The Problem of Problems: How Do We Live?

Truth Social post made by President Trump of Trump Maximus, Ruler of Gaza

This inquiry follows the deduction: conservatism prevails over liberalism because conservatives can prove that existence is a state of constant war, and liberals can’t prove that existence is a state of constant peace. It’s unfair—but this fact makes it impossible for liberals to fulfill the promises generated by the idea of progress.

Our Double World:

There are two basic realms that humans live in. They can be separated but, as we actually live, they are coincidental. They can’t exist without each other. 

The first realm is biologic and, in it, we are as all other creatures born, struggle to survive and die. In this realm, there is no symbolism, art or ideas (ie symbolic representations of what is actual). There are needs and hungers, pleasures and pains, all physical. 

The second realm is anthropic and, in it, we are born into a historical narrative, clad with a culture and language and value system, and struggle to see our character through a grand dramatic presentation—"all the world is a stage". Literal language is the key element of this realm, for language constructs history, a story that weaves, molds and moves thoughts and behaviors of mass populations.

In short, we live actually because of the earth (a la biotic self) and function symbolically as characters in a historical narrative (a la anthropic self).

Our Schizophrenic Identity:

Leopold wrote: We fancy industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry. This forgetting is a conscious ignorance, an ignoring that intentionally diverts attention away from a truthful understanding of our actual existential situation. This forgetting generates a false and diseased narrative and false and diseased character—analogous to the way repressed bad memories generate mental and physical disease.

The mental illness of our mass population is increasing, and is caused (largely) by living falsely, ie. ignoring our biotic self so our anthropic self can feel numb about destroying our habitat along our biotic self—we forget so we don’t feel bad about killing ourselves. But the signs of collective suicide can't be ignored or escaped, the modern liberal industrial capitalist historical narrative deconstructs (re: Trump Maximus, Ruler of Gaza pic) and social anarchy, violence, hopelessness, loss of meaning, despair and madness ensue.

a)

The biologic realm is primary and the anthropic is, at best, secondary (bc it is constructed symbolically). 

We are living in a world that reverses these facts and are crazy as a result.

Our madness arises from the doubleness of our identities, of our erratic jogging back and forth between them and also because the anthropic self is untrustworthy and incomplete.

b) 

Our biotic self is constant, until death. For ex., we must constantly eat and breathe or our biotic self dies. The biotic self goes with us everywhere, for without it we don’t exist at all.

Our anthropic self is a construct attached to literal language use. Its formal social construction begins in primary, secondary and post-secondary schools. It is an educated self, and the education is literal language based.

Our anthropic self is inconstant. It is culturally constituted, which means there is no fixed variety of it as cultures are relative, variable and ephemeral. If we want, or are forced to, we can add or subtract our beliefs. We can learn and use new literal languages and symbologies. 

We can change our anthropic self; our biotic self has a set and fixed destiny.

Our Suicidal Identity:

Whenever an engine enters a pristine biome it destroys human habitat. By serving its function, the engine kills humans.

As the anthropic self, en masse, uses the engine to transform habitat into gold, it destroys itself. 

SO: How Do We Live?

To reverse the collective suicide, we have stopped forgetting what supports industry, at least most of us. But that is not enough to solve this problem.

When the power goes out, or we suffer drought and pandemic etc., our biotic self gains prominence. The anthropic self requires external support, industrial infrastructures and media consumption to sustain its construction; as these external sources of vitality diminish, so does it. 

To imagine what your biotic self is, imagine how you can survive without external support, living as locally as possible.

It is difficult to imagine how this can be done, but every action taken to become more self sufficient is valuable.

If we are to set a target to aim at, a destination to arrive at: a purely biotic self is drawn directly from the earth. This is in fact already an accomplished task; the goal is to earn one’s keep and raise one’s family as directly from the earth as possible in a way that does not destroy habitat.

To step back and view from a larger perspective: the apogee of the anthropic self is, say, Donald Trump, a culturally-constructed person who wields the most power over everything else on earth. To be as much unlike him as possible is our target. His felonious career of wealth and success epitomizes the falseness of the historical narrative that weaves, molds and moves his character through the scenes he performs in. His delight in using the engine to destroy habitat expresses the insane compulsion to commit suicide, to destroy the biotic self: a compulsion results from forgetting what supports industry.

The only honest living is done by drawing from the earth the necessities of life, without destroying habitat. 

We do not live that way, but that is how we are supposed to live.