Objectivism & Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving is, by tradition, given to a being that Objectivists say either does not exist or is unnecessary. Hence I am curious how, if at all, Objectivists deal with Thanksgiving. When responding, for clarity to those reading this thread, identify yourself as either atheist, agnostic, or deist. As for myself, I cannot rationally conclude that this universe is not the product of a rational mind. There is way too much that would be inexplicable.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/O...
Here is the key quote from the article...
"Ayn Rand described Thanksgiving as 'a typically American holiday' whose 'essential, secular meaning is a celebration of successful production. It is a producers' holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.' She was right."
Makes me wonder if America would be better off if it was still that way. Just saying.
Why name it thanks-giving. Why not "We made it" Day.
You know as well as I that it is because they are not attributing their "making it" to themselves as they recognized without God, there would have been nothing to make it to, nor purpose to propel them. Fleeing the original religious persecution in England is a strong motivating factor for man, same as Galt and his fellow comrades seek to flee gov't suppression of freedom to produce and consume without egalitarian limits. By the way, I understand that Thanksgiving was not a holiday when the pilgrims got here, but the purpose is no less applicable and designed to express that which was their attitude.
I think Ms. Rand should have gone to the extent of advising a renaming of Thanksgiving to "The Producers Celebration of Their Production for Consumerism," or, to keep it simple, "Capitalizing."
I propose that if Producers want to celebrate production, they can do that any day of the week, just like I can be thankful any day of the week. True?
If that is true, then if we set aside a day called Thanksgiving, then it implies expressing thanks to something for something. If it is being stated, as it is above, the Producers are "celebrating" vs "thanking" then they are not really in tune with the idea of Thanksgiving as a holiday and its inherent purpose.
The deconstruction of Thanksgiving results in something other than Thanksgiving, else why deconstruct. That is exactly what we do when we say that Producers should do anything but be thankful to God for all that God has provided in order that they can produce. Where do Producers get the ability to do anything? Evolution? Existence? If Evolution, then nothing has any meaning and chemicals are the cause. Existence? That is a non sequitur and irrational; existence doesn't exist for existence sake (no different than saying the plate exists for the plate's sake when sitting on the dining table).
If you were to tell me that one Producer was thanking another Producer for their production, then I can see that, in a purely secular humanistic fashion and ignoring the entirety of the original purpose of Thanksgiving, but that isn't what was said above.
If I were naming the holidays, I'd probably name them Harvest Festival and Winter Solstice. They come at universally recognized times of the year.
But on this day there is a component of thankfulness at our house, not to any external God or government, but just that the glass is significantly more than half full.
Meaning is something that minds create about objective reality. Meaning is not something that has some kind of existence other than in rational minds. Those who try to reify concepts live in fantasy worlds. The facts of evolution and existence are not the cause of anything. They are concepts about matter and its processes. Evolution is the meaning that minds have created about some aspects of reality as are the principles of chemistry and physics and all other studies of objective reality.
Societies through government and religions make all kinds of reasons to control people and Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, pledges, etc. are ways to get people to act in some way that makes some feel good to see some people obey.
The Pilgrims probably had a good reason for giving thanks to their god after surviving their initial communist society's first years in the new world. They soon found that the "from each according to ability and to each according to need" type belief was inhuman and that private property was the human way to go.
Ok, if that is the case, then can I objectively determine that murder is ok? If meaning is what I create, then nothing is right or wrong in an absolute sense correct?
Some minds do determine murder as ok. Meaning is created by a mind in the sense that one makes a judgement about a relationship of ones percepts in some sense or significance to oneself or to some other aspect of reality, i.e., if the self is rational and well integrated, it can create mental meanings that are valid about objective reality.
Your "If meaning is what I create, then nothing is right or wrong in an absolute sense correct?" seems to imply some kind of belief in a static reality of rights and wrongs that are perceived by minds. The unit of minds is the individual mind as in individual brains and such a mind is self made and can create meanings rationally, irrationally, or non-rationally. But that meaning is in the brain of the individual and not to be reified as some absolute to be discovered in reality externally to individual brains. It takes a sense of self to decide on right or wrong or good or bad. That is why there is so much bad in the world where self is considered as a nearly evil attribute of a human. Also, not everything has a meaning, so, your use of the absolute "nothing" is not meaningful.
But giving thanks for my health and the health and well being of my family and friends is what it is all about to me. While much of what we do can be derived from our own actions including much of our health, to live a long healthy life, free from major issues or accidents seems simply lucky... or...what??
I do have a question for you. When you say that something that does not line up with your logical mind (reasoning process), do you mean that it is unreasonable, or just that it is beyond your ability to reason?
I am asking because I have encountered some who say that if they cannot reason it, then it is unreasonable, which implies it is irrational; however, one man's rationality is another's irrationality right? The fallacy in this reasoning process is that it ignores all the information available for complete reasoning because non-anthropogenic existence, and I would venture to say even anthropogenic existence, understanding would require omniscience, which is impossible in Objectivism.
Your last sentence seems to be missing a word, but as I understand it, you only open the door to paralytic agnosticism: you cannot know everything, therefore you know nothing.
Have you ever taken a lightbulb apart? or a refrigerator ... I am so thankful...
Ok, did you reason to this conclusion, or was it revealed to you? If revealed, did the revealer reason it? How do you know they are absolute? What is your epistemology?
I am truly seeking to understand how you have determined reason is man's ultimate means of determining reality when you deny you have faith in such a means when you cannot prove another means is not superior (e.g. revelation).
I believe you have a circular reasoning (i.e. we have reasoned to reason).
I am not being antagonist, but seriously asking a question, expecting a serious response and not philosophical invective.
And what in the world is non-anthropogenic existence, not human caused existence. I don't know any Objectivists that think that existence is human caused.
Existence exists.
A=A
When it comes to these topics, I don't think I would need omniscience, but I would need information that I do not have at this point. Some people of faith try to use that faith to fill in the information that is at this point not known. That does defy reason.
However, an understanding of why the universe exists as it does is, at this point in my life, beyond my ability to reason logically because of a partial lack of information. There is perhaps enough information to make some hypotheses about the nature of the universe. The problem therein is how one would go about testing such hypotheses. I guess I am saying that I am a limited being, and I am OK with that.
We also celebrate people going off to live life deliberately. If they want follow religion, the FSM, or other stuff I think is not backed up by evidence, it's their life to fly their freak flag. It's usually the freaks who most people reject that move society and production forward.
http://mayflowerhistory.com/letter-wi...
Their words, not revisionist speculation. Please read this letter from 1621, from someone who was there, and tell me God didn't factor into Thanks being given for this holiday.
What does this mean? Can you send a link to an example of someone doing it or someone writing a blurb about others doing it--- any example that sort of explains what you mean.
I haven't given thank's to a higher being for longer than I can remember, but when I was a kid... Now I am atheostic... :) I have no opinion because I have no evidence or experience upon which to form one with conviction. Anyway, I still give thank's, but it is for/to my good fortune and all who have been of assistance along the way and to all of my friends and family for their support and companionship.
For your Thanksgiving listening pleasure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gz...
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
O.A.
I celebrate TDay, XMas, Easter, Memorial Day, Labor Day and all the other traditional holidays, and then I throw in a few pagan holidays to boot. Why Not? I do not care about whether there is a 'tainted origin' in these holidays - they are what I mean them to be.
Thank you (Gulch, not God) for being here and being informative and entertaining for the last several years. There: I have Given Thanks!
Jan, happily arrogant
I am neither atheist, nor agnostic, nor deist insofar as no one whose works I have read has proven whether the universe was created or has always existed. Have you read of any such proof?
Aristotle's logic and Galileo's scientific method coupled with the intelligence which Nature has infused into humans are the necessary elements to correctly identify that existence. Faith and worry have never added one iota to the knowledge base developed by humanity.
That knowledge base does not yet include the origins of the universe, specifically, the answer to the question: Did anything exist prior to the current expansion of the universe?
Ok good, I am glad you didn't avoid the question.
Unfortunately, I have a question to ask you which will help me answer your question.
Have the 5 sense, scientific method or any other means of perception determined something can come from nothing?
If our senses are valid, then the universe exists. The conservation laws of physics tell us that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. The universe appears to be composed totally of matter and energy in motion. In the 1930's, physicists were able to explain the phenomena of pair-production by which a virtual electron and a virtual positron are created from an energy field according to Einstein's E = MC^2 and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. They last for an incredibly brief fraction of a second then collide and their combined masses are converted back into energy.
If the foregoing is true, then there was never a beginning since matter and energy must have always existed. Hence, something can never come from nothing.
A: Only if the something remained in the emptiness therefore therefore it would not be empty. In any case that's a hundred or so million years in the future as one possibility but for me it's two possibly three decades if I lay off hamburgers once a month.
If that is true, then how do you determine your morals when you don't believe there is an external revelatory source for such? If you reason that an accepted moral position is not to murder, is it invalid for one to reason murder is an accepted moral position (i.e. murder is good to one person and not good to another).
Not everyone can. It's a question of individual choice you will or you won't.
Suppose nothing doesn't exist except as a zero which is the sign post between positive and negative numbers and has zero value. Until some idiot decides to celebrate the millennium a year early in which case it has a value of minus one or 999 and the third millennium has a projected value of 1001. In our case a nation of idiots and the value was 1999 and 2001
Classic example of dumbing down
There is a great scene in the movie Shenandoah (which could be a tribute to objectivism) when Charlie Anderson (Jimmy Stewart) is about to pray before a meal in keeping with his deceased wife's wishes to keep the family in the church. I'm doing this from memory but Charlie bows his head and says well Lord, we prepared the field, planted the seed, weeded the field, fed the animals, did our own butchering and harvested the field-then we cooked the food--but I guess we are thankful to you.... bad paraphrase but great secular Thanksgiving moment.
I like best the AR comment AND the comments in last year's Gulch on thanksgiving-a producers holiday. I have often found myself just thankful about an outcome. Not a prayer-just internally grateful that I made it through. As many have said, sometimes we are just stuck with a word, a name a date and for me sometimes it's just easier to say Merry Christmas than to explain all of the legends and pagan rites leading up to that day. A well meant albeit lazy greeting works. But to sum up-today because of the calendar I take a moment to be internally thankful for the RESULTS of MY EFFORTS. And Happy thanks-give day to you all. We are in the Gulch for- if not a rigid adherence to a creed-we are here with a shared or common approach to a belief that our own minds and our own efforts are a beautiful thing.
I am grateful to you all that contribute. Especially when I think I have the only answer and your comments and responses challenge me to THINK.