Kant has said that people must act according to the categorical imperative – in such a way that, if others acted that way, it would be a universal law.engineering or business or science.
Some people may think that the way I’ve lived my life has been inconsistent with categorical imperative. They would be wrong. I contributed what I had to contribute. My contributions have been in culture and thought. Someone else’s may be in
The contributions I’ve made by translating a vast body of Russian poetry into English – the only such work in English language – is greater than contributions I made when I was in the computer industry. There are many people who can programcomputers; there are few people who can do what I have done. I left the computer industry because I don’t see how I can compete with a man in India who can do the same job for $6000 a year and has a master’s degree. It was a solution in 1990s, when
Now many people see creative types as bums; but they don’t know what they’re talking about. It very much takes work to produce good art. Art constitutes accomplishment as much as does business or science. Civilizations are known by their artwork.You have created a good piece of art, you have made a contribution to the civilization.
When I dropped out of the corporate world in 2000, people were accusing me of leaving reality. No; I left an adaptation. There is a lot more to reality than the adaptation. There is the Sun. There is Planet Earth. There are other societies andcivilizations. Some think that doing this was irresponsible; in fact it wasn’t. Responsibility presupposes knowledge and wisdom. I gained a lot of both during that time. This allows me to make more informed choices – choices that, being informed,
One thing I found out was that what is thought of as responsibility, and what responsibility actually is, differ greatly. There are people who equate responsibility with reckless consumption. In fact reckless consumption is more responsible than evendrug addiction. The drug addict hurts himself and people who love him; the reckless consumer hurts everyone. I do not advocate doing away with business or technology. Many good things have come out of both, and we benefit from all of the above all the
When responsibility is incorrectly defined, we have many undesirable results. True responsibility is about leaving the world a better place than you have found it. I have done a lot toward that outcome, and I recommend that others do as well. That waythe categorical imperative is actually being served.
As for Kant’s enemy Ayn Rand, while she was correct to affirm business and technology, she was wrong to have no value for nature. Nature contains in it things of greater intricacy and beauty than anything that people have known to devise. Both natureand civilization are amazing accomplishments, and both deserve to be treated with respect and care. The solution is not moving away from the civilization; it is about using human intelligence to fulfil the civilization in a way that is not destructive to
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