Moving in the Political Direction
I have wanted to talk more about my hobby interests lately. I think that this is because my interests are moving from philosophy to politics. I have long since gotten used to the fact that in philosophy, I can't talk about what’s on my mind with most people. But it is much easier to talk to more people about politics. Certainly people must be out there that share your interests with whom you could discuss many of these issues, such as on political blogs.
Why did you not simply visit more philosophy blogs when your blog was still about philosophy? You could have performed a Google search on “ethics blog”, for example.
Back then, I was more interested in sociobiology. But I gave up pursuing the philosophical implications of sociobiology, on the grounds that it was uncontentious. At that time, I thought that the only thing that I really wanted to do was simply speak out against people who annoyed me. People like that were people who I thought were saying things that were stupid, evil and dangerous. An obvious example of that was the hypocrisy of Peter Singer. On the one hand, Singer says that we should give all our income above $30,000 a year to the poor. On the other hand, he enjoys a lifestyle that far exceeds $30,000 a year. His excuse for this is simply that he is waiting for everyone else to catch up with him before he gives more. I was not very impressed, because I thought that it would be easier to follow him if he showed some absolute integrity in the first place. His argument was simply a rationalisation for disobeying his own theory.
I spent four sections in all discussing Singer's hypocrisy:
I could no doubt, with few changes, convert those sections into an essay. Indeed, if my blog ever gets indexed by Google again, it will be interesting to see how many hits these sections generate. If I find sufficient interest generated, I will be more than happy to convert them into an essay. But for now, nobody has yet commented on my blog entries full-stop.
Nevertheless, I have definitely benefited from some feedback about what people are interested in. My blog entry on “Philosophy, Al Qaeda and the Meaning of Life” generated seven hits in all. People are obviously very interested in Al Qaeda and its philosophy. So I thought that I would explore that a bit more. To that end, I am reading Terror and Liberalism, and it is already so fascinating that it is definitely pulling me more in a political direction now. I have not entirely lost sight of my original philosophical goals. But I do reserve the right now to write many entries at a time that are not directly related to philosophical issues. The main thing that I am doing now is simply pursuing various lines of inquiry, so I have renamed my blog Inquiries.
What, then, are your inquiries?
They relate to my current reading material. Currently I am reading three books fairly concurrently that are all related to politics:
Okay, you have already gone over why you are reading Terror and Liberalism. Would you care to explain your other choices?
Well, to do this, I must distinguish my reasons for buying them from my reasons for reading them. I can no longer read them for the very same reasons that I had when I bought them. When I bought The President of Good and Evil, I was not particularly interested in America or George W. Bush. I simply wanted to research Singer’s accusations of hypocrisy against Bush. I believed that this would give me valuable ammunition when it came time to accuse him of hypocrisy myself. Now, however, it is the political nature of the book that keeps me reading it. It is teaching me a great deal about the imperialism of America overseas, as is Why do People Hate America? Yet when I had originally bought the latter book, it was just for some interesting holiday reading. I thought that it had a catchy title.
From this, I have two main lines of inquiry. The first is why the Third World has the problems that it has, and the second is the philosophy behind Al Qaeda. The second was my initial line of inquiry, spurred on by the hits to my page about Al Qaeda. The first is simply fries with the meal, acquired for an excuse to finish reading the books that I have already bought. I have chosen those two books because they have the greatest topical relationship with the third. They do not directly assist the inquiry into the philosophy of Al Qaeda. But they do assist with an inquiry into the problems of the Third World, as exacerbated through American imperialism.
This was an inquiry that all began with my anger at the hypocrisy of Peter Singer. While researching Singer’s hypocrisy, I encountered Dan Roentsch’s “The Disingenuous Ethics”. I thought that it was an excellent analysis of Singer’s famous railroad hypothetical. It also asked a very pressing question about the cause of the suffering of the people in the Third World. On the one hand, I did feel very guilty from Singer’s railroad hypothetical. On the other hand, as Roentsch argued, I could not allow the fact of suffering to become an excuse to ignore the cause of suffering. Roentsch would have you believe that your wealth is incidental to this cause. On the other hand, much of this wealth is probably the result of the exploitation of Third World countries. I agree that individual self-sacrifice will not stop why these people are poor. But the First World still cannot ignore its role in the suffering of the Third World.
Why did you not simply visit more philosophy blogs when your blog was still about philosophy? You could have performed a Google search on “ethics blog”, for example.
Back then, I was more interested in sociobiology. But I gave up pursuing the philosophical implications of sociobiology, on the grounds that it was uncontentious. At that time, I thought that the only thing that I really wanted to do was simply speak out against people who annoyed me. People like that were people who I thought were saying things that were stupid, evil and dangerous. An obvious example of that was the hypocrisy of Peter Singer. On the one hand, Singer says that we should give all our income above $30,000 a year to the poor. On the other hand, he enjoys a lifestyle that far exceeds $30,000 a year. His excuse for this is simply that he is waiting for everyone else to catch up with him before he gives more. I was not very impressed, because I thought that it would be easier to follow him if he showed some absolute integrity in the first place. His argument was simply a rationalisation for disobeying his own theory.
I spent four sections in all discussing Singer's hypocrisy:
- The Hypocrisy of Peter Singer;
- Singer’s Mother;
- Singer’s Donations; and
- Actions Speak Louder Than Words.
I could no doubt, with few changes, convert those sections into an essay. Indeed, if my blog ever gets indexed by Google again, it will be interesting to see how many hits these sections generate. If I find sufficient interest generated, I will be more than happy to convert them into an essay. But for now, nobody has yet commented on my blog entries full-stop.
Nevertheless, I have definitely benefited from some feedback about what people are interested in. My blog entry on “Philosophy, Al Qaeda and the Meaning of Life” generated seven hits in all. People are obviously very interested in Al Qaeda and its philosophy. So I thought that I would explore that a bit more. To that end, I am reading Terror and Liberalism, and it is already so fascinating that it is definitely pulling me more in a political direction now. I have not entirely lost sight of my original philosophical goals. But I do reserve the right now to write many entries at a time that are not directly related to philosophical issues. The main thing that I am doing now is simply pursuing various lines of inquiry, so I have renamed my blog Inquiries.
What, then, are your inquiries?
They relate to my current reading material. Currently I am reading three books fairly concurrently that are all related to politics:
- Terror and Liberalism;
- The President of Good and Evil; and
- Why do People Hate America?
Okay, you have already gone over why you are reading Terror and Liberalism. Would you care to explain your other choices?
Well, to do this, I must distinguish my reasons for buying them from my reasons for reading them. I can no longer read them for the very same reasons that I had when I bought them. When I bought The President of Good and Evil, I was not particularly interested in America or George W. Bush. I simply wanted to research Singer’s accusations of hypocrisy against Bush. I believed that this would give me valuable ammunition when it came time to accuse him of hypocrisy myself. Now, however, it is the political nature of the book that keeps me reading it. It is teaching me a great deal about the imperialism of America overseas, as is Why do People Hate America? Yet when I had originally bought the latter book, it was just for some interesting holiday reading. I thought that it had a catchy title.
From this, I have two main lines of inquiry. The first is why the Third World has the problems that it has, and the second is the philosophy behind Al Qaeda. The second was my initial line of inquiry, spurred on by the hits to my page about Al Qaeda. The first is simply fries with the meal, acquired for an excuse to finish reading the books that I have already bought. I have chosen those two books because they have the greatest topical relationship with the third. They do not directly assist the inquiry into the philosophy of Al Qaeda. But they do assist with an inquiry into the problems of the Third World, as exacerbated through American imperialism.
This was an inquiry that all began with my anger at the hypocrisy of Peter Singer. While researching Singer’s hypocrisy, I encountered Dan Roentsch’s “The Disingenuous Ethics”. I thought that it was an excellent analysis of Singer’s famous railroad hypothetical. It also asked a very pressing question about the cause of the suffering of the people in the Third World. On the one hand, I did feel very guilty from Singer’s railroad hypothetical. On the other hand, as Roentsch argued, I could not allow the fact of suffering to become an excuse to ignore the cause of suffering. Roentsch would have you believe that your wealth is incidental to this cause. On the other hand, much of this wealth is probably the result of the exploitation of Third World countries. I agree that individual self-sacrifice will not stop why these people are poor. But the First World still cannot ignore its role in the suffering of the Third World.
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