In one of his unintended aphorisms, Whitehead observed that intellectual antagonists of a particular era will generally share some unconscious or implicit presuppositions about how the world functions:
Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions a certain limited number of types of philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems constitutes the philosophy of the epoch.
I’m old enough to remember when left and right in America shared some underlying assumptions, e.g., the Constitution, freedom of speech, equality under the law, Judeo-Christian values, etc. Now what do we share? I can’t think of a single principle we can all rally around, nor a single person we can all revere as a Superior Specimen.
For one thing, to even recognize such a specimen is to acknowledge hierarchy and telos, which is precisely what their ontology denies at the outset.
For us Washington is the greatest American, and worthy of our eternal gratitude; for them, a self-interested slaveholder. No need to review the list of similar heroes felled by the axe of cultural Marxism. You need only one grievous example to get the point:
Those who profess that nobility is vile end up preaching that vileness is noble.
For example, groomers, trannies, criminals, really, all the special pets of the left, who are special not by any merit or achievement, but only because of some immutable trait or correctable defect.
Not only do we have different political philosophies, there is no longer a shared ontology. We literally live in different realities, but the first thing to know about reality is that there’s only one. Of course, there are different views of this single reality, but the left elevates the view to the viewed, AKA My Truth.
Which for us translates to no truth and no possibility of truth. Nor can there be any compromise between what reality is and what I want it to be. At least after age ten or eleven.
Why can’t they understand this? It’s not necessarily stupidity, which leads to the corollary that not only is intelligence not enough, nothing good comes of it when it is unhinged from reality:
Compared to so many dull intellectuals, to so many artists without talent, to so many stereotyped revolutionaries, a bourgeois without pretensions looks like a Greek statue.
Second look at my entirely ordinary and unpretentious parents? Perhaps, but that’s another post. Besides, I was looking for a different aphorism. Here’s one that reminds me of the state-media-big tech gaslighting that has become so perversive in recent years:
Propaganda in Russia and in China selected such intentionally crude arguments and obvious falsifications that we must attribute the triumph of communism to the disdain with which it treats the intelligence of the masses.
There’s a subtle point in there, because the citizen who participates in the gaslighting at least gets to share in the disdain for the restavus, both the normal and superior. Is there a matrix-media journalist out there who doesn’t ooze this disdain from every pore? And not just disdain, but genuine hatred, contempt, dehumanization, etc.
We’ve mentioned before that the people who are subject to these feelings may deceive themselves into believing they are “unpleasant,” when the opposite is the case: not only is self-righteous disdain pleasant, it’s addictive. Ultimately it's a form of "downward transcendence," or elevation from below.
And now we have an anthropological context to understand such upper vertical counsels as forgiving, turning the other cheek, loving one’s enemies, etc. Obviously these have to be given from a supernatural source precisely because they do not come naturally. What comes naturally is tribalism, envy, scapegoating, human sacrifice.
In other words, what comes naturally is the left. The world of the modern left is an invention of Queen Karen for the benefit of their stupid, perverse, and criminal kings such as George Floyd.
It's really an inversion of Christ's inversion alluded to above. But just because the ultimate victim of human depravity was God himself, this does not mean that any old Democrat-approved victim is the ultimate god.
12 comments:
Boom. Most posts since 2011. That's not just an achievement, it's downright abuse of the reader.
But just because the ultimate victim of human depravity was God himself, this does not mean that any old Democrat-approved victim is the ultimate god.
Well, at least not for anyone who still retains the ability to utilize the critical intelligence they were gifted from above.
Z Man on the ontological divide:
A common theme on this side of the great divide is the growing perception gap between the people in the regime that rules over the Global American Empire and the people who are trapped inside that empire. The relationship between the ruled and their rulers is becoming two black boxes. The people see their rulers perform, but why they are doing what they are doing makes little sense. The rulers look over the walls and see nothing but monsters lying in wait for them.
"Every day the people inside the regime imagine themselves on higher moral ground than the day before, while the people looking on see their leaders sinking into a swamp of moral depravity. It is not just that there is a gap, but that the gap is rapidly widening. Each new outrage by the freaks of the regime lowers their standing with the people."
I'll add that each new outrage and moral depravity heralded as a social good by the regime will lead to complete and utter chaos, with guns.
Still, as for me and my family, we will serve the Yahweh Elohim.
I’m old enough to remember when left and right knew evil when they saw it, regardless of team colors. Back then we'd get rid of the sinner/interloper/grifter then let the games continue.
But this was before big media got all bought up and consolidated.
I think of the recent case of a conservative Republican representative who just wanted his local utility companies to charge customers capitalistically, and not socialistically. In other words, competitively, just as the free markets are supposed to be run. Enraged utility officials then got their “lobbyists” to buy local media reporters, and the conservative Republican representative wound up getting voted out by ignorant voters and replaced by a more utility corporate friendly one. No doubts the same thing happens on the other side.
There are actually three teams, not two. We fools just think there are two, probably because it's more fun.
Is there a matrix-media journalist out there who doesn’t ooze this disdain from every pore? And not just disdain, but genuine hatred, contempt, dehumanization, etc.
Nothing new under the sun. We were just learning this morning about Charles Dickens' visit to America, and his subsequent book trashing on Americans. Emerson at the time, after reading it, noted something along the lines of, "he knows what will sell." As I pointed out to the kiddos, a book that everyone can get outraged about is going to make a lot more money and garner a lot more publicity than a book extolling the pleasantness of visiting America. Dickens' genius was that the haters could read it and feel justified, while America lovers could read it and feel persecuted.
"There’s a subtle point in there, because the citizen who participates in the gaslighting at least gets to share in the disdain for the restavus, both the normal and superior. Is there a matrix-media journalist out there who doesn’t ooze this disdain from every pore? And not just disdain, but genuine hatred, contempt, dehumanization, etc. "
Brings to mind Dietrich Bonhoeffer's comments on Power and Stupidity "... which Bonhoeffer likely saw at work in Hitler’s rise to power:
“Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”
Van, that Bonhoffer analysis is spot on. I need to dig out a couple of his books, again. Thanks for posting that.
You're welcome!
The Greeks & Scholastics had an idea of 'Metaphysical Casualty' that operated on the level of our thoughts, not as Hume caricatured it, but in that in apprehending and concluding, or thoughts lead us into other thoughts. Accepting lies and their corollary in exerting power as the means which such ends justify, edges 'us' out of our own thoughts as we progressively cease playing an active part in what goes on in our own heads, which is what I think Bonhoeffer was noting, and that tips our mental planes into a downward spiral of willfully blind stupidity. Sad.
Nobody’s been able to figure out how an individual can best express their individuality when that individuals own survival is being dominated by other individuals.
As a poor kid I didn’t mind too much, that a couple silver spoon Harvard MBAs were providing us poor college students with a place to work. We could always quit and find another way to make our college money if their sweatshop conditions became too much for us. Our economic ground was that fertile.
But it seems that when a lack of individual expression becomes too much for the individual to bear, when a personal sense of controlling ones own destiny goes past some tipping point, then anything becomes possible, even extreme evil.
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