Phor Philosophy
So, like five years ago I came up with a value system.
It's basically just four basic values. I ranked them.
Intelligence
Beauty
Power
Strength
(top is more important)
I have also devised rules and lots of other information that relates to these. And, many other sets of four.
Is this a good value system?
Can you think of four, more important values?
Can you add some values to it?
Oh, and I almost went crazy thinking of more rules and sets of four that relate to it.
For example, the human body can be divided into four chakras.
Head (the brain is responsible for intelligence)
Heart/Arms (heart, love, beauty)
Belly (butterflies, signifying a struggle with power)
Pelvis/Legs (legs are the strongest part of your body)
No, really, I almost went crazy thinking of all sorts of shit related to it. This is a testament to how good the system is as when you think of a new set of four, you can usually relate it to the basic values or another set of four which is responsible for new neural connections..
I even thought of colors and planets that relate
Red (Mars - it's going to take intelligence to get there and its red)
Blue (Earth - the most beautiful planet and its mostly blue)
Green (Venus - think of it's powerful atmosphere and yellow is next to green on roy G biv)
Purple (mercury - its just a big rock - strength and its dark like purple)
I am going to write a small book on the subject called "The Power of Four"
Any suggestion for new sets of four?
If you take me seriously I will respond with a new set of four. ive got like twenty of them
but remember, the four values are the cornerstone of my system
what do you think of them?
not sure if I mentioned this one
4 DNA chemicals
might I humbly suggest "Wisdom" instead? The difference is very slight, yet profound if you think on it.
I notice that there is no place in your value systems for RELATIONSHIPS.
If you went out on the street and randomly asked people what they valued in life the first thing they would say is family and friends, and relationships. Those being important for the "soul" and mental well being.
There are a class of people for a number of reasons don't need relationships to be fulfilled persons, and I've got no problem with that, because I know that the wrong kind of relationships you're better off without.
So by that measure translating to a human quality EMPATHY should be top of the list.
Followed by INTELLIGENCE with qualification.
One of the "in" topics at the moment is the recognition off fully functioning, highly intelligent people in our society, usually successful leaders, who are borderline psychopath. (The main trait of psychopaths is obsession with self interest).
Florian-K in a comment below says that intelligence is overrated as raw intelligence. And how you use or adapt intelligence for benefit of all rather than self is more important. This shows that intelligence needs to be qualified.
Einstien was reported to have an IQ of 165, I commented somewhere else that IQ is probably compartmented and he may have been 200 in math.
But there are areas in which ordinary people would beat him.
Shows that intelligence plus inspiration plus vision of positive outcome and benefit should be near the top of the list.
I read somewhere that one of the most intelligent persons in the world was a man, unemployed, with an IQ of 210 who was currently working on a single equation to describe everything.
Shows that some of his compartments might have been empty.
Here's a good book that talk's about values, sugar coated with fiction.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.
(Robert Persig explores metaphysics of quality).
Not only do I find associations to four, I attempt to explain their relationships to each other.
1. Empathy. ( From which derives morality, sense of fair play, and equitable treatment of others , from which derives, the rules of society).
2. Balanced Intelligence.
If you value intelligence, or have it, it would improve your human relationships because you would be smart and know how to respond and connect with the person you are talking with.
Love and Beauty come from the Head.
Numbers don't really have meaning like this. There are no special numbers.
-strength is the ability to lift a car
-power is the ability to make someone else do it
"It's basically just four basic values. I ranked them.
Intelligence
Beauty
Power
Strength
(top is more important)"
I would like to hear what those basic values are actually based on. I know that there're some things (or elements/aspects in logic, reality and existence) that can be assumed without a basis, because the missing of these things would also eliminate all other possible, non-basic elements, but in this particular case I'd like to hear some kind of justification for choosing these values and why they're in that exact order.
What would it mean if one of these values wasn't shared by people? Do they all have to be present? Are there exceptions? Are they contingent upon each other?
And why are you constructing these values? What's the purpose?
- "For example, the human body can be divided into four chakras." -
That's a potential path to vagueness by muddying your initial thoughts (that seem to be legit) with basically meaningless ideas. But it's not totally wrong in this case, because you associate parts of the body with actual physical and mental properties as a kind of exercise to come up with more aspects to think about. You can go this way, but be careful not to dive into void expressions and equally void conclusions ('the heart pumps blood -> blood is important for human life and it's warm -> love is important for life and feels "warm" too -> the heart is responsible for love' would be an example for such a dangerous and muddy path to take; you should avoid that).
Other wrong conclusions based on wrong (or too vague) assumptions:
"Heart/Arms (heart, love, beauty)" — The first and usually most important part of the human body to identify beauty is the face (in your case "head" would be associated with beauty; not the heart).
"Belly (butterflies, signifying a struggle with power)" — "Butterflies" are a feeling that's created by the autonomous nervous system that's located in the chest and belly area. Feelings there indicate some sort of stress (positive and negative). You could call this stress a "struggle with power", but only if you accept that constipation and stomachache are a "struggle with power" too.
"Pelvis/Legs (legs are the strongest part of your body)" — Actually the jaws and their muscles are the "strongest" part of the human body; the feet are the most robust part and the teeth are the hardest part.
- "I even thought of colors and planets that relate." -
And this is where you completely go off the rails and walk on shaky (and also shady) ground, because there's no logical connection and not even consistency between abstract things like values and arbitrary things like planets and colors (you can lump these things together with plants, animals, temperatures etc. as well, because these things are equally arbitrary and muddy). Sure, you can construct a connection, but you can only do it by appealing to your basic values and implicitly using the real basis behind them instead of a vague abstraction you disguise and distort their basis with.
keep in mind that whenever you deal with words and not numbers, there is definitely a subjective quality to them.. subjectiveness breeds inconsistencies and opens you up to criticism as you have demonstrated
and for you to say these things are assumptions and that they are wrong is quite rediculous
I doubt you could come up with a better system
plus this is only half of it so you do not know what you are arguing against
and half the information that I have presented went over your head
go back and read my original post again with an open mind
- "I'm not sure how I came to the four values. I like them because I value them all and they are all important in life (strength being the least important) and they are different from each other." -
But that's the important part. Sure, you can pick some things that "seem" important an subjectively rank them, but without at least some kind of objective justification for them you're adding subjectivity on top of subjectivity and whenever somebody doesn't share one detail of your system, everything falls apart.
I thought you had at least some kind of explanation (because I myself would be able to justify your values if I really wanted to and you saying you have no explanation seems a bit sloppy; especially if you want to base a whole system on them).
- "keep in mind that whenever you deal with words and not numbers, there is definitely a subjective quality to them." -
Yes, that's correct (although not every word has a subjective component and the subjective part often has to do with the concrete object an abstract word is referring too).
It might be best if you define what your values actually mean, because for example "intelligence" is an extremely vague term and you cannot simply base a system on a vague term without defining it one way or the other. Same goes for all of the other values too.
In the end you're talking about abstract ideas. It's logical that you can combine everything with these ideas (you can arbitrarily justify that "a chair" can have something to do with "beauty", because how elegant it appears and how it corresponds to the human body; or with "strength", because how it supports people who're sitting on it and brings stability; or with "intelligence", because one needs to know how to build it; or with "power", because chairs can be thrones on which a king sits to look over his servants). The vaguer the term the more arbitrary you can justify anything and the less meaning you actually have.
- "and for you to say these things are assumptions and that they are wrong is quite rediculous" -
I'm sorry, but things like "Mars - it's going to take intelligence to get there and its red", therefore Mars = intelligence is an example of extremely poor reasoning (or maybe more an example of extremely arbitrary justifications like the ones I mentioned above).
Your reasoning is on one level with things like "Earth is getting hotter. It was cooler in the time when many pirates still sailed the seven seas. Pirates are cool. Therefore pirates can prevent global warming."
- "I doubt you could come up with a better system" -
I can come up with various systems, but the most efficient way would be to condense all of these values to their most basic aspects.
1. The ability to learn (superficially this seems to be the same as intelligence, but it's not; intelligence is static and vague, but the ability to learn is something concrete and adaptable)
2. The pursuit of truth (this is connected to the ability to learn, but it focuses on the value of finding out what's actually real and what can be known; it relativizes the ability to learn and guides it towards things that are actually useful to study instead of just learning random stuff or wasting time with useless things)
3. Compassion (this is connected with understanding, acceptance, help etc. and emphasizes the importance of communities and societies in which creatures support each other and share their knowledge gained from points 1. and 2. to increase the effectiveness of these points)
4. Freedom of self-expression/self-determination (this ensures that people have maximal freedom to live in a way they like, be productive and have the power to put things into practice; point 3. ensures that this freedom cannot be used to infringe on the freedom of other people and point 2. ensures that not every potentially harmful act can be arbitrarily justified as an expression of this freedom)
If you take away one of these points you'll end up with either some kind of dogmatic system or some kind of unproductive system. But as I said, there're many other possible systems.
- "plus this is only half of it so you do not know what you are arguing against" -
I'm arguing against what you've presented. If you don't show the other half then it's not my problem.
- "and half the information that I have presented went over your head" -
No, I let them fly by, because they're without content.
And crying about my ego instead of addressing anything I tried to talk about tells a lot about you way of arguing.
Okay, what do you want me to address further?
Do you want me to justify your values or do you want me to tear them down? Do you want yet another system of values from me? Do you want me to rectify the reasoning in the 8 examples you gave in detail? Do you want me to comment on the name of your book "The Power of Four"?
There're no other things in your post I haven't addressed. I already talked about everything you brought up. You're just claiming that I've swept things under the table.
If there's something you want me to talk about then please tell me.
I would obviously have people agree with me, but the internet is ego city so anyone who responds is just disagreeing to try to prove someone wrong so they can feel better about themselves.
I will defend my system in this way.
I challenged you to come up with a better system and you still used the power of phor.
Disagreeing only for the sake of it is unproductive. I hate unproductive things, because they're a waste of time. The fact that I took some time and responded to your points shows that I'm interested in the topic and think that the topic has important aspects and potential (it's worth thinking about it). And if I find things that seem to be important and productive then I'm looking for ways to improve flaws I detect in them or just ask questions to find out what the reasoning behind things is. You refused to explain it.
You asked for other values and I gave you an example. I can create a system with only 3 elements and I can create systems with 5 or 7 or 10 elements. It all depends on the purpose of the system and you didn't care to explain what this system is for. Therefore I followed your example of exactly 4 values. The term "better" isn't even applicable, because you didn't define what "good" even means within your system. Without knowing about your goal people can propose "different" systems, but not "better" ones, because there needs to be a purpose or goal first to be able to make value judgements.
Another possible systems can be:
1. Reality
2. Logic
3. Comprehension
or:
1. Generation
2. Transition/Change
3. Dissolution
or:
1. Change
2. Persistence
or:
1. Ballance
The last system only needs one value.
But these are completely different systems based on other purposes/goals.
You always have to explain the goal of something and define your terms before you can ask people about it. Otherwise you'd either get nonsensical responses that don't really help you or distract you or you leave people no chance but to question your system as a whole.
My fourth one would instead be morality. After all - not every beautiful person has a personality to match (the bitchy cheerleader) not every smart person uses their intelligence for good (the con-artist) and plenty of times the powerful will abuse their obvious stance over others for their own benefit (the bully) Beauty, intelligence and power are all up for abuse of the possessor lacks any morality to their fellow human being. Morality is not exclusive to the religious (no matter how many bible-thumpers tell you otherwise) it's an in-built social obligation that has evolved with us, making us such a successful "pack animal" in the first place. But like all things we have evolved with and are born with - it's prone to variation. Not everyone is equally beautiful, smart or strong, and so is the same for morality. If someone is blessed with any one of the other three features, then they can be dangerously influential onto others if they lack morality.
About your planets system though, just for fun I'd do that different myself:
Intelligence: Earth - Earth is the spawning point of humans, and not only us, since this planet is full of thinking, self-aware lifeforms all interacting with each other, forming a level of activity here far more complex than anywhere else in the solar system.
Beauty: Venus - Venus is named after the goddess of beauty/love, inspired by it being the brightest object in the night sky (asides from the moon) Sure up close Venus is a burning hell under a deceiving shell, but those who possess only beauty often are.
Power: Mars - Jupiter could have been a candidate too due to its colossal size and presence in the solar system. But I went with Mars since Mars has traditionally been affiliated with the god of war and the male form. Jupiter is a slothful king, but Mars is a hardened warrior.
Morality: Mercury - Sticking with my theme of using the inner planets here, I gave Morality Mercury for more reasons than just the same first and last letters. Mercury is a land of contrast. Hot and insanely bright days, and dark freezing nights. Like yin and yan and the spectrum of morality itself - there is a dramatic difference in the outcome depending on which side you're on.
I do not think in terms of morality. The farthest I go is that everyone does what they want. If they don't, it's because someone or some organization has power over them. That's why power is not strength because strength in this system is physical. And, actually, physical is one of the associations to strength. I do not have the other 3 however. It's a fun game making associations between sets of four and is part of the reason I almost went crazy.
The planets:
I ordered the planets in their true order and just realized they fit with the values I created in the way I described
so I will give you another set of four
Sorrow
Embarrassment
Anger
Pain
these are obviously all negative and relate to emotions with pain being the most physical
There's bound to be more to people staying in line rather than just fear of punishment alone.