The Law of Love

Tag: history

  • Manson’s book about how ‘everything is f*cked’ and how it relates to hope and the happiness

    I wrote about Manson’s book “The Subtle Art of Not GIving a F*ck” and now we turn our attention to his other book…

    “Everything Is F*cked” –

    Core Premise

    • Life is materially better than ever, yet people feel spiritually and psychologically bankrupt.
    • Hope is the ultimate resource, and society is losing it.

    1. The Paradox of Progress

    • Comfort, wealth, and technology have increased; anxiety, depression, and cynicism have also risen.
    • Material success ≠ happiness.

    Lesson: Focus on internal values and meaning, not external validation.

    2. The Crisis of Hope

    • Hope comes from believing in a larger narrative or purpose.
    • Modern ideologies (consumerism, politics, social media) often provide false or shallow hope.

    Lesson: Cultivate hope through authentic values and personal responsibility.

    3. Values and Responsibility

    • Poor or destructive values: instant gratification, entitlement, avoidance of discomfort.
    • Good values: long-term responsibility, resilience, honesty, enduring struggle.

    Lesson: Choose values that prepare you for adversity, not just comfort.

    4. Meaning and the Mind

    • Humans naturally create meaning, even in meaningless circumstances.
    • Problems arise when meaning is based on illusions, fantasies, or moral superiority.

    Lesson: Base life meaning on reality, responsibility, and ethical principles, not vanity or social status.

    5. Pain is Good

    • Suffering is essential for growth, character, and hope.
    • Avoiding discomfort leads to nihilism, cynicism, or stagnation.

    Lesson: Embrace pain as a teacher and guide.

    6. Self-Deception & Society

    • Modern people often blame external forces instead of accepting personal responsibility.
    • Freedom and hope require owning your life and choices.

    Lesson: Stop blaming, start acting consciously and deliberately.

    7. Key Takeaways

    1. Life is difficult and uncertain — avoid illusions of comfort.
    2. Meaning, hope, and fulfillment come from enduring struggle responsibly.
    3. True freedom = responsibility + honesty + clear values.
    4. Happiness is byproduct of growth and ethical alignment, not external success.

    Practical Application

    • Identify your core values and align your life with them.
    • Practice resilience and delayed gratification.
    • Face problems instead of avoiding them.
    • Maintain realistic optimism, grounded in action, not fantasy.
    • Limit social media, consumerist, or political distractions that undermine hope.

  • after analyzing virtues across philosophical traditions, what does the emphasis of each tradition indicate in its worldview?

    Each philosophical and religious tradition tends to emphasize certain virtues over others—not just randomly, but because those virtues reflect deep assumptions about **human nature, the good life, society, and ultimate reality.** Looking at which virtues are foregrounded, and why, can give us insight into the **undercurrents that define each worldview.** Let me sketch this out across a few traditions:

    —### 1. **Classical Greek (Plato, Aristotle, Stoics)***

    **Key virtues:** Wisdom (sophia), courage (andreia), temperance (sōphrosynē), justice (dikaiosynē).*

    **Underlying worldview:** * Human beings are rational animals, meant to live in accordance with reason. * Virtue = harmony: reason governs desire, and individual contributes to social order. * Happiness (eudaimonia) = flourishing through virtue.*

    **Takeaway:** Emphasis on **rational order and balance**—the cosmos is structured, and the good life means aligning with that structure.

    —### 2. **Christianity (Patristic, Medieval, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant streams)***

    **Key virtues:** Faith, hope, charity (theological), plus humility, patience, chastity, forgiveness.*

    **Underlying worldview:** * Humans are fallen but redeemable through grace. * The highest good is communion with God, not just rational flourishing. * Virtues are relational—faith and love direct the soul toward God and neighbor.*

    **Takeaway:** Emphasis on **transformative love, dependence on grace, and inner renewal.** The Christian virtue set reveals a deep **relational ontology**—the self is fulfilled only in love of God and others.

    —### 3. **Buddhism***

    **Key virtues:** Compassion (karuṇā), loving-kindness (mettā), mindfulness (sati), non-attachment, equanimity.*

    **Underlying worldview:** * Suffering arises from craving and ignorance. * Virtue is a practical path to liberation (nirvāṇa), not just moral obligation. * Self is ultimately empty (anattā), so virtues cultivate wisdom and release from ego-clinging.*

    **Takeaway:** Emphasis on **liberation through insight and compassion.** Virtues reflect the metaphysical claim that attachment is the root of suffering and compassion is the antidote.

    —### 4. **Confucianism***

    **Key virtues:** Filial piety (xiao), benevolence/humaneness (ren), righteousness (yi), propriety (li), wisdom (zhi).*

    **Underlying worldview:** * Society is the matrix of the self; harmony in relationships is the highest aim. * Virtue is cultivated in hierarchical, familial, and ritual contexts. * Moral development is continuous self-cultivation.*

    **Takeaway:** Emphasis on **relational harmony and social order.** Virtues here show that personhood is not individualistic but embedded in networks of duty and reciprocity.

    —### 5. **Islamic Philosophy & Sufism***

    **Key virtues:** Justice (ʿadl), trust in God (tawakkul), gratitude (shukr), modesty (ḥayāʾ), patience (ṣabr), love of God (maḥabba).*

    **Underlying worldview:** * Humans are servants of God; moral life is obedience to divine will. * Virtue is both social (justice) and spiritual (surrender to God). * Sufism emphasizes interior transformation—love of God burning away ego.*

    **Takeaway:** Emphasis on **submission, gratitude, and remembrance.** Virtues reveal a theocentric worldview: flourishing comes not from autonomy but surrender.

    —### 6. **Modern / Enlightenment Philosophy***

    **Key virtues:** Autonomy, reason, tolerance, justice, rights-consciousness.*

    **Underlying worldview:** * Human beings are free and equal; moral life means respecting that dignity. * Virtue shifts toward **universalizable principles** rather than personal piety. * Enlightenment valorizes rationality and autonomy over tradition.*

    **Takeaway:** Emphasis on **freedom and rational respect for others.** Virtues reveal a secular, individual-centered vision of moral progress.

    —### 7. **Contemporary Positive Psychology***

    **Key virtues:** Gratitude, resilience, curiosity, kindness, creativity.*

    **Underlying worldview:** * Human well-being is measurable and cultivable through habits. * Flourishing is not only moral but also psychological and emotional. * Virtues are tools for meaning, growth, and life satisfaction.*

    **Takeaway:** Emphasis on **well-being and flourishing in this life.** Virtues reflect a pragmatic and evidence-driven approach, stripped of metaphysical commitments.

    —✅ **Big Picture:**Each tradition’s virtue set is like a mirror reflecting its **first principles**:*

    **Greek:** cosmos is ordered by reason → cultivate harmony.*

    **Christian:** life is covenantal and grace-filled → cultivate love and faith.*

    **Buddhist:** suffering comes from ego → cultivate mindfulness and compassion.*

    **Confucian:** self is relational → cultivate benevolence and propriety.*

    **Islamic:** God is supreme → cultivate obedience, gratitude, remembrance.*

    **Modern:** human dignity is central → cultivate freedom and justice.*

    **Positive Psych:** flourishing is measurable → cultivate habits of resilience.—

  • confederate statues shouldn’t be honored

    history.com and all the academic websites say the ciivil war was about slavery. hisotyr.com says if you asked people back then what the war was about, they’d say slavery. that means the only difference between germany erecting statues of hitler and the south raising confederates, is that one fought for genocide and the other fought for slavery. that’s also why it’s not like the statues of washington,… he just happened to have a slave, but he’s known for a lot of other good things. if the south had other decent reasons for the war then it would be like washington- it’d be like if the usa lost the revolutionary war yet kept statues of washington. but that isn’t the reality we are dealing with. people engage in revisionist thinking, and anachronistically say the war was about states’ rights looking back on it, but that’s not what the people or the leaders said was the reason for the war. 

    “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery ” the greatest material interest of the world,” proclaimed Mississippi in its articles of war

    it should also be pointed out, that a plurality if not a majority of momuments were erected during jim crow and the civil rights movement. that means they were promoting suppresion of the black man with those monuments. it’s not possible to say even the original intention of the monuments have good intentions.

    even a confederate leader in his later years after the war denounced revisionist ideas that the war was about more than slavery…. (also in the following is an editorial about why we shouldn’t honor confederate monuments)

    “

    “”Whatever else I may forget,” the ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass said in 1894, “I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.” Douglass (who is doing an amazing job and is being recognized more and more) deplored an emerging national consensus that the Civil War had been fought over vague philosophical disagreements about federalism and states” rights, but not over the core issue of slavery. In this retelling, neither side was right or wrong, and both Confederate and Union soldiers were to be celebrated for their battlefield valor.

    Douglass was right to be concerned. Southerners may have lost the Civil War, but between the 1890s and 1920s they won the first great battle over its official memory. They fought that battle in popular literature, history books and college curricula, but also on hundreds of courthouse steps and city squares, where they erected monuments to Confederate veterans and martyrs. These statues reinforced the romance of reunion.

    Now, a century and a half after the Civil War, Americans are finally confronting the propriety of celebrating the lives of men who committed treason in the name of preserving slavery. That these statues even exist is unusual. When armies are defeated on their own soil”particularly when those armies fight to promote racist or genocidal policies”they usually don”t get to keep their symbols and material culture. As some commentators have noted, Germany in 1945 is a useful comparison. “Flags were torn down while defeated cities still burned, even as citizens crawling from the rubble were just realizing that the governments they represented had ended,” wrote a reporter for McClatchy. Most physical relics of the Nazi regime were banished from public view. In this sense, the example of Germany”s post-war de-Nazification may offer a way forward for the United States.

    Yet history tells a more complicated story. In its initial years, de-Nazification had only limited impact. It would take time, generational change and external events to make Germany what it is today”a vibrant democracy that is notably less permissive of racism, extremism and fascism than the United States. Tearing down the symbols of Nazi terror was a necessary first step”but it didn”t ensure overnight political or cultural transformation. It required a longer process of public reconciliation with history for Germans to acknowledge their shared responsibility for the legacy of Nazism.

    The vast majority of Americans have long agreed that the destruction of slavery was a just outcome of the Civil War. But in continuing to honor Confederate leaders and deny their crimes, we signal that the United States has not yet fully come to terms with its collective responsibility for the dual sins of slavery and Jim Crow.”

    the following is a politifact article that is responding to people who claimed the war was about more than slavery as “obvious if you research it”. so politfact did research it, and came to the same conclusion that it was was about slavery….
    http://www.debate.org/forums/politics/topic/103590/3/#2870466