From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   Schopenhauer said that our knowledge of our own weal and woe is direct, while   
   our knowledge of the weal and woe of others is always only representation and   
   thus does not affect us.   
      
   No, that is not true. My mother cares about my weal and woe even if it   
   doesn’t affect her, and I care about my daughter’s weal and woe even if it   
   does not affect me.   
      
   The problem with many philosophers is that they haven’t been parents. Their   
   deductions do not take into account the experience of parental love. A very   
   smart woman once told me that the problem with people such as Nietzsche and   
   Ayn Rand is that they    
   didn’t love anyone; and that created in them a very non-loving attitude   
   which they have passed down to posterity.   
      
   I had a brilliant friend who was against family. When I challenged that view,   
   he cut me off. I think that I was in the right. There are many things that are   
   done wrong in the name of family; but that doesn’t mean that family has to   
   be bad. Family can,    
   and should, be done better; and I as a parent have done none of the things   
   that he found loathsome about family.   
      
   He also wrote a lot against society. I have come to the conclusion that the   
   problem is not with society but with wrong ways in which it is done. If your   
   society has high levels of incest and domestic violence, and if your society   
   has extreme conformity    
   pressure and an anti-intellectual attitude, then you will be doing wrong   
   things in the name of society. The solution is not to do away with society;   
   that is impossible. The solution is doing society better.   
      
   So we see such claims as that all interest is self-interest. Once again, these   
   people aren’t taking into consideration the experience of parental love. In   
   parental love, you care about the child whether or not it affects you; and   
   their interest becomes    
   your interest, not the other way around.   
      
   Many people who haven’t experienced parental love have not experienced   
   disinterested concern for another person’s well-being. So they then claim   
   such things as that all interest is self-interest because they have no   
   experience of anything else. I    
   have changed a lot of my views after I became a parent. I ended up realizing   
   that the problem with family and society is not the value itself but the   
   abuses of the value. Wrong things get done for family and society. That does   
   not mean that either of the    
   above is bad.   
      
   I want to wed society and family with intelligence. I want to see intelligence   
   being formative to both of the above. I don’t just think that it is   
   possible. I know that it is possible. And I want to see more effort directed   
   toward that outcome.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)