Defend human dignity - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Makhnov · 12-13-2010, 12:59 PM

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---------- Post added at 11:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:50 PM ----------

Are we to beleive that living human beings walk around carrying an eternal soul , merely because the alternative makes us feel icky, or makes us feel afraid? In normal conversation, the objectification of the human body is bandied about as being "obviously" bad. For example, van Dusen's plasticized corpse exhibits have been likened unto pornography, since they both similarly objectify human flesh. And we "all know" that the objectification in porn is bad and wrong (allegedly).

But I do not completely understand what the alternative is supposed to be. Is the alternative to Objectification, "Subjectification"? Are we expected to walk around and play a make-believe game that emotions ... No; more specifically, certain kinds of emotions are to be sanctified and promoted, because they are more important than another?

Even if we have a collective empathetic emotional response to something, how does that collective empathy translate to those particular emotions being more sacred or more important than any other? All emotions are chemical reactions in the brain. So why should these particular chemical reactions be more or less wrong, or more or less important than these other reactions?

In the extreme case, should we act as if our emotions somehow transcend time and space? Is the regular, day-to-day common-sense conversation expected to pretend that emotions are the demonstration of a timeless, infinite soul?

I do not have enormous respect for Frederick Nietzsche or his body of work. I do not consider myself a "fanboy" of Nietzsche. However, I will invoke two of his more popular arguments as they are pertinent to this topic.

First, a popular sentiment: "In the absence of a supernatural soul, there is no compelling argument to be made for human dignity."

Secondly, another popular sentiment: "If there is no God, then there is no meaning to life."

Both of these sentiments, which are widespread, (I will make that claim without citation) send us flying headlong into the philosophy of Nietzsche.

Nietzsche died in 1899. Because of the time and setting of his life, he had the elbow room and leadway to argue and defend a certain kind of ethical system. He argued that christianity was a failed system of ethics, which operated as a sickness against the vital health of people. Christianity for Nietzsche was the ethics of a herd instinct, which he saw as a sign of weakness. As an alternative, he proposed a system of ethics which sanctifies and promotes individual power. Following closely in the tradition of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche suggested that the vital essence in all living things was a will to power.

Largely due to what happened in the first half of the 20th century, philosophers and intellectuals alike recoil in horror from Nietzsche's ethics. There is a kind of historical understanding now that this kind of ethics was being employed by the dictatorships of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and also found within the atheistic russian empire led by Joseph Stalin. Nietzsche's ethics of purely physical, individualistic power leads directly down the road to society-wide human depravity, suffering, and atrocities; to genocide, eugenics, warfare, etc etc. More on this below.

Return briefly to sentiment number 2 above. I have suggested for many years, that if we cannot find some way of getting out of the trap of that argument, then we have not moved beyond Nietzsche, historically. In essence, if we cannot find a third corner to the "God is real"/"Life is Meaningless"/X triangle, our intellectual and ethical development is stuck spinning its wheels with Nietzsche sometime around 1889. It matters not whether you agree with him. What matters is that Nietzsche has drawn a line in the sand, and we have yet to overcome him -- to break away from his paradigm completely.

I don't personally subscribe to the version of history which says that objectification of the body is a slippery slope to political atrocities. A countering example would be the fact that the Nazis were censoring many avante garde artists. They said the art was degenerate, and that the artists were suffering from "sick minds". But in particular, and what is most important to this topic, the Nazis claimed that the artwork of the expressionists denigrated the German Woman.

The idea that art would denigrate women, or in particular the ideal of the "German Woman" is very suspicious, and I would say further that it is simply impossible to square this Nazi sentiment with the theory that the Nazis were in favor of objectification. To clarify and summarize, I am claiming that if one begins to objectify other races, poles, slavs, africans as being products of natural selection, one cannot simply along the sanctity and dignity of the German Woman along for the ride on the same biological bandwagon.

A second example that runs contrary to that version of history, is one that is very widespread among actual academics and historians in universities. They point at racial ideology as the pivot point for the atrocities of the 20th century. I ask you to approach this subject carefully, because there is a strong tendency to claim that "Well, racial ideology is what you get after you objectify human beings and look at the world like an atheist!" If your own mind leads you in that direction, my suggestion to you is to actually read what the high-brass nazis wrote in their books. In particular, Alfred Rosenberg. I think you will find that they are far more mystical, and far more ethnically biased than you would imagine. The idea that national boundaries rope off various genetic clades of humans in Europe is not sound science. And no modern biologist would claim that the Aryan Nordic race was "created separately" from the lower races. But this kind of mystical racism is saturated in the works of Hitler and Rosenberg.

It seems to me that the fear of slippery slopes engendered by objectification have less to do with any historical causal links, and more to do with the protection and defense of a certain (largely american) type of judeo-christian morality.

Zeraph · 12-13-2010, 01:27 PM

Wow, long post to say few words.

I don't really care one way or another, if we have a soul, if not, if God is real, if not, etc. Seriously don't get why people care so much. Curiousity sure, but such religious devotion? I don't understand it. It matters not really. You have your principles, you live by them. Let the afterlife be what it be.

The_Jazz · 12-13-2010, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeraph

Wow, long post to say few words.

I don't really care one way or another, if we have a soul, if not, if God is real, if not, etc. Seriously don't get why people care so much. Curiousity sure, but such religious devotion? I don't understand it. It matters not really. You have your principles, you live by them. Let the afterlife be what it be.

Zeraph, at the risk of surprising you as much as you surprised me, I agree with every single word in your post. I could have written it myself.

Baraka_Guru · 12-13-2010, 02:05 PM

I usually take the Buddhist position.

Humanity, like many beings, wishes for happiness and deplores misery. There is dignity in helping others find happiness and avoid/alleviate misery. There is dignity in seeking this for oneself.

I believe this to be true regardless of whether there is such thing as a soul or deities.

Makhnov · 12-15-2010, 02:40 PM

Dear forum posters,

Defend human dignity. Give me a reasoned defense of human dignity without resorting to threats of violence and without resorting to your own emotional preferences.

Okay go.

Walt · 12-16-2010, 12:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Makhnov

Dear forum posters,

Defend human dignity. Give me a reasoned defense of human dignity without resorting to threats of violence and without resorting to your own emotional preferences.

Okay go.

Yeah, its finals week here, too. I will defend human dignity if you can produce a full profile of bacterial pathogenesis with an emphasis on A-B type exotoxins.

Ourcrazymodern? · 12-16-2010, 04:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Makhnov

Dear forum posters,

Defend human dignity. Give me a reasoned defense of human dignity without resorting to threats of violence and without resorting to your own emotional preferences.

Okay go.

You're one, too. Without resorting to your own emotional preference, can you do it? Being a human, what other means have you?
Human dignity needs no defense as far as I can tell.

Makhnov · 12-18-2010, 11:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ourcrazymodern?

You're one, too. Without resorting to your own emotional preference, can you do it? Being a human, what other means have you?
Human dignity needs no defense as far as I can tell.

What do you say then to the complaint that Dusen's plasticized corpses are "bad"/"wrong" because they objectify the body in the same way as pornography?

And further, what is the entire basis of the argument that pornography is bad because it objectifies women? Let's investigate that on a deeper level rather than just conversationally accepting it. Let us get to the bottom of it by examining deeply why we feel or think it is wrong.

Turning people (or yourself) into an object is bad because...? Because why?

The Nazis called modern artists degenerate and then complained their paintings denigrated the German Woman. Why then is it okay for them to march romanian women into gas chambers, as if they were mere objects to be discarded? The Nazis felt the German Woman had dignity and that this dignity needed defending -- even on the artist's canvas. Why did they think this way? Do you agree with them? Etc?

Ourcrazymodern? · 12-22-2010, 02:23 PM

About plasticized corpses I have nothing to say because I didn't go look at them.
I'd venture they'd become irrelevant because they were corpses.
About looking at each other naked, it's fun. Taking a picture of a person doesn't make the subject into an object, unless they didn't take money for it or wish it to happen, the first of which is a completely different story, & the second of which is fantastic paranoia.
Do I think Naziism was a concept benefitting our species? I don't think drawing parallels (read this as borderlines) amongst us is ever a good idea.
These are parts of my reasons for thinking it wasn't a defense of anybody's dignity.
I like that you ask such hard questions.

My youngest tells me I must follow up such statements with "I'm gay!" but that wouldn't be all that dignified, would it?

kriswest · 12-29-2010, 06:35 AM

Human dignity is in the eye of the beholder, there is no one size fits all.

12-13-2010, 12:59 PM	#1 (permalink)
Makhnov Banned	Defend human dignity YouTube - Peter Singer - The Genius of Darwin: The Uncut Interviews - Richard Dawkins YouTube - I Know You Haven't Got Soul http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...8236744881885# YouTube - Survival a value? [conferencereport] ---------- Post added at 11:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:50 PM ---------- Are we to beleive that living human beings walk around carrying an eternal soul , merely because the alternative makes us feel icky, or makes us feel afraid? In normal conversation, the objectification of the human body is bandied about as being "obviously" bad. For example, van Dusen's plasticized corpse exhibits have been likened unto pornography, since they both similarly objectify human flesh. And we "all know" that the objectification in porn is bad and wrong (allegedly). But I do not completely understand what the alternative is supposed to be. Is the alternative to Objectification, "Subjectification"? Are we expected to walk around and play a make-believe game that emotions ... No; more specifically, certain kinds of emotions are to be sanctified and promoted, because they are more important than another? Even if we have a collective empathetic emotional response to something, how does that collective empathy translate to those particular emotions being more sacred or more important than any other? All emotions are chemical reactions in the brain. So why should these particular chemical reactions be more or less wrong, or more or less important than these other reactions? In the extreme case, should we act as if our emotions somehow transcend time and space? Is the regular, day-to-day common-sense conversation expected to pretend that emotions are the demonstration of a timeless, infinite soul? I do not have enormous respect for Frederick Nietzsche or his body of work. I do not consider myself a "fanboy" of Nietzsche. However, I will invoke two of his more popular arguments as they are pertinent to this topic. First, a popular sentiment: "*In the absence of a supernatural soul, there is no compelling argument to be made for human dignity." Secondly, another popular sentiment: "If there is no God, then there is no meaning to life.*" Both of these sentiments, which are widespread, (I will make that claim without citation) send us flying headlong into the philosophy of Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1899. Because of the time and setting of his life, he had the elbow room and leadway to argue and defend a certain kind of ethical system. He argued that christianity was a failed system of ethics, which operated as a sickness against the vital health of people. Christianity for Nietzsche was the ethics of a herd instinct, which he saw as a sign of weakness. As an alternative, he proposed a system of ethics which sanctifies and promotes individual power. Following closely in the tradition of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche suggested that the vital essence in all living things was a will to power. Largely due to what happened in the first half of the 20th century, philosophers and intellectuals alike recoil in horror from Nietzsche's ethics. There is a kind of historical understanding now that this kind of ethics was being employed by the dictatorships of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and also found within the atheistic russian empire led by Joseph Stalin. Nietzsche's ethics of purely physical, individualistic power leads directly down the road to society-wide human depravity, suffering, and atrocities; to genocide, eugenics, warfare, etc etc. More on this below. Return briefly to sentiment number 2 above. I have suggested for many years, that if we cannot find some way of getting out of the trap of that argument, then we have not moved beyond Nietzsche, historically. In essence, if we cannot find a third corner to the "God is real"/"Life is Meaningless"/X triangle, our intellectual and ethical development is stuck spinning its wheels with Nietzsche sometime around 1889. It matters not whether you agree with him. What matters is that Nietzsche has drawn a line in the sand, and we have yet to overcome him -- to break away from his paradigm completely. I don't personally subscribe to the version of history which says that objectification of the body is a slippery slope to political atrocities. A countering example would be the fact that the Nazis were censoring many avante garde artists. They said the art was degenerate, and that the artists were suffering from "sick minds". But in particular, and what is most important to this topic, the Nazis claimed that the artwork of the expressionists denigrated the German Woman. The idea that art would denigrate women, or in particular the ideal of the "German Woman" is very suspicious, and I would say further that it is simply impossible to square this Nazi sentiment with the theory that the Nazis were in favor of objectification. To clarify and summarize, I am claiming that if one begins to objectify other races, poles, slavs, africans as being products of natural selection, one cannot simply along the sanctity and dignity of the German Woman along for the ride on the same biological bandwagon. A second example that runs contrary to that version of history, is one that is very widespread among actual academics and historians in universities. They point at racial ideology as the pivot point for the atrocities of the 20th century. I ask you to approach this subject carefully, because there is a strong tendency to claim that "Well, racial ideology is what you get after you objectify human beings and look at the world like an atheist!" If your own mind leads you in that direction, my suggestion to you is to actually read what the high-brass nazis wrote in their books. In particular, Alfred Rosenberg. I think you will find that they are far more mystical, and far more ethnically biased than you would imagine. The idea that national boundaries rope off various genetic clades of humans in Europe is not sound science. And no modern biologist would claim that the Aryan Nordic race was "created separately" from the lower races. But this kind of mystical racism is saturated in the works of Hitler and Rosenberg. It seems to me that the fear of slippery slopes engendered by objectification have less to do with any historical causal links, and more to do with the protection and defense of a certain (largely american) type of judeo-christian morality.

12-13-2010, 02:05 PM	#4 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	I usually take the Buddhist position. Humanity, like many beings, wishes for happiness and deplores misery. There is dignity in helping others find happiness and avoid/alleviate misery. There is dignity in seeking this for oneself. I believe this to be true regardless of whether there is such thing as a soul or deities. __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

12-15-2010, 02:40 PM	#5 (permalink)
Makhnov Banned	Dear forum posters, Defend human dignity. Give me a reasoned defense of human dignity without resorting to threats of violence and without resorting to your own emotional preferences. Okay go. Last edited by Makhnov; 12-15-2010 at 02:42 PM..

12-22-2010, 02:23 PM	#9 (permalink)
Ourcrazymodern? still, wondering. Location: South Minneapolis, somewhere near the gorgeous gorge	About plasticized corpses I have nothing to say because I didn't go look at them. I'd venture they'd become irrelevant because they were corpses. About looking at each other naked, it's fun. Taking a picture of a person doesn't make the subject into an object, unless they didn't take money for it or wish it to happen, the first of which is a completely different story, & the second of which is fantastic paranoia. Do I think Naziism was a concept benefitting our species? I don't think drawing parallels (read this as borderlines) amongst us is ever a good idea. These are parts of my reasons for thinking it wasn't a defense of anybody's dignity. I like that you ask such hard questions. My youngest tells me I must follow up such statements with "I'm gay!" but that wouldn't be all that dignified, would it? __________________ BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

12-13-2010, 01:27 PM	#2 (permalink)
Zeraph Banned Location: The Cosmos	Wow, long post to say few words. I don't really care one way or another, if we have a soul, if not, if God is real, if not, etc. Seriously don't get why people care so much. Curiousity sure, but such religious devotion? I don't understand it. It matters not really. You have your principles, you live by them. Let the afterlife be what it be.

12-29-2010, 06:35 AM	#10 (permalink)
kriswest Upright	Human dignity is in the eye of the beholder, there is no one size fits all.