Friday, March 22, 2024

Progressive Sheep and How They Get That Way

The greatest political puerility is to attribute to certain social structures the vices inherent in the human condition. --Dávila

Why is the left so hysterical? Why has the sober think tank of academia become a bottomless feel tank? Why is the news an estrogen carnival? Why is every institution from the military to the law to science riddled with mind parasites? Why the metastatic spread of soul-killing philodoxies and misosophies?  

Here we go. 

To reset, we've been discussing the book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, but since extremes meet, it actually describes the return of the barbarous self, the same one on which Judeo-Christianity exerted its rescue operation. Nevertheless, it borrows many of its most cherished assumptions from the very metaphysic it denies, e.g., human rights and the dignity of the individual. 

In fact, it pretends to eliminate all metaphysics, hence "the antireligious and antimetaphysical thinking that dominates our contemporary world." But thinking is precisely what one cannot do in the absence of a realist metaphysic that accounts for the conformity of the intellect to reality.   

Among other things, "The death of metaphysics" explains why "moral discourse today is so fruitless because it lacks any commonly accepted basis on which moral differences can be discussed and assessed." It's why we talk past each other. 

This is a hierarchical cosmos, so what we say is literally over their heads, while what they say is under ours. Again, transcendence accounts for immanence, while pure immanence is by definition enclosed in itself -- or at least pretends to be. 

"Take away the notion of human nature, and all that is left is free-floating, subjective sentiment." I feel that I am a woman, therefore I am a woman. Or, I feel that the baby isn't a person, therefore it isn't one. Here are "The seeds of today's moral anarchy, where personal emotional preferences are constantly confused with moral absolutes." 

For example, I am traumatized by microaggressions, therefore free speech must be curbed by the state. A reminder of Schuon's Law that "man has the right to be legitimately traumatized only by monstrosities; he who is traumatized by less is himself a monster." Every. Time.

Nevertheless, here we are: 

If society/culture is merely a construct, and if nature possesses no intrinsic meaning or purpose, then what meaning there is must be created by human beings themselves (Trueman).

But that's not meaning in any meaningful sense, rather, just your opinion, man. Meaning is precisely what takes place -- and can only take place -- in the dynamic space between immanence and transcendence. 

Someone here is sick, and literally, for mental illness always involves a failure of the mind to conform to reality. In many ways, contemporary discourse involves the question of Where is the sickness? In other words, someone is sick, it's just a matter of determining who it is. 

You will have noticed that the left pathologizes disagreement, such that our beliefs are always a literal consequence of phobia -- homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, gynophobia (the desire to Control Women's Bodies), etc. And "For both Nietzsche and Marx" in particular, "sacred order was a sign of psychological sickness." 

The Marxist does not think it possible to condemn except by distorting what he condemns.

But if you have to distort something in order to condemn it, it must mean that you want the distortion to be true, e.g., a Bloodbath, Russian Collusion, Very Fine People, Muslim Ban, Insurrection, Threat to Our Democracy, etc.

Civilization appears to have been invented by an extinct species. 

Wait a minute!

There are still a few of us left, AKA the Raccoon remnant.

It comes down to whether progressives are evil or just cosmically stupid:

The more stupid the motives we assign to an action, the less we are in danger of being wrong.

Moreover,  

Leftists are not the representatives of the poor, but the delegates of poor ideas.

Interestingly, polling suggests that poor and working class Democrats are beginning to discover this, which, if true, would bring about an extinction-level catastrophe for the left. Thus, they will have to crank up the pathologizing of conservatives from the usual 11 to 12 or more.

Progressivism may not necessarily be maliciously willful, just careless:

In the coherence of certain systems, a vision is articulated; other systems result from the mere inertia of an idea.

If you've read the previous 4,000 posts and 5.6 million words, you will agree that a certain cosmically coherent vision has been articulated, and thensome. But progressivism? It's just the usual entropy and gravity at work, 32 feet per second per second:

Having said that, there is a distinction between the grazing multitude of passive, low-information sheep and the lying elites who herd and shear them. One of their organizing lies involves the

view of history in which traditional heroes of the story are actually the villains and in which even the narrating of history becomes part of a wider discourse of power that keeps the marginalized on the margins (Trueman).

These tenured mythofolkers "provide the philosophical rationale for an anticulture."

Conversely,

Conservatism should not be a political party but the normal attitude of every decent man,

and

To be a conservative is to understand that that man is a problem without a human solution.

5 comments:

Gagdad Bob said...

A tweet today by Elon Musk:

This is a battle to the death with the anti-civilizational woke mind virus.

My positions are centrist:
- Secure borders
- Safe & clean cities
- Don’t bankrupt America with spending
- Racism against any race is wrong
- No sterilization below age of consent

Gagdad Bob said...

Have we reached peak insanity? Nowhere near!

"If there is any light to be seen, any shift from this spiral of decline, we must start at the beginning. We must start with what our children learn and what they are being taught in school."

Gagdad Bob said...

"Of course, the life of a bad idea is the result of the people choosing to embrace the bad idea, often when it is obviously a bad idea. Much of what Marx had to say about economics, even in the context of his age, was obvious nonsense. Further, people knew enough about the human condition to know that communism could never possibly work, but intellectuals chose to embrace it anyway.

"Put another way, stupid ideas need a special sort of stupid person. Orwell famously wrote, 'One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that; no ordinary man could be such a fool.'” The basic concept is something of a universal, as we see today with our 'expert' class.

"Even so, ideas matter and this age is haunted by bad ideas that should have been relegated to the dustbin of history."

julie said...

It comes down to whether progressives are evil or just cosmically stupid:

The more stupid the motives we assign to an action, the less we are in danger of being wrong.

Moreover,

Leftists are not the representatives of the poor, but the delegates of poor ideas.


This, too, is why it becomes so useful for them to do away with standards. An ignorant populace will believe anything the left claims, so long as it makes them feel somehow superior.

Open Trench said...

Good evening Dr. Godwin, Leslie, and all others sheltering anonymously at this time, how I adore you all.

From the post: "There are still a few of us left, AKA the Raccoon remnant. It comes down to whether progressives are evil or just cosmically stupid."

On this topic some of the first action reports are filtering into headquarters, and I am privy to all of them. Take heart!

"Yesterday mobile woke forces originating from Perris and Moreno Valley in California drove up Hwy 58 to Tehachapi Pass and occupied the mountainous heights around south of the town of Tehachapi. The woke forces took possession of numerous wind turbine installations and a gravel mine.

Following this, civilian guard forces stationed in Tehachapi under the command of Marshall Two-Pair counter-attacked and drove the woke forces from their positions in fierce hand to hand fighting. Two dozen woke fighters were captured and the remnant driven from the heights and to positions near the desert town of Mojave. Losses to our forces were slight.

Some of the captives were carrying axes and called themselves "Carrie Nation." They defiantly claimed they were out to "destroy the Patriarchy" and made baseless claims that "women had been previously deprived of their right to vote." Two of the captives claimed they planned to destroy all bars, saloons, and nightclubs in Tehachapi and then and then sabotage petroleum pumping installations around Arvin and Weedpatch. Fortunately these plans were foiled, and the captives can look forward to incarceration for the duration of the war."

I hope this dispatch brings good cheer! So far the blues have shown they can easily be defeated by a determined force, and we are proud of Commander Two-pair and his valorous guards!

Love from the Trench, may the war be mercifully short.

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