Desperate Sacrifice

Desperate Sacrifice

Samuel Bird

They call me a human being and not a human knowing. I am, and to a degree I am aware that I am, but I can’t turn my eyes back into my skull to look within. That leaves any immaterial subjectivity even the more inaccessible. How can something see itself with no reflection? I am unknowable. What is this me? What is the core of this me? Can “me” as this core, perceive it? I follow it down and list it back up. Will, as far as I can reason and synthesize a priori, is at the base of it all. This is not the will to have a certain something, but pure will. This will seems to sprout into consciousness. This consciousness would then have a seemingness for it to perceive the world. This perception then brings about the world. Now, that we have the will, the world, and the we, a process begins to unfold. That will attempts to be manifest in values. These are aims that the our being works toward to bring about some conclusion of our will. We have as many values as we have aspects, their parts, and the multifaceted portion of their nature. These values make facts in the world and their alternate possibilities an imperitive to us. These values vary in the degree to which they bring about facts, and those vary in how they serve our ontology. From these series of possible metrics available for instance in a given value, we find things preferable over other things. A nice warm meal beats out being kicked in the stomach, but we welcome the kick in the stomach if it is accompanied with the sparing of our lives. You will note there is some degree of arbitrariness that we would then find in what satiates us. A full belly and sheltered bed can be cathartic to one, but another man can be tortured by his smaller mansion. I will speak on later how facts of our ontology make exact and non-arbitrary points with specific outcomes for us. Let us then assume we seek to maximize our value. While this assumption is not baseless, it only has merit to the degree we are are general with what we mean by value as the economist is always trying to make it a given thing that to us is not everything. Let us now order this gradient as clearly as we can. On the one hand, do we have perfection? Well, we don’t have perfection but we can assume it is something that could be had, though perhaps even not by us. The word perfect gets thrown around like there is some way we could concede and it would be more than the maximality of one’s subject that is partial to itself. Let us assume that there is some point where all quantities of value can be achieved at perfect quality. However, this conception is internally inconsistent. As I have said, wanting is at odds with itself. I want unlimited sweets and good health. I want a clear mind and an inebriated pleasure. I want climax and also to not dull my senses. Maximization of values is then not graspable as we have defined it. This is my critique of hedonism. Pleasure is not something to live for, but something that attempts to help you stay alive. Sweets are only that way because of the rich energy stored in them and the limited access our ancestors had to them. As our modern world allows us to destroy it to access more resources, we find that these pleasures were only so when scarce and now are only addiction. Let us now look at the perfect lack of value. Is this evil? A friend much smarter than myself thinks that evil is a specific and seperate categorical positing and not the negation of value. Perhaps he is right, and this lack of value would be more about starvation than maliciousness. I have noticed myself at all moments wanting. I am always too cold, too hot, too hungry, too full, too sleepy, too anxious, or too ill from too much of any of these. These wants are a constant drive to fight back against a world that wants to kill me, but they have no wisdom passed such. However, there is a point on that line that is not relative to what other point preceded it. There is a certain amount of nutrients intaken which keep a man alive. A morsel less than that, and the man is not slightly less alive, but completely dead. Living over not living is another thing to evaluate, but the outcome of the value is exact given the resources at hand. For this reason, something being a gradient does not make it arbitrary. For this reason, I am critical of being socialized to put up with less and less resources as there comes a point where a tiny portion more of stolen value results in a specific and new amount of damage. When we are the frogs being boiled alive, whether or not we can notice it, there comes a degree that the water kills us. 

We have forayed into value and our attempt to bring about a degree of it via resources that is passed the minimum only enough to be safe. To shoot for maximization inhibits future opportunities for ourselves or our descendants which I hope we are intimately tied to. No man knows what fate brings, but we can infer what it will offer next. What comes next in the conversation? We have made sense of our process of evaluating, but what have we forgotten? The world. Even if we have all the wanting we could muster, it doesn’t change the fact that the world may not offer what we long for. Desperation. It is what it is to be human. This desperation is the mitigated accessibility to a valued resource to the extent of forgoing the acquisition. We are unlimitedly wanting in a world with limited to offer, or at least in proximity. Everything we do is out of a position of desperation. It is not about choosing the best thing possible, but the best thing actual. In my day, there is a libelous attempt to paint human nature as evil. Can anyone know ourselves and good well enough to make that claim? Furthermore, any degree which we are seen as evil could easily be reviewed as striving with our desperation. If I ask you what made your enemy do what they did, and you remark that their character was just flawed, you may be right, but largely I would assume you were not looking at the desperation that they were pressed into. This is the secret attempt of the modern age, to make a world so plentiful we don’t have to be desperate. What do you think my estimation of such is? We only make a world that puts off the desperation for its severity to swiftly come on our prodigy. The moral now for the vile later. I am placed in a position where I can only be said to join the evil to remedy this system. This denial of desperation kills means as desperation acts as a natural exclusion. To mean one thing, we mean it at the expense of something else. I will discuss this later on. We can then be reminded that as we share this world that brings about this desperation, we then are co-desperate with others. To exact value for oneself, we do so in the stead of another. For this reason, we are placed at odds. We can hate this fact and the world, or we can bless it and live in its precepts. If we despise our options, and have no alternative, we are made ill by our imagination. In what sense is the world where we are not desperate, real? Any attempts to make a world without desperation pushes desperation to the margin and is not sustainable. Any world, no matter how perfect, that crushes not only itself by later possible worlds is one that is irredeemable.  If there is a fair judgement of humanity, let it be that he does what he can with what he has.  As always and in this instance, we must resign ourselves to desperation. From this, we rid ourselves of unnecessary conceptual anxiety. Let us now think of a soaring seal that chases after a flighty penguin beneath the waves. Why do they chase and be chased? The penguin wishes to not be eaten and the seal wishes to not starve. How can we maximize value for all parties? This can’t happen. What if modern man in his hubris pulls them both from the water and feeds them both a pellet substitute? The penguin numbers explode while the seal is cursed to not be what he is. In this new world he is not made for, something within his mind will always call him back to it. This is the natural anxiety. Conceptual anxiety is to have thoughts at odds, and natural anxiety is to be something at odds. We can rid both via a resignation to the mind and beast that we are. At some point, my desperation in collaboration with fate will offer less than what is needed to live, but death if we make death the enemy and he always wins, how fraught is life?

We come into a given situation with our values, our facts, and the degree of desperation these two varying entities place us in. We are not just recipient, but seem to be actors. We do not just hope for an outcome, but see ourselves making plans, actions, and curriculum for how to bring about a value. This phenomenon is a transaction. There are so many wonderful and interesting thoughts around transactions between us, but first let us look at transactions between ourselves and the world. I use to say to myself in my supposing, that we live in a transactional world. I now don’t know what that means, much less if it is true. What does make sense is that whatever causation is, we utilize antecedents or inputs to achieve our ends. If we forgo the “is” for the “seems,” we will not see that outside of how causaility and agenthood work, they seem to us to be a process of causality well enough to infer our action will bring about a transaction in the world. However, when we transact, there is a surrendering that is antecedent as hoping to cause the obtaining. There is no value received without a value lost, or at least a potential alternative forgone. What makes a transaction worthy of being acted out? When the obtaining trumps the surrendering, weighted for the probability of the acquisition. Let us remember that our desperation as limitation to access is also manifest as something being involuntarily taken from us. This leaves us with two sorts of transactions, one where we seek to gain the most or lose the least. We either seek to have more than we already did, or not lose what we have. We do each of these by one of the following: We choose something over something else, or we choose something over nothing. Ontological this ends up splitting hairs. In all transactions that one is left to value the outcome, what is exacted from us is of less worth than what we receive. You will note that from desperation, we can’t have the outcome and what we sacrificed for it. If we do this correctly, minus the needed consumption for our organism, we would see the degree of value we hold humbly and incrementally grow. Before we assume this is economic, let us be reminded of all the ways we can receive value including wisdom. Let my wallet drain and my soul fill and my life will be worth it. This is progress manifested correctly. The hegelian fallacy then attempts this private story arch to become a public one as the world is supposed to progress. It was acceptable when it was true of a finite life, but in adding this quality to the world, we make it finite. We have precisely looked at transactions and desperation, now let us catch a common fallacy relating. You will often hear people talk about a trade-off and remark that we can’t possibly do a given transaction, because we give something up. Well, yes, that is a part of a transaction. However, it is inevitable that we exchange something, the hope is that our exchanges are worth it. There will be value in what we give up, that is why the world accepts it as the input to our desired output. While we are making claims of what resources in the world have intrinsic value to obtain, of course we have some epistemic assumptions to access those things. For example, not only can we not be sure what the alternatives are, but there is always one we did not have access to due to our imagination given the facts. When we look at this fallacy of what we give up for what we receive, we have to think in terms of “net-value.” This is the outcome of a transaction that yields the greatest hoped for value. Negating and positing isn’t enough; what is the net result? A great example of this is in terms of rights. Every positive right is an obligation for someone to do something and every negative right is an obligation for them to not do something. On average, this would mean that we would then be obliged to offer and forgo everything that we expect. If we do less than average, then we are the oppressor. Universalizability aside, we see an exchange here. We want a large series of rights, but only can offer so many obligations. We then have to temper each to find an efficient frontier, and then find an equilibrium on that based on some third quality like our principles. No matter what option we pick, we either could have gotten more from others or could have gotten away with doing less. Wherever we find ourselves is in terms of net-value. Let’s look at an infuriating example of not understanding net-value. As a leader, you make plans for a series of transactions. In doing so, something is sacrificed to bring about the plan. At times, subordinates will point out that something is being lost and then assume that you can’t move forward with the transaction. You will then notice that yes we are giving something up, but to achieve something more. This is best manifest in ungodly large social systems in which an opposing party will uncharitably parade the cost of their foe’s plan without mentioning what that cost is hoping to obtain. As they navigate tyranny and liberty, they pretend that there is no net-reason their opponent would come to a given conclusion. This is an issue, because we once again live in desperation. At some point, someone will need to make a massive choice for humankind, and the cost will be immense. He will be made to be evil to others, as they will only see what he gave up, as they take for granted what was achieved. There will always be someone who is angry to lose something, but we must lose one to truly have another. What is a more fair reason to find ourselves at odds, is the weightings of categories we talked about earlier. Assuming we can and even should step outside of our subjective value to maximize the value of an amorphous human mass, we would have different weightings that we give to the different qualities. Perhaps we all want to maximize life, liberty, opportunity, health, and safety, but how do we weight each of these values? How would that then require us to treat them differently when they are at odds? This multivariable calculus and its weighting is the constant multilogical judgement we are talented at doing, but perhaps could improve at. However, this is where the mathematical is an illustration and not a demonstration as seemingness is not material and doesn’t abide by its “law.” We have used metrics in this chapter, but don’t simplify value to quantities. 

We follow thought and where does it take us next? Whether love, God, or delusion, something ties us to the world and others in obligation. This non-properly-basic attempt is ethics. This endeavor is so far from the base, that it ends up being swayed by Humean passion. However, let’s look at a unique way that morality is affected by desperation. To certify the creation of value via transaction, those entities and activities that bring about value have the right to its allocation. From this, we get ownership via sacrifice. For that reason, many ethical systems do not make way for stealing. When I was a young man, I was expelled from home and had nothing to eat. Cold night’s require more food to burn. I had at times stolen food to stay alive. Your moral intuitions will catch this prima facia and tell me that it is acceptable, or perhaps not. However, let us ask what is going on? I have a series of values and my survival came before the social systems around me. Thanks to my honor to it, I waited until the desperation was severe. What we find here is moral luxury. We can be critical of the ancients who had to choose between death and violence often. But Samuel, don’t you want us to return to the ancients? Yes, but with so I warn us that we will be placed at odds, and that much of the bloated moral systems we have will make way for natural striving. What of the laws? I will leave it to you how to reconcile universalizable laws with never net-equal circumstances, but I think never having the same situation makes the effort fraught. We would then only be critical of the alternatives someone has and choose between. Does this mean we can never penalize? No, because part of our desperation is defending ourselves from characters probable to reoffend. Morality ends up being the complex social systems for the elite to ensure their progress. Let us set aside its complexity for rational actors whose game theory places them at equilibriums of peace and exchange. We want, we want to the point to give something we want for less. As a finite being in an effectively finite world, we only have at the expense of not having something else. Anything actualized forgoes the opportunity of another potential. There are many properly basic facts about our being, but this is one of the few that we carry with us in each moment. We at all times are wanting, and always expanding to fulfill that want. We do this in terms of resources needed for our organism, but this also applies to our conceptual holdings. If we want a belief as a given that we approach and systematize our being, we gain an instance of a belief only at the exclusion of another. There are ideas that can coexist and mount as a series, but for each part of the system there is an opposite that could not exist in it. This was one of the original motivations for Esse Maxim. I was at peace to exclude beliefs, but I knew that the system needed to be self-consistent as a first order criteria. The attempt picks whatever belief we value prima facia, leaves a system that betrays us, causes cognitive dissonance, and breeds nihilism as there is no singular thing for which we believe. Before academic efforts when I was a pure philosopher, I was frustrated when people would pick those ideas that they wanted, with no concern for if the totality of those ideas meant anything at all. This is why we “bite bullets” as I have spoken on before. Every belief has those things that we sacrifice to hold it, both in terms of the concepts forgone as well as the possible value we think we could bring about. The morality of permissiveness is most guilty of this. We want to bring about value in the world via any means, even if we set out means that can’t possibly coexist and destroy ourselves in the process. Sacrifice is necessary, but the wise get to choose where their sacrifice is. Will we build Esse Maxim and give up what we are willing, or not engage with our existence and let fate unpartnered steal away what might have been? Problem of induction aside, this is the wisdom of asceticism. As a young child barely able to talk, I would put myself through misery now for the value hoped for later. I now need to learn the skill of accepting that value once it comes, but at large I am proud of this effort. There is nothing God, fate, or the world can take from me that I did not first offer up willingly and with gratitude to have had it. At times, I realize they have to ask before I offer, and at that point I repent and offer it up. This is the basic dichotomy of heaven. Would I rather exact all value from this life and make a social system, ecosystem, and even life that is stripmined of all value, or am I willing to allow whatever escapes me in metaphysics be the other half of being that I am willing to accept as payment. This principle is not just in time but in location. The other half of being as I can access it now is my conceptual world. Can I allow this kingdom of heaven within me to be the world I revel in to not need to derive all from this mitigated world? For many, suffering removes God’s logical necessity. For myself, it adds to His valuable necessity. I have chipped away at this idea for many years, but I can’t work out how this non-self-explained world can be sufficient both in terms of the value I need and causation I seek. We sacrifice, and in doing so, we do not escape being who we are. We sacrifice by trading labor for food as rest is of less worth to us than our continued being. Follow our wants down until we find our. As I will speak on later, there are those things central and those things peripheral to us. Esse Maxim is the attempt to bring the central into focus. We forgo the margins for that which we can’t look away from. We value everything we can perceive, but in the valuing is an imperative degree we do so. When we care, in that care is an exact and non-atomic degree to which we care. For that reason, two things rarely come at odds in terms of value. What instead happens is our multivariable calculus and judgment of the weightings associated with them, though of all computational tasks, we are the most talented at quickly approximating this. If we follow this reason, one article available for care will always take precedence. Then, let your God rule over your angels. We have extrapolated the process of judgment in desperate sacrifice. From the rest of our philosophy, the given next task would be to do so deliberately. We now have a doxis that we then ought to bring about as praxis in our actions. In the acting out, our will as we find it intermingles with Esse Maxim as we structure it until they become the same sort of thing. We are then a singular being, void of an internal enemy, and ripe for valuing our existence. 

I am so tired of ethics. We hear what we ought to do, why we ought to do it, and ignore the assumptions such as who desires us to do so. The issue with morality seems to come down to locution which is the point that we ground a given moral system. Give a man an assumption, and he can build the universe, but you will never have enough reason to give a non-contingent assumption. What seems to take more and more of an explanatory and valuable role to me, is aesthetics. A man tells you his legislative objectives, and what we really mean to say is that the world would be more beautiful if it were so. Morality needs a God and for you to know Him sufficiently, but beauty only needs the beholder. It struggles with sharedness between entities, but it takes royal place in the seemingness of a given subject. This is why the evil are disgusting and our hero’s tale makes a beautiful story. As we have identified today, our existence is the process of valuing a series of qualia in order to accept or refuse. In what we deny and affirm, we identify our selfhood. Much of living my life was the process of identifying the mystery that I am. Have you ever been surprised by your own actions despite thinking you picked them? There are some issues here with our aspects, will, and essence, but for now I seek for us just to be curious about this. With the re-addition of desperation as limited accessibility, that which we were able to access and value is all we could have. This is done only by the living it out. Let us look at an example of a perfect possible and a wonderfully simple actual. You find yourself in a gallery of portraits. You turn to a given portrait, and are immediately smitten by the beauty. The eyes that look back at you are full of a depth and mystery that leaves you yearning. Their facial features and bone structure is dramatically emblematic of their sex. The picture seems to hold some presence past words that you seek to step through canvas and be with them. They are perfect. Everything you could want in the aesthetics of a mate, is here. You stare at the picture until you divorce yourself from the world you are in and they are not for the one they are in and you are not. Let us now compare this to someone you find in your village. They have a pleasant appearance, but there is more your imagination could want. You have fine conversations, but they never live out the character you saw in that portrait. As time passes, you court and marry this ordinary though wonderful person and live out your life. You suffer together, labor together, and sacrifice in desperation together. Finally, your spouse is now old and looks every year. You now think back to that portrait of the dreamed lover. You can’t help but to compare. Not only did the portrait start out more beautiful, but your actual spouse’s beauty faded. Your actual spouse also had much more time to hurt you. You have many difficult memories. In fact, no one ever causes you more pain because of their proximity. Fortunately, you have enough good memories to make the net-value sufficient. Still, what if you never married her and stole that portrait to stare at it all day? To be human is to make your desperation your own. Time brought sentiment that beat out any essence shared in love at first sight. Yes, the portrait was beautiful, but we have always loved stories more than pictures. You have lived out a very real tale that is punctuated by the exclusion of your desperation. Lived out, the only option you had was the only option you wanted. We have used metrics as a way to illustrate value, but it is only an adjective of it and not the seemingness of what it is. Your love for this spouse isn’t a number. Your love isn’t a portrait. Your love isn’t just all you could get, it is now all you have. They are what you are, and chose to be all they were with and for you. In as far as you did the same, your being is now intermingled as your blood now is. I challenge any man to find me a portrait more beautiful than the story lived out by such a couple. As I talked about in the “Fallacy Fallacy,” we induce truth rather than deduce it. Rather than inducing or deducing value or the imperative, we use abductive logic. Abductive logic is inference to the best explanation. Out of all the options, what is the best one? The best option, implies all the options given. This abductive effort is then prepared to sacrifice in the desperation inherent and inescapable in the human experience. Finally, there is one last usage of sacrifice for us to look at. Sacrifice as the means to make sacred. We are religious animals with knees made to bend and tongues made to confess. Via the acceptance of desperation and willful sacrifice, we exclude some things in order to make our lives mean something else. We can then say we value our existence if not all the parts, because it cost us all we could to give us what we had. How could the sacrificial life not mean more than what it does? A word can be a lie, but never a life. What you meant is what you lived. I hope in what I live out, I give you the love letter that you must know I meant. To you, my friend, a challenge: Find what is your altar, and find what you elect to be placed thereon.