Saturday, December 01, 2007

Thoughts on the Intrinsic Madness of the Left

We hardly need empirical studies to prove to us that Democrats on the whole are less mentally healthy than Republicans, since leftism itself is, if not a mental illness, an intrinsically spiritual illness, being that it denies Spirit a priori. Therefore, to the extent that spirituality contributes to human happiness -- and the wisest people have argued that true happiness is impossible in its absence -- then leftists must, on average, be more unhappy (which research also reveals them to be). And to the extent that leftism does not comport with human reality, then believing in its tenets is intrinsically unhealthy, just as, say, it would be unhealthy for a puckish penguin to believe that it would be preferable for him to play in Florida instead of Pittsburgh.

Yes -- and this will no doubt come as news to materialists -- there is a "human world" to which we must adapt, just as there is a material world to which we must adapt. Failure of the latter leads to physical disease, just as failure of the former leads to psychological or spiritual illness. To cite a couple more empirical studies, married people tend to be happier than the unmarried, while failure to be religious carries the approximate health risk of smoking a pack or so of cigarettes a day.

There are so many ways to consider this problem. For example, "sexuality" is a reality to which humans must adapt on pain of dysfunction. But human sexuality is obviously different than animal sexuality. Now, I can affirm this because I am a humanist, which is to say, spiritual. But an anti-human materialist can make no such assertion, since his philosophy reduces humanness to animality (or the reverse, which amounts to the same thing).

Just the other day a typical troll argued that there was no real distinction between animal and human, which we hear all the time, as it is a necessary consequence of the principles of materialism. For a materialist, the fact that our genes are 95% or 99% similar to a chimp is a highly significant fact. To a spiritual person, it only highlights the infinite gap between genes and humanness. In any event, to the extent that a human being believes that human sexuality is no different than animal sexuality, his hopes for finding human sexual happiness will be reduced to chance at best. He will probably end up learning more about sex from the movies than from eternal human archetypes (which, by the way, the movies once reflected).

As I have said before -- and I know it sounds polemical, but it's not -- the Democrat Party is the Party of Dysfunction. Their racist attitude toward race is well documented and would be too tedious to discuss again. To cite another glaring example, the Democrat party can only function as a party to the extent that it both produces and appeals to dysfunctional people. Now, I don't want to cast aspersions on a whole race of people, but consider the fact that single women are by far the largest constituency of the Democrat party. According to statistics cited in the 12.03.07 National Review, "Democrats haven't won more than 43 percent of the white-male vote in 30 years." For example, Al Gore won only 36% of white males, while John Kerry won 37%. "If no women had voted on Election Day 2000, George Bush and Dick Cheney would have carried 43 states."

Now, don't get me wrong. That's not what I'm suggesting. The article -- which was written by a woman, BTW -- goes on to point out that the female vote is hardly "the monolithic bloc of feminist fantasy," but breaks down into married vs. single women. Much more significant than the "gender gap" is the "marriage gap." For example, in the recent congressional elections, "the marriage gap was a huge 32 points, compared with a gender gap of just 9 points." And this gap cuts across all other demographics, including race, income, and education. So single women are by far the largest segment of the Democrat base, more than blacks and hispanics combined.

Therefore, it should not surprise us that the Democrat party is the anti-marriage party, since the more people marry, the worse things are for them. To put it another way, their electoral success is directly tied to the weakening and/or destruction of the family as we know it. But I would guess that for most people -- and I don't need a study to prove this -- the greatest source of their happiness -- not to mention, mental stability -- is their family. Thus, the Democrats must again be the party of unhappiness and mental illness if they are to be a party at all.

One of the reasons fewer women marry is because of the ideological success of feminism, which has brainwashed women into believing that there are no intrinsic differences between men and women, and that a women certainly does not require a man or children to find fulfillment and to be happy. Thus, to the extent that a woman does possess a higher archetype of femininity, or that she requires loving relationship with a good man in order to find fulfillment, she will have a void that cannot be named and therefore addressed. True, some women are no doubt happier droning away at some meaningless job than they are in being married and raising children, but it's not as many as feminists would have you think. Mrs. G. for example, thought she was happy as a career woman, but it turned out she wasn't -- that it was just a compensation for a choice she had been brainwashed not to make.

Because secular leftism is materialistic, it abolishes all archetypal human distinctions, and human distinctions are what make us distinct as humans. For example, if there are no distinctions between men and women, it naturally follows that those opposed to the redefinition of marriage are bigoted as opposed to discerning, for what difference does it make?

But freedom means nothing if it is truly "radical," i.e., if there is no intrinsic purpose to our humanness. Thus, the existentialist is "free," but as Sartre concluded, in the absence of a human essence, it is a freedom that is indistinguishable from "infinite nothingness." But in the Raccoon scheme of things, freedom is the power to realize our specifically human potential, an archetypal potential that lies both "before" and "above" us. In short, it is eternal, but must be realized in time.

Again, on the material view of things, our nonlocal potential must be collapsed into the material domain, so our freedom will be limited to ultimately meaningless material choices down in 3D. This, by the way, is why the wealthy hedonists of the left fantasize that they empathize with "the poor." It's because they project their own spiritual emptiness into them, and imagine that the poor must be as unfulfilled as they are, because so focused on material lack. But another study came out this week -- I'm too lazy to try to find it at the moment -- that showed that a significant majority of Republicans are of modest means, while the Democrats are the party of the wealthy. This is because these conservative "values voters" are unaware of the envious absence, the active spiritual void, that gnaws away at the leftist. How selfish of them!

With the devolution to secular leftism comes the loss of role and the loss of hierarchy. No one knows their place or their true identity, which is one of the things that fuels celebrity culture, which necessarily conflates the famous with the significant. More importantly, because of the assumptions of materialism, it allows everyone to believe that they have either reached the summit of perfection, or, if not, that they have been unjustly denied it. If "everyone is equal," the obvious lack of equality will be intrinsically unfair and corrupt. This again fuels envy, which is terribly corrosive to any kind of human happiness.

I'll leave you with a little passage from Bolton's The Order of the Ages: World History in the Light of a Universal Cosmogony:

"[T]he norms of Man, Woman, Child, and Adult belong among the archetypal realities, the realization of which never ceases to be a basic condition for existence. In proportion as these universal archetypes fail to be realized, life can easily be experienced as a continuous low-intensity mental torture which can produce life-threatening cumulative effects, owing to the maladjustment and interpersonal conflicts fostered by it.

"Realizing significant archetypal realities in oneself, having a sense of identity, and finding happiness, are inseparable, because the archetype or Form is the ultimate object of self-knowledge, without which the self is not knowable even to itself. Only in proportion as one knows what one is can one consistently act in a manner coherent with one's nature and find fulfillment."

*****

Regarding the left's racial pathology and its contribution to human misery, here's a little gem from Taranto:

Take That, You Little Cracker!

Here's an appalling press release from the University of Texas:

Challenging the idea that racism education could be harmful to students, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin found the results of learning about historical racism are primarily positive....

Both white and black children who learned about racism were more likely to value racial fairness and to express greater satisfaction with the lesson. White children whose lessons included information on discrimination showed more defensiveness, had more racial guilt and were less likely to accept stereotypical views about African Americans.


Breaking down stereotypes is all well and good, but what kind of sicko thinks it's "positive" to make 7-year-olds feel guilty about the color of their skin?

40 comments:

walt said...

Tsk Tsk, there you go being repellant again! You're just going to scare off the readers who come here for limericks ...

Good words, today!

I think "Intrinsic Madness" is a good name for your next band.

You wrote:
"...in the Raccoon scheme of things, freedom is the power to realize our specifically human potential..."
This would make a great product for your Raccoon Store: a banner, button, or tee-shirt with a Raccoon's face, saying "FREEDOM -- is the Power!" A sure-seller!

And quoting Bolton:
"Only in proportion as one knows what one is can one consistently act in a manner coherent with one's nature and find fulfillment."

Sentences containing 'proportion,' 'consistently,' and 'coherent' just naturally get my attention!

Thanks, Bob!

Gagdad Bob said...

One last point -- I think that leftist environmental hysteria is a projection, a displaced recognition of the "spiritual danger" they are in, only collapsed down into materiality. It is the only way their soul can "cry out for help," to the point of sometimes even being suicidal, i.e., believing that human beings are "bad" and should be eliminated from the biosphere.

walt said...

Here's a good illustration of Bob's comment about environmentalists.

Gagdad Bob said...

From PowerLine:

Which brings us to a fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives want the freedom to pursue happiness on their own terms. Liberals think they have a right to happiness and that it should be delivered, like a pizza.

When you understand this, you understand why the liberal version of the American dream -- no worries, free health care and a guaranteed income, among other things -- would be like living in your parents' basement, for life.

Put another way, modern liberalism is exactly like modern art: Ordinary people take one look and say, "Blech," while its elite defenders say, "You don't understand -- this is better than it looks."

Gagdad Bob said...

Walt:

Since it's down to you & me on weekends, maybe I should just call you on the phone rather than bothering to post? Either that or transmit directly through the ether via Remote Coonography, or what Petey calls "blowing smoke signals."

walt said...

Yes, I sense the problem -- but Ben is at the Comissary, and Mizz E is wranglin' with Blogger, and Robin's got the blues -- legitimate excuses all! Or, I could say, they have a life!

But in the spirit of bashing Dems and Libs -- leftist Libs, of course (the repellant kind) -- here's an example of Hillary's "leadership" qualities, spoken upon hearing about yesterday's hostage crisis at one of her headquarters:

"It affected me not only because they were my staff members and volunteers, but as a mother, it was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time."

Gagdad Bob said...

Syncoonicity -- reading a book about the great Catholic historian Christopher Dawson (in the sidebar), and it says, "Dawson argued that the ideological attack on the family -- the true central institution of society -- would inevitably lead to the increase of power of the state."

Which, of course it has, as single leftist women want more entitlement programs, higher taxes, and the expansion of government in general as a replacement for father and husband.

Anonymous said...

An excellent post today, Mr. Godwin.

I can attest to the truth of what you have expressed for, yes, I once was married.

Oh very well, it was not a proper marriage in the strictly technical sense - Beaglehole and I had agreed in our youthful callowness that marriage was a crushingly bourgeois enterprise, fit only for Doxy Street clerks and woolly mammoths.

I supposed you will not be surprised to hear that our "marriage" was conducted along the lines of an ongoing Normandy Invasion, in which we took turns playing the invading Allied armies. How often the rafters of Waterfowl Manor shook to the sound of hurled shoes, dinner plates, and once, I recall, a gold-plated scone toaster. . .

And yet - as I look back on those days, I see myself as being oddly . . . happy.

Anonymous said...

"Walt: Since it's down to you & me on weekends, maybe I should just call you on the phone rather than bothering to post?"

"Hey...lurkers always abound...don't give up on the reticent crowd!

walt said...

"Oddly . . . happy," says it all!

Anonymous said...

Dang you Bob!!!
Now I gotta start reading again....
It was sooooooo much easier when I didn't read anything that made me think...
Say...Do they have "Polyani for Morons"????

Anonymous said...

Edith has reminded me of the definition of bigamy, which is "one wife too many" -- which also happens to be the definition of marriage, especially insofar as Edith is involved in the ghastly enterprise.

GB, with all due respect, this confirmed but happy old bachelor says you've gone a bridge too far with today's post. Or as the randy Mohammedan once said, "I've got more wild goats to sow."

Anonymous said...

Oh my yes, Beaglehole, you appeared all confirmed and happy when I last bailed you out of the Los Angeles County drunk tank this past October, was it not?

And how dare you accuse Mr. Godwin of going a bridge too far! This coming from a mouldy old sot whose bridge cannot raise quite high enough to span the Thames, if you comprehend the allusion.

Sow your wild goats, indeed. Only in your ever-present hallucinations.

Anonymous said...

Since it's down to you & me on weekends, maybe I should just call you on the phone rather than bothering to post?

What -- and disappoint those of us who routinely visit (even though, frankly, OC is a bit lean on the Thanksgiving limerick side of things)?

Anonymous said...

And incidentally, Beaglehole, that dinner jacket you were wearing shall NOT be returned. It was so reeking of your . . . shall we say of your personal effluvia that I had it burnt to ashes whilst in the company of several exorcists and a Griffith Park patrol officer.

Van Harvey said...

Thanks Walt, for making the comment I was thinking of... well maybe not the the Raccoon t-shirt part... unless you put a Darth Vader helmet on 'em, that'd be cool... but the excerpt, comment & Bolton quote... they were what I was thinking.
And thanks Gagdad for answering the question I was thinking... and thanks to the Waterfowl manor players, that was fun... what an effortless morning!
(lookout for that other shoe doesn't drop on you...)

julie said...

"Since it's down to you & me on weekends, maybe I should just call you on the phone rather than bothering to post?"

Hey now, just because we're a bit later to the party on Saturdays doesn't men we're not going to show; we just need to sleep off the grog first!

robinstarfish said...

...and get the chores done. Like getting my hair cut and having to listen to 20 minutes of dysfunctional yada from a multiple pierced and tatted ex-con. She misses prison. Should have recorded it, would have made the perfect sound bite today...

I'd rather Look On the Bright Side of Life.

Anonymous said...

Good to see Beaglehole and Dame Edith back at it again.
Just yesterday I was thinking about them and wondering how they were doing.

wv; obsvr

I kid you not!

julie said...

She misses prison?! Wow. Did you experience any moments of panic as she reached for the scissors?

Why is it that some people who've been in jail feel the need to tell that detail to anyone they come into contact with for more than five minutes? We had a cab driver in Ohio once who had to share that info over the course of a forty-minute drive to a podunk airport. We were very glad for him that he seemed to have straightened his life out, but we really would have been much happier with the drive without knowing he'd been incarcerated.

Anonymous said...

"All evil philosophies are systems of rationalization." -- Ayn Rand.

Which party is more characterized by systematic rationalizations inherent in its philosophy?

Is systematic rationalization conducive to mental health?

Van Harvey said...

I think the Hush Puppie just hit the floor... could swear I dimly heard a 'woof'...

Stephen Macdonald said...

Hmm...

Well it isn't just Walt and Bob here on weekends, but the Cooniverse does indeed contract a tad.

So Smoov, being that you are One Cool 'Coon, tell us what to do!

Well, how about a conference call?

We could use something like FreeConferenceCall.com. Budget-conscious raccoons could purchase one of those phone cards that lets you call long distance for a penny a minute. Bob could be Grand Raccoon and deliver the Sunday Sermon, and afterward we could have coonversation providing we could work out a method of taking turns...

I do this in business all the time and you can get the hang of it. It works well with small groups, and we could limit the subscription each week to 10 via sign-up sheet.

Whaddaya think?

Anonymous said...

"Since it's down to you & me on weekends, maybe I should just call you on the phone rather than bothering to post?"

Hey there are a lot of lurkers here.

Anonymous said...

"When you understand this, you understand why the liberal version of the American dream -- no worries, free health care and a guaranteed income, among other things -- would be like living in your parents' basement, for life."

In other words, leftism is simply arrested adolescence.

Anonymous said...

I think if The World Without Us had been written simply as a totally objective study on what would happen if humans disappeared, it would make a fascinating study, especially to a "crunchy con" like myself, who loves the environment but hates environmentalists. But, having not read it, only the reviews, it appears that it was written predictably as a sky-is-falling alarmist piece of radical enviro propaganda. Hey, if Salon raves over it, you know it must be full of lefty hysteria. What a shame. Again, it would make a fascinating objective study, as would an analysis of what a place like Manhattan looked like before Europeans arrived (I've seen scientific papers like that). But, of course, science is religion to the postmodernist, and there is no such thing as objectivity. These days, it all has to have a message behind it that denigrates capitalism and praises socialism. I still wonder myself if there is some small group of psycho geniuses meeting in some secret location plotting such a demise for mankind.

Joan of Argghh! said...

Fellow Raccoons, there is hope, or at least some serious/comic relief on the horizon.

Ben Stein has been on a covert mission, it seems, to challenge Dawkins, Darwin, and Tenure.

The entire website for his upcoming film is brilliant, but don't miss the "News" link for some amazing articles.

He asks for personal testimony from profs and students that have been expelled for daring to think and ask intelligent questions.

Sorry to hijack, and I'll post more on my blog, but I can't contain my glee, because Ben Stein rocks the Raccoon in me!

Magnus Itland said...

Intriguingly, a leftist friend linked to the study where Republicans reported to feel more sane, and mentioned this as an example of how deluded Republicans were. After all, since Republicans are insane, their delusions of sanity are proof of their insanity.

I found this amusing, no less so because my leftist friends have a tendency to be very open (if not proud) about their various mental dysfunctions. In fact, having mental problems is so trendy that I suspect over-reporting by Democrats as a possibility.

walt said...

Magnus mentioned:
"...having mental problems is so trendy that I suspect over-reporting..."

So if our liberal friends exhort us to "get with the program," we will now know what they mean!

julie said...

Smoov, if you ever manage to get a group of raccoons to be in on a conference call, I'd sign up. I might just lurk, but it would be awfully fun to listen :)

Magnus, I wondered how long it would take for leftists to draw that conclusion. After all, the common wisdumb is that crazy people never doubt their sanity. By labeling themselves as having poorer mental health, they get to be a victim and get to be actually sane at the same time.

Joan, thanks for the link. I'll be keeping an eye out for that movie!

Van Harvey said...

Smoov said "...and afterward we could have coonversation providing we could work out a method of taking turns..."

What... and risk revealing my secret identity? I'd have to be crazy to do that... oh, wait, quesitoning my sanity means I'm actually sane, right? But then thinking I'm sane... means... I'm insane... that must mean I've got some dysfuntional problems... which means I'm cool... and sane... but then that means....

I'm so coonfused.

(Turns? Do we do turns?...hmmm....)

Van Harvey said...

What we really need is a way to meet up at Skully's Bar 'n Grill, where we could wash our paws, drink his Grog, and make one heck of a racket!

Anonymous said...

Smoov,

We still hookin up at my Mamas place this spring in N.O.?
Don't forget the checkbook. ;)

Stephen Macdonald said...

shantisha:

Well I'll bring the checkbook, but I these days I lease instead of buy.

You just bring that thang, girl.

;-)

Anonymous said...

Oh, I got the thang!

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"Breaking down stereotypes is all well and good, but what kind of sicko thinks it's "positive" to make 7-year-olds feel guilty about the color of their skin?"

That is indeed, sick and twisted.
Talk about mental torture.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Crunchy conservatism is quite Christian at its heart: It loves the environment while calling environmentalism anathema! Or something.

"Realizing significant archetypal realities in oneself, having a sense of identity, and finding happiness, are inseparable, because the archetype or Form is the ultimate object of self-knowledge, without which the self is not knowable even to itself. Only in proportion as one knows what one is can one consistently act in a manner coherent with one's nature and find fulfillment."

Ah, yes. The key problem with normal 'identity seeking', 'selfishness' and so forth, is that it is mere 'egotism'. It is without a doubt selfish that we want to be saved, salvation occurs not because of a selfless desire to save mankind; but because we honestly are repelled by the idea of burning eternally (or suffering temporally as well.)

I.e, the archetype you embody is ultimately bigger than just you, so if you try to selfishly contain it you strangle it. Hard to say what I'm getting at, but that's pretty close.

How about this: Jesus says, "He who loses his life for my sake will save it, and he who saves his life will lose it." It's like, we don't really know who we are, so mere selfishness will always prevent us from becoming what we're meant to be. Partly because 'what we are' in toto includes what we will be, which is intrinsically unknown.

Therefore the only real way to find your identity or save your life is to give it up to the right Person. Or at the very least lift up anchor and let the Telos draw you in.

Almost lost my job on Friday, so everything else went temporarily out the window.

Still on this side, though!

CrypticLife said...

Self-report surveys are trash, Bob. C'mon, you know that. Believe me, there are plenty of leftists who'd like to use them, too, and they'd be (and are) far more irresponsible with their use than convservatives.

I'd be interested in your citation on lack of religiosity being the equivalent of a pack a day. Can you give a reference for that?

Anonymous said...

Look it up yourself, assoul. Bob's got a life.

Van Harvey said...

River said "How about this: Jesus says, "He who loses his life for my sake will save it, and he who saves his life will lose it." It's like, we don't really know who we are, so mere selfishness will always prevent us from becoming what we're meant to be.

Or this, He who at the same time conforms to the Key, can harmonize with Truth, He who gnos the music, will effortlessly be in rhythym with it. He who tries to match the beat, will be mechanical, he who insists on riffing with no understanding of scales and harmony, will be grating and off key.

What did someone say once? It's not selfish, but selfist? Or was it vice versa? Oh well....

(I know, Jesus said it better. I can live with that)

"Almost lost my job on Friday, so everything else went temporarily out the window."

Phew! Careful! (... while... keeping the above in mind, of course)

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