The Why Masons

I've enjoyed our conversations of late. I'm hoping we can open up the philosophical topics to the highly accessible interweb. Our most recent conversations have focused on the value of government and the importance of freedom. And I think it would be worth while to tackle a topic that guides government and puts value to freedom. I would like to offer the topic of "Values". Now it will be almost impossible to separate social traditions (religion, codes of ethics and law) from values but I would ask that we try. Ultimately we had the value of freedom before the founding fathers. We had the value of love before Jesus. Let's examine why we have these things and not how we organize there wide indoctrination. I suggest we start with "freedom".

Why do we have the value of freedom?

I would like to propose that freedom is held as a value purely out of desire. Unless treated favorably most individuals do not enjoy being told what and how to live there lives. Favorable treatment is subjective and that is why personal regard for freedom can run from dying to secure it for others to enjoying being in absolute servitude. But it is in fact the momentary perception of freedom's valuation in the face of a deficit of pleasure that drives the desire for more or less freedom and therefore more pleasure. Freedom is only a means to an ends not the ends in them self. And just to clarify the carrot from the stick, pleasure is attained desired gratification. Covering from physical indulgence to dying for a cause to ruling an empire and the rest across the bored. So it would seem freedom is purely the right to pursue pleasure. And if freedom is the right to pursue pleasure then a man can be free in servitude if is is pleasurable. Lastly if freedom is the goal it is because you have made freedom the object of desire and therefore a source for pleasure.

In regards to the greater discussion I propose "Values" are merely tools to achieve desires across a community and their true worth are only achieved when indoctrinated in a community.

I personally don't think I could define freedom as anything other than choice. Being able to choose or decide your own actions, your own fate, to me is if nothing else the basis for freedom's definition. Regarding freedom being the means to pleasure, you are correct in stating that some people in fact do find servitude in various forms to be pleasurable. But is someone truly free if they are a servant? Suppose the servant wakes up one morning and his desires have changed. He no longer wants to clean the bathrooms in a 35 story building. He wants to be a NASCAR driver. His owner wants him to continue to clean bathrooms, and now the servant begins to hate and resent his lot in life. Pleasure disappears. Where is his freedom now? And if he is allowed to leave, allowed to pursue his current desire, was it ever truly servitude? Surely not. So freedom lies in the choice. To pursue his whims of the moment, or to not.

I don't think values are tools to achieve desires, and think values are desires themselves. Ideals we hold high for one reason or another, like being honorable, being brave, being kind and generous. We hold these ideals high because they are not base and primal, like the need to survive and to procreate. They are difficult to achieve in some regards, and give us something to aspire to.

I completely agree that freedom is choice. But the heart of the question is why do we have a value such as freedom. To use your definition, why do we value choice. Why would a man want to die for choice when a lack of choice leaves him happy. And I propose he wouldn't. Unless choice became the object of desire anyone would be happy to reside in servitude to the choices of someone else if they were made to feel content and happy. In such a scenario freedom is no longer a value. A vast number of Asian cultures put significantly less emphasis on personal freedom and more on the welfare of the community. Many ancient cultures maintained slaves and there are accounts of these slaves writing how great their masters were. By our standards these people are not as free as our value of freedom dictates they should be. So again I have to say freedom is only held as a value when it would allow desire to be fulfilled. If desires are fulfilled by the choice of someone else we no longer hold freedom as a value.

I agree that values are meant to represent a higher ideal but only when we live in a society that has promoted the value as desirable. Thus when we are said to exemplify it we feel a sense of gratification and ultimately maintaining the value itself is pleasurable. The focus of the discussion is why do we have values. For "one reason or another" may be on some level correct but our focus is to dig into the nature of our values. I propose that desire and gratification are always the driving forces.

Not really a response to the last post, but I thought this video was relevant.

I very much liked his speech.
Frank I think what your talking about is less freedom and more self-determination and I may be splitting hairs here. If you have a desire for self determination one cannot be happy in a role chosen by another, whether or not it is something that they might have chosen. There are plenty of examples of people in "fantastic" jobs and situations who we may love to trade place with who are completely miserable because they feel that they were pressed into it or that they did not make the decisions to put them where they are.
If the consensus is that man does everything out of pleasure or gratification (not my view) then i don't see the point in disusing values as they are all just other words for gratification. i gratify myself by being honorable or by stating that i am a free man and therefore our values come solely from our culture/society that we live in. In such a situation there is no such thing as self sacrifice or nobility because that person got the most pleasure from that act.

I can see the argument that the human drive is pleasure but i think that there is much more there. I don't believe that people would do some of the horrible things that people do with the sole drive of pleasure and I can say the same about the extreme good that people do. I also have a personal bias against it much like Einstein had against quantum physics.(not trying to compare myself to him just an example)

Sorry if that was a bit hard to read a bit stream of consciousness.