should we be anti-principle?

clickbait title but maybe you can help me out on this one.

i've noticed that people get really committed to principles as the good in themselves, and if they do this in excess they become incoherently bloated thinkers who just live on heuristics like empty calories. they'll do this so fervently that they'll be fine with neglecting the Good that the principle was in service of.

1A is a good normie example of this. "free speech" was very smart political maneuvering in 1776. smart gentlemen *will* be meeting to discuss controversial political matters, actually. but i suspect with enough time it has externalities that result in the destruction of the sort of civilization that once could harbor it. making sure it was legal for tiktok to tell your kids how awesome it is to explore their gender and sexuality wasn't high on john jay's to-do list. libertarianism is the odious sort of extreme here.

"democracy" is another. just bottom-feeder levels of deception and vulgar principle that has degraded everything great.

rationalism is also a sort of principle. "we need to be rational because... we just do, ok??" you can't really pull any oughts out if it, despite its immense utility up to a point.

so what do we do with principles? is it possible to build a civilization that is not obsessed with principles? we will need principles at every given point. but how do we pre-plan the ability for the priests to steward everybody into new principles when needed?

am i thinking about this correctly

>>2480
All the examples of "principles" you gave are normie principles that are parts of bad ideologies. I agree that we should avoid *those.*

This doesn't mean that we can do without principles in an absolute sense. It means we need to get our principles right, and they might not look like the normie ones.

A big pet peeve of mine is how many "principles" are actually targets. Take the NAP, for example, you won't get anywhere treating it axiomatically, what you want instead are axioms that enable the construction of a community that attains non-aggression and maintains it against perturbation. A way of life is not just a species of stubbornness.

It isn't surprising that this happens though. People join some community they like and irrationally clinging to some "principle" is a simple method for holding on to what they like about their community.

One reason things keep getting screwed up in modernity is that people don't think organically anymore. "If you want a tasty apple, go to the supermarket" vs "if you want a tasty apple you'll need everything required to grow a healthy apple tree of the right kind".

>>2480
Your particular principles aside, about which i agree with >>2482, i see the pathology you are pointing out with taking abstract principles to be goals. But the way i would read this is the pathology of wrong or at least obsolete principles.

All cultures are based around some leap of faith towards something that can be described as principle. Some set of concerns they take to be the important thing. Usually they are not tightly articulated and having a tight outside view articulation might be a sign they are obsolete.

The one you list that i dont think is obsolete is the pursuit of truth. Why should that lead us to flourishing life? We don't know; the gods told us to. But deapite its costs it sure does seem to pay off in the long run. I take something like that to be the core faith of philosophy. But again to the extent it can be put into mere words its probably the dead version.

We should have others beside pursuit of truth. I take Gnon theology and Nietzsche’s ubermensch as other important ones. At some pointbthey will be obsolete. Maybe they already are.

In any case you are wrong about tiktok. Tiktok isnt related to gender hysteria afaict.

Principles are tools. Pick the right principle to rally your forces, it becomes your banner, your soundbite.

And pick the right wedge to split your opponent's forces, your wedge:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_issue

>>2489
Thats true for principles as zero sum political tools, but the positive sum questions requires principles as leap-of-faith on strategy that must actually work on its own terms.