Egads, after a night surfing internet porn I come here and lo and behold, Gurdjieff, Popper and Chomsky all on one thread. Only my buddy Fresco could draw out these Brainiacs from posters.
Gurdjieff was crazy, like a fox. And his approach always seemed to me to point to humans understanding that we have many demons and angels inside of us; each of those demons and angels on our shoulders get a chance to be "I" for a while, and its best to know when each one is in charge.
I'm not smart enough to speak competently about integration of human personalities, but it seems that was where he was going with his multi-selves approach
..So was Jesus, btw, at least as far as self-honesty and self-awareness was concerned.
Whether he was describing a determinism or not with his "crazy human machines" is still up in the air to my mind, because human nature is not an imperative like gravity. Although the pursuit of the death penalty as a Kantian "categorical imperative" in the face of evidence that it does not reduce murder might support Gurdjieff in this case. However, I would agree with Joe from Chi-town on this.
As to the original question? We are still merely very clever monkeys, and greedy ones that seem to require some sort of boundaries to prevent from us from causing too much harm to ourselves and others. And that appears to be the crux of the situation. And I wonder if ethics is merely a way to get what we want by the least difficult methods
. And when that ways fail, violence arises.
Clausewitz' maxim that war is politics by other means dovetails with Mao's that warfare is politics by bloodshed. And here is where I see what Gurdjieff was inferring; as we are clever, greedy monkeys, we want what we want, and do things to fulfill our desires
.Interpersonal action in human society can always be described as some sort of politics. Mostly we try to satisfy ourselves without resorting to violence and use persuasion, but sometimes we don't. When we resort to violence to get what we want we have abandoned time tested modes of behavior that are the standards by which we have built human societies and help us fulfill most of our corporeal needs. So what benefits does violence bring if by such violent actions the bases for the very structure of human society are undermined? ...Only a fool would punch a hole in the bottom of his boat to get a drink of water.....But, there it is; history shows the sunken boats to us, and still we fight.
One would have to be crazy to do it, but once engaged in such actions, further bad craziness is bound to continue. That, to me is what Gurdjieff was pointing to. Is that deterministic, or just wisdom attained from observing human nature?
Maybe the Old Testament rule of an eye for an eye was merely an acknowledgement of this feature of human nature, and it was Jesus, in the New Testament who pointed to the way to break that cycle of viciousness by clarifying what human society was actually based upon, a realization of a common humanity and NOT convenience to satisfy corporeal needs and desires.... Love is awful strong, don't you think? It moves mountains and men's hearts.
I watched Apocalypse Now last night, and the theme of Col. Kurtz becoming so savage in pursuit of the goal of beating his enemy that he loses his own mind comes to my own mind in this discussion. The only way out for Kurtz was death, because his savage actions had laid waste to any structure of human society and ethics he once held sacred and which had been the very thing he was defending in the first place...The Horror, The Horror of one who realizes he has become what he hopes to conquer.
Now, back to that internet porn.
