Wednesday, April 07, 2010

The Willed Stupidity of the Left

As mentioned yesterday, it is a truism that one can be stupid in one area and a genius in another. At the very least, being gifted in one discipline -- say, music or physics -- is no guarantee of being even adequate in another.

But also, one must sometimes intentionally render oneself stupid (so to speak) in one area, in order to prevent its dominance over other aspects, dimensions, and modes of the self. Human beings are so good at things, that a small segment of the personality can become hypertrophied and cause a major imbalance. For example, the rational side can dominate the supra-logical side, and vice versa; or reason can extinguish intuition; letter can dominate spirit; collectivism can overwhelm individualism; etc.

A classic case in my profession is the dominance of the conscious over the unconscious mind -- not just for the patient, but for the doctor. When Freud developed the psychoanalytic technique, he said that the analyst needed to essentially disable his own linear, conscious mind in order to attend to the patient's associations with intuitive, even-hovering attention.

In fact, Freud expressed it well when he said that "When conducting an analysis, one must cast a beam of intense darkness so that something which has hitherto been obscured by the glare of the [conscious] illumination can glitter all the more in darkness." And as irrationally hostile as Freud was to religion, this is ironically the approach one must take in illuminating the subtle realm that lies beyond the ego. In other words, the same general principle equally applies to realms above as below the ego: only when the sun is down do the stars come out.

Bion formulated the same idea in affirming that the analyst's task was to "abandon memory, desire, and understanding," so as to clear a space for the spontaneous emergence of novel meanings -- similar, say, to the receptive mode with which one approaches a poem or musical performance. It's quite simple, really: in order to know what you don't know, you must begin by unKnowing what you think you know.

And for readers who might be a little slower on the uptake, e.g., anonymous, the same applies to the attitude required to profit from my posts -- which mirrors the passively active and actively passive state of mind from which they were produced; to read them with the ego is, as the Zen master said, like chasing a criminal while banging a drum. Your pursuit will be fruitless, but at least it will be loud. Or, put it this way: if you don't profit from them, that's a subtle hint that you do not understand them, mindless attacks on the messenger notwithstanding. What can I say? I can't help you. But I can give you a referral.

Now, a few years ago, charter Raccoon Dilys made a piquant observation regarding the suspension of one faculty in order to activate another and bring it to the fore: "Have you heard of the 'learned incapacity' idea, that proper execution of every calling requires the disabling of certain kinds of intelligence? For instance, I know a lot of people who are just too intelligent to be [certain professions], because there are some things one needs not to know in these roles, some mental and emotional strategies that must be disconnected" (emphasis mine).

I had never thought of it in exactly this way before, but this is truly a key idea, for it explains how any discipline or philosophy can take on a cult-like quality, elevating a relative incapacity to the only capacity. For example, in order to be a materialist, one must disable virtually everything that makes one human. This is fine as a temporary strategy, but if the incapacity takes root and dominates the personality, then you have become a kind philosophical and spiritual retard, like our own anonymous. But so long as you associate with fellow cult members, you won't even know that anything is amiss. Like the rest of them, you will take the shadows on the cave walls as reality, and nurture a childishly superior attitude toward those who notice that big light entering the mouth of the cave.

For to submit to a discipline is to learn to interpret the world in terms of that operating system, which only reinforces and reifies the system. For example, it's fine to attend law school, but if secular law displaces the law that is written on the heart, then one is lost. Or, if one begins taking scientific abstractions for the concrete reality, that is another form of spiritual suicide. They disable certain kinds of intelligence, and then confuse their little operating system with intelligence as such.

As I have mentioned before, one of the great shocks of my life has been the unending discovery of how fruitful the traditionally religious operating systems are for novelgazing around O. Some 1,500 posts later, it continues to be an endlessly generative surprise for me. I don't know where it comes from -- well, I suppose I do, in the sense that it comes from O -- but I do know that it would be inaccessible without the proper operating system. It would be like trying to play blues without the pentatonic scale. I suppose you could try, but you'd just sound silly.

Now, there is a huge difference between fruitful willed stupidity vs. a kind of pathological and permanent disconnection of cognitive links in order to understand the world in terms of this or that specialty. One of Bion's most important ideas was "attacks on linking," a primitive mental process that dismantles the scaffolding of the mind so as to prevent certain unwanted meanings from emerging. This intrapsychic violence is always associated with exteriorized violence, for if you do violence to the truth, it is only a matter of time before you do violence to human beings.

Take the example of the willfully stupid leftist who knows the truth and believes that it sanctions him to impose it upon others, e.g., Obamacare. In such a case, truth is naturally transformed into a lie. But just as importantly, truth draws one to it, while the lie agitates. You might say that the meaning goes from being a centripetal thing, so to speak, to becoming a centrifugal event.

So too does the personality under the influence of the lie -- their personalities become disturbing "events." I'm not talking about charisma or about benevolent love, which also radiate from certain people. Rather, this is a person whose energy "agitates" those around them, and inducts them into their particular psychodrama. In short, it is "acting out" as a replacement for "thinking."

Karl Marx is the quintessential example of idea-turned-event, for his fraudulent system of thought continues to agitate minds and spur action in the present. He cannot stay buried in his dustbin, because his ideas are just too tempting to certain sick minds in need of intellectual sanction for their acting out. It is as if he were the prophet of an anti-religion that substitutes action for thought. Pass the bill first, then find out what's in it!

This in itself is a fascinating idea, for we must always ask ourselves, "when is action action, and when is it a substitute for thought in order to unburden a disturbed mind?" At the same time, we must ask "when is thought thought?," because for many on the left, a thought is not an idea but an object to be used for some primitive purpose such as releasing aggression or blocking certain unwanted meanings (as we see here every day with anonymous's aggressively clueless comments).

Political correctness -- the cognitive Swiss Army knife of the left -- is another example of a collective attack on linking. It also deceives the person who engages in it, because PC is always able to operate freely under the pretext of "compassion," when it is actually quite aggressive and even violent. The leftist cannot be consciously aware of this violence, because one of the purposes of political correctness is to allow the leftist to behave violently while denying it -- and even tell themselves that they merely have "compassion," or "inclusiveness," or "tolerance," or some other benign motivation.

However, the person on the business end of political correctness is well aware of the primitive and bullying violence, which is one of the reasons he is not a leftist. A sane person recognizes that Truth is without question the highest societal value, higher than love, higher than compassion, and certainly higher than democracy, i.e., the collective will -- which will simply devolve to the will to power in the absence of integral Truth.

40 comments:

Cousin Dupree said...

Agitation. Mission accomplished.

Van Harvey said...

"As I have mentioned before, one of the great shocks of my life has been the unending discovery of how fruitful the traditionally religious operating systems are for novelgazing around O."

It sure shocked the bejeebers outta my oh-so smart self, I can tell you.

Van Harvey said...

BTW, a fun pic I came across and had to post, The Obamao Debt Star

debass said...

I read in the paper this morning that Corin Redgrave, of Redgrave family fame, died. It stated that he was a Marxist. Why are their never pictures of poor Marxists? They all seem to be wealthy. Why is their wealth never distributed?
These are rhetorical questions. I do know the answer which is they want to distribute your wealth, not theirs.

Gagdad Bob said...

Exactly, like leftism in general, the purpose of the belief system is to maintain a belief in the belief system, not to actually accomplish anything. The belief is the point -- which is why it only agitates and does not illuminate.

Gagdad Bob said...

I forgot to mention that in this book I'm reading by Shenk, he makes the point that idiot savants often have serious damage to one part of the brain, which is what brings out the freakish capacities in the intact part, e.g., memorizing thousands of books.... I wonder if this explains on a smaller scale why the tenured can be such ballywhacks outside their bailiwicks.

Gagdad Bob said...

And now that I think about it, this is one of the central points of Sowell's excellent Intellectuals and Society. Truly, there is no idea so stupid that it isn't taught at our elite universities.

julie said...

Truth is without question the highest societal value, higher than love, higher than compassion, and certainly higher than democracy, i.e., the collective will -- which will simply devolve to the will to power in the absence of integral Truth.

Indeed. I was reading Matthew last week, and this section almost made me laugh:

Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples, saying: "The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; ... They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men; ... They love the place of honor at banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues, and respectful greetings in the market places, and being called Rabbi by men.

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. ...[Y]ou devour widows' houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive greater condemnation. ... [Y]ou travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

"Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple is obligated.'

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. ... [Y]ou are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.


Same as it ever was. This is why it's important to fight against what's happening in our government right now, but it's also important to stay dispassionate about it. As long as Man is Man, the will to power will struggle to subjugate truth for its own ends. And from where we sit, it will often seem as though it succeeds, but really that's like believing that a heavy cloud cover will not just block sunlight, but will actually snuff out the sun.

Van Harvey said...

"One of Bion's most important ideas was "attacks on linking," a primitive mental process that dismantles the scaffolding of the mind so as to prevent certain unwanted meanings from emerging. This intrapsychic violence is always associated with exteriorized violence, for if you do violence to the truth, it is only a matter of time before you do violence to human beings."

Beneath a load of equivocations and catch phrases, which anyone who no's anything, 'knows' the right response to (those who've been wackedemically processed and certified), all questions and questioning seems to vanish - turn on the evening news for an example. George Orwell... paging George Orwell,

"...I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language-and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind..."

"At the same time, we must ask "when is thought thought?," because for many on the left, a thought is not an idea but an object to be used for some primitive purpose such as releasing aggression or blocking certain unwanted meanings (as we see here every day with anonymous's aggressively clueless comments)."

Oh my yes. The number of people who try to use thoughts as solid objects to be piled up against the entrance of Lighter fare... a painfully large numbgrrrs.

"A sane person recognizes that Truth is without question the highest societal value, higher than love, higher than compassion, and certainly higher than democracy, i.e., the collective will -- which will simply devolve to the will to power in the absence of integral Truth."

Which... is why we have politically correct words and phrases to enable us to easily sidestep the truth whenever it might so rudely pop up.

swiftone said...

"And for readers who might be a little slower on the uptake...the same applies to the attitude required to profit from my posts -- which mirrors the passively active and actively passive state of mind from which they were produced"

I can attest that to the coon in training, it can take a while to learn to find the attitude, and further it is very hard to explain to noncoonish persons that it's worth working through the move from formal logic. Clarity in expression is a false god that can make your efforts a complete miss. But sometimes the light goes on very very slowly.

WV: pontsiv

There are probably more than 4 bridges to cross to go from a strict mathematical training, and a life teaching the same, but on crossing at least four of those bridges, the light glows in a rather constant twilight.

Van Harvey said...

Julie quoted "...Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence..."

Right back to "... one of the great shocks of my life has been the unending discovery of how fruitful the traditionally religious operating systems are...", and the eagerness of modernity to paint it all as 'Obviously nothing more than primitive talking snake stories. Duh!

It burns....

Gagdad Bob said...

Swiftone:

I think Schuon was the master at what might oxymoronically be called poetic precision, which is to say, expressing the inexpressible with a poetic exactitude that captures but does not contain, so that it is always equally letter and spirit.

mushroom said...

So would the leftists be better off if they gave us a piece of their minds?

I know it doesn't do any good to give them a peace of mine.

Anonymous said...

This attitude of "I said it, so it must be true, if you disagree you must be deliberately stupid" is a guaranteed recipe for disappearing into a cultish black hole (which seems to be exactly what you are accusing your opponents of -- projection again). It's a profoundly illiberal and irrational attitude. Which is pretty much par for the course, except you can't have that attitude and at the same time claim to follow the values of America's founders.

"Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."
--Thomas Jefferson: Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1779.

Susannah said...

"it explains how any discipline or philosophy can take on a cult-like quality, elevating a relative incapacity to the only capacity."

I have to share that one with hubby; he's sure to appreciate that insight. :)

"One of Bion's most important ideas was "attacks on linking," a primitive mental process that dismantles the scaffolding of the mind so as to prevent certain unwanted meanings from emerging. This intrapsychic violence is always associated with exteriorized violence, for if you do violence to the truth, it is only a matter of time before you do violence to human beings."

Great insight. I hadn't quite thought of it in psychological terms, although I was familiar with Paul's take on it from a spiritual vantage point in Romans 1 (suppressing the truth and a few of the outward manifestations of that). I'd noticed, of course, that people wishing to suppress the truth routinely do violence to language (e.g., PC terminology).

wv: givityol

Wordveri uttering Southernisms today.

Cousin Dupree said...

Watch out Bob -- keep it up, and anonymous might stop reading you!

Susannah said...

Anony: Blogging one's insights, thereby attracting a few people who happen to find them useful = establishing a cult? Have you noticed that you are free to disagree, and not only that, to depart at any time? Also, you don't have to buy the book. ;)

Petey said...

To affirm the a priori truth that necessary Being is necessary and that we are not, is the foundation of the possibility of any human truth. Indeed, Jefferson said the same thing from a different angle in grounding our political existence in the self-evident truth of liberty.

Gagdad Bob said...

Susannah:

I actually do attract cultists -- the cult of the anti-Bobs. As you may have noticed, they're all the same, like robots.

Susannah said...

Yes, anonys are quite predictable. Invariably, they illustrate your point.

Van, thank you for the anti-motivational poster! I shared. :)

Petey said...

Yes. They never fail to provide opportunities to learn of the of ways of Darkness, e.g., hardness of heart, resentment of Light, rejection of liberty, worship of idols, ungoverned envy, a paradoxical absence of both sobriety and good humor, and preference for a cold and airless environment that appeals to no spiritually normal person.

katzxy said...

I was going to make the same point, but Susannah beat me to it. And perhaps Anons noticing Bob's desire to establish a cult may be somewhat self revelatory.

But I could be wrong.

wv: event

Anonymous said...

If you tell me some more about how Dennis Prager is just like Navy SEALs, I may join your cult. Thank you.

Jack said...

Yes. Having been hanging around OC for a few years now it really is difficult to tell one anon from another. Perhaps there is the "hysterical-demanding"-anon (who wants his questions answered NOW and gets bent because he's not getting he answer he wants. And then the smug-disruptive anon who thinks his brilliant insights will cure of us of our "errors", as if we haven't all heard this point of view ad nauseam and just need someone as brilliant as they to show us the true path.

Are there more types

Anonymous said...

There's me. I started a google account so I could post comments, but when I came back the next day I couldn't log in with what I thought were my user name and password. So I've just been lazy and made a few comments under anon. (I'll figure it out sooner or later).

From now on when I do that, I've decided to sign off my name at the bottom so people will know it's me and not the one I don't want to be identified with. So if there's an anon post that doesn't agree with your usual anon - it's probably me.

Dianne

julie said...

Katzxy,

I don't think you're wrong. The anony(s) are stuck in a endless loop: obsequious praise, "helpful" suggestions (which almost always point to some decidedly unsavory motivations), childish name calling (when the suggestions are rejected), and infantile tantrums. The order may change, but those are the flavors of the comments, ad nauseum.

One of the "helpful" suggestions is usually some form of a demand that Bob act like a real cult leader, ranging from calls for proselytization to ass umptions that light actually shines out of Bob's nethers.

In conjunction with that, s/he/it frequently offers up what it considers to be "real" spirituality, suggesting that what it really wants is a cult leader (and a following) that it controls, thus elevating itself and validating its ideas. It doesn't want to change itself, it just wants everyone to acknowledge how awesome and spiritual it is.

Incidentally, when someone like Dianne pipes up and has something of interest to say, you can usually tell it's not the other anony simply by the fact that what's being said doesn't leave you feeling vaguely queasy.

Susannah said...

"And from where we sit, it will often seem as though it succeeds, but really that's like believing that a heavy cloud cover will not just block sunlight, but will actually snuff out the sun."

Just wanted to say, Julie, that this analogy often comes to my mind as well. So true!

Gagdad Bob said...

More on the vapid dreams of the left, whereby no one will have to be moral because Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will take care of virtue for us.

julie said...

Speaking of cult leaders and fantasy...

debass said...

"Speaking of cult leaders and fantasy..."

Always trying to hide evil. Rousing speeches, distraction, misdirection, promises of utopia, etc. Always the same old same old, and people still fall for it.
There is a sucker born every minute, and two people to take advantage of him-PT Barnum?

Van Harvey said...

I'm kinda partial to the "question on the table" and the "I open the floor to" aninny... those always gives me a good giggle.

Tigtog said...

We all remain the same, until we don't. Seems the multiple anonymice share the same archetype. Their sameness is rather striking when you think about it. No wonder they are so dead set against individualism, they have completely morphed into collective sameness. I guess you can create the perfect soviet citizen after all? Who knew?

Susannah said...

"Bion formulated the same idea in affirming that the analyst's task was to "abandon memory, desire, and understanding," so as to clear a space for the spontaneous emergence of novel meanings -- similar, say, to the receptive mode with which one approaches a poem or musical performance. It's quite simple, really: in order to know what you don't know, you must begin by unKnowing what you think you know."

Where's NoMo with the scriptural equivalent? :) I need to translate it somehow into my field of knowledge.

Seriously, though, I'd love it if you wrote more about this.

Susannah said...

Re: anonys, I also find amusing how they attack Bob's certainty about self-evident truths with such, well, confident certainty.

black hole said...

An opinion:

A State is entitled to demand respect and protection for its authority only when such authority is administered in accordance with the interests of the nation, or at least not in a manner detrimental to those interests.
The authority of the State can never be an end in itself; for, if that were so, any kind of tyranny would be inviolable and sacred.
If a government uses the instruments of power in its hands for the purpose of leading a people to ruin, then rebellion is not only the right but also the duty of every individual citizen.

Raccoons weigh in. Agree or disagree.

Van Harvey said...

Black hole said "An opinion"

Whose opinion? Well... I'll take a chance and assume it's yours. If so, then with,

"A State is entitled to demand respect and protection for its authority only when such authority is administered in accordance with the interests of the nation, or at least not in a manner detrimental to those interests."

How are those interests determined? It's a fair bet that Calvin Coolidge, FDR, Nixon, Reagan and Obama would all have different interpretations of what was in the best interests of the nation... is simple public opinion as gauged by elections sufficient to determine what is in accordance with the interests of the nation? And if so, does that mean that the interests could be as trimetrically opposed as Coolidge, Nixon and Obama, and that would be just fine? Is one not better than another? Is the popular opinion and circumstances of their time sufficient to determine those ends?

"The authority of the State can never be an end in itself; for, if that were so, any kind of tyranny would be inviolable and sacred."

Hopefully this means that the interests as determined by the mood of elections and current events would also not be sufficient enough to be an end in itself, for that too would be tyranny and unopposable.

So what does determine it? Is just a congress or parliament sufficient? If so, how would that be different? Is a constitution sufficient? If so, would the lawmakers need to abide by it's rules? And if so, would just the fact that the constitution was written, be enough? Written by who? How would that be any different than interests determined by the mood of the people of the time? How would that be fair and proper to impose upon future moods of the people which would likely be different than theirs? Wouldn't that be just tyranny by a remote past?

If you haven't figured out where I'm going, allowing the mood of the electorate to determine what are the proper ends of government, is not a sufficient end in itself to prevent tyranny. Having a constitution is worthless if it is not followed, and if it is interpreted beyond the clear un-tortured meaning of it's words, then it is not being followed. If that constitution is bound by nothing more than the mood of those who wrote it, as reflecting the times in which they wrote it, is not a sufficient end in itself to prevent tyranny.

A government, to avoid being an end in itself, a tyranny which declares itself to be inviolable and sacred, must be rooted in Truths which do not themselves depend upon any one particular time, yet still allow for the different needs of different times, without violating those truths.

If you pay a reasonable amount of attention to our Constitution, to the ideas behind it's principles, and as reflected in, especially the Bill of Rights, particularly the 9th and 10th amendment, that of a philosophical understanding of Natural Law which successfully bridged the gaps between philosophy, law and religion - best summed up in the Declaration of Independence as with ,

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Your opinion?

Susannah said...

Not gonna take issue with it this time, but here's a perfect example of what some of my lefty Christian pals swallow whole (one "became a fan" today):

http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/iconocast/

Van Harvey said...

From Susannah's link "This is an intensely challenging two part interview (part two will air in two weeks); we discuss how Christianity is intrinsically unjust, how justice requires the entire dismantling of civilization, and how denominations, if they are sincere in their apologies to Indigenous peoples, should take the first step of handing over unused lands to the tribe upon whose land they occupy. You’ll definitely want to forward that to your denominational headquarters. ;)"

O.M.G. People believe this idiocy? I mean... you know... People!?

ah.... jeez....

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

This intrapsychic violence is always associated with exteriorized violence, for if you do violence to the truth, it is only a matter of time before you do violence to human beings."

Which is why Obamao (h/t Van) is not a messiah in any sense of the word.

He's Pharoah, Dope of the Red See.

Susannah said...

Van--I've gathered that this is not exactly a thought-guided outlook.

They do seem to borrow heavily from the "politics of guilt and pity."

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