Principles and Anti-Principles

Every leftist since Marx and before Marx his lived by the principle that is literally engraved on his headstone, that "philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world," whereas "the point, however, is to change it." 

Disagree on both scores, especially the latter, because trying to change something before you have understood it is a recipe for chaos and destruction. 

As Chesterton said about fences, 

The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

This goes double for walls, especially between countries.  

Imagine going to a doctor, who, instead of fulfilling the Hippocratic oath, swears by the Marxist alternative: your previous physicians have only tried to understand your body, when the point is to change it! (Dr. Fauci call your office.)

I'm old enough to remember when the point for Democrats was mainly to change the economy without ever bothering to understand it. Now the point is to change sexes, change the the weather, and change the demographics of the country.  

Surely Marx's credo expresses a certain despair at man ever being able to properly interpret the world. Since every philosopher disagrees with every other philosopher, why waste time arguing about who's right and what's real? Rather, let's just get on with the heist social justice!

So many aphorisms:

The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who covets another’s goods but the one who defends his own. 

The revolutionary is ultimately an individual who does not dare to rob by himself. 

“Social justice” is the term for claiming anything to which we do not have a right. 

Transforming the world: the occupation of a prisoner resigned to his sentence.

I myself used to be cynical. But now I'm really cynical, which is to say, cynical of cynicism, because cynicism is too facile. 

Back when I was a Democrat, naturally I wanted to change the world. Of course, I didn't understand the first thing about the world, nor the first thing about myself. So I easily fulfilled the requirements to be a man of the left. 

But ignorance of these two is a not only a prerequisite for imagining it is possible to fundamentally change the world, but by far the best way to avoid changing oneself. 

Thus, it is no mystery whatsoever why this attitude not only persists but is ineradicable, at least without divine intervention by the one physician who actually does know the first thing about human nature:

Social problems are the delightful refuge of those fleeing from their own problems.

Every last one of these vertical misfits and spiteful mutants exchanges personal and/or existential problems for political, economic, or sociological problems. They all need help, but they seek a cure from the physician who promises to change them before understanding them. 

The left is made up of individuals who are dissatisfied with what they have and are satisfied with who they are.

Which is the most ancient and venerable recipe for envy. 

I'm thinking of how Joe Biden pretends to be able to heal the soul of the nation. Okay. Start with healing the diseased soul of your depraved son. We'll wait. 

Having said all this, changing the world is a fine idea, so long as it is grounded in an accurate perception of the world, but most especially of human nature. 

Note that the denial of this very principle is the first principle of Marxism: that human beings do not have a nature or essence; rather, consciousness is a function of class -- or, in the contemporary nomenclature, of race, gender, sexual perversion, etc. But race Marxism is the same old Marxism painted a different color:

For man to fall repeatedly into the same trap, just paint it a different color each time.

And if you can't decide, just make it a rainbow.

As usual, I'm getting sidetracked from the main point. It reminds me of how Dávila refers to the aphorisms as "annotations to an implicit text." 

In this case the implicit text is a book by Josef Pieper I'm rereading called In Defense of Philosophy. Without coming right out and saying so, it's also a defense against the sick and depraved philosophistries and misosophies of the left.

These two terms are literal, being that the left always expresses a love of sophistry and hatred of wisdom. Marx is only their most famous sophist, but sophistry itself goes back to the pre-Socratics and before, all the way to Genesis 3.

Let's begin with an obvious principle that there is and can be no philosophy per se that is so complete that it eliminates all questions. But one can proceed in two very different directions from this principle: toward cynical sophistry or toward God, or more precisely, up to the principle of creation. And this principle is the act of being.

To be continued...