And is there a word for it? Taken off a website:
Critical thinking is a sham. Why should one point of view be deemed any more valuable or authoritative than any other?
Should consensus be the judge of values, or past practice? Traditions and culture, that’s all it is. And bias. I’m biased, and you’re biased.
We’re all possessed of a bias the roots of which are an intrinsic aspect of our biological makeup.
When I make my claims and state my opinions, I disavow my instincts and go with what I personally feel to be pure logic unadulterated by feel-good morals.
How do the abstract concepts of good or bad apply to an opinion?
“Good/Evil”, “Nice/Mean”, “Rich/Poor”. These dichotomies are simple abstractions. They don’t mean anything. They don’t contain truthful statements. There is nothing of any inherent value in them. Water is wet, fire is hot. Those are intrinsic values. Stare at a penny long enough, and you’ll figure that it’s worth a cent, when it’s really just a small copper disk.
Just look at currency, for example. Our money is backed by government fiat. That means that they have to actually declare its value. It isn’t backed by anything. The statement “A dollar bill is worth one dollar” is a form of fiction or self-delusion.
Who are we to decide the value of things for other people? What is value? Value is nothing, and nothing is of value. Aside from its conductive properties, even a bar of solid gold has no intrinsic value. Scarcity is imaginary, and holds no meaning to nature. Even meaning is meaningless.
Sure, one could argue that the distribution of certain elements in the universe resulted in the properties that gave rise to stars, planets and organic life itself, but it really wouldn’t have mattered in the big scheme of things if Earth hadn’t formed at all. We just wouldn’t be here. Big deal.
Organic life is the ultimate example of unwarranted self-importance. We keep saying that everything has a divine purpose, when it does not. It’s just… there. That’s it.
Yes, even if everyone on this planet were to expire – including myself – nothing would have happened at all. After all, nothing is worth anything.
Billions of years from now, our sun will be dead. Billions of years after that, the Universe may cool to the point where even information itself cannot exist. What meaning will your ethics and values hold then? Absolutely none.
Why shackle yourself with the bonds of society if their values and ethics do not hold true to the savage chaos of nature? Savage. Chaos. Even these words hold no meaning. Just symbols. Imaginary symbols. Even numbers are a fiction of the mind. A mind limited by the constraints of ordinary matter and biochemical reactions.
Morals, ethics and values are a contrived aspect of human existence, and I challenge you to find evidence to the contrary.
The only thing that should matter to humanity is our continued survival and growth as a species. All else is secondary. A diversion, and nothing more. If we must preserve our environment and the other living things on this planet in order to preserve ourselves, then so be it. If they impede our expansion, they shall be despoiled as necessary. Survival is of foremost importance. That’s all there is to it.
Yes, one could argue that I’m effectively saying that laws are pointless and one could kill a human being with no impact on society at large, but that would be missing the point entirely. It’s not just the laws that are an artificial, unscientific construct; it’s the society itself, and the economy which underpins that society.
How is murder different from war? There’s no difference at all. It’s just a larger organizational structure partaking in violent acts, attempting to legitimize their actions by appeal to consensus. A fallacy if there ever was one. Keep in mind that an individual living being is an organizational structure. Our bodies are composed of various types of cells and filled to the brim with a range of microbes and chemical compounds all working in perfect balance.
Each living being is a government unto themselves, so if I wage war on another human being, that should be no different than when a bunch of people decide to do it. Why should I – or anyone else – bow to the flawed, subjective consensus of others? Think about that for a minute.
What is this, nihilism? Or the cold, hard truth?
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No, just a mixture of nonsense and banality, from someone who hasn’t even read a children’s encyclopedia or he’d know that he’s very far from the first to ask these questions, and there are pretty simple answers. He appears to be unaware of the social institutions developed over the last quarter million or so years (can’t remember exactly) of homo sapiens existence, precisely to deal with the fact that we are not alone, but are one among similar others, who we need, but are also threatened by.
“Each of us is a government”
No we aren’t.
” Why should I obey the law[roughly]”
Because you’ll get put in jail or worse, unless you’re very clever. Do you feel lucky?