“Life can only be understood backwards; but must be lived forwards.” - Soren Kierkegaard

Couple of days ago I saw a post about on atheist community about a quote saying atheist can't base their morals on anything.

I commented that if religion didn't accept some premises like god, they wouldn't either. Some said I am wrong and downvoted me. So I decided to post here about to what extent can I be skeptical about premises, to see where I am mistaken (or commenters).

Before that post, for a while I had an idea that even the analytical truth/necessary truth (whatever you name it) like "a is equal to a" are premises which can not be proven (since they are the basics of our logic, which will we be in use to prove claims) even though they seem us to be true by intuition. They just have to be accepted to be able to further think about other things.

So my question is since we can question the correctness of basics of our logic and cant find an answer, we can not justify or learn anything. Also, there lays the problem of do we really understand the same thing from the same concepts, and does language limit us?

If I am mistaken, which is highly probable, please correct me and don't judge. I am not much of a philosophy reader.

I would really appreciate it if you could share some resources (video, article, book, anything...) about limits of our understanding, logic, language and related topics.

Thanks in advance...

Sincerely apologize if this is the wrong place for such a question(/rant).

The context of the question relates to "Self" and maybe about "Power" in general.

I'm assuming the following maxims hold true:

• Unexamined life not worth living...
• Philosophy is lived. Choices primarily determine your philosophy

Please to correct my assumptions or reasoning. Can elaborate on above if needed.

I tend to myself in circles regarding the importance of philosophizing and examining my life. Maybe it's a symptom of some mental issue.. With every new idea I learn, I now have to consider it and balance it with all I've learnt in the past. Each choice becomes a battle of value systems and ideas and perspectives and constraints. It's tiring to the point where I try not to think and just "do".

But then that path leads me to an autopilot where my choices fall to my default "human" state overridden by the philosophy modules installed at the time. Then it devolves into the unexamined life. Or then life throws a curveball. I have to snap out of it and need to reassess everything going into the philosophizing state above.

Philosophy feels like an indulgence.

I'm guessing this pendulum is not new. On a global scale, Academia are cutting philosophy department budgets as it's easier to divert money to "actionable" disciplines. No point in "wasting" time in thinking about thinking about doing things. Who needs a meta-compass if we need to walk the distance anyway (even though it helps a tremendous deal if the compass is in the right hands (which hold the power)).

I know I've reduced the argument to 2 buckets. I'm currently trying to consume Zen literature trying to get rid of my buckets and/or/xor trying to bring harmony of various buckets in my life.. (https://tinyurl.com/verse20)

My question is: how do you manage all this philosophizing in your life? How useful is this indulgence?

Happy to accept any books/articles on this. Thank you.

I guess this was mainly a Continental thing, but for a while philosophers often wrote novels that in some way expounded their philosophy. I think Nietzsche was perhaps one of the earliest, with Zarathustra. All the French existentialists wrote novels, too. What happened to this trend?

EDIT: I just realised that arguably this goes back all the way to Plato! But I was thinking less of straightforward, largely plot-free dialogues and more of full fledged novels, like Sartre's Nausea.

Is there really no alternative justice system than crime and punishment? Seems that punishments are taken for granted as necessary and that we only debate on the reason it is accepted.

If not, can someone explain why it isn't?

Other than (metaphysical) anti-realism, which I'm under the impression is an umbrella for all types of denial that there is an independent, external reality.

I suppose you could even envision someone taking the stance that there is an external reality, because they have found empirical proof, which would make them a realist as well as a proponent of whatever this is.

The harm of religion is historically evident whereas the presence or absence of gods is not. Ultimately, the continued existence of religion is predicated on the indoctrination of children and suppression of rational thought. Therefore I am against religion but not necessarily against the idea of gods. For all we know gods are computer scientists and we are in their video game.

This guy single handedly put so many of my "feelings about the world" into context. It's a lecture series which goes through the aspects of philosophy trying to explore the topic of "Meaning".

For an novice like me, he related so many different concepts together and showed the nuances between ideologies throughout the world and various periods.Like a bore hole through the past.

Surprised it's free and glad it exists. Maybe one of you might find some video interesting. ~If you have any similar recommendations, feel free to share!~

Media file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/philosophizethis/Panpsychism_final.mp3?dest-id=144660

Perhaps this framework can be used as an attack on materialist environmentalists as much as capitalist industrialists and exploitative corporations. Start seeing forests and lakes as beings and not merely resources.

I've noticed a pattern, that wealth is privacy. If you take for example how people live.

1. Homeless, outdoors. No privacy at all.
2. Shared apartment
3. Private apartment with shared outdoor space
4. Private house
5. Gated community
6. Gated private estate

Or how people travel.

1. Walking in the street in full public view
2. On a bus or train or aeroplane
3. In a car
4. In a private convoy surrounded my staff, or in a private jet.

The poorest are always in public, in everything they do. The wealthiest are never seen, except when they choose to appear. There is a continuum in between of increasing wealth meaning increasing privacy.

But there are other possible perspectives. Wealth is the freedom to waste.

With wealth you can buy many things and leave them idle or dump them. You can travel and live and eat in wasteful ways. You can hire people to work for you, doing things you don't really need.

Things which are expensive are (to a large extent) so because their production is wasteful. The rich can utilise more expensive things.

So the problem with too much global consumption - too much emissions, electricity usage, mining, etc - is really a problem of too many rich people. There is no point restricting or banning these things - people will just find other ways to be wasteful - maybe even worse ones. The only way to solve these crisis is reduce wealth, by reducing inequality.

Wealth is power over people. Wealth is required to compel people to do things, to directly pay them to do your bidding, or to access the fruits of hours of labour through purchases. There is also bribery, access to lawyers etc, which allow more wealthy people to exert more power over their peers and society.

Are there other ways to understand wealth?

Socrates sought out those with reputations for wisdom. Who were the wise men he interviewed?