SO it's easier for me to go to the store and get potable Fijian water than it is for a Fijian, living in Fiji, to do the same.
cf. Steven Landsburg's argument that not consuming is the same as performing undirected, random acts of generaosity or charity.
cf. Prof. Dierdre McCloskey's contention that ethical consumption does not = the downfall of our modern capitalist economic system. Relevant passage:
"Nothing would befall the market economy in the long run if we tempered our desires down to one car and a small house and healthy foods from the co-op."
Friday, July 13, 2007
on transcendence
So I'm reading Deirdre McCloskey's The Bourgeois Virtues. Not because I agree necessarily, but because it's interesting. And well written. But there is a section on love, the virtue--as opposed to what I ask myself as I make that clarification--and there is the idea that transcendence is necessary, that love cannot come from humans, it must somehow be participated in even though it is transcendent. [[I'll have to clarify this.]]
Anyway, I'm thinking: transcendence is a drive, not a goal. Once transcendence has been achieved, then it is no longer transcendent, as it now belongs to the sphere of the subtranscendental- or the 'merely' human. Sorry. I'm too much of a humanist to use merely without reservations because unless you are talking cosmology, people and human activity is pretty much it. The mind precedes its objects, as the Dhammapadda says, and the collective mind precedes the realm of human experience.
ANyway, transcendence is not achieved; it is performed. The drive to extend the realm/sphere of human experience necessarily changes (expands?) that realm which then must expand towards the new transcendence. It's a never ending (possibly eternally (for certain values of eternally) recurring) process.
Thus the transcendent doesn't come from anywhere but from us
Q: is this true, or at least a useful definition of, transcendence then?
Related musing on teleology: what if certain processes are teleological, but continue on aimlessly once the telos has been reached?
Anyway, I'm thinking: transcendence is a drive, not a goal. Once transcendence has been achieved, then it is no longer transcendent, as it now belongs to the sphere of the subtranscendental- or the 'merely' human. Sorry. I'm too much of a humanist to use merely without reservations because unless you are talking cosmology, people and human activity is pretty much it. The mind precedes its objects, as the Dhammapadda says, and the collective mind precedes the realm of human experience.
ANyway, transcendence is not achieved; it is performed. The drive to extend the realm/sphere of human experience necessarily changes (expands?) that realm which then must expand towards the new transcendence. It's a never ending (possibly eternally (for certain values of eternally) recurring) process.
Thus the transcendent doesn't come from anywhere but from us
Q: is this true, or at least a useful definition of, transcendence then?
Related musing on teleology: what if certain processes are teleological, but continue on aimlessly once the telos has been reached?
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