Tuesday, November 10, 2015

In Search of the Deep Structure of Cosmic Assoulery

A couple weeks ago someone at PowerLine made the point that the rift in the Republican party is not so much between conservatives and RINOs, establishment and Tea Party, but between those who think our disagreements with the left are just politics as usual, and those who believe (I would say "recognize") the left is pure evil.

He didn't use the term "pure evil," but the point is that these are not normal political times, and that we cannot deal with the left as if we simply have routine policy disputes that can be settled via compromise. Or maybe you like a little feces in your ice cream.

What is the deepest of deep structures that explains the surface differences between left and right? What are the First Principles that account for all the secondary differences? You could say "ignorance," but ignorance per se has no structure. It's just nothing, so there must be some deeper reason why the LoFos trend leftard.

There are of course LoFo conservatives, but usually they are able to draw upon some deeper well of wisdom, such as religion. Which is why a LoFo conservative may well be a HiWis, whereas a HiFo liberal -- e.g., the tenured -- may be appallingly low in wisdom.

As we've discussed in the past, one of the benefits of religion is that, from a purely evolutionary standpoint, it discourages humans from trying things that centuries of collective experience have discovered to be harmful. I mean, you can hardly go wrong if you obey the Ten Commandments, even if you aren't a believer.

Yuval Levin's The Great Debate attempts to drill down to the deep structure of our politics, using Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine as archetypes. If he is implying that the differences originate in these two writers (and I'm not sure that he does), then he's wrong. Rather, these two figures are already representatives of a deeper archetypal reality.

This same archetypal difference accounts for the very different assumptions and consequences of the American and French revolutions. The latter, for example, "launched in earnest the modern quest for social progress through unyielding political action guided by philosophical principle" (Levin). And every evil revolution since then has attempted the same thing, from the Soviets to the Mullahs.

This flight into abstraction and idealism is very much in contrast to the empiricism and moderation of the Anglo-American tradition. In Europe, Marxists wield real power, whereas in America we mostly confine them to the looniversity bin of academia. Or at least this was the case until about 40 years ago, since which time the left has completely taken over the Democratic party.

Note that nothing else in nature works in the abstract, top-down manner of the left. Rather, everything in nature is organic, systemic, and complex.

Furthermore, evolution is intrinsically conservative, in that it preserves "what works" and eliminates what doesn't. Obviously the key to life -- or going-on-living -- is to preserve what allows it to flourish and avoid what doesn't.

This has direct implications for our well-being. For example, researchers "have identified increases in suicide and drug and alcohol related deaths among high school educated white Americas as the cause for a remarkable spike in the overall death rate for middle-aged white Americans. Various experts express surprise, shock, and sadness. I can understand the sadness, but not the surprise."

Exactly. What do you expect when millions of people don't just vote left, but actually incarnate its demonic principles?:

"For the last few decades, cultural leaders have been waging a war on the weak. Their goal is to dismantle traditional norms and rules for family life. They push to dismantle gender roles and other foundational categories that ordinary people use to orient themselves and make sense out of their lives....

"The upshot: reliable guides toward a normal life are removed, and potentially destructive behaviors that rich people either avoid or discretely manage are normalized. The most vulnerable pay the cost."

So, yes, the left helps the little guy. To ruin his life and even kill himself.

Speaking of traditional categories to help guide us through reality, what could be more empirical -- more of an existential given -- than the differences between the sexes?

Conversely, what could be more insanely abstract than ignoring the message of our bodies, a message that refers to its complementary opposite? Male refers to female, and vice versa. Each by itself has no meaning whatsoever. Rather, they become mere abstractions torn from their context:

"The male-female difference is a fundamental, orienting reality in every culture. Having a sense of oneself as a man or woman gives us a place to stand in the world. The transgender revolution represents that latest, most dramatic stage in today’s efforts to efface the social authority of the male-female difference."

Once again, the LoFo "little guys" the left pretends to care about are hardest hit: "kids and young adults from poorly educated households are deprived of a functional language to talk about what it means to be a man or woman. Without such a language, they can’t see themselves as successfully being men or women. And so they are deprived of a baseline adult achievement that come-of-age rituals in traditional cultures have always celebrated."

So the war on sexual differences goes much deeper than sex, all the way down to ontology. Thus, it is an attack on being, on our most primordial cosmic signposts.

One of the benefits of respect for sexual differences is that it opens up the possibility of cultural spheres that are free of sexual tension. But the left is well on the way to destroying all such sex-free zones.

Consider how quickly we went from homosexuals in the military to the federal government now forcing high school girls to shower with boys who think they're girls. In the name of the Constitution!

So now, the violence of the state is being used to deny the basic reality of sexual differences. Or in other words, diabolical Power is shamelessly tearing truth from our midst by the root.

As someone said, fascism is the violent rejection of transcendence, in this case the transcendent complementarity of male and female. Reminds me of that crack by George Orwell:

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever.

(Related.)

9 comments:

Van Harvey said...

"...What is the deepest of deep structures that explains the surface differences between left and right? What are the First Principles that account for all the secondary differences? ..."

Having First Principles, and Not having First Principles.

Tony said...

The fundamental disagreement to me seems to be between two premises:

A: something came from Something
B: something can only come from the difference between two somethings

The first premise is that all being derives from the creativity of pure Being (Perennial Wisdom). The second is that all being comes from a process of differentiation (Deleuze).

The second premise is what C. S. Lewis would liken to polytheism. It is a "truncated metaphysic" in that, in paying attention only to differentia, it avoids asking questions about the ultimate context in which differentia occur. All differentia can only occur on a "substrate," if you like, of existence. Whence existence? Perhaps it differentiated itself from non-existence. But that theory begs the very question.

Much seems to derive directly from these deep premises.

But I'm not a philosopher.

julie said...

So, yes, the left helps the little guy. To ruin his life and even kill himself.

Listening to them talk amongst themselves, this is clearly a feature, not a bug. They may not, in general, have the courage (or rather, the guts) to act on their own (well, unless the victim is in utero and completely helpless), but they are perfectly happy to encourage those they hate to kill themselves in any number of ways. All those vicious little crybullies would probably be in ecstasies if, say, the university president at Mizzou didn't simply step down from his position, but committed seppuku onstage in order to appease them. Which of course would just encourage the little monsters.

julie said...

These days, Orwell's vision is more like imagining being forced to listen to a bunch of feminists scream-singing, forever.

Harpies and maenads never really went away, they just set up studies departments in prestigious universities.

julie said...

In a sane world, any such reports made to this campus police department would be met with the immediate deployment of a waahmbulance outfitted with the latest in tiny violin technology. Phones answered by R. Lee Ermey.

Instead, someone saying anything that causes badfeels will be reported, photographed, and disciplined. Presumably unless the complainant is a straight white male and the badspeaker anyone else.

Van Harvey said...

My lunchtime rant on higher ed in Mizzou:
Ferguson goes to college: What did you expect? A rant

John Lien said...

"...but the point is that these are not normal political times, and that we cannot deal with the left as if we simply have routine policy disputes that can be settled via compromise."

Yes. To quote that brilliant philosopher, Sting, "There is no political solution..."

I was active in politics until I came to the same realization. At this point I'm just watching the show.

mushroom said...

So, yes, the left helps the little guy. To ruin his life and even kill himself.

That's like the mentally ill we used to treat and try to restore to normalcy. Now we enable them and "celebrate" their deviancy. That ended so well for Sodom and Gomorrah.

mushroom said...

Don't get me started on Mizzou. I have been grinding my teeth on that all day. It's a good thing I don't live as close as I used to. I'd be loading rock salt in my shotgun shells.

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