Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Right Thinking, Right Doing, Right Being, or Why Obama Hates Me

I don't think I'll have time for a real post -- one that burdens your time and patience. But I did want to follow up on Monday's post about ortho-doxy (straight thinking) and ortho-praxis (right practice). As one commenter noted, it comes down to doctrine and method, or knowing and doing. For what purpose though?

I suppose for the Raccoon the ultimate purpose would be ortho... onta? Orthonta? That's not very euphonious, but what we mean to say is "right being."

Thus, the most general categories of our lives are thinking, doing, and being, but these can only be artificially separated. And to the extent that they are severed from one another, mischief ensues.

For example, doing without thinking, thy name is liberalism. Doing also subsumes feeling -- which is interior movement -- so the same sad principle applies: for the liberal it is always I feel, therefore I am. What they generally feel is a troublesome combination of pity and sanctimony, for example, vis-a-vis the fiasco they have engineered at the border.

What's even worse is that one left hound doesn't even know what the other left hound is up to. In other words, one element of the left manufactures the crisis (the high-power, or HiPo segment), while the more LoFo element can be relied upon to exercise its pity, the end result being the transfer of more power and authority to the HiPo statists, accompanied by a diminution of personal and collective power and sovereignty among higher abnormals such as ourselves. Those of us who don't want hordes of (mostly) low IQ illegals swamping our already failed state have no say (much less do) in the matter.

Thus, the element that manufactured the crisis can propose to dig into our pockets for another few billion in order to address it. What I don't quite understand is why the LoFos never object to the manipulation, but I guess that's what makes them LoFos, i.e., members of the lowerdoxy.

So anyway, this is just one example of what can occur when crooked thinking gets together with crookward actions untethered by any rational principle rooted in ontology, or the Way Things Are.

As to orthonta -- our unsatisfactory word for right being -- more than one luminary has observed that if only man were capable of sitting alone in a room with his thoughts for half an hour, that would pretty much solve the world's problems. Why? Because it would mean that his thoughts and feelings aren't persecuting him into performing all kinds of wrong actions, for starters.

For what is an activist? Usually someone acting out his private psychodrama in public. No one, for example, would even attempt to organize a community, of all things, unless his soul were quite disorganized.

Speaking of Obama, he was preposterously presented to the public as an "intellectual" -- first of all, as if that's a good thing! When the left uses that term, all they mean by it is that this is the sort of naif or knave who still believes what he was told in college -- someone who has been thoroughly indoctrinated and can be relied upon to never have a creative thought, nor to question the political hetero-doxy of the left.

Therefore, we're dealing with a kind of hardened hetero-doxy, or crooked thinking frozen in place. This is why Obama behaves the way he does, in such an obnoxiously hetero-ontic way. He is way beyond caring what normal Americans think, because he is very much a (pseudo) intellectual narcissist.

The primary drive of the narcissist is to be mirrored by those around him. However, if there is a failure of mirroring, two possibilities may result: for the healthier narcissist there will be an internal collapse, which may then be used as the basis for rebuilding the self in a healthier way.

The more pathological narcissist deals with the rejection through the defense mechanism of outright contempt, and this is Obama's approach. In truth, the contempt has always been there, only now it's much more widespread and undisguised, what with his peevish and childlike taunts at congress. But it's of a piece with "you didn't build that," "bitter clingers," "I won," global warming skeptics as flat earthers, etc.

Well, I wish I had more time to get into the dynamics of narcissism, but you get the general idea. This is a world-historical political narcissistic tantrum the likes of which we have not seen in my lifetime.

One more thought: Obama is so heartbroken about what's going on at the border that he can't even bring himself to visit the scene. Rather, he needs to console himself by attending a fundraiser with similarly compassionate millionaires and billionaires who wouldn't be caught dead down there, let alone take one of those kids into their homes. They don't believe in fences, except around their estates and compounds.

33 comments:

Rick said...

Curious poll question for the masses:

"If President Obama decided to take another term, would you object?"

Unfortunately, Obama would like to see the results too.

Rick said...

Bob proposes:
"I suppose for the Raccoon the ultimate purpose would be ortho... onta? Orthonta? That's not very euphonious, but what we mean to say is "right being."

Slight objection (very slight). Being seems static or absolute or unmoving. If everyone were merely behaving themselves herebelow, does this save them? The telos of Man is to be saved.
Perhaps Ortho-movement.
But that sounds like a club. And we already voted: no clubs or we're otta here.

Van Harvey said...

Just as long as it's not Orthodonto... Ortho Tonto might be good too.

julie said...

Maybe it should be "right-becoming?" I don't know how that would translate, though.

Van Harvey said...

"I suppose for the Raccoon the ultimate purpose would be ortho..."

What can it be, but what we can do while being? Ortho Logos.

?

Rick said...

Howabout OrthoDude

Rick said...

...as in: You can't put the Gospel back in the Dude.

mushroom said...

Being does imply eternity or transcendence of time.

That's Ortho Tonto to you, Kemo Sabe.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Bob, have you taken the orthoDontest?!

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Semper Ortho!

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Ortho Aweigh!

Van Harvey said...

Anyone notice that the 'Coach Factory Outlet" Anonymous makes more sense than our aninnymouse?
Ortho-Anon!

Gagdad Bob said...

Obama's plan: encourage enough people to flee from their dysfunctional homelands, thus turning ours into the type of dysfunctional homeland from which they are fleeing. Then they'll flee here.

Gagdad Bob said...

And I mentioned in a comment that most of my anonymous commenters want to sell me some tramadol, whereas our recent guest is peddling a dangerous and addictive opiate.

mushroom said...

Tramadol over Trolls!

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Bob, maybe it's one of those VA employees who stole morphine from a dying vet trying to get rid of it's stash.
We can rest assured the Obama's thugs will punish the whistleblowers though.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Our newest troll's real name is Opi. Same effect at any rate.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Meanwhile, and I do mean mEan with a capital Evil, Obama will have VA employees helping out with Obamascare.
This is his final solution to help the veterans and stop the systematic abuses at the VA.

Gagdad Bob said...

Re Rick's comment, I think of be-ing as intrinsically ing-ing. Plain old "be" would be a static and unmoving abstraction from the dynamism of being. Being is being because of relation and dialogue, beyond which there is no whicher.

Gagdad Bob said...

From Vanderleun's sidebar. I agree entirely: stick it to the man!

"You get to flip the bird to The Man, to be anti-establishment, to get off the grid of pop-culture garbage and live the way you see fit.
Those of the alternative right are not just in the positions of being the Marxes and Nietzsches and Gramscis opposed to bourgeois mass-culture morality, but we also get to be Kerouac in San Francisco, to be Wyatt and Billy on the open highway, to be Ken Kesey on his Magic Bus, to be Lenny Bruce making people faint from the stage. Nearly everything necessary for this is already in place. In many ways, the alternative right community reminds me of my father’s descriptions of Greenwich Village circa 1964. It is filled with all manner of eccentrics and thinkers and radicals and rebels and misfits. Some speak deep truths, some seem half-crazy; some are charismatic and charming, others seem scary and dangerous. Sometimes it is the scary, dangerous, and half-crazy among them who speak the most deep truth. All throughout, there is a feeling of throwing off what the establishment gives us, of finding a better way. There is also a feeling that something big is inevitable, and coming sooner rather than later."

Tune out, Turn right, and Drop rhetorical bombs on 'em.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Preach it brother!

Gagdad Bob said...

We're here, we're queer, and we're not going away!

Rick said...

Bob @ 1:55

Nope, it's Moops.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

The Man or Tran won't buy our silence with rainbow wrapped unicorn burgers!

Gagdad Bob said...

There are so many outstanding insults of the tenured in this autobiography of Kirk. He saw the problem way back in 1953. That's what you call wide-open cOOnvision.

Van Harvey said...

Gagdad said "There are so many outstanding insults of the tenured in this autobiography of Kirk. He saw the problem way back in 1953."


ehmmm... not to take anything away from Kirk other than chronological coonism, I do mucho-enjoy him, but Irving Babbitt beat him to the dunce punch by at least a half century, with every bit as much bite to his wit (and maybe even with a bit more depth).

From an article Irving Babbitt, the Moral Imagination, and Progressive Education

"...When Literature and the American College, Irving Babbitt’s critique of the new educational theories, was first published in 1908, it was a shot fired across the bow of the ship of progressive reform in American higher education. Babbitt fired a sound shot, but he lost the war. Since that time, educational reform has run through various movements, including, but not limited to, the industrial education movement, the mental testing movement, differentiated curriculum, child-centered education, the mental hygiene movement, the efficiency movement, constructivism, and education for life-adjustment, all reform movements advanced under the rubric of “progressive education.”1 Yet, readers who review educational practice and who delve into the voluminous works on educational theory over the past century, will recognize that Babbitt’s writings on education as an ethical pursuit remain topical. Now more than ever, Americans argue the purpose and value of education and debate the central issues of educational content and methodology, as Babbitt did one hundred years ago. Babbitt’s voice should continue..."


BTW, it's online: Literature and the American College: Essays in Defense of the Humanities

Gagdad Bob said...

I guess I didn't realize that Dewey's malign influence extended back that far, but sure enough. I don't spend much time studying people I deplore. My main knowledge of them is from whatever I picked up when I was one of them. For example, I actually read a lot of Chomsky, Parenti, Zinn, etc., back in the day. Talk about a shadow pursuing shadows!

Van Harvey said...

Yep. And in large part because of the bold part, all of the rest of it has come apart:

"... an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey is one of the primary figures associated with philosophy of pragmatism and is considered one of the founders of functional psychology. A well-known public intellectual, he was also a major voice of progressive education and liberalism.[2][3] Although Dewey is known best for his publications concerning education, he also wrote about many other topics, including epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, art, logic, social theory, and ethics...."

He started off as a prominent enthusiast for Hegel, taking an active part in more than his fair share of muddying the waters to make them appear deep, and then deciding that there was no such thing as depth, he pragmatically set about eliminating anything that smelled of depth.

As mentioned in the comments the other day, the imaginative stuff of story, poetry & religion that makes learning interesting & worthwhile... out. He was a big part of finalizing the process of "can't be measured or quantified on tests, or be spun in the most useful direction of the moment? Gone."

Workers & Drones please, that's what was needed... after all, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king (and the two eyed One is a threat).

Tony said...

"Orthodaimonia," perhaps.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Well, I wish I had more time to get into the dynamics of narcissism, but you get the general idea. This is a world-historical political narcissistic tantrum the likes of which we have not seen in my lifetime."

I'll say! Obama acts more like a two-bit dicktater than a President of the US.
Come to think of it, I can't recall one moment when Obama has ever acted as a President of a Republic should. Nothin'I would call Presidential, even in a shallow sense.

Tony said...

Most divisive president ever. Unworthy of the office. Unworthy of our country. I'm with Sam Adams:

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!"

By the way, Bob, have you ever considered applying to the Templeton Foundation to support the writing of your next book?

Gagdad Bob said...

I was kinda hoping you'd do it for me.

julie said...

I'd never heard of that, Magister, but it looks like a great idea. Their next submission window begins August 1...

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