Monday, June 01, 2020

Ideas Have Riotous Consequences

People generally think of ideas as good or bad, correct or incorrect, brilliant or stupid. They don't -- especially in our age of stupidity, AKA relativism -- think of them as intrinsically pathological.

However, among Voegelin's principle themes is that thinking is indeed subject to disease and decrepitude, and that when this happens on a widespread basis, culture follows. We are seeing this play out on TV in real time -- on TV if you're lucky enough not to reside in a Democrat stronghold, unlucky if you have to live amidst the savages.

One question is whether or not the left will finally appreciate the consequences of their ruinous ideas. No chance. Ideas are easy to change, political religions, not so much.

About the religiosity, the following passage caught my attention yesterday:

You do not fight the narrative. The narrative will destroy you. The narrative is all-powerful. The narrative rules. It rules us, it rules Washington, it rules everything....

The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It's so powerful because it's unconscious. It's not like they get together every morning and decide "These are the lies we will tell today." No, that would be too crude and honest.

Rather, it's a set of casual, nonrigorous assumptions about a reality they've never really experienced that's arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the way they've chosen to live their lives.

It's a way of arranging things a certain way that they all believe in without ever really addressing carefully.... [It's] the bedrock of their culture, the keystone of their faith, the altar of their church. They don't even know they're true believers, because in theory they despise the true believer in anything (Stephen Hunter.)

One thing I noticed yesterday is the knee-jerk quality: everyone compulsively repeating the same lies, over and over.

Why? Why the constant proselytizing and virtue signaling, the conspicuous conviction that these are fine people with good intentions, with a handful naughty people taking advantage of the situation?

A few bad actors couldn't, for example, turn a Tea Party rally into a dress rehearsal for the collapse of civilization. I don't see Asian Americans rioting over the widespread and systemic legal discrimination against them by our most expensive looniversity bins.

A few notes to myself from over the weekend. Those who understand them will require no explanation. For those who don't understand them, no explanation will be sufficient, although I will no doubt expand upon them tomorrow, when I have more time:

Secularization is the process whereby Homo religiosus convinces himself he isn't.

Every war is a religious war, especially if it's irreligious.

Not a clash of civilizations, rather, of reality tunnels.

Under threat, a worldview will defend itself with violence.

Uncritical thought elevated to first principle is intrinsically pathological.

Leftists don't have ideas. Ideas have them.

In a world run by the left, who knows how to be a victim knows everything.

And who has mastered self-esteem has mastered everything.

In poor countries the wealthy are fat. In wealthy countries, the looters are disgustingly fat.

Paranoid people don't wonder about the meaning of life.

Trump's barbaric nationalism is an insult to glorious tribalism.

Progressivism is a lawsuit against reality by Perfection.

The left won't rest until all America is a university campus.

Black isn't a race, it's an ideology.

Leftism turns have-nots into will-nots, and will nots into why not, the police won't stop me.

Natural rights are never zero sum. Invented rights are whiner take all.

The demonstrators are ANGRY -- unlike most people, who learn their feelings can't change reality by the age of five, and move on.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for brokenhearted beta-men to virtue signal.

If you can politicize a perennial problem rooted in human nature, the left has a career waiting for you in politics, academia, journalism, activism, or criminality.

The rioters are showing with great persuasiveness why, despite the most thorough precautions, there will be the occasional tragedy of a George Floyd. Given the vast numbers, statistical aberrations are inevitable. Some people who never touch a cigarette will die of lung cancer.

Let's begin with the bottom line: if reality is the tension between immanence and transcendence, then default to one side or the other is intrinsically pathological, because it denies the proper form and end of man -- no different than if we were to, say, pretend man can live without food or oxygen.

One can always hold the theory that man is an angelic being who doesn't require nutrition, but what can't go on won't go on. The question is, will the person admit his error, or even acknowledge the fact that he is putting food in his mouth?

It is identical vis-a-vis any deformed ideology: it can last awhile, but not forever. It is difficult to say exactly when the present ideology under which we are forced to live fully crystalized into a pneumo-cognitive totalitarianism voluntarily internalized by the majority of citizens.

Having lived through the disease process, I can identify certain accelerations or "leaps," especially during the past two decades, e.g., the attempt to overturn the 2000 election in Bush v. Gore, the ascendence of Obama and his vile race war, the second and ongoing effort to deny a peaceful transition of power in 2016, the open attacks on free speech, the gender hysteria, the rise of social media facilitating the instantaneous transmission of pathological hatred and stupidity, the total politicization of the Narrative Media...

As I said, to be continued tomorrow...

12 comments:

julie said...

Jumbled thoughts to add:

Why the constant proselytizing and virtue signaling, the conspicuous conviction that these are fine people with good intentions, with a handful naughty people taking advantage of the situation?

Why, if black people are so hell bent on destruction, do they need so much prodding to get started? In Minneapolis there was footage of a white man in a gas mask using an umbrella to smash out the windows of the AutoZone that was looted. he walked off afterwards, followed by people who were trying to call him to account.

Things you won't be seeing on the news this week:

White kids helpfully handing out bricks to groups of black men

Random antifa goons helpfully doing the spray painting black protestors won't

In DC, why desecrate monuments to WWII and burn down churches?

Watching footage from Santa Monica last night, there was the ridiculous scene of little white girls rushing out of the shop with a load of surf boards, while a black man rushed out of the store hiding behind a "Black Lives Matter" sign. They really, really care about what the police did to that poor man.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we had big protests at the beaches. Completely non-violent, full of people who just want their lives back; the news constantly intoned that they were putting everyone at risk. Last night, we sat on our patio and watched the helicopters overhead and wondered how many grocery stores will be open in our area this week, but of course this is all Totally Understandable, just a bit of playful merriment and righteous anger.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for brokenhearted beta-men to virtue signal.

In one of the few moments of protest sanity I saw this weekend, there was a woman in Santa Monica crying that all of this chaos will just result in the nightmare of Trump's re-election. Unsurprisingly, nobody listened. All the good that Trump has been trying to do has had comparatively little effect on California, after all, and they're freer than ever to commit all the crime they like.

julie said...

Heh. Local report from San B., along with the Walgreens that made the news, hardest hit businesses were hair & nail salons.

Antifa may be starting things, but as noted in the post, it wouldn't continue without an awful lot of people only too happy to profit from the mayhem.

Anonymous said...

Julie:

Anitfa is not currently activated. This is because no Nazi activity has been seen.

Not every black-garbed person saying they are Antifa is the real deal. These are the pretenders, the wannabes.

Antifa regulars are a highly disciplined, well trained, and well led force.

If the real Antifa was conducting an Acktion, it would be all over the news. Antifa kicks ass and takes names; it is a lean, mean Nazi-crushing machine.

Cara B, Antifa Brigade Commander

Anonymous said...

You are either antifa or fa, there really isn't any middle ground. Pretty clear what side you folks are on. You see an agent of the state murder someone, and you are all too happy to take the side of the state.

I have faith that America will defeat fascism at home like it defeated it in Europe 75 years ago. But it will take some re-education of people who have been absorbing toxic ideology for so long.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 2:30 PM:

Dr. Godwin indeed appears to be taking the side of the state. Would Godwin dismiss all charges against Chauvin if he had the power to do so? Maybe.

He has spent thousands of hours poring over anti-communist literature and therefore is well and truly indoctrinated.

He will make excuses for the bad behavior of his faction any day of the week. If a squad of goose-stepping fascists arrived at his front door at midnight to take him away "for questioning," he might well thank them for their interest in his views and feel perfectly safe.

Godwin started out as a youthful Socialist but then converted to Neoconservatism after completing college.

If I could interview Godwin I would as him "Why was your first choice Socialism? Why did you change?" That is the mystery.

It is never too late to repent.

Petey said...

Bob was never a socialist, just an unthinking ambient liberal leftist. He adheres to no philosophy except immanent intelligence in permanent relationship to transcendent truth.

Anonymous said...

Most of the early socialists turned neoconservatives also wore mullets. Even most females. The rest wore the big poufy hair which had once been a mullet. Today as neoconservatives they wear the blandish Ned and Maude Flanders look. All of them always say they dabbled in witchcraft before being born again. It a tribal style thing.

When I went to college I only knew of one socialist in my large state university. He was pointed out to me in disgust by somebody who eventually became a gay miami Jewish lawyer. Not a lawyer for the Jewish mind you, but from that background. Probably a tribal style thing as well.

One tends to do as their friends do.

Me, I've always been a cynical party pooper. I was the guy they invited to the party when they wanted to clear the place before the cops arrived. At first they'd say, "Oh sheesh... he's here. Party's over. Bye." But after some conditioning they'd say, "Oh God he's here and we better get outta here before the cops arrive!"

On the plus, as a cynical party pooper with no sense of tribal style and whose mind is entirely his own, nobody sees human reality better than I do.

Anonymous said...

I don't think the looting is proof of the failure of leftist indoctrination.

I seems more like it's proof that idle hands are the tools of the devil.

We need to keep people gainfully employed, if you don't want them to turn looty lefty.

Cousin Dupree said...

Either that, or maybe Soros could give them a raise.

Anonymous said...

Since Soros would rather send their jobs to Vietnam, I say they go to where the jobs are.

I mean went.

Anonymous said...

Trump used tear gas on peaceful protesters to do a photo op with a Bible in front of a church. Not to be outdone, “let them eat chocolate” Pelosi clutched her own Bible in her own response to Trump. I’m looking forward to Biden holding “Book A” from the old Encyclopedia Britannica, thinking it a Bible, for his own photo op.

I really don't think that ideas have much meaning anymore. It's the photo op imagery that counts.

Van Harvey said...

"A few bad actors couldn't, for example, turn a Tea Party rally into a dress rehearsal for the collapse of civilization. I don't see Asian Americans rioting over the widespread and systemic legal discrimination against them by our most expensive looniversity bins."

More than a few bad actors tried, but because of their surroundings, and our very different goals, they were easy for us to spot and root out. Syncoonously I was thinking along the same lines yesterday,

"...If you're a person who believes that the police or government are routinely violating your rights and the rights of others, then if justice is your goal, you may well decide to protest. I can understand and fully support the people who do believe (rightly or wrongly) that an injustice has been committed, and that if they see it is part of a long pattern of similar injustices, will feel the need to publicly protest in order to draw attention to their grievance. I support them 100% in that. I've done the same myself in the past, and I've helped organize protests, large ones, over a period of several years. But our peaceful protests, were actually peaceful, orderly, and clean, and they were so, because Justice was our goal. When we found malcontents and bad actors in our midst, we exposed and rooted them out, and expelled them from our protests, because justice was our concern, and not theirs. Fortunately for us back then, there were very few bad seeds in our midst and so they were easy to identify, isolate, and expel. Unfortunately for those protesting the George Floyd incident today, because of the political ideals that've long been supported in our urban areas and schools, their ranks are riddled with those who don't give a damn about George Floyd's life, or of other people's lives, individual rights, property, or justice, they care about political power only, and expelling them from their midst is going to be a herculean task...."

And also worth re-noting:

"...Uncritical thought elevated to first principle is intrinsically pathological.

Leftists don't have ideas. Ideas have them...."

Yup.

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