Философы призывают вернуться к целеполаганию, отвергая устаревшую систему удовлетворения потребностей

Greek philosophy was defined by goals of life as communicated by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and, following them, by the Stoics such as Zeno, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, and others.  With the acceptance and spread of Christianity, we see many erudite lights of wisdom, such as Augustine, Aquinas, Roger Bacon, and others.  These and others advanced the idea that the Word of God and men’s faith in that Word and in Christ are the source of a living, true knowledge of God. Many of the Catholic and Orthodox doctrines were modified by the Protestant Reformation, but the Christian overarching goals of loving the Lord Our God with all our hearts, minds, and souls and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves remained two overarching principles and goals. The panorama of life represented by pre-Christian Greek and Roman thought and the goals of Christian theology and philosophy together constituted the fabulous panorama of philosophy until the second half of the 19th century up through our present time.  But by the mid-19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels came out with their masterwork The Communist Manifesto. These two creative devils turned away from the goals of philosophy that had held sway for thirteen hundred years.  Instead of claiming to name and describe the goals of life and the competing claims of those goals, they claimed that goals such as love, faith in God, and following God all one’s days, or raising families with Christian goals at the center of the family enterprise, are not the basis for a meaningful life. Rather, for the founding fathers of communism, a true understanding of life should be established based on meeting human (economic) needs.  The heroics of peacemaking and self-sacrifice on behalf of others (like staying to care for dying victims of the plague [Black Death] when most people were fleeing their towns) was perceived as less than optimal.  According to Marx and Engels, radical economic and governance changes were needed to bring hope and equality to society. In contrast with the communist needs-based distortions, the USA began its statehood within a context of more than 2,000 years of goal-oriented social and political philosophy from the periods of Greek and Roman hegemony in the West through the following Christian centuries up to the present day. Goals like love, truth, honesty, honoring one’s parents (in fact, all the Ten Commandments), faith, grace, hope, purity, repentance, marriage as the basis for conjugal relations, understanding as a crucial mental faculty, wisdom, leadership, etc. were and are, for communist leaders, all bourgeois concepts based on a false understanding of human nature and society.  “Needs” and in particular “economic needs” — not goals — define our identities, and seeing society as a collective body with common economic needs is a much better way of viewing humanity than as people with different abilities and different goals trying to make their way through the labyrinth of life. This ideological orientation of philosophizing about defining the proper goals for society has been under intense attack from the needs-based rhetoricians and political leaders of communist ideology. The European Marxists and those who are resurgent in our Democrat party believe that a goals-based society favors a dynamic few who understand how to manipulate “the system” to their personal advantage and get phenomenally rich or powerful.  Despite phenomenal increases in wealth and productivity in Western civilization owing to inventors and titans of business, many individuals feel dwarfed and exempted from the thriving world that inventors and the geniuses of business have built.  Even many who were not full blown Marxists have begun to use the language of needs to justify expansion of government intervention and, concomitantly government’s size. Times of depression with high unemployment or times of inflation with declining purchasing power tend to produce fear.  During such times, the idea of a goal-driven life may seem more like a hopeless dream, but meeting needs seems to carry a note of helpfulness and hopefulness.  Meeting needs appears to the left as a movement of collective pride and pride in the collective. Communism overthrew the tsar and the autocrats.  Following the civil war between the Menshevik commies and the Bolshevik commies, the Bolsheviks won and took over not only Russia, but a host of Slavic states under the new Marxist-Leninist needs-based community system.  They eschewed rugged individualism, free enterprise, and bourgeois morality (the family), though over the years, they walked back that ideological aspect.  In our time, we see the left moving away from family creation and family-sustaining goals in favor of people meeting identity needs and their need for freedom from traditional Jewish and Christian values. Meeting the needs of all overthrew the competitive system in Russia for more than 60 years.  All major industries were taken over by the State — all retail stores, including food stores, and all medical practices were taken over by the government.  Housing was under the management of designated government offices and officials, and all of this control was justified under the principle of “the good of all.”  Religion in Russia (and later in the People’s Republic of China) was deemed by Marxist ideology to be the opiate of the people.  Most churches were bulldozed.  The name was changed from Russia to the United Soviet Socialist Republic (“soviets” were workers’ councils). Interestingly, Ukraine was an uncooperative area during the transition to communist governance in the USSR, and Josef Stalin — the murderous ideologue who became the all-powerful dictator — was responsible for the starvation of an estimated 4 million Ukrainians in the early 1930s. At the same time, as this overthrow of the non-communist system was taking place in Russia, the USA under Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded on some of the needs-based initiatives begun by Pres. Woodrow Wilson.  A host of alphabet agencies was created to jumpstart the economy during the Great Depression, which the Dems blamed on the laissez-faire economic policies of the Republicans in the 1920s. In Germany under the Nazis, private ownership and profits were allowed, but there were intense controls over these “private” businesses by the government.  For the Nazis, Jews and gypsies were diluting the natural vigor and pride of the true Germans.  Nazi rhetoric frequently invoked Germany as the “Fatherland” alongside concepts such as Volk (the German people), racial unity, sacrifice, and military duty.  The Nazis proposed that the inherent vigor of Germanic people had been diluted by its non-Germanic citizens.  Following the ideas and ideals of Karl Marx, needs have begun to displace goals as the basis for governmental social and economic policy.  The Democrats especially emphasize these needs to justify their goals.  The distinction between Marxists and Democrats has become blurred. We need to return to a goal-oriented way of understanding the human condition and human interaction.  Society based on a needs value system will fail every time. Image: Darkmoon_Art via Pixabay, Pixabay License. Related Topics: Philosophy, Communism