Many years ago back in my early teens, I read Heinlein's Starship Troopers. What resonated with me in that book (and, BTW, I HATED the movie), was the discussions in History and Moral Philosophy. For me, the crucial questions asked in it were:

  1. To whom do we owe an obligation?
  2. What is that obligation?, and
  3. Why do we owe it?

As I grew older and got more heavily involved in politics, I added other questions to that list:

  1. Do we still owe obligations if their effect is to destroy something else to which we owe an obligation?
  2. What is the current and ideal balance of rights and responsibilities (duties)?
  3. What is the time range necessary to consider both the balance of rights and responsibilities and second order effects of obligations?

Still later, I added in a whole series of questions about the relationship of people to institutions and ideologies, such as:

  1. What is the practical limit of organization?
  2. What is the practical limit of ideological adoption?

Right now, I'm reading Tom Kratman's Carnifex, which deals with a lot of these issues. After more years than I like to think about, I still have no answers that I am happy with, only more questions.

At times, I find myself reflecting on the nihilistic poetry of Ginsberg or Yeats but, like Yeats, I find that I cannot accept that nihilism as inevitable; a dip into the lake of despair is often enough to make me mad enough to say "Right, let's get on with it".

Mike asked
The only thing that I want to know is an endstate. As selfish as that may seem, I want to know where this ends.
To which I can only reply, there is no end state - our actions change the flow of life, but life goes on. All we can do is try to help move it in a direction of enhanced civility, individual opportunity, and individual responsibility - anything else we do will destroy us both as individuals and as societies.