As If It Was Your Last

[anthony]

To paraphrase AR's well known desert island scenario, about the necessity of a rationally selfish morality:

It is on your last day, that you'd need it most.

A lifetime of pursuing, finding and holding one's virtues and values doesn't end instantly because one knows one has a few months, or days or hours left, I think.

In Honoring the Self, Branden tells of asking a client if he'd give up his present unhappy marriage to be with the woman he loves deeply - but is too wracked with guilt to go through with.

NB asked him :"If your physician told you you had only six months to live, what would you do?"

Without a moment's hesitation, he replied "I'd be out of the house today, and I'd spend those six months with the woman I love."

Branden responded [gently] "Then I have only one thing to ask you. What makes you think you have six months?"

Doesn't that go for any of us?

[Xray]

I think hatred is a result of empathy, rather than selfishness.

I think you are getting things mixed up here.

For if, according to your premise, hatred is the result of empathy, then an unempathetic person would not be able to feel any such thing as hatred.

But one only has to look at a few criminal cases to see that this is not the case. Quite the contrary - it is often the intense feelings of hatred on the part of the perpetrator which then override possible feelings of empathy for the victim.

[Dglgmut]

I think hatred is a result of empathy, rather than selfishness.

I think you are getting things mixed up here.

For if, according to your premise, hatred is the result of empathy, then an unempathetic person would not be able to feel any such thing as hatred.

But one only has to look at a few criminal cases to see that this is not the case. Quite the contrary - it is often the intense feelings of hatred on the part of the perpetrator which then override possible feelings of empathy for the victim.

What I mean is, a psychopath is not going to hate someone they see as an inanimate object (or not any more than they would hate a table after hitting their shin on it). We feel hatred for people when we attempt to get inside their head, and find their mentality "against us". Not that we are necessarily right or wrong, but it's empathy that gives us this subjective information.

[BaalChatzaf]

Hatred is caring for or about someone else but in a rancid way. The opposite of Love is Indifference.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[dldelancey]

True or false: nothing matters in the end?

Do we represent our answer to this question with the actions we choose--or our lack of an answer?

Isn't this the question at the core of ethics?

Whose end? Mine? My child's? My child's children? Mankind's?

[syrakusos]

True or false: nothing matters in the end?

Do we represent our answer to this question with the actions we choose--or our lack of an answer?

Isn't this the question at the core of ethics?

It is not the end, but the mean time, that counts. In the end, nothing matters because you are dead. IN the mean time, you can be happy or not, healthy or not, productive or not.

The ends do not justify the means. The means determine the ends. How you view your life when you look back on it in those final moments depends entirely on what you made of your life.