Do you think we need a 'value North Star'?

[coberst]

Do you think we need a ‘value North Star’?

 

It appears to me that we sapiens need a ‘value North Star’ upon which to fix our voyage. We need a reference point upon which we can focus our attention when trying to determine what of value we can and should do in life.

 

Religion, or God, serves as the ‘value North Star’ for some people; for others it is nationalism; for others, that fix is to own as much good stuff as possible; to others it is power; for some it is family; and I guess there are many other such ultimate values.

 

I have tried to examine my inner voices to determine just what my value North Star is and does it need to be changed. I have determined that, by some turn of events, perhaps completely willy-nilly, my value North Star is life on this planet. My guidance for fixing value is ultimately dependent upon its aiding or hindering life on this planet.

 

I often speculate that human life is a hindrance to maximizing the ‘good life’, of all life, on this planet. I often speculate that if all life on this planet were given a vote in this matter that they would throw sapiens overboard.

 

What do you think?

[sanctus]

If you read my second signature (the utopy one) I have a value north star for mankind: have an evolution of the societies so that one day a society which needs no laws (because they would be useless, as common sense is developped enough to make them a waste of time) can exist.

 

If you want my individual value north star, then I guess it is to be able if I get old to look back on my life and think that it wasn't wasted. This I can achieve by supporting changes which follow my ideology, even if my ideology might change in time I don't think that it ever change so much that I'd be against a choice made earlier.

[coberst]

I thin that Rousseau might be helpful in this matter.

 

Rousseau was offering “the Science of Society something great, unprecedented—just what it needed: an ideal type of man…it was holistic, spiritual, nonreductive, descriptive, phenomenal…to describe man taken as a total thinking, feeling, free agent.” Rousseau showed that morality could be designed by woman and man in accordance to an ideal created by them. Rousseau determined that the “science of man” could have meaning only as “an active ideal-type science”.

 

Newtonian science left little room of such an idealistic model. It propounded a science of Science; the scientific method made man into a cipher, which served best when served lest. Rousseau pushed back; make humanity first and science second. When humanity is placed first “Existence is the thing—Man—the mass of men—Humanity; human music not the music of the spheres, that’s what interests man, the man of flesh and blood.”