Why Sam's Morality centered around minimizing suffering and maximizing pleasure completely misunderstands human existence.
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This is an independent part, separate from parts 1 and 2 of Wrecked Sam Harris' Moral Landscape. (link https://steemit.com/vidarreturns/@vidarreturns/video-wrecked-sam-harris-moral-landscape)
In this Finale we are going deep into the concepts of VidarReturns, and the role of Morality in our lives...
When we finally understand that the Morality of Sam Harris is based around feelings of the brain, we can begin to understand it's flaws and consequences. It's all about maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.
In a perfect universe, relying on pain and pleasure might not be an issue, but we don't live in a perfect universe. Our senses of pain and pleasure are flawed and we are imperfect beings. In a perfect universe, we would experience immediate and constant pain from something like smoking cigarettes. Instead, it relieves stress and pain daily for people around the world. Eating pizza for dinner everyday should cause some kind of intense reoccurring pain because of it's detriment to one's health, yet it is a dietary staple of many college students.
We could imagine the example of another person who loves to sky dive, and suppose this person dies from sky diving. They were experiencing pleasure that ultimately lead to their death. Sam can't say they weren't experiencing "well-being". All of us will eventually die. Even if we know that a set of actions will lead to our death, as long as the pleasure we experience in the present is ever increasing, then it fits Sam's definition of "well-being".
As stated in my previous video, I see this as the major failure of Sam's morality. It doesn't recognize anything about the lineage of human existence. It doesn't recognize anything in regards to the past or future. It only concerns itself with people in the present. It's perfectly willing to sacrifice the future of humanity for those alive today. Such action or morality is a complete perversion of the nature of humans, or any animal species for that matter.
So how does Sam get it so wrong? Well firstly, we can't deny that feelings play an extremely important role in life, but what are the value of feelings, and where did they come from? Generation after successful generation for thousands of years, certain things caused humans pain while others didn't. Why does the smell of feces make us disgusted, but yet we can't smell an extremely deadly gas like carbon-monoxide at all? The answer is that all the feelings we experience are directly related to our survival and reproduction.
Feces generally contains harmful material, and we have been evolving negative feelings toward feces since the beginning of time, but carbon-monoxide was not a threat until very modern times. If our ancestors were never in danger of carbon-monoxide poisoning, then there was no reason for them to evolve a disgust or any smell for it. Things that inhibited our survival and reproduction evolved into bad feelings. Conversely, things that helped us survive and reproduce evolved into good feelings.
For example, eating fruit gives us a good feeling. Fruits provide us with many valuable vitamins and nutrients, but our feelings are flawed. We evolved to taste almost nothing but the sugar in fruits, and not the vitamins. That's why we can get a rush from drinking sugary beverages and cola's, but get practically no feeling from eating vitamin supplements.
The point is this, such feelings (good or bad) take a long time to evolve, and are imperfect. Our feelings exist as very flawed and rudimentary indicators of what to go towards or avoid in life.
This is where Morality comes to have great value, and guide us in our lives. Religious texts, with intelligent principles for life, exist to suppliment the flaws and imperfections of our feelings. Old religious principles would forbid seemingly strange things, like eating pig or other animals. At the time those texts were written, such meats caused many people to become sick or die, due to lack of knowledge in processing meat cleanly. Today, we thoroughly cook meat, and thoroughly cooked meat kills no one, but what would have happened if texts didn't forbid eating such meats? People would have died, until they either A) evolved the ability to eat the meats without being cleanly processed, or B) evolved a disgusting taste or even smell from such meats.
Again, this is to illustrate that the value of morality is in supplementing our survival because our feelings about reality are terribly flawed. And preventing people from dying from meat is only a tiny example of how old religions saved people and increased survival. For more examples that encompass morality, we must also consider these Religious principles 1) Valuing honesty. Those who live a dishonest life are respected by no one. 2) Practice controlling anger. Anger is an emotion that distracts and destroys the ability of someone to think or concentrate. Out of control anger ruins one's relationships and personal health. 3) Learning to live life with positive gratitude. In the absence of gratitude, people are plaqued with all kinds of negative feelings, from jealousy, to frustration, to depression. 4) Respect for others, and the hierarchy of family and community. When individuals lose respect for these hierarchies, chaos and disorder will inevitably follow. The family structure is vital to the survival of humans.
With these examples, I'm only just scratching the surface here on the depth of morality, and for more on this, follow me to be notified when I release the guide, First Principles of Vidar, coming in 2020.
So here's the Finale. It was by following such intelligent principles, many tribes were able to survive that otherwise would have died. And by organizing tribes of people according to principles of morality which enhance collective survival, humans have come to dominate the Earth.
And where are the great Secularist civilizations? Or civilizations that had a morality akin to maximizing good feelings? They don't exist, and they never existed. Those tribes or groups of people that abandoned or rejected such morality which prioritized survival have been erased from the history of human species.
There has never been a great civilization of humanity came from the soft hedonistic morality of maximizing pleasure and self satisfaction in every persons life. Hedonism has been described by many religious people as a disgusting evil. Why is it evil? Maybe God hates it, or maybe it's the work of demonic spirits. Whatever the reason, there is one thing we can know for certain- hedonism is degenenerate and destructive to our continued existence.
All of us are imperfect beings, and society relying on feelings, in the absence of specific intelligent principles to guide us in life, will bring about an inescapable demise.
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