Yeah I guess is he is wrong if you are a nihilistic secular materialist, which is the dominant view.
Hearing a coherent view that is different is part of what’s interesting.
Hearing a coherent view that is different is part of what’s interesting.
Most scientists in the US believe in God or a higher power, most Americans do too. The current government is chock full of weirdos with supernatural beliefs and its common on both sides of the aisle.
Where are all these nihilistic materialists people are always talking about?
By dominant, I mean among people who would read Plato.
Can you point me to a single academic department or branch of government who acts under different pretenses?
> Most scientists in the US believe in God or a higher power, most Americans do too
Ok. But this is mostly a result of unexamined conflicting ideas. The cultural domination overwhelms to the point where most people are secular materialists + God. Their assumptions are almost identical (God is a scientist, things just happen, etc). Radically different Christians do exist (God led me to the grocery store for a purpose), but it’s not the norm.
Do you subscribe to the idea that Christianity is not in decline?
> Where are all these nihilistic materialists people are always talking about?
The managerial class of western society.
Almost all Americans believe in moral ideals, human rights, etc, etc, etc. Christianity may be in decline, but that is at least partially separate.
In my experience the humanism part is an unexamined social nicety that isn’t consistent with the rest of their beliefs.
Its not a deep observation that you can't be a utilitarian without an enfolding moral framework and most people have one and in western civilization that framework is basically the one inherited from the cultural aether. From my point of view that kind of sloppy thinking is basically the same as believing in God.
The current government is kind of an iconoclastic reaction to some of the recent failings of that view.
I'll be frank with my perspective: trying to understand recent (say the last 50 years) of US history on a "materialist -> idealist" axis is hilariously absurd. There has been literally no moment in the history of the united states that I can think of where anything like a truly materialist public facing justification for policy has ever been offered.
And while its true that the failings of the ruling cast tend to be mercenary in nature, which is to say that they are mostly out for themselves, this really is neither here nor there philosophically, and is more a condition of ruling classes everywhere and one not deeply related to the navel gazing of philosophers.
The key word there is public facing. Can you imagine a White House staffer suggesting a course of action based on a spiritual prompting? In Islamic culture that does happen. In ancient Greek culture that happened all the time.
The public message is rhetoric designed to appeal to whatever mythos exists in the public with a shred of meaning or importance.
Humans do tend to be spiritual (and I understand why you feel different), we just don’t have a society that’s providing narratives and explanations of the world that feed that desire.
The entire frame of American political life and foreign policy is idealistic in nature, not practical.
I consider myself a secular materialist in the way it's been talked about here, yet I still hold those views that you deem "idealistic". I just rationalize their origin in a different way.
I always cared about those ideals (human rights and such) since I can remember, yet I hadn't even heard of the concept of God before the age of eleven. I vividly remember thinking "Damn, they gave the creator of this Universe the same name as the word they use when venting in frustration!"
If you just have a preference for a world where people behave as though human rights exist, then you can be a materialist.
Anything beyond convenience and conflict resolution is justified by a metaphysical belief in human rights.
Maybe you just think that the decrease in the power of like evangelical Christianity or conservative Catholicism constitutes a turn towards materialism? I just don't see it. Unjustifiable metaphysical beliefs are rife in society and the decline of purely Christian hegemony (if it is happening at all, given that we have had a series of pure wins for Christians at the highest levels in this country recently) is a separate thing.
Yes.
> Plato himself laid the seeds of nihilism
No.