncovered without scrutiny. If not done naively, and by someone overcome by ideological possession, it can be beneficial. A beneficial solution that follows from its findings is in direct relation to the person who wields it, just like firearms. It is merely a tool, that, since its conceptualization and elucidation has not been in alignment with its goals of reducing discrimination and injustice in society at large. That being said, it can be useful, and it has its place, the problem is with the incorrect application, and willingness to apply it where it doesn’t belong. Where there’s smoke there’s usually fire, and we call firefighters to help the situation, but it could be the case that it’s not smoke, nor is there a fire, it’s just a guy with a vape who isn’t getting cancer from his previous addiction to cigarettes, the firefighters time is wasted, resources are wasted, and the people who were so concerned with the smoke were worried, and worried everyone else around them based on a false assumption.                 

REDISTRIBUTION / DIVERSITY

A movement which harms the majority for the benefit of the minority in the short term, isn’t morally justified solely for doing so, even if historically it was necessary and justified in the long term benefit to the totality of society. In those areas where it has been a necessity, we were pragmatically justified in doing so, such as the detriment to the majority of landowners in the abolition of slavery, or the detriment to the power of most male’s government contribution to society with women’s rights. But to apply this maxim across the board, in modern society, is a fallibilistic tendency, the higher class in any hierarchy isn’t always wrong, they aren’t always culpable of injustice, and individual scenarios must be delineated from the totality of implication of this maxim. Imposing detrimental effects to those higher up any hierarchy for the benefit of those at the bottom is in no way universally applicable, especially where virtues such as competency, effort, and time spent in that hierarchy have been historical requisites to ascension. We find advocate groups promoting the idea of racial and gender representation in politics, colleges, and corporations, which previously have been afforded to those most qualified by competency. In areas such as aviation or the medical field ideas have been posited to the end of equality of outcome, imposing quotas upon the race or gender of the employee hired for the position. In areas of life and death, in areas of the most moral responsibility, we ought to want the most competent person for the job, whether that’s a surgeon, pilot, governor, or teacher, regardless of race and gender. The opportunity cost for the nation, the education system, and economy, all will be negative if these quotas succeed in opting to select for anything other than competency.

To claim moral justification solely upon the grounds of providing a benefit to the minority, such as proposed in many policies advocating for equality of outcome, is a problem that appears to be morally beneficial as those at the bottom have been purported as being “victims” or “oppressed” (which for some individuals is actually the case), but neglects many aspects of the society that hold value as well. We ought to be taking into account the wellbeing of the majority in addition to the minority, and the virtue which has previously been required for ascension. To shortcut the character traits of competence, of personal sacrifice, and educational development required for a place within a hierarchy, such as in the job market, in college acceptance, and in political power, is to shortcut what is most optimal to be developed to be effective within these systems. Since effectiveness is paramount to the education of young, for medical procedures, for governing of a nation, we ought to be more restrictive in explicitly selecting for competency than less. The question of heritage, skin color, or sexual orientation ought to have no place in these domains, given our current position of relative equality of opportunity in the barrier to competency within them.

The subjective experience of the “rich”, the “privileged”, and the “fortunate” still holds moral consideration, regardless of their place in the hierarchy in comparison to others. While minor sacrifices in the lifestyle of the upper class are expected for the benefit of the lower, and claimed as being morally justified, ought those individuals be disregarded in respect to their subjective experience being negatively modified “for the good of others”? Where is the social justice for the rich and privileged, for those who sacrifice, who dedicate time, effort, and subjective wellbeing for ascension? Are those who succeed by the sweat on their brow and bloodshed in persistence not to be taken into consideration? Ought they to be punished for their success through hard work and dedication? Are they merely the source to be utilized for the alleviation of those less accomplished, or do they too deserve social justice? To be successful and raise your children in a good environment isn’t a crime, in fact, it’s a gift not deserved, a grace of sorts, and to attribute that success and benefit to corruption, extortion, and enslavement of the masses is to fall into a conspiratorial mindset, that ought not be generalized across the entire class. While these means to the ends of upper class lifestyle do in fact exist, their prevalence and the generalizing of them to all successful families is off base by a long shot.

There ought to be a way to provide alleviation to the underprivileged, oppressed, and unfortunate, by means that is agreed upon by those who desire to sacrifice, give, and aide them. While not everyone has the same opportunity, and this ought to be rectified, those who do have relatively similar opportunity, and capitalize upon it in a way which is afforded to others yet not traversed, should not be punished for doing so, they ought to be championed, and their stories ought to be used as inspiration for others to rise in a similar manner. The common solution posited by many is merely to tax, regulate, and “redistribute” finances from these upper tier performers to be siphoned to the less accomplished. While there are groups that deserve a better opportunity, and have suffered misfortune, such as the disabled, abused, or victims of violence, it ought to be universally considered that their alleviation is on the hands of all of society (including their own), and not disproportionally to those who do not opt into their alleviation. Local communities that are voluntarily assented to ought to be means enough towards their aide, and improper, disproportionate, allocation of funds from involuntary philanthropists ought not be our go to solution. There is a limit to the degree at which we can siphon off resources from the fortunate to the unfortunate before we make those fortunate into an unfortunate position.

INTERSECTIONALITY

The complexity of group divisions in any intersectional analysis makes the distinction between classes along any domain difficult to delineate, and competency, effort, background, education, and other areas of which “privilege” can be attributed, are altogether innumerable in their relation to any individual. Correct identification of different groups from which to allocate funds for welfare programs therefore becomes next to impossible, as the factors which contribute to any individual’s intersectional analysis are extensive, and anyone is likely to fall into an “unprivileged” grouping along some metric of analysis, regardless of their other characteristics. There is more than merely the financial class that distinguishes the fortunate, we all fall upon a spectrum of benefit and detriment in our developed constitution.

At what point to do we distinguish someone as fortunate or otherwise? At what degree of racial profiling do we delegate someone to a class of “unprivileged”? Race, family situation, upbringing, environmental factors, are all as complex individually as are factors attributed to one’s financial situation. These things are in no way “black or white”, pun intended, or easy to define outside of the individual level. The inadequacy of definitions such as “richness”, “coloredness”, “privilege”, even in the domain of sexuality, are quite contentious and difficult to pin down. Where do we draw the line in any form of discriminating differences so as to classify different groups? What combination of groupings is to be selected for against others? Given the limitlessness of potential groupings based on any irrelevant factor, we find the correct defining and characterizing of classes of people to be wholly inaccurate in depicting anything of real substance. Intersectionality runs infinitely deep, and hasn’t been properly delineated with a formal definition, nor do I believe it ever can be. As is now hopefully commonly known, there are more differences within any racial grouping than between them. To make arbitrary labelled groups the emphasis of selection, to make the group identity the order of importance in a society necessitates the degradation of the individual, and doesn’t accurately represent any individual within that grouping. The level of the individual must be that which is taken into primary consideration, it is the only domain in which accuracy can in any beneficial manner be depicted.

The overlap or absence of qualifying factors which constitute per the intersectional analysis of what makes someone “unfortunate or unprivileged” hasn’t been adequately extrapolated upon, and at what point do we make class qualifiers important in the face of racial or gender classifications? The blurring of the lines between degrees of “misfortune” and “less privileged” are currently delegated upon social perception. Currently we are basing our perception of privilege upon mere appearance, in a perfect world many of these liberal idealists would be calculable by a “privilege” system according to individual characteristics. Being that this ability to calculate intersectional evaluability in terms of societal ability, and opportunity, is impossible, how can we possibly delegate laws, quotas, or societal movements based upon it?

OPTIMIZATION

To merely delegate the equality of classes or groups to governmental control, is to impose authoritarian control upon many who earned their position through embodied virtue. It isn’t merely upon those who are corrupt, and cheated their way into financial success, its purported across the board. Governmental solutions often stem from these higher financial brackets, which, while themselves in the minority, many individually are legally required to aide in ways that are contrary to their will. Those who vote towards higher taxes of the rich, who themselves fall into that bracket, ought to be the only contributing, as it is their voluntary will. To extrapolate the involuntary will of many who do not agree with the distribution method, or its end recipients, ought to only be required to use their funds as necessitated by the state or local governments in which they reside and have more of a say in effecting change, not for things they do not assent to. The democratic process ought to defend for injustice in this regard, but given the minority position of those in the higher ranks of hierarchies, they often are underrepresented in regards to their wellbeing. This is obviously quite controversial, and counter to the common narrative, as those at the top of the hierarchies often wield the most power, influence, and means to wellbeing. I am not negating this by any means, I merely am stating that in a democratic system that holds the potential to do what it was devised as doing, that is, being run for the people, it has the potential of authoritarian redistribution for the majority of the population at the expense of others. This isn’t controversial, and it often is beneficial in a utilitarian sense, I merely want it to be recognized at the same time that we must not shrink from consideration of those on the end from which we are taking. They are human beings from which our moral consideration holds ground, and their wellbeing, despite their position, is not negligible. In their negligence the system actually holds the potential of oppressing the rich and powerful, as paradoxical as that sounds.

In the master-slave dialectic the slave in the final analysis gains conscious development through independence that isn’t afforded to the master who is dependent upon the slave for his wellbeing, so ought the members in higher standing in any hierarchy be disregarded for the advancement of those at the bottom – when they provide the means for their actualization and ascension? In extreme times of war, or in past ages of racial and gender inequality in the eyes of the law, this surely was necessary. Now that the law is impartial, and the problem is merely cultural, group orientated, and class orientated, yet not hindered by the law, we ought to strive for individual decision making of the rich, rather than compulsion by the government. This means reducing the slide into further socializing the economy, and promoting a laisse faire economy. This doesn’t mean that a pool based socialist system can’t still run in parallel to pure capitalism, merely that it ought to be opt in, as insurance is. If people are given the decision to opt into socialist programs in regards to any domain of financial redistribution, they gain the benefit of potentially being aided, as well as providing aide that the system dictates to those in need – based on their own values. In this way, we can satisfy both ends of the financial political divide, maintain freedom and democracy, and provide support for those in need and wish to help, without validating the right to economic and personal freedom our nation is supposed to stand for.

Mere hand outs and governmental aide for those who are of less fortunate standing may actually increase their dependence rather than empower them towards a rise in any hierarchy for which they are interested in having the opportunity to ascend. The same goes for quotas based on race or gender. To regard any monetary aide as universally beneficial, is surely to miss a nuanced argument about its detriment. Is it better to give food to those who are hungry or to teach them how to provide for it themselves? Is it better to give a solution to one’s problems, or aide them in discovering the solution for themselves? Is it better to move someone up the hierarchy by your own hand, or to provide them with the opportunity and education that they can engage in to earn that spot themselves? In allowing people to fail, and having real life social and economic repercussions for doing so, there is a form of tough love that is eliminated by the safety net.

While a type of safety net that supplies basic needs for all citizens is beneficial, a safety net that allows people to abuse the system while just contributors work hard to make ends meets is surely an injustice to those who are working from the bottom of the economic system to better themselves. By crying outrage and attempting to burn the system down, many social justice advocates in the modern era blind themselves to the benefits the system has accrued to the majority of people, and rather than looking to spread those benefits to those who don’t have the opportunity, they seek to overcompensate those outside of the walled garden for their endured oppression, at the detriment of those within, which, is the majority of people.

MORALITY

Everyone deserves moral consideration, as we all have moral worth. In many schools of thought, all life has moral worth, or at least that which has a subjective experience that can be better or worse. Given that all humans, despite their race, sex, age, financial class, share this propensity for better or worse subjective experience, they all must be considered when we’re talking about systems which have implications that can alter this subjective experience. Therefore, the domain of inquiry which holds the greatest moral responsibility – politics – (as it has the most widespread effect amongst the greatest number of people) holds the greatest power to effect the subjective experience of people. The complexity of issues, and their moral consideration needs an extension. As we’ve included environment consideration, non-human species consideration, racial, sexual, and gender consideration, we’ve simultaneously been recently inclined to regard as morally less important those who have previously been afforded higher consideration.

The raising of tides within the standard of a class that in its entirety has been historically regarded as higher in the social hierarchy, such as that of straight white males, is now regarded by many to be hold less morally considered weight as an entire group. Individuals within this broad group hold the same variance as any other group, many individuals within it are impoverished, have been given unfortunate familial situations, and face the same challenges by the same systems that effect other intersectional groups. Mental capacity, competency, financial situation, opportunities afforded, are varied within any group, within any race, and to discriminate against an entire group based upon the historical position of some individuals with the same skin color, and to extrapolate that privilege and negative character resemblance across the group, is by definition racist. To characterize individuals upon the color of their skin, at their detriment, is social injustice, and needs to be rectified, as any racial consideration ought to be placed upon equal footing.

As we’ve worked to undue the wrongs our forefathers committed in racial inequity, we ought not reinstate their methods against any racial, gender, or sexual intersectional group, ever again. We ought not work to repair certain intersection groupings at the detriment of others, if those groups are predicated upon race, sexual orientation, or gender, but rather we must maintain equality across all domains in regards to opportunity, and recognize the variance across humankind, not merely in these specific groups, but across areas that actually matter. “Social justice” ought to be primarily for those who are actually oppressed, such as victims of totalitarian corruption, like those in Venezuela, North Korea, or China. It ought to be for those individuals within our societies which have been impoverished based on family upbringing, educational opportunity, physical disability, regardless of their skin color, gender, or other trivial characteristics. Any individual which has been unjustly (properly discerned) served by a system ought to be campaigned for, and the system ought to take into consideration the whole of society, rather than a narrow scope of it. My main point is that the complexity of society as a whole, its shortcomings, its progress, its many factors, is quite larger than the succinct narratives which have been used as a description of a whole. This complexity needs to be addressed, if we are to realistically improve the system which is complex.

CONCLUSION

Many areas of moral consideration escape the public eye, and many ideas of a disagreeable nature exist upon rational grounds which may provide benefit to systems. It is the job of any philosopher to expose these nuanced views, to propose counter points to common narratives, and critically examine even the use of critical theory. In a meta sense, we have the ability to apply critical theory towards the institutions and segment of society that primarily adhere to belief in the overarching utility of critical theory as being the optimal philosophical method of “improving” society, and in so doing, reveal the flaws within that group itself. Taking that group as the sample size, apply critical theory, I wonder what there is to be found in the power that group holds, and its benefit or detriment to society at large, given its large influence, and the effect that shouting fire has upon those near and far.

The Hedonist Expansion Problem

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: August 30th 2020

There’s a multitude of factors that result in the overwhelming pursuit of hedonistic lifestyles in the postmodern era, here we’ll look at those that are most predominantly occurring to factor into its support, as well as its biological and cultural underpinnings. Most notability, the amount of free time afforded to those in the west due to economic and technological progression, the cohesion of democratic nations, and the general alleviation of poverty. While hedonism has been a perennial pursuit, the ability of more people to have the free time and money to even consider and engage in hedonistic activities has opened the playing field to the majority of the population to adopt a hedonistic lifestyle. Modern technology and societal systems have reduced primal goals through the increase in readiness and affordability of base necessities such as food and shelter. Base necessities are more easily covered by a shorter work week, there is an almost complete absence of threats from external sources and we are provided safety from impending dangers – which we would have been constantly guarded against in previous eras. These changes result both in a positive shift in wellbeing as well as a negative, depending on the individual’s reaction to them and his method of filling in that extra time afforded to him.

The ability to pursue our interests can be a double edged sword, depending on what those interests are, and the manner in which we pursue them. By progressing as a society in such a way we face some loss in the traditional forms in which our evolutionarily engrained reward systems are triggered, but this removal in no way erodes the systems and their potential rewiring to other stimuli. Removal of traditional forms of triggers to our reward system, such as personal acquisition of food in hunting, exploration into unknown areas, violence expressed in conflict, and, in even more primitive times, the unpunished acquisition of multiple mates forced into satisfying sexual desires. While food, war, exploration, and reproduction are still aspects of the modern life, the ways in which we acquire them, and the limitations governments put on our actions in pursuing them, has been altered as our extension of morality pervades the culture. While this certainly affords us a net benefit in terms of safety, equality, and basic rights to freedom, it simultaneously causes a shift in the stimuli which causes the production of serotonin. This differentiation removes some of our sources of the subjective experience of wellbeing, producing the desire to replace them with new forms of stimuli, and the question becomes, by what ought we replace them?

By moving away from the environment we found ourselves in for millions of years, into one which is almost entirely constructed by the human species, we find ourselves with new methods to cope with the drives and constraints of the human psyche. On the one hand we must find new methods to mitigate our unconscious, primal, and instinctual drives, and on the other we are faced with a much more expansive, yet strict, societally informed morality. Punishment for deviances such as violence, theft, and injustices enable greater freedom to act within the framework of society, while limiting the threat to the pursual of the majority of societies interests. The current state of the legal system reflects an improvement of moral considerations, aiding in removing external threats to our wellbeing and cybernetically informing the moral guidelines of society (we inform the government of morality and it, in turn, informs us). While all members in society have the risk of imprisonment for moral deviance, and this modifies the nations morality in the same way it is itself informed by it, it still leaves open the potential for vastly different methods of coping under its general guidelines. While both the unconscious urges and the moral restrictions have altered, our conscious, intelligible, mitigating “power” remains wedged between the competing factors, and it is how we cope with being “thrown” into such a situation that will determine the quality of our subjective experience.

The growth of the population and the interconnectedness of humanity has allowed for the upper constraining factor of conscience to be modified in a way that is in no way universal. Everyone is raised differently, whether it may be in a traditional nuclear family, or by more diverse familial structures. Some are influenced by sub-groups to follow strict religious morality, others are raised under more or less strict secular imperatives, and in other corners of the same society parents raise their children to conform to the most prominent form of moral imperatives, that of pursuing “whatever makes you happy”. While there is a vast range of ways we develop from infanthood to adulthood, the moral rules, discipline, and in general, what is deemed “important” and “right and wrong” vary according to individual circumstances. This variance causes a variance in the upper constraint of how we mitigate our instinctual drives, which are more or less universal in their grounding. While the generalized group of individuals that believe in the overwhelming pursuit of happiness may have been led into such a mode of being with the best of intentions by a society and family that only wants the best for their children, it holds the risk of developing a belief system that finds no problem in the overindulgence in sensual or pleasure producing stimuli, resulting for many in the pursuit of a hedonistic lifestyle. Given the ability to live such a lifestyle afforded to us by the modern era, the backing of an interconnected society, whether it’s the majority or merely a subgroup (we can find ourselves in an echo chamber in regards to whatever belief system we hold) the mutual acceptance and propagation by other members of society reinforces the belief system and can produce ideological possession to push the individual in the direction which he has been raised.

The answer of how to act in the modern era – given the lack of formal structure and openness to ever-increasing options – is for many of us with quick fixes of serotonin surging activities. While this satisfies a “natural” unconscious urge, and it can be rationally defended by conscious self-interested arguments, I argue, it is not the optimal framework in which to develop a wholesome psyche and a meaningful life. The manifestations of the hedonistic mode of being, whether rationally considered or merely driven by societal and unconscious desire, manifests in the form of overindulgence in an excessive amount of food, sex, and drugs and alcohol. Social media allows for our pleasure system to be moved by apparent attraction and acceptance in communal settings, by opening us up to the approval of millions of users. Fixation on societal approval in our online presence across social media becomes reinforced by the dopaminergic systems response to attention, television and video games provide satisfaction that the non-human created outside world doesn’t provide to the same degree. Bars, clubs, and drug dealers are found on every corner, and there is the added social reinforcement of those who indulge, not to mention the widespread cultural acceptance. The secondary acquisition of our basic biological needs through work rewarded by compensation for currency and further exchanged for necessities, allows a recourse of the dopaminergic system towards striving after wealth and power, which would be a second derivation away from our primitive desires which still must be met. Although the means have changed the ends are relatively similar, in the abstract. While the plague of desire for quick satisfaction, attention, wealth and fame may be a modern problem, it is in no way a non-perennial one, merely the form in which it manifests itself is altered.

While these factors are relevant and its results can, at times, negatively affect the populations overall wellbeing, at least in the lives of many individuals, the tendency to generalize it, and to only apply a critical theoristic framework to the current milieu is fallacial. While we can find negative repercussions of any frame of mind, applied to any era, or any society, we must not limit ourselves to merely criticism and stating the situation as being a novelty, without seeing the whole picture, including the benefit. In preindustrial society the ability to abstain from hedonistic pursuits and desire for excessive wealth existed alongside the ability for altruism, which, in our social development, became more than a possibility as seen by our current large scale states, which couldn’t have been created and developed to cohesive welfare societies in the absence of cooperation between individuals and groups of individuals. The development from primitive egoism, to kin altruism, to reciprocal altruism and later to group selection, has, in the west, been extended to populations of millions of people, for the benefit of the vast majority. The expanding circle of our consideration has enabled the lower class to have enough extra time and currency to pursue what once was only afforded to the wealthiest and most powerful in a society.

We can see technology and the mass productive capabilities of modern society, along with the scientific erosion of fundamental religious views as producing suffering and existential crisis for many people. It may be that the development of humankind has produced a society that is permeated by negative emotion not equipped for its newest development, while the suffering which drives us is perennial regardless of the era, the disconnect between our environmental adaptations informed by evolutionary biology and our societies rapid development has never had a bigger gulf. The ability to transcend the societal norm, the human condition of permanent desire in a constantly fluctuating experience, has been reframed to an extreme extent given the situation and environment we find ourselves in. The more our conscience’s diverge from our biological nature, the bigger the toll on our psyche to mitigate the difference, which for many is too big a gap to attempt to reconcile, leading them into escapism and a masking of the “natural” mode of being, inhibited by the quick fixes available to us.

Humans have evolved from their primitive ancestors, but this has shown less biological movement than societal and cultural change in the recent millenniums. Memes have altered and propagated our current milieu more so than genes over the last 10,000 years, and to lay the blame of the nihilistic tendencies, and lack of meaning in many of our lives upon this lagging biological nature, would only be half of the story.  Our societal influences and the progress of civilization in general bears a tangential relation to our biological nature, the coupling of which is failing to provide adequate answers to how to cope with our lives. We merely haven’t evolved to be equipped with a positive subjective experience, and as we have more time to be self-aware and contemplate our existence, the fact of this phenomenological truth makes itself clear.

As our ancestors had the potential to escape suffering through meaningful pursuits, whether that be by providing food for the tribe and their families through sweat and blood in hunting, or if it’s by factory work with the same outcome, the potential for a meaningful life with values that highlight the positive side of our nature are still possible. As beneficial as critical theory is at exposing problems and injustices, it merely is one side of the existential coin. The potential to suffer, even if it is itself an impermeable widespread pandemic, is truly part of our nature, yet so is the potential to live meaningful lives of value, whether they be summarized in religious principles, traditional family values, liberal or progressive in nature, or personal and idealistic. The reward system which consolidates our biological, social, and cultural influences into a present desire to pursue whatever it intuits as beneficial, still runs through us. The ability for that desire to be directed at more or less fulfilling and meaningful, or pleasant and unpleasant pursuits still is an existing possibility, and wisdom remains the guiding star towards optimizing our value system (what our actions stem from) as well as the traits we embody in systemically providing a feasible ground for their attainment.

Openness to novel perspectives and abstaining from dogmatic beliefs is a potentiality for anyone, and individuals who hold a fallibilistic mindset can find other likeminded individuals who will reinforce their belief that such a framework to operate from is beneficial. While this is a possibility, the advantage hedonism has is that it is experienced as a short term pleasurable subjectively, as well as having a group which reinforces it in culture. Those stimuli which provide short term satisfaction are more enticing to a biological system which isn’t designed for long term goal acquisition, we are wired for short term indulgence, and this butts its head against the current situation we find ourselves in. With ever increasing lifespans, and the benefit of stability across a long period of time becomes more important to individual and familial success, the hedonistic route is revealed as a hindrance to our long term goals and wellbeing.  In America we champion hedonistic heroes, many of our most popular celebrities, musicians, and cultural icons display the type of behavior that reinforces a hedonistic lifestyle, providing an example to those who already are inclined toward pursuing happiness (everyone!) that if they continue to do so they could be successful in a similar manner to the famous representatives of such pursuits. The cultural reinforcement to the hedonistic lifestyle is strong in the modern era, and with our natural disposition and unconscious urges, fleshed out in our neural chemistry propagating a reward system based on these urges, we find it easy to explain why anyone would prefer a hedonistic lifestyle. The real question becomes not how anyone could find themselves in a mode of being characterized by hedonistic pursuits, but how could anyone escape it? The answer to this question is seldom posited, but as more and more people discover the result of hedonistic pursuits in the long-term, that of creating a lack of meaning, that of not providing real relationships, or success and inner contentment, they find themselves asking what a better way could possibly be.

Being that our genes haven’t provided the optimal influence towards pursuing meaningful and subjectively beneficial experience in our current environment, we must turn to the word of culture, memes, and, if so inclined, philosophy, to properly uncover what a meaningful life would look like in the 21st century. We ought to optimize the memes which influence us, our belief structure, and develop a conscious top down influence to drive behavior, based on reason. While this system is developed on the framework of our biology, using our genetic heritage, we can utilize the tools in accordance with our modern environment to form more meaningful and productive lives, which can sustain well-being rather than promote suffering.

The sacrifice required of short term pleasure for long term gain isn’t merely a leap of faith, but it can be proven in personal experience as providing a more meaningful life. Anyone who has tried both lifestyles, in their extremities, or has found themselves somewhere in between, can personally recognize the benefit to themselves and those they value in abstaining from a purely self-indulgent lifestyle. Nothing someone tells us should be taken up dogmatically, especially when it is in regards to our morality, how we live our lives, and what to believe. It is in the exploration of different methods of living, of testing different philosophies of life, in living different lifestyles that we collect the data needed to inform us of better ways of living. If we take the human enterprise of what’s the best way to live seriously, and concentrate on the causality, both in the positive and negative repercussions of our actions, applied to different lifestyle experiences, we will be better informed as to which interests to pursue, how to spend our time, and what values and character traits are most optimal to be embodied. To dogmatically heed cultural norms, or a specific belief system, without collecting this data, limits the evidence we have towards uncovering, or progressing, in a way that is optimal for us.

Finding a better way to live our lives, that produces a more sustainable and positive subjective experience, is in the interest of every individual, and deviating from what is comfortable and known towards attempting to live a life in the absence of purely hedonistic pursuits can provide the necessary data to act upon to improve our lives. This is entirely possible for anyone, regardless of economic class or upbringing. The current milieu’s championed ideals may not always adequately provide trustworthy advice for us in the pursuit of a meaningful life, and we should question it where we can to discern what is useful and beneficial, and what is harmful and reductive to fulfilling our potential. There are individuals and great minds, now, and throughout history, that can aide us in developing a system which foster our attempt in developing such a mode of being that can better navigate our current landscape. All hope isn’t lost, and it is our responsibility to ourselves to seek the truth, not merely metaphysically, but existentially, not merely for ourselves and our own wellbeing, but for the benefit of our current society and future generations to come.

The “Why” in “Why do We Seek the Truth?”

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: August 19th 2020

The “why” in “why do we seek the truth” has to do with a biological desire that has been reinforced by our reward system to value the acquisition of insight into the true nature of things. In the hippocampus we find two systems of importance here, one which seeks to discover the unknown, as a biological imperative (this is why dissonance is such a problem to us) as well as a dopamine release system which is linked to that acquisition, and reinforces pathways that in our past have proven to accomplish that goal. The two are inextricably linked, and at a basic biological level, explains our will to push frontiers and knowledge of the environment. Being that the materialistic underpinnings of both the manifestations listed above are located together, their cybernetic influence upon each other is more closely linked than their relations to other areas of the brain.

This is only the start, and like all other basic biological values, how we spend our time, how we achieve the things that give us pleasure, the method we do so, and what is the end, becomes mediated by our social and cultural milieu, and tweaks from the initial imperative in novel directions by our experiences. This value system, the will or desire to achieve what grants us pleasure, and reduces suffering, as well as what is in line with underlying biological “wants”, is the source from which actions manifest, including actions and subjective psychological processes that encourage us to the pursuit of truth.

While everyone has this “to a degree” the more our experiences inform us to the beneficiality of uncovering truth, in a specific manner, whether scientific or philosophical, the more inclined we are to pursue them. The greater source of pleasure or accomplishment we find in creating a habit of searching, finding, contemplating, and theorizing, the greater possibility we will pursue it more often. Thus, we find the mutual reinforcement between accomplishing new conceptualizations and modes of being, which we consciously attach the definition of “truth” to, and the feeling of its intuition. A deeper analysis of the content of the word “truth” may here begin to break down as we dive deeper into the phenomenological realm. What the word stands for, merely is the expression of what we believe to be actual. But what we believe to be actual, in concepts, in thought, in idea, is merely the expression of our attempt to organize the chaos of factors that make up our orientation within the world, from our DNA instigating a perceptive system, to our embodied Being and its navigation in the external environment. The conceptual level merely scratches the surface of what underlies such statements or consciously held beliefs. What we seek is an optimal mode of Being in the world, for which a consciously held belief can support as an epiphenomenon and a causal agent towards the makeup of our Being. It is merely surface level expression which attempts to label an intuited idea which we may or may not embody. The real truth which we seek is to be found in how we are, in the manner in which we act, in how we are so situated in the world, the attitude we take up, the things our body does. While this can be consciously directed, that conscious direction arises from subconscious content, form the totality of our body, and psyche, in the integrated Being. The “why” in “why we seek the truth” from a philosophical standpoint, can be explained by a deeper investigation into the effect upon our Being that such “seeking” entails, and the “why” behind such a question is even posited runs tangentially to the same answer.

The biological closeness of the neuronal divisions which have been uncovered as exploration of the unknown, as well as the pathway reinforcement system, and the functions inherent, provide the necessary basis to explain the human drive towards exploration of the unknown. The biological purpose of rewarding exploration through chemical intervention, in the form of serotonin and its empirically observed “pleasurable sensation” worked through environmental expansion is for purely primitive human’s evolutionary reasons, from a materialistic perspective. While environmental expansion provided benefits to our ancestors in the utilization of different domains, in expanding territory, in more options and potential which can be uncovered in new areas, the use of exploration and its place in the realm of idealism is now the frontier which is phenomenologically “closest” to us. This means that the drive which once was directed at environmental expansion, has been reallocated according to our current environment, that of the social world, the world of language, ideas, and their cultural transmission – memes. Given that ideas rule the social milieu in which our Being is oriented, given that memes and ideas are the currency which direct our consciousness and its impulses, that is, beyond the instinctual, it is deducible that we may “seek the truth” for merely biologically fitness enhancing purposes even in the realm of ideas.

Those ideas which captivate us and inform our beliefs plays an integral role in shaping the mode of Being from which we act from in the world. While these ideas and their subsequent belief modification may be consciously formulated, the level at which they affect our psyche and our value system is stemming from subconscious alteration. Meaning, we may conscious receive the memetic material from reading, from conceptually piecing together information, from auditory sources, from reflection upon experience, but the content that arises into consciousness which states “I believe something” is integrated based on a predisposition that is wholly subconscious, and, from one perspective, even sub-psyche. Our conscious rationalization of beliefs is merely the expression of an attempt to justify what we have deterministically been led to perceive as the truth. Given that this perceived, intuited, believed, “truth” plays a role in modifying our value system and mode of Being, we can connect its role to the biological “goals” inherent in our DNA.

The connectivity to a subconscious stratum, and our mode of Being, implies a modification of our conscious attention, and our very navigation of the world we find ourselves in. Thus, the seeking of truth is always a perceived fitness enhancing activity for evolutionary reasons. On the basis of what we believe to be “true” our behavior is modified, the way we interact with others is modified, how we spend our time, and what we perceive is all modified. These changes based on our belief system can be better or worse in relation to the replication of our genome, the task which the survival machine which we intuit consciously as “us” is tasked at accomplishing. What we intuit as “true” can have several senses, towards which I expound upon in “Truth Claims and their Corollaries”, but one such method of interpreting the word “truth” is the pragmatic utility of a content upon our subjective experience, or upon what is practically beneficial and useful. This method relies on the empirical data that we can phenomenologically analysis, and it is from this methodology which we will perceive, as it is all we truly have available to us (everything else is merely an abstraction from the empirical groundwork).

We may attempt to consciously hold on to the “belief” that what is true is the objectively verifiable statements, or that which holds logical consistency, what “true” necessarily implies for a biological organism, in the preconscious processes, is what is beneficial and useful to the organism, which, for us, is the DNA’s protection and reproduction. Thus we may consciously state that we don’t believe something to be true merely because we wish it to be, but because it is, but the reason why we believe that truth claim, stems from a subconscious belief in the utility of such a belief. If we believe something to be true due to verifiable evidence, logical conclusions, in consequence of the scientific method and its deductions, the very belief in such a method’s veracity is for pragmatically utilizable reasons. Taken from a phenomenological perspective, we act out what we believe to be truly the most effective at accomplishing a goal. Whether this goal may be looked at from an Individual psychology perspective, as constituting power and dominion over our environment, or whether it be social feeling and an inferiority complex looking to be rectified, or if we look at it as removal of dissatisfaction, or the pursual of satisfaction, the underpinning perspective here is irrelevant. What is necessary for the “seeking of truth” is that it only correlates with Objective Truth in that it is objectively the drive of our subjective experience for a reason that is biological in nature. If we consciously hold the view that it is being done otherwise, the statement itself is arising for fitness enhancing purposes of the individual. Perhaps this idea is popular in the current social milieu, perhaps we attribute reason and logic to its statement, no matter from which experiential factors the statement “seek the truth” and our actual “seeking” and “finding”, finds its conscious rationale to be, its core structure is founded upon the pragmatic utility for the individual.

Thus beliefs which seem wholly contradictory in their expounding are understandable, such as “I am a nihilist”. The belief that everything is meaningless wholly negates the very existence of the Being which finds it significant to think such a thought, or state it to others. It is a statement that is destroyed by logic upon any comparison with “objective truth”. Yet, for the conscious individual who states such a belief of the meaninglessness of all experience, there is an objective truth that the content is consciously believed to be representing the “truth”. How can this be so? How can we explain such a seemingly contradictory phenomena existing? The statement and its corresponding subculture of adherents find it mutually beneficial to their psyche to state their “nihilist” belief. There must be a psychological benefit to the individual who can live with the conscious belief in a world devoid of meaning, otherwise, they would not be alive. If we follow the statement to its logical conclusion, and truly take it as the truth, the individual would find no reason to state the belief, nor reason to believe it, nor reason to breathe, eat, and continue living. The fact that self-purported nihilists exist confirms our deduction that pragmatic truth runs our belief system, whether or not we consciously believe it. There is a significance and a meaning behind any idea, any belief that we may hold, and this significance impacts our Being in such a way that we value the “seeking of truth” both for the pragmatic utility in the mode of being which is supported by the very journey of seeking, and of the pragmatic utility of the discovered “truth”, regardless if such a truth is modified by the utility it has to the individual, regardless of its logical or non-logical justification. Whether that is spurred by social context, environment, indoctrination, survival, or purported philosophical consistency and reason, the underlying factor which all phenomenologically experienced “seeking of truth” contains is the pragmatic utility of the endeavor.

We seek the truth for the same reason we do anything. Because of existence. Because of life. Because of DNA. Because of evolutionarily beneficial prerogatives. Because of our developed neuronal structure. Because of our past experiences. Because of our perceptual system mediated by a value system which informs our Being, and the subsequent orientation we have to our environment. Because of the social milieu we find ourselves in, and its cybernetic influence upon us, and us upon it. Because of the Being which we are. We seek the truth because of its pragmatic utility towards the goals which we have developed from the totality of influences and factors which make up, in the overarching synthesis, the totality of our Being. The principle of sufficient reason guides us to deduce that there is good reason for these goals, and we find explanations for driving factors from many perspectives, across the domains of philosophy, psychology, and biology, yet, experientially, we find them in the content of our subjective experience. For us, this is the most real, and from this, stem all our pursuits and goals. If we ask ourselves, why do we seek the truth? It is because it is the most natural thing for us to do, and we couldn’t do otherwise.

Temporalitys Affect Upon our Being

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: August 5th 2020

In analyzing the way temporality affects us, we can look at two phenomena which show an apparent gulf in the way we regard ourselves within time. In spontaneous actions time appears to be a nonessential aspect due to the action not occurring in conscious experience. External stimuli, and the manner in which we interact with it, produces a reaction that happens in an order of time that falls below conscious awareness’s threshold for interaction. Our pre-conscious perceptual system produces a nervous reaction that responds to stimuli, and we only experience the situation consciously in conceptualizations of a retrospective nature. On the other hand, consciously deliberated action appears within the domain of experience, and thus we regard it as being of a different nature than that of spontaneous actions. Action resulting from conscious awareness or deliberation may be itself modified by the deliberation, but the very deliberation itself, without a doubt, is the result of the nervous systems modification of the environment it finds itself in, as in the case of spontaneity, yet this content reaches conscious awareness. To say conscious awareness produces the action which follows deliberation, is to speak only a partial truth.

Both phenomena are the results of our Being becoming modified by our immediate environment, and producing a reciprocating response to it, the difference is in the amount of time that lapses. In the first case, the time that passes is less than conscious experience can grasp, and happens outside the domain of our awareness, in the later, the experience can be quantified as resulting from a period of time in which awareness was present of the process. The way we view these two experiences, and the way we intuit their relationship to our totality of who we are, our “Being”, is grounded upon phenomenological experience, but they share temporal modification of a subtle nature. In what manner does temporality and the actions which stem from our Being originate? What is the subtle nature that produces both actions, and why do we experience them differently? How does our reaction to time elicit a view of self-control?

In regards to spontaneity and action that is preceded by conscious deliberation, they both are inextricably connected to time, the differentiation is merely conceptual, and an illusion. Conscious deliberation is an act of spontaneity, yet is recognized as being altogether different in nature, as spontaneous acts are often described as “instinctual” or “habitual”. While spontaneous acts aren’t experienced within subjective consciousness, the very conscious deliberation which precedes an action is itself manifest from the unconscious. We do not choose our thoughts before they appear in conscious awareness, and thus the deliberation, and action that follows, stems from the same deterministic framework. In a sense, conscious direction is as instinctual and conditional as unconscious reciprocation to our environment, it is itself a reaction to our current place in time and space, given our current mental development as conditioned by our past historicity. While these characterizations do differentiate it, from an appearance perspective, conscious deliberation arises in a manner that is only different in that it is experienced consciously. It still arises in response to an environment with causal factors which are out of our conscious control.

Time is something geared into our existence, anything that happens can be explained by its temporal and causal nature. If we explore phenomenologically our experience then we can see how the conscious deliberation and spontaneous action are both moments which mysteriously appear in the present by our Being undergoing different modifications through time, producing different modes of being. These different modes of being might be that which retrospectively labels a situation as happening habitually, or, if the action or movement occurs after conscious forethought, we say it was an act of our “self” or of “freewill”. The fundamental phenomenological difference is in the perceived lapse of time in conscious deliberation, and the lack of conscious acuity in recognizing it in “spontaneous” actions.

There is a gulf between the conscious present and its pre-perceptual causal instantiation- but – so too is there in spontaneous reaction. We only recognize the illusory gulf between the two due to our conscious examination, and in reflection they appear to be different, of a different temporal order, yet, in the experience of either, they are both manifestations of the same Being geared into its temporal wave as it flows through us, merely reacting in either direction in the way which it is conditioned to do so.

Time is fundamentally entwined with our Being, and the transience and modification it plays upon how we perceive subjective experience can be revealed phenomenologically, by returning to the experience itself and how it appears to be of a certain nature depending on the amount of perceived time lapsing in the “event” under scrutiny. There is an illusion that spontaneity and conscious deliberation are not manifestations of the same “Being”. We say we didn’t mean to, or it wasn’t our choice, when we react in a habitual or instinctual manner, that is, unconsciously. But why do we not apply the same explanation to conscious thoughts as they arise? Or the actions which follow them? They too aren’t our “choice”, they merely are appearing in conscious awareness. The temporal wave we find ourselves in, in the moment of spontaneity, and in an action with conscious pre-conceptualization, both carry the modification of time, occur in time, and take place for good “scientific reasons”.

Science is fundamental, yet a different area of analysis. We do not deny science in phenomenology, nor accept it, we merely bracket it and head “to the things themselves”, that is, as they appear in perception, consciousness, experience, and are formed due to a significance, meaning, a sense, all of which is presumed in any scientific enterprise, and not made explicit.

The temporal structure as embodied is inextricably connected to the milieu in which we find ourselves thrown into. Our anticipation of the future, our projection and always living ahead of ourselves – in time – as the future comes, develops out of a constructed style of being that has been modified by the past. The connectivity within the present of our Beings orientation informed by the past and modified by perception of the future is necessary to describe any experience or reflective moment within time, any phenomenological analysis requires times elucidation to provide context to the phenomenon. In other words, we are constantly being modified by our orientation towards time, our relation to the past, and future must be taken into account for any explanation of a present moment experience. It is for these reasons that we fail to accurately perceive the equal expression of our Being in “fast” response and “slow response”, that we fail to have an automatic insight into the origin of consciously conceived phenomena, and attribute them to stemming from “us” in a controlling manner.

While the appearance of control is only present when an action or thought is brought into conscious awareness, we must recognize the Being from which it stems, and the manner it does so, to see it clearly. The next conscious thought we think is no more under “our” control than the reaction to accidentally placing my hand on a hot stove, both reactions are triggered by stimuli, internalized by our perceptive system, modified by our experience, and resulting in an action that follows. We constantly are orientating ourselves towards the environment we find ourselves in, and the manner we do so is based on our embodied perception, genetic inheritance, experiences, and current mode of being. The current mode of being is itself a manifestation of our historicity, and is likewise explainable on deterministic grounds. Conscious thought can appear to decide between options, and it can lead to us choosing an option, but that choice, that conscious decision, or indecision, is all representative of the totality of the Being from which it stems from.