Friday, December 10, 2010

Come for the Social Justice, Stay for the Omnipotent State

As the fifth act of creation involves the descent of ensouled movement into the world (discussed yesterday), the fourth act involves the creation of the archetypes -- just as the blueprint is prior to the building, genotype to phenotype, or logos (intelligent form) to substance.

Tomberg compares it to a symphony orchestra in which no one person has the entire score, but each member has his own instrument and his own part to play, in order to harmonize with the whole musical existentialada.

As such, the fourth day of creation "is that of the coming into being of those principles which direct 'time and tempo'" -- the creation of the sun, the moon, and the stars in order to separate night from day, to provide light to the earth, and to serve generally as cosmic designposts: "signs and seasons, days and years." Tomberg asks, "What are these other than organs of direction, i.e., conductors of time and tempo for the world-orchestra, in accordance with the music-score of the stars?"

One might say that the sun illuminates space, while the moon and other heavenly bodies mark time, providing its primordial rhythmicity. (Although in another sense, the roles can be reversed, in that the moon rules the space of night, or the unconscious, just as the sun corresponds with the conscious self.)

Note as well that separation must precede order, something which is very much emphasized in Judaism. We revert to the chaos that preceded the creation if, for example, we ignore the distinction between the sexes -- which is one of the inevitable cosmic horrors of radical feminism, the homosexual agenda, or of left wing egalitarianism in general, which is always at war with discrimination (and the ability to discriminate vertically is what makes us human).

Looked at another way, the fourth day involves the enunciation of the principial world, which is anterior to creation in the same way that our personal essence is prior to existence (again, unless you are a Marxist/existentialist).

In fact, this is perhaps the central idea (appropriate that the four is midway between the one and seven) that separates the believer from the pagan and liberal from leftist, for the secular leftist inverts the divine order and insists that existence is prior to essence. Having denied his own essential blueprint, he is a cosmic orphan reduced to, and determined by, mere chance and superficial contingencies such as race, class, and gender (i.e., sex as social construct as opposed to principial archetype).

This is why leftism is 180 degrees from liberalism, and why leftism is unthinkable in the absence of this inappropriate obsession with horizontal accidents. Once you acknowledge a true self -- which is to say a created self, or a unique ontological center of personal autonomy -- you can no longer call yourself a leftist.

Thus, it is no surprise that we see the New York Times trumpeting the scientifically "sophisticated" but otherwise terribly unsophisticated idea that human beings do not possess free will. For if human beings do possess free will, then nearly the whole ghastly project of leftism crumbles in a heap. The absurdity of the free will deniers becomes clear if expressed explicitly, as in this piece at American Thinker:

"We here at The New York Times want to announce a new policy. This is that we will no longer criticize anyone, nor praise anyone. We will, in other words, hold no one responsible for his or her conduct.

"We institute this policy in light of the columns published recently in our pages arguing that human beings have no free will, that they cannot choose their own conduct. If this is so, as we believe it is -- we haven't published anyone arguing the opposite thesis, as you may have noticed -- there can be no choice about what people do. Neither Saddam Hussein, nor George W. Bush, nor Nancy Pelosi nor indeed anyone at all has anything to do with his or her conduct or, as social scientists prefer to call it, behavior."

In short, if there is no free will, then obviously there can be no morality, let alone a judicial system, for we are merely condemned to do what we do in a mechanistic way, and it makes no sense to punish a machine. Conversely, once one acknowledges that man possesses free will, and that he may (and must) recognize and choose between good and evil (or truth and falsehood), then one has left any form of leftism behind.

The Times quotes one "expert" who is apparently compelled (for he is not free) to say that free will is merely "a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free," but "the more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don't have it."

Hmmm.... if we are not free to scrutinize it, how could we ever know that it is true that we don't have free will? Here we see how there is no truth in the absence of free will, which is why the left ends up denying both freedom and reality (for truth coincides with the Real). To turn it around, if truth exists, so too does free will. Truth is the ultimate guarantor of liberty, and vice versa. Attack one and you maim the other.

One of our guiding stars in the principial firmament above is justice. This is as good an example as any of a "greater light" that allows us to navigate by day, as it illuminates the moral space we inhabit. That is, human beings possess an innate sense of justice -- not just this or that justice, but justice as such.

What is so ironic is that the leftist too lives by this light, but at the same time, denies its reality above and therefore its possibility below. This is why leftist theologies literally turn the cosmos upside down (speaking ontologically) and transmogrify transcendent justice into some version of "social justice" or "liberation" theology.

Equally ironically -- and this is key -- "social justice" is always an excuse for unlimited state power, since, if you try to understand what the leftist means by the term, you soon realize that it is imbued with omnipotence. (This is ably trissected in Thomas Sowell's foundational A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, and The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.)

In short, in order to impose one's idea of unlimited justice, one must have unlimited power. Whenever a leftist says "justice," reach for your blowtorch.

If no one is free and therefore nothing is moral, religion merely becomes the will to power, even -- or especially -- when it is dressed up in the language of social justice, entitlement, and "human rights," instead of the negative civil liberties of classical liberalism. For civil rights are here to protect liberty, whereas so-called "human rights" are here to deny liberty through state power -- which always ends up being a great injustice from the standpoint of heaven, since it imposes the same law on the lion and lamb, so we are all treated like sheep. First they steal our wool, then they pull it over our eyes.

Here is a typical voice from the abyss at huffingandpissed. He agrees that reality is not what it appears to be, and that there is a "hidden blueprint," so to speak, ruling over us. Yes, his opinions are obviously "crazy" -- that goes without saying -- but crazy does not mean random. Rather, one of the axioms of psychoanalysis is that craziness is merely order by another name. In other words, in order to heal the craziness, we must help the patient uncover the deep structure -- the implicate "lesser lights" of his night time unconscious -- that underlie the surface disorder:

"Every 'advanced' society exists as a parasite in those less 'advanced,' and that can be proven empirically and decisively. Bush is not responsible for the war in Iraq.... Civilization cannot exist in the absence of war, because civilization is itself inherently exploitative.... that is why we'll have more and more of it, and why it will eventually percolate from the peripheries populated by Dark Others into our suburbs. [How can there be "Dark Others" if war is inherent? -- ed.]

"Everything we have that we list in our catalogue of civilization is forged out of fraud, theft, and murder.... Show me the exception, and I'll take it back. [Since he is not an exception, he is a liar and a thief, so why should we believe, much less trust, him? -- ed.]

"The fine woods and metals and animal guts that make the orchestras, the stones and steel and trees for our libraries..., and the food displayed strategically along our supermarket shelves... they all require war. They are taken from cultures who first refuse to cooperate, then who are forced to cooperate or be depopulated. [In that case, we have to stop the world from stealing all of the food we produce here in the United States. -- ed.]

"The expansive and expanding heaps of... of asphalt and glass and plastic and paint and shiny right-angles -- are scraped out of hillsides and coastlines, with the corpses of biomes and simpler cultures left behind as the mizzens of this wretched thing called civilization.... Technology is driven by scarcity, and scarcity by pillage.... This is not a mark of superiority, but the cascading catastrophe of power seeking the enslavement of first women, then slaves and colonies and nature..." [But given your conception of man, wouldn't these women and other primitives just enslave and colonize white men if they could? -- ed.]

*****

Oh my. Imagine this fascist being in charge of your homeowners association, much less the wheels of government.

Here is a quite literal example of "justice gone mad," for when we reject the greater light of divine justice, we are left with mere animal justice, which is no justice at all. I am always surprised at the inherent irony of secular progressives calling themselves "humanists." For one thing, to deny God is to prevent man, pure and simple.

Secondly, have you ever read a more quintessentially anti-human diatribe? If human beings are what this or any other progressive says they are, then why would we ever trust progressive statists to set things right? If human beings are power-mad monsters of depravity, the last thing we want to do is give them more power over us, because they will treat us as such.

No one is responsible for anything, but somehow its our fault, otherwise this person wouldn't be ranting about his sense of cosmic injustice. But where does he get his grandiose sense of injustice, since it doesn't come from above, and he's a depraved human animal just like everyone else? From whence does it come if we are only self-interested monkeys who will commit any crime to get what we want? Indeed if we -- that is to say, civilization -- are a crime against man and nature?

End of part one.

28 comments:

Van Harvey said...

"Note as well that separation must precede order, something which is very much emphasized in Judaism. We revert to the chaos that preceded the creation if, for example, we ignore the distinction between the sexes -- which is one of the inevitable cosmic horrors of radical feminism of the homosexual agenda, or of left wing egalitarianism in general, which is always at war with discrimination (and the ability to discriminate vertically is what makes us human). "

When Hume said we cannot really know reality, he legitimized the call to escapism through denying reality bit by bit. The civilizational exit sign the modern proregressive leftist is so busy herding people towards, is a retreat from the identification of what Is, and avoiding judgment over any Is's Ought - anti-discrimination is the very soul of political correctness. What Prince Charles & Camilla may have begun to discover yesterday, is that the exit sign they've so busybodily helped to adorn, no matter how gilded, is painted upon a door which opens over a gangplank... and it doesn't discriminate over who it tosses into the shark infested ocean.

Van Harvey said...

"Hmmm.... if we are not free to scrutinize it, how could we ever know that it is true that we don't have free will? Here we see how there is no truth in the absence of free will, which is why the left ends up denying both freedom and reality (for truth coincides with the Real). To turn it around, if truth exists, so too does free will. Truth is the ultimate guarantor of liberty, and vice versa. Attack one and you maim the other. "

That's a big 10-4.

"In short, in order to impose one's idea of unlimited justice, one must have unlimited power. Whenever a leftist says "justice," reach for your blowtorch."

Poetic justice indeed, if you could use it to back them up to the stake they've prepared for you.

julie said...

In short, if there is no free will, then obviously there can be no morality, let alone a judicial system, for we are merely condemned to do what we do in a mechanistic way, and it makes no sense to punish a machine.

And in truth, that sort of thinking, followed to its logical ends, would result in feral humans. If all behavior is predetermined, there is no reason to try and correct anything anyone does - nor even any point (besides the exercising of ones own uncontrollable drive to exercise power over others), since everything anyone does is just natural.

I wonder how many of these believers in no free will would be willing to just let their children (or anyone else's; I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these folks choose to remain childless) run wild and free? After all, kids have no control over what they do, it's all just brain chemistry. In a generation or two, there'd be no culture, no society, no civilization, maybe even no language. But on the plus side, humans will have resumed their triumphant place somewhere in the middle of the food chain, as just another grunting species on the face of the earth. Think of all the endangered species of snail darters and biomes that would be saved!

Gagdad Bob said...

They used to say a leftist is someone who wants to reach into your shower and adjust the temperature. Now they want to reach into your mouth and remove the food they don't approve of.

mushroom said...

The Times quotes one "expert" who is apparently compelled (for he is not free) to say that free will is merely "a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free," but "the more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don't have it."

He just had to say that.

mushroom said...

Rather, one of the axioms of psychoanalysis is that craziness is merely order by another name. In other words, in order to heal the craziness, we must help the patient uncover the deep structure -- the implicate "lesser lights" of his night time unconscious -- that underlie the surface disorder.

As Chesterton said, the insane are at least as logical as the sane, for the most part. They have often eliminated all the messiness of reality and reduced it to something they can understand. It's not that they are not reasonable, rather their reason disconnected with reality to varying degrees.

And if they are crazy enough, they can get a Nobel prize in Economics.

Gagdad Bob said...

Precisely. Ideology is always superimposed on the world not to understand it, but to provide the intellectual pretext to seize power and transform it.

Brazentide said...

That poor fool at the Huffpuff has no idea what he is saying. He is teetering on the edge of absolute insanity. There is no reason in what he says, just outrage at his perceived injustice. There is no way to even begin to organize his unhinged ravings into principles by which he would suppose humanity ought to live.

But as I find the absurd funny and entertaining, I'll give it a shot.

The main thrust is that civilization is unjust because it is a parasitic entity built on waging war in order to steal. First from women, then from slaves, and now from nature.

My question: What in this poor deluded fools mind determines ownership?

Under his 'reasoning', aren't the Biomes he laments over just as guilty of theft from the planet (after all, they need their minerals) as the civilization that destroyed them? Why is nature somehow exempted from his condemnation of theft? When this otherworldly demon called "civilization" was first conjured up by (presumably white) males. Was it at the same time ritually summoned by Starlings? After all, they have stolen the nests of sparrows for thousands of years. Considering how much theft, murder and war exists in plant and animal nature itself (not to mention the molecular or galactic scale), on what basis can he even declare that stealing, theft and war unjust?

You don't need to read too deeply between the lines to see that what he really hates is existence, that is to say, he hates himself (and his Creator). He's a nihilist of the first degree. He is doing his level best to dance around that fact and ends up looking like a total fool in the process.

If he was philosophically consistent with his with what he believes, he would eventually come to the conclusion that power is the only determining factor in the universe, rather than lamenting exploitation, he would seek to become the exploiter. As you say Bob, he is a fascist, and if the touchy-feeliness doesn't keep him in check (one of God's safety systems for the rest of us). he might become either a despot or a suicide statistic.

There are only two roads, the further one travels, the more they diverge. When all is said and done, you are either on the road the road to sainthood, or the socio-path.

Gagdad Bob said...

Yes, in the end it's either God or nihilism, O or Ø, the nothing-nothing or the nothing-everything.

julie said...

Re. the fast food places in LA, that's just precious. Poor people are too stupid to pick the "right" foods, but in the rest of the city all the (presumably) smarter, wealthier people are mature enough to make their own choices. For now.

First, they came for other peoples' hamburgers...

I wouldn't be at all surprised, though, if there isn't a sudden proliferation of mobile food trucks selling the same type of foods, parked on the same otherwise vacant corners.

JWM said...

-- ...are scraped out of hillsides and coastlines, with the corpses of biomes and simpler cultures left behind...

Yup. And that's exactly how it should be.

JWM

Tigtog said...

To: Julie
Re: "I wouldn't be at all surprised, though, if there isn't a sudden proliferation of mobile food trucks selling the same type of foods, parked on the same otherwise vacant corners."

Don't tell anyone, but I have a business plan to offer gourmet hot dogs via vending carts. The beauty of the plan is to partner with "citizens of disputed provenance" as my marketing arm, after they have paid a partnership fee and arranged a loan to buy their cart from me (we all know banks love giving loans to mouth breathers with no functional english - its the right thing to do according to FNMA). I provide the daily supplies, which are paid for in cash daily, and they are responsible to sell it. Should they find a particular location less than desirable they can simply move. This avoids heavy investment and property taxes. My responsibility is to provide the recipes, supplies and advertising. I would have no real overhead and very little payroll. Do you think the nihilist from huff and puff would approve? BTW, if any coons are interested I am willing to accept startup funds.

I wonder what a Biome Hot Dog should taste like?

Basically I wish to bring the internet business model business to food service and cut out all the unnecessary costs like payroll taxes, property taxes, and if possible, sales taxes.. No reason to invest in bricks and mortar, thats just building your own tomb once the social justice zombies find you. Flexibility and mobility, two key concepts in winning the war of exploitation.

julie said...

Note as well that separation must precede order, something which is very much emphasized in Judaism.

On that note, Stossel asks why the poor remain poor. Another fractal descendant of the separation that precedes order is the necessity of property rights as a foundation for economic growth and liberty.

Tigtog - I wonder what a Biome Hot Dog should taste like?

Earthy, with a hint of grit. Perhaps mud pies should have a place on the menu, as well ;)

Tigtog said...

"Earthy, with a hint of grit. Perhaps mud pies should have a place on the menu, as well ;)"

Selling people dirt to eat, now you are really cooking. Go on girl - Julie knows exploitation. Shoosh.

julie said...

To be fair, I was only partially right - given the context ("corpses of biomes") I was thinking only of microbial soil systems, such as the stuff that makes up diatomaceous earth. Guess I was thinking too small, but still if one were to crush up and process an entire biome, some sort of mud would likely be the result...

Tigtog said...

So Julie, what you are saying is you would like a gourmet hot dog that tastes like skanky shrimp?

I can do that.

julie said...

Chock Full O'Nutrients!™

julie said...

The Nutrition Nazis would have to love it! It would be loaded with proteins, phytochemicals, probiotics, and be 100% all-natural - and it would taste absolutely heinous.

julie said...

Back to Bob's first comment today,

They used to say a leftist is someone who wants to reach into your shower and adjust the temperature.

Why stop at the temperature when they can ban it altogether?

ge said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/11plane.html?hp

--at what point does one admit to oneself: 'BAD idea'

Van Harvey said...

Brazentide said “My question: What in this poor deluded fools mind determines ownership?”

That’ll undo his posturing, all right.

And this,
“You don't need to read too deeply between the lines to see that what he really hates is existence, that is to say, he hates himself (and his Creator). He's a nihilist of the first degree.”

, gets to the root of his matter, very good. At the start of it all, they want to assert what they want reality to be, and from that moment on, they are at war with reality, excluded from the use of principles or any true reasoning whatsoever – all comes down to assertion and force.

Van Harvey said...

Julie said "Another fractal descendant of the separation that precedes order is the necessity of property rights as a foundation for economic growth and liberty."

Yep... there can be no, zero, zilch, political support for any individual rights (speech, religion, self defence, etc), without the recognition and unwavering defence of Property Rights.

They are the political anchor which makes the rule of law and all else possible.

Jack said...

Came across this article Is There Anything Good About Men? which I think does a brilliant job explaining the differences between men and women. Leftism simply would deny such thinking as "sexist" by definition. It isn't much of a leap from this article to discover why the male value sphere MUST be denied in order to promote leftist values.

Worth a read.

julie said...

Iowahawk.

Gagdad Bob said...

Just when you think the left is beyond satire....

Tigtog said...

To: Jack
Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

Thank you for posting this article. I found it very insightful. There was only one issue I had with the premise and that was the use of the term "evolution." Throughout the article the writer used the term to described the differences in proficiencies across different tasks between men and women. He made very solid and reasonable claims that the specialization of men and women created their differing observed proficiencies and preferances. It may be me, but the term evolution describes the process for creating a separate species while adaptation describes the process of specialization within a species. I think we can all agree that both women and men are of the same species. So the process that he refers to as evolution is in fact adaptation. Darwin never caught any flak concerning his thesis of adaptation. It was well known by every farmer for the preceding 3 millennium. He only caught flak for his theory of evolution: the genesis of the species. I know every Discovery channel animal show likes to show the results of adaptation within a species to shill the idea of evolution, but there really is a difference.

Are we saying that women are the missing link here?

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"First they steal our wool, then they pull it over our eyes."

Excellent descripton of leftist thieves (but I repeat myself)!

After they tax you for the wool then they steal it. Then they might give you a small piece back (if you didn't have much to begin with).

Then folks lose their jobs 'cause the folks who had the most wool have less wool for job seekers to make stuff out of.

The wolf's share of the wool goes to the bureaurats who took yer wool, their friends and those who never had wool, (many of which never worked for it and think they desrve it simply because they elected the wolves, I mean, the bureauratic, backstabbin', lyin', cheatin', mobsters we now call politicians, primarily with a "D" after their names).

That's how lefties define "fair."

In many ways the new mob is worse than the old mob, 'cause at least the old mob didn't tell ya what to eat or how to live or take your rights away after they stole yer hard earned wool.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Oh, and then the leftists try to blame the sheepdogs when their plans to redistribute yer wool to themselves and their rich friends (leftists are, afterall, allowed to be obscenely rich...why? Shutup! That's why. And if you hafta know, it's nuance) makes the economy worse for some unknown reason.

It's not like this ever happened before, you know.

Theme Song

Theme Song