Surely You Kant Be Serious?

Hello Human

We’re back for another year, and looking to change the world (in a good way) one human interaction and connection at a time.

How was your ‘festive season’? How was your ‘holiday break’? I have no doubt there’s a continuum of both, and you’re plotted somewhere along each - very festive to not so; an extended holiday to ‘worked-right-through’.

Wherever you landed on each continuum I also do not doubt that over the last few weeks, knowingly or not, you’ve:

● Made decisions.

● Weighed options.

● Processed information.

● Used intelligence, and you were free to use it

● (Possibly) pursued a little self-improvement - health, fitness, wellbeing, knowledge, experience.

● Considered the implications of your actions.

● Acted consciously in the world.

I can hear you nodding. That’s a decent list. Right? Well done Human.

In other words you’ve done the things that make us Human, the things that set us Humans apart from every other species.

Where’s this going, Mark?

Thanks for asking - it’s going here - to a little Kantian philosophy to kick off 2024.

Immanuel Kant is the ‘means versus ends’ guy. That list above is a take on Kant’s what sets us apart as Human Beings.

Kant’s big-time, game-changing statement goes like this:

“Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”

The ‘everyday’ version of Kant’s big-time, game-changing statement goes like this:

‘Don’t treat people only as a means to some other end, but treat them as an end themselves.’

Kant is held as one of the most important and influential thinkers in modern history. His legacy is still felt in democracies that protect individual rights and in conversations about ethics and morality.

You have probably already;

‘used intelligence to process information’ and deduced that Mark LeBusque read some Immanuel Kant during his 2023 / 2024 end-of-year break.

Well done on that.

To be clear there’s some challenges, issues and inconsistencies in Kant’s thinking and writing - no one's perfect.

But, with that said, I am drawn to the power of some of his (big) original ideas:

‘Treating any human being as a means to some other end is the basis of all unethical behaviour. What you actually do doesn’t matter as much as the purpose behind doing it. Building a life designed around maximising your own potential. Mastering your own actions and mastering yourself.’

Bundled together - no small task of course - I reckon they are a solid way for us Humans to attack 2024 - acting consciously in the world.

Let’s go Human?