Herd and Purpose

Aristotle believes in his metaphysics, that everything has a function, and the functions are towards an ending, which in modern terms are called purpose or goal. Once purpose is established, the functions of the human being is to realize the purpose. Deciding the goal isn’t a trivial matter. There are messages out there that constantly persuade us what the purpose of the life, which all promises great stuff. One of saddest thing that can happen to someone is that he lost the purpose. We can say that life is not meaningful until that you find a goal. We as human beings are herd. We live together and we cannot sustain ourself if we are separate from the herd. To guide the herd, we need purpose and human purpose that directs our effort into that, thus making our life meaningful. There are herdman who are great at propagate messages. Some of them are actor who does not do the work of creating purpose but just to propagate it. Some of them are truly goal depositors. They are philosophers who doing the creator to shape the Goal of our species. We are living in the world of these minds, like Adam Smith, Plato, and so on. They show us perspective and give us understanding. Like a invisible hand, most of us won’t see the power of these great figures.

Plato believes human being are inherently political. He termed it political animal. The highest/important profession for a person to him is politician. Plato in his republic shows an ideal world, which challenges us to move it towards it. As a ideal, it can’t be achieved which Plato himself admits it. But the point is more about getting closer to it. That is purpose that Plato handed down to us. After so many century, it has long been forgotten by our society. But there are seeds in our society that may grow into that ideal world. The goal is challenging, there are people who are truly believer of the world working tirelessly on achieve it. That is noble. The highest goal is never reachable. Like idea in Kant’s sense, it can never be reached and it is there to guide us towards something which is a human meaning. Without it, the mere existing of us is meaningless. Before science dominating the philosophy, these idea are like gods. Truly, they have superpower to move us as a herd towards an goal. The science in its in infant state is not all that powerful. In the early stages, there are scientists with god conviction. Kant was a scientist, and Netwon was a scientist. They believed in the god. They are scientist who took off the believe in god and there is risks of reducing it to the lower status. Science serves something. If it can’t deposit a goal for itself, there are some other force that would deposit one for it. Being useful is one of it. The goal serves the practical interests of the herd. It works towards the basic needs of human beings. It has been done specularly that science has elevates itself into a higer and higher status. It may have gone too far along the way that the true noble goal is not longer a debatable activity for the herd. Practical and usefulness which I’m sure is championed by greatest herdman out there such ones for capitalists, is in the herd’s mind without no question. The god directly appears to our need has taken too far, that the ideal is laughed at as a joke. But there are other voices that want the herd to know there are something else as a goal that you can pursue. Truly, stepping out of the herd is very scary. Taking one idea that appears to the primitive feeling: owning slaves. There are ideas that says the nature of human being is owning slaves and maximize it. I’m sure human being has that nature, but there are counter idea that fights against it. Noam Chomsky is one of them that leads the battle. If the purpose is owning as much slaves as possible, it flatters slavers owners the most, but I’m sure the slaves do not like the idea.

True purpose must deviate from the natural disposition. Because enforcing the natural disposition will lead one into its own slavery. It is hard to the herd to do it. There are herdman to do it. herdman comes out of the herd with a very painful way, because it must destroy within itself the herd thinking. To create a new purpose, it must destroy the old, first within itself. That is very hard to do, and possibly dangerous. Away from it natural disposition is even harder. Monk is one example. True philosopher is one another. The herd does not understand them because herd is a herd that does not hear a different voice. That is why, often the true purpose creators are not understood and even being made fun of. Herd have their own purpose which they cherish most. Herd’s purpose being the lowest and easiest understandable has to satisfy the basic and the primitive need of human being, which are their natural disposition. They liked natural disposition, they would cherish them as the goal. A person, only with the age, will come to realize something, like god, and noble goals.