Ethics

The speaker goes through a series of numbered points, discussing topics such as centrism, Martin Luther King, Rush Limbaugh, politics, human interaction, skepticism, values, Jordan Peterson, and Sartre. They highlight the differences and similarities between different ideas and perspectives. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding different viewpoints and using instincts and emotions to make decisions when values and context are uncertain. Alright, so for this recording, I'm just going to go through the numbers and answer each one individually so that they're easy to track and manage. For number one, centrism is the middle ground of political events. Polarizing is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, meaning to identify which side of the political spectrum. Events that happen modern day usually get pinned to a political party. Number two, Martin Luther King complicates the common binary idea to understand both sides of an issue because of the blatant violent prosecution that he experienced. As his side were told, were not taken into account by pro-segregation groups. His supporters were met with violence as he preached peaceful demonstrations all throughout the civil rights movement. So although violence did happen on his side and from his supporters, he always promoted peaceful demonstrations he never gave in to the segregationists tampering and taunting. The segregationists were obviously very upset about his peaceful demonstrations and definitely met it with violence. Number three, I feel as if there was no moderate or middle ground to one's virtue as virtue is in the eyes of the beholder. And everyone is going to be different, such as with morality. You know, morality makes everybody different, right? So everyone's got different opinions on how their life should be run, different opinions on things in life. Number four, Rush Limbaugh's analysis and take seem very extreme and controversial, which is, in a very twisted way, must have been seen as very controversial to segregationists at the time. You know, everything back then was split up. Blacks, you know, had different drinking fountains, different bathrooms, whites were allowed in certain restaurants, which blacks were not. You had Rosa Parks with the whole, you know, thing on the bus seat, not moving. Everything like that was very new and very foreign to people back then, so those takes were probably very similar. However, Rush Limbaugh's takes and opinions seems to promote divisions within people, whereas Martin Luther King promoted peaceful, you know, peaceful demonstrations of togetherness. All that Martin Luther King wanted was everyone to be treated equally. For Rush Limbaugh as a politician, it seems like, you know, he loves to have divisions with people because divisions with people causes reactions, causes his shows or podcasts to gain more views. So those were the similarities and the differences that I could find. For number five, Limbaugh promoted divisions and identifies boundaries between the right and left. It was quite clearly a political figure identifying on the right and was quite clearly against people who had leftist ideologies, kind of going back to number four about putting people up and identifying the differences. For number six, why do political talking heads seem to have a passion for splitting the American people and promoting divisions regarding politics in this country? So kind of like I said in number five, politicians seem to get more traction by splitting people up. So leftists or right-wing people who identify with each side of the political spectrum seem to love dividing people. That's how they get their views. That's how they get their popularity. In most terms, in most cases, more money. Number seven, I don't think the answer is very obvious because that's such a deep-rooted problem with our society and, you know, with politics nowadays, with the mudslinging campaigns and just a bunch of different ways to make the other side look bad. The question is quite clear, though. You can see in American politics that everything is based off of extremism. Everything is, you know, separated, not down the middle. If something happens, it's a political side problem. It's their fault. Just a lot of mudslinging nowadays. I think everyone can be clear to see that. Even people that live in foreign countries see that very often, you know, in American politics and around election time. Number eight, easy to understand is the human-to-human interaction and everyday courtesy regarding humans, such as holding the door for another person or naturally approaching another human and asking them if they're okay, if they're crying. You know, even if it's a stranger, it's widely seen as the correct thing to do. If you see someone in distress, you go over and see if you can help them. Difficult to understand would be using humanism to find purpose in life that is not centered around religion or spiritual beings and naturally finding happiness around other humans. So, you know, other people do not like humans, and they like to look at religion to solve their problems. So, living the life of a bishop or a preacher, you know, you might not be happy. You might not find happiness within people, but you might find happiness within God or some other sort of supernatural being or belief that aligns with another religion, like Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism or something like that. For number nine, a misconception of skepticism would be that skepticism correlates completely with doubt and promotes distrust to a situation or a person, whereas skepticism only means approaching a situation with caution. So, if you're skeptical of a situation, you might be wary. You might be second-guessing the situation. Not quite the person. You know, it's not distrust, but it's being wary of a situation. You're being careful. That's what I more see skepticism as. I don't see it as, you know, not trusting or, you know, not believing somebody. If they tell you something, but being skeptical is kind of thinking of maybe making your own turn on things. So, if somebody tells you something, you kind of think about it in your own way and not just completely trust what they're saying as reality. Number ten, if values are uncertain, if they are too abstract to determine the particular, nothing remains but to trust our instincts. That definitely did stick with me because it's true. Our judgment of a situation with a lack of context will fall back on our morals and gut instinct resulting in our decision. So, if, you know, if there's a situation happening that you can't quite understand what the context is, we kind of fall back and kind of analyze it maybe just a little bit and then try and make a decision based on the best outcome that we can think will happen or the most reliable. So, number eleven, a major difference between Jordan Peterson believes that every problem in life has a well-thought-out, maybe calculated or analyzed answer. Whereas Sartre seemed to accept that instincts are an acceptable response to a problem that does not have enough context. So, I feel like Jordan Peterson as an absolutionist really thinks that every problem has a solution, right? Calculated as a mathematical solution that can be found using numbers, problem solving in terms of just statistics. Every problem in life seems to have an answer and that answer can always be found using math, statistics, or, you know, analyzing the situation. It doesn't seem like Jordan Peterson uses a lot of emotions in finding out the answers to a problem. But it seems like Sartre understands that human emotions, gut instincts, stuff like that can be used to find an answer. That was the big underlying difference between the two, it seems like to me. Number twelve, the critical difference between mainstream ideas is that I believe that some answers in life cannot be formed using analytics, statistics, or math like Jordan Peterson might believe. So, going back to the last problem, I really think that that's very relevant to this problem as well. I personally believe that interacting with other humans and reading social cues and digesting emotions can give the best results as well. In specific situations, of course. Maybe dealing with an emotionally distressed person, like reading their body language or the way that they're talking or how their emotions are portraying to you. It kind of aligns more with Sartre, like I said, if you have a lack of context, you might substitute that with human emotion or, you know, just going with your gut instinct and what you think might be the right choice in terms of morality. Number thirteen, to Sartre's previous point about if values are uncertain, if they're still too abstract to determine the particular, nothing remains but to trust our instinct. Yes, and to accept that making a decision based on instincts was the best choice, even if the outcome isn't exactly the best, that you made the best effort to solve the situation and made the best of that particular situation. So, not getting too down on yourself if the answer or, you know, the answer that you found by using gut instinct might have not been the best case scenario. It might have been not the best fit, but understanding that human emotion was the only thing that you could go off of, I think, would be the best answer to that. But, yeah, thank you for listening. I appreciate it.