wilbjammin

Er... this block quote totally confused me!

Ok, now that I've established for myself that I didn't say that (it remarkably didn't sound like something I would say!), I have a few things to say.

Nope, I disagree! This does rather sound Machiavellian, and maybe you are of the mind that the ends justify the means... but this kind of thinking lends one to believe that life is an end in itself! This is unnecessarily nihilistic. First, what I don't understand is this "first instinct" concept. Many, many times in my life I've been confronted with situations so difficult and convoluted that I couldn't gain a "first instinct" response - either all possible choices are bad, or all possible choices are equal.

Think of the classic political realism. The whole basis for most political decisions is self-interest. In fact, the whole idea of the social contract that we have guaranteeing our freedoms come from Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes that say we do everything out of self-interest (and natural sociability with Grotius)! Can it be, in fact, that our first instincts are at times the absolute worst options? Have you ever had a bad day and your first response to it is to simply give up? Or maybe go out and just kill everyone that's pissing you off?

I'm not necessarily agreeing with Hobbes, but I think that choices that are made grant themselves to giving someone something that they want. That is all. The "highest choice" reasoning hovers in the realm of imagination and postulating... I'm not comfortable doing that because for me, my life is defined by action.

There is not a quote I could be more uncomfortable with. I think that many people value power over love.

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Innominate.