It seems the two intentions here, to engage people in interesting conversation, while seeking mutual agreement, are not always compatible.
For example, we are all driven by our desires, which we moderate with judgement. Basically the head and the heart.
Yet desires are often in conflict. Say between short term appetites and longer term goals. We can’t have our cake and eat it too.
Among different people, desires are often in conflict. Not every acorn gets to be an oak tree. So we evolve civil and cultural structures to adjudicate these various interests.
Not to mention the political binary of liberal and conservative reflects this dichotomy of the anarchy of desire, versus the tyranny of judgement.
Yet the very reason that life is so complex and dense is that everything doesn’t follow the same rules, dance to the same tune, speak the same language, etc. It is all constantly flowing around and filling niches left, or created by others, not all focused on the same goal.
Though people are inclined towards group think, where we do have to follow the same trends, in order to be accepted. Which does lead to various interesting juxtapositions, such as the aforementioned atheism among correct thinking peoples, not realizing that monotheism was the original globalism. Especially the Christian and Islamic versions, at least in their ascendent stages. It was only the political manipulations directing these mass movements, which left us with this top down, father figure lawgiver and his ten commandments, that those questioning the model are likely rejecting. Without any apparent knowledge, or even thought for the reasons and history behind these movements. The revolutions turned into placebos, etc.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell, yet philosophy, for all its introspection, doesn’t seem able to identify the conceptual fallacy of conflating the absolute with the ideal, as it does run through much of current culture. The financialization of everything, for example, where the economic tool of money has become the god. The bottom line by which everything is measured.
I suppose when people with arguments like Boghossian and Lindsay are taken seriously, it’s a sign we are still way out in the primal fringes of logic and reason.
Just keep in mind, it’s friction that makes reality real. We are all in our little bubbles of awareness and tend to wallpaper them over with pleasant thoughts and memories, rather than have to deal with all the information that would wash over us otherwise, so sometimes it’s alright to just smile and go about your day.
