Is it a mistake to pursue happiness?
Is pursuing pleasure pursuing happiness?
Does all pleasure lead to happiness?
Is US Declaration of Independence wrong in encouraging Americans to pursue happiness, when so many would take it to mean the pursuit of pleasure ie hedonism?
If we were immortal, would we be infinitely immoral because the worst that mortals fear - an early and unnatural death - would be removed?
Are we only moral because we fear the consequences of not being moral?
Is the purpose of law to limit our immorality?
Is the purpose of religion to give us moral principles?
If we are just, we create justice. If we are unjust, we create injustice. If we are good, we would want to be just. If we are wise, we would know that being just creates the justice that we would benefit from and adds to the total fund of human virtue, while being unjust depletes it.
Is Life Really Worth Living?
The Book of Ecclesiastes
Talking about Hegel, National Socialism was a synthesis of what Hitler supposed was the long-term German national self-interest - war and empire - and the principles of state socialism.
Happiness is an end in itself.
Courage is the means to the end of the implementation and success of some risky undertaking.
Moderation is the means to the end of protecting our long term well-being.
Justice is an end in itself.
Truth is the means to the end of Justice since Justice relies on Truth.
Is it a mistake to pursue happiness?
Is pursuing pleasure pursuing happiness?
Does all pleasure lead to happiness?
Is US Declaration of Independence wrong in encouraging Americans to pursue happiness, when so many would take it to mean the pursuit of pleasure ie hedonism?
12:00 Religion is just bad science? But science is the study of material objects and natural phenomenon while religion is about morality. Engineering is not a substitute for philosophy.
20:00 Edina of AbFab is The Last Man posited by Nietzsche who cannot conceive of anything more important than herself. Does this mean she is a narcissist, sociopath, a psychopath and ultimately immoral and evil? Or is this just a grandiose way of referring to someone who is selfish, spoilt and silly?
24:00 "God is the lynchpin of moral, values and culture. When God is erased, the boundaries of things are erased." This explains liberal extremism and why they ignore their own rules and have no innate sense of justice. When you no longer follow your religion, you no longer follow any moral principles. Atheists who claim they follow their own moral principles will always be coming up against other atheists whose moral principles are in conflict with theirs with no moral system gaining any moral authority over enough people to impose the rule of law and by extension moral order.
Therefore God as even a hypothetical supreme authority is useful even to atheists, because atheists also want to enjoy the benefits of not living in a declining civilisation descending into chaos, irrationality and criminality.
38:00 MISTAKES - If we had religious principles we would attribute our mistakes to the breaking of these principles. No religion, no objective morality and no awareness of immorality and the cause of our mistakes.
Eternal Recurrence is only for people who have no real regrets or who have come to terms with their mistakes.
The heroic age is when your nation has a low average age.
The age of senescence is when the birth rate declines and your society is feminised.
20:00 What is our "condition" and what is our "predicament"? That we are fallible and have a tendency to err, presumably. We choose to become wise to avoid falling into error. Moral principles give us a range of permissible actions which are intended to prevent us from falling into error.
But what does it mean when the good suffer? The Panglossian view is that we live in the best of all possible worlds even if the good suffer, because God will always have a good reason for everything that happens and is said to move in mysterious ways. If the good do suffer unjustly, their belief in an omnipotent and perfectly moral God who will put things right in the next life or afterlife will give those who believe comfort giving them the capacity to bear their sufferings with fortitude.
If the individual is comforted by this belief, then surely would a nation. If an individual's behaviour is better regulated with religion, then surely would a nation and preferably all nations of the world in order to minimise bad behaviour, error and disaster.
The foolish imperialistic Europeans have behaved like the Ancient Greeks and exhausted themselves in war. America became the New Rome and is now declining.
Is moral regeneration possible for declining empires? Yes, but only through war and revolution and, last but not least, repentance. The least we can do is learn from our mistakes. To learn from them, we must at least acknowledge them.
Jews have an excellent 4 stage process of repentance. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-teshuvah-2076801
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