The author seems to be blissfully unaware of existentialism, French or otherwise, which could have either saved the author 12 years of anguish (OTOH, a very existentialist thing to have) or made the article more interesting. Maybe both. This way I'd say, needs work.
There is no "categorical imperative" on the plane of existence for the same reason the Tower of Babel collapsed. Once we get above the 23 chromosome pairs defining the standard human, little is enduring.
To govern and coordinate people at scale requires stripping individuality and binding them through, e.g. a UCMJ[1]. That is, some sort of military-ish authoritarian system.
For a glance at history, authoritarianism is both attractive, and transient.
So history seems more a chemical reaction of a variable set of "people-molecules" in an environmental "solution", building up and tearing down structures as we collectively fumble along.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Code_of_Military_Jus...
It's mentioned at the start:
Our entire social contract boils down to, “I promise not to kill you if you promise not to kill me.” There’s nothing more to it.
That said, I agree that the author subsequently ignores the implications of this, which makes his conclusions rather meaningless in my view.
This is really not how you should deal with other authors. It would be much better to make the point he wants to make without false witnesses and name dropping.
LargoLasskhyfv•1h ago
Closed.
suddenlybananas•53m ago
mcny•47m ago
lionkor•36m ago
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
robobro•24m ago
Tldr if you're a Christian, you're a punk, and you're wise: and philosophy is a dead end. I don't agree.