The Masters of their Universe

Subjectivism (or relativism, or the Primacy of Consciousness) is the hidden lie at the basis of most current political philosophies. They are the products of the Counter Enlightenment movement. According to philosopher Stephen Hicks this movement was a reaction to the primacy of Reason that figured so prominently during the period of the Enlightenment. The basic culprit was Rousseau. Later on it was picked up and developed in Germany where it became the prevalent school of thought. A handy family tree is layed out in Chart I.

Subjectivism rejects Reason as a reliable source of knowledge. It also opposes the blessings of the Enlightenment, and basically all that Classical Liberalism (or Libertarianism) stands for: individual autonomy, mutually beneficial interaction, free trade, capitalism, progress in the spheres of science and technology, limited government.

Subjectivism promotes collectivism, statism and corporatism, and stands opposed to every advancement that resulted from the Enlightenment: it is anti individualism which 'atomizes' society and leads to Narcissism, it is anti realism because that doesn't exist, it is anti capitalism as affluence leads to one person amassing more of it than another which is simply unjust; it promotes Rousseau's idea of the Noble Savage - that man is best left alone in his natural state, relying on impulses, hunches and instincts for his subsistence, while the advancement of civilization has proportionally diminished his quality of life as it developed throughout the ages.

This piece of demonstrable nonsense can easily be refuted, but nevertheless Subjectivism is thriving as never before. And it gets worse. What all these followers of Rousseau's don't realise, is there's blatant lie at the bottom, indispensible to make the hogwash at all sell-able to people with objective cognition intact. They'd have to accept that there is no real, objective world out there. This is the scientific underpinning of Darwinians like Richard Dawkins.

No wonder there are wars and waive after waive of ethnic cleansing, people seeing things differently from their own perspective, which of course differs along gender, racial, ethnic, cultural and social lines: to each their own 'narrative'. Each carbon based unit creates his or her own version of reality: all Masters of their own Personal Universes!

Accept that and, hey presto ... all human misery will come to an end, world peace breaking out among the Noble Savages, living happily ever after in the collectivist hive! But it is a well guarded secret that in this ideological edifice there is a cupboard nonetheless for strive, war and struggle. Because it is exactly this what propels humanity forward in this world view: this is what Leftists mean when they talk of 'progressive'.

That very principle propped up the Jacobins during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, it's what inspired the highly strung Romanticists and their aesthetics, the Nationalists who were trying to sell the state for an alternative deity, Nietzsche fulfilling his role as proto Nazi in elevating man to Master of the Universe as were he Lucifer himself, Marxism, National Socialists, and lately all other Leftist thought as epitomised by Third Way-ers, Social Democrats, Christian Democrats to some extent, postmoderns, multiculturalists, environmentalists, etc., etc.

All these Subjectivist practitioners never ask themselves the basic question, that would bring the fallacy of a personally devised Universe to light, at the blink of an eye: if I die overnight, will the sun still be rising tomorrow. Most of them being reasonable people, would answer the question - which in the end seeks to avert the existence of God - in the affirmative. Still, they're clinging to ideologies which they know to be based on a lie.

Not Libertarianism, but Man as Master of the Universe is closely related to the social pathology, known as Narcissism. One symptom of this psychological dysfunction is the inability to see others as separate from the self. Narcissistic Awe tends to lead sufferers to decide for the whole of humanity what's good for them: in short, they become pocket potentates. Drug abuse - which also enhances retreat in the personal cosmology - doesn't help either towards a safe return to the common Universe.

Because of the pernicious character of the aspects that underpin the ideologies they subscribe to, the political Left belong to a particular class of people: those without a learning curve. The Counter Enlightenment ideologies are together good for over 110 million dead, most notably as a result of forced implementation of Communism and National Socialism. But the Left carry on as if these disasters never happened. Instead they've built a straw man out of Adolf Hitler, fitted him with horns, fangs, tail and cloven hooves, and proceeded to shove all the blame on him and his cronies of National Socialism. The purpose was to make the Commies come out smelling like roses.

They carried on as if business as usual, perpetuating the lie and working out yet more versions of the dialectic to keep the strive, revolution and struggle ball rolling. This dialectic sooths what's left of a conscience by justifying any wrong in the name of "standing up for the oppressed". But because of their straw man building what they don't realize is, that the Nazis and Adolf Hitler invoked the exact same justification after World War I, exchanging Marx' proletariat for the oppressed German Volk. Ironically today's Storm Troopers are using identical methods: gagging and censoring through self-proclaimed Departments of Information, intimidation and beatings by self-appointed enforcers.

Counter Enlightenment ideology was introduced into the Middle East by way of European colonies. There it developed into Panarabism, Arab Nationalism, Ba'athism, Islamism and Khomeinism, falling as it did on fertile Islamic soil which shares much of the characteristics of the original European Rousseau philosophy: anti capitalism, pro collectivism (Ummah), anti Reason, belief in divine revelation, distrust of science, technology and free trade and - most disturbingly - justification of violence to power.

In the West meanwhile, after women, blacks and gays, the Muslim cause - immaterial whether mainstream moderate or virulently radical - has become but the latest excuse for struggle, to "liberate a group of oppressed victims", justifying any means. Latest evidence: ever more frequent ad hominem assaults on opponents - like Adolf Hitler suitably labelled "fascists" - to be beaten up and manhandled in the name of "standing up for the oppressed."

One might be excused for mistaking Counter Enlightenment thought with Lucifer's own work: the dialectic of the struggle ensures that justified violence to power will never stop. From our historical horizon we see oppressed cultures, social classes, ethnicities, races, genders and sexual preferences and presently - who would have thought - an ideology disguised as a religion. Invisible are as yet the oppressed of the day after tomorrow. The dialectic is directed against the establishment, whoever they may be. The genius of the struggle is, it lasts forever!

- Article dBase: Category: philosophy; Item "The Unholy Alliance"