The Spiral of Hatred

In a post containing the thoughts of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff just before her trial in Austria for 'hate speech' is resuming on January 18, she accurately describes how the 'hatred' narrative works.

The Left - or more accurately, those who like to think of themselves as nice, empathic, inclusive, under-dog loving people, often are very far from it. They feel great hostility towards the opposition, who have no right in their minds to have such vile, egoistic, mean-spirited thoughts about freedom and humanity.

Projection is a psychological coping device, that deals with the ensuing cognitive dissonance by turning the opponent as by magic into a demon: the process that is leading to scapegoating and collective guilt.

Projectionists have become incapable of looking at their opponents with anything remotely smacking of objectivity or empathy. They no longer think, they simply smear and condemn. And here we have one of those infamous Leftist contradictions which are simply ignored as part of the logic (Hegel's dialectic): 'morality does not exist,' yet they morally condemn anyone, who does not agree with their narrative.

In the Western world we have things nicely under control (or so we thought): for any conceivable risk there's an insurance policy and Europeans have been lazily laying back in nanny states that cuddled their citizens from cradle to grave. What could possibly go wrong?

This has created a phantom security in which all evil seems to have evaporated. No war, pestilence or bad fortune could befall the citizen of such a country. Such circumstances have led some to the false conclusion, that evil does not exist. In this way amoralism finds its way to people's mindsets: good and evil have become fluid, subjective constructs that wither away.

To them morality is no longer a matter of objectivily right or wrong, but the median mores of any given culture. We'll have a look up close shortly how that is playing a major role in the climate of hatred.

- Projection in action -

On top of that, traditional Kantian thought has insinuated the fallacy in Western culture that reality is in some way dependent on human consciousness: thought creates reality.

Since in this philosophical ruin, one external, objective truth does not exist, we are thus a single step removed from blaming people for their opinions. Personal taste has taken the place of objective truth, but with a difference. You can't blame truth for being true, but you can blame people for having a terribly bad taste.

It is no coincidence that Leftists on both sides of the Atlantic are scolding their opponents in terms of 'bad taste', 'indecency' or 'the wrong tone'. In his recent memorial speech in Tucson after the Loughner massacre, Barack "bring a gun" Obama called for 'civility'. Persistant Conservative has listed a number of martial analogies from the President himself.

In this way those like Ayaan Hirsi Ali,  Elisabeth Sabaditsch and Geert Wilders, who warn against the insidious influence of Islam and Sharia law, have become people of bad taste. Or in the view of Leftist Islam apologists, narrow-minded xenophobes who 'hate' Muslims.

Robin of Berkeley, a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist, has written a great piece available on American Thinker about the ethical side of psychological projection; the relationship between amoralism and hatred neatly falls into place. On the process of scapegoating and collective guilt he writes:

"Collective guilt is not just a noxious premise, but it's an evil one. It presumes guilt without a shred of evidence. In this case, conservatives are incriminated for Loughner's bloodshed (even though Loughner is apparently a Karl Marx-admiring atheist.) The delusion of collective guilt shields people from taking a long hard look in the mirror, thereby witnessing their own bad behavior."

But as Ayn Rand has pointed out:

"The clearest symptom by which one can recognize [the amoralist] is his total inability to judge himself, his actions, or his work by any sort of standard."

The descent into evil becomes a vicious spiral: amorality is leading to the inability to judge one's self, which is leading to cognitive dissonance, dealt with by psychological projection (scapegoating and collective guilt), which is evil, but isn't recognized as such because of amorality, and so on, and so on. A vicious spiral is born.

Here's Robin of Berkeley. For 'Americans' read 'Western culture' ...

• American Thinker: "See No Evil"

One of the first books that made me thirst for God was, ironically, about His polar opposite. The book is Andrew Delbanco's 'The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil". The author describes the disastrous results of Americans rejecting the concept of evil. When Satan was alive and well, citizens practiced the Ten Commandments, atoned for their sins, and worried about eternal damnation. But today, inhabitants eschew the devil as an anachronism of days gone by.

And what has been the result of the Death of Satan? More bloodshed than ever before in the history of humankind. In the 20th century alone, hundreds of millions of people were murdered by genocidal regimes. And yet, why would banishing Satan result in a less civilized society? Because without an understanding about how good and evil work, people are stripped of Divine intelligence. (...) 

The number one rule in warfare is this: Know thy enemy, whether it's Radical Islam or evil. Yet, most Americans, with heads firmly buried in the sand, have no idea how to cope when darkness rears its ugly head.

Their default is to find scapegoats, projecting all badness outwards. Liberals routinely scapegoat conservatives. Yet, by smearing an entire group of people, liberals become part of the evil themselves. 

Scapegoating is the quintessential feature of evil, says M. Scott Peck, in his seminal book, "People of the Lie". (...) So the Left demonizes others, which is a fascinating term in and of itself. Instead of taking a good and hard look at themselves and how the Left has unleashed and enabled the brutality, progressives tar conservatives as the demons.

The progressives do this by devilish actions: first, turning conservatives into subhumans, as the other. (...) The Left denies that evil forces exist because they deny God. Evil cannot exist without its polar opposite, the Creator. (...)

And so Leftists do what they always do: blame conservatives. They disown any responsibility for the dark times that are upon us. They exploit the Tucson tragedy, thereby creating more damage. And through it all, Leftists cling to the notion that they a are the Good Guys. (...) >>>

- Ouroboros -

Which brings us back to square one. The Left - or more accurately, those who like to think of themselves as nice, empathic, inclusive, under-dog loving people, often are very far from it. They feel great hostility towards the opposition ... (start from top).

Update

- Caroline Glick: "The Aim of Blood Libels"
- PNJ: "Schneider: Protect uncivil speech? It's only Common Sense"
- American Power: "The Lies of Bill Maher — And the Epic Struggle Between Good and Evil in the Aftermath of Tucson, 1/8/11"

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Related

- "The Dystopia of Paradise"
- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "Pomo Lingo"

Ideological Archeology: Countering Kant (III)

Continued from Part II: " Rousseau's Ravages" 

Often erroneously classified as part of the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in his mindset is entirely antithetical to the values of that movement: he is a collectivist and is the inventor of subjectivism. His is not the mind of a scientist, but of a religionist.

The revered Kant is also a wee bit intellectually dishonest. His 'trick' was to stretch reason beyond the limits of what is reasonable and then used the outcome to discredit it. It culminated in his critique of "Pure Reason". Postmodernism has made it its own, and applies it in every argument. In his Second Preface of the first Critique he writes that he found it ...

"necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith." ...

These are hardly the words of a scientific thinker. Kant was an austere Lutheran Pietist and a great admirer of Rousseau. The individual to him represented little more than a miserable sinner in need of a strong master, only good as canon-fodder to teach some morals.

The Second Coming
Kant foresees in a teleological progress towards an end-game by means of strive, war and discord. This supposedly brings man as a species to a more ethically evolved order. The process will ultimately culminate in a world government, an international and cosmopolitan federation of states, awaiting the coming of the Day of Judgment. This is the Hidden Plan of Nature, according to Kant. But he was so honest to admit that this might as well lead to the greatest tyranny imaginable.

You think?! Progressivism and the new world order, anyone? While the Enlighteners worked towards the separation of Church and State, the philosophers based on Rousseau, Kant and Hegel - even the atheists - confusing 'is' with 'ought' (Hume's Law), reverted to recreating 'paradises' on earth, now synonymous with collectivist distopias.

The tenets of the Enlightenment were abandoned and replaced by philosophical principles reflecting reliigion: realism made way for idea-lism, and individualism for collectivism; intuition and revelation were adopted as sources of knowledge rather than reason and experience, social theories replaced liberal capitalist theory.

The Incarcerated Mind
While today's postmodernists are mostly virulent atheists, they are at root adept followers of Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, faithfully subscribing to their most irrational tenets. Plato's mind versus body dualism, reflecting the macro and microcosm of heaven and earth, male and female, the sacred and the mundane, yin versus yang, tends to identify the mind with the soul, giving rise to visualizing the mind as non-physical pure substance, distinct from the physical organs and brain. Rather then thinking of them as tools to knowledge, this led to a view that the senses and the brain as obstacles to knowledge, standing in the way between the mind and reality.

Moreover, some sensorial imperfections (color blindness, for example) in some people, induced Kant to declare the senses unsound tools to knowledge overall. To clarify the Kantian position on the separation of the mind from reality, Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks in "Explaining Postmodernism" makes a feminist analogy: to support Kant is to say that women are absolutely autonomous and free to do as they please, as long as it is within the confines of the kitchen; Kant imprisons the mind in the skull and isolates it from reality.

Amoralism
It is ironic that the Counter-Enlighteners, who sought to prevent the Godless, spiritless and amoral future that was supposed to be the result of reason and individualism, have brought about precisely that by Kant's subjectivism and his imprisonment of the mind.

Hicks: "Once reason is in principle severed from reality, one enters a different philosophical universe altogether." According to postmodernists 'the' truth - as 'a thing in itself' (according to Kant) does no longer exist - a statement whose first victim is the notion of good versus evil, in fact, morality.

Thought creates reality
Kant also held that reality conforms to reason, not vice versa: as by magick, thought has become the source of reality instead of reality providing the mind with information. This marks the infamous shift from objectivism to subjectivism, the basis of the postmodern egocentricist pathology of the Master of the Universe syndrome (each individual creates his own personal version of reality, a so called 'narrative'.

N.B. According to this particular 'truth', science is but a grand, Western 'narrative'.

It beggars the question, if I die overnight, will the sun rise tomorrow? It sparked Einstein asking the question: "Do you really believe that the universe does not exist when you are not watching it?

Anthony Rizzi in "Science before Science: a Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century" laments Kant's now codified idea-lism, ...

" ... the default declared position in academia and in nearly all other environments. Kant's success is partly explained by his tying his philosphical system to Newtonian physics [which he wanted to] have a certainty that it did not have. However, Kant thought that one could not know the thing itself

(...) Kant and Kantians múst say, "Kant doesn't know anything about anything." Such is always the end of the matter when one forgets that all knowledge in man comes through the senses. We non-Kantians can be simultaneously more accurate and kinder; we can say, "The foundational principles of Kant's philosophical system were wrong, but still he knew a lot of other things."

This enthusiasm is at once tempered by a footnote:

"Many attribute to Kant a developed skill in physics. Physisist and renowned philosopher and historian of science, Fr. Stanley Jaki has shown that Kant's knowledge and ability in physics was minimal (though Kant considered himself another Newton) (...) the book [Universal Natural History] is a storehouse of inaccuracies, contradictions and amateurism and plain fancy."

What else is new in subjectivism?

Up next: from Part IV: "Heckling Hegel": "Hegel's theme was the state. Freedom is not God-given as the followers of the Enlightenment held, but granted by the state".

Related dossiers

- "Postmodern Ravages"

- "The Dialectics"

- "Pomo Lingo"

- "The Unholy Alliance"

- "Science as a Narrative"

- "Justice, Pomo Style"

Ideological Archeology: The Counter-Enlightenment (I)

Reposted from March 3, 2008

The idea of the creation of a personalised universe, or rather a personal version of the universe originates with Protagoras (Πρωtaγόρaς, 490-420 BC), who said "man is the measure of all things", he meant individual man, rather than mankind.

The sophists of the rough, second generation, notably Trasymachus, a character in Plato's Republic, put that notion of subjectivism to good use. In classical Greece the sophists used language, not in the service of truth or the transfer of information, but as a strategy for political point-scoring. The sophists held that justice is in the interest of the stronger: might makes right.

Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks in "Explaining Postmodernism" claims that

"postmodernists - coming after two millennia of Christianity and two centuries of social theory - simply reverse that claim: Subjectivism and relativism are true, except that the postmodernists are on the side of the weaker and historically-oppressed groups. Justice, contrary to Trasymachus, is the interest of the weaker."

Contemporary postmodernists have harnessed this form of political correctness to today's version of the class struggle, the dialectic, a tool to perpetuate into eternity the struggle of 'oppressed' minorities against the 'fake tolerance' of the white, male 'power structure'. The latter should not be understood as 'whoever is in power', but rather 'whoever is in power, other than us'.

Although we have not always seen it for what it was, during the last two and a half centuries or so the fruits of reason have been pitted in an existential dog fight with the reactionary forces of anti-realism. The movement in generally termed 'the Counter-Enlightenment', to underscore the culture's fundamental rejection of reason and the Enlightenment.

In his ground-breaking book Hicks posits two theses: that the failure of epistemology (philosophy's study of human knowledge) made postmodernism possible; and that the failure of Socialism made postmodernism necessary. What Rousseau, Kant and Hegel were for church authority, the postmoderns are for collectivism: their raison d'être is a desperate 'rationalization' for holding on to a rejected system.

The emergence of the Counter-Enlightenment represents the turning point of the age of reason. The era between 1780 and 1815 was a defining period in modernism, as Anglo-American and German culture split into respectively the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment.

The former began in England, and was picked up by the French. But Roussseau's followers wrested the Enlightenment inspired revolution away from John Locke's (1632 -1704) followers. This quote is from Locke's 2nd Treatise §3:

"In order to preserve the public good, the central function of government must be the protection of private property ..."

... compare that to Rousseau:

"For the creation of a society of 'common will', the people need only accept the dictates of the state" ...

The French Revolution turned it into the Jacobin Reign of Terror, the particularly bloody, third and last episode. The Germans thereafter, already suspicious of the culture of reason, began a counter movement in an effort to rescue religion from what they saw as the onslaught of reason. When the Enlightened French despot, Napoleon Bonaparte jumped into the vacuum left by the Reign of Terror and conquered Europe, the still largely feudal German states knew for sure what the age of reason had wrought.

The reaction was a counter movement by a brand of collectivist philosophers and intellectuals - politically on the Left as well as on the Right, some religious, later on also atheists - with a number of themes in common: Jean-Jacques Rousseau inspired "anti-individualism, the need for strong government, the view that religion is a matter of state (whether to promote or suppress it), the view that education is a process of socialisation, ambivalence about science and technology, and strong themes of group conflict, violence and war.

Hicks: "Left and Right have often divided bitterly over which themes have priority and over how they should be applied. Yet, for all of their differences, both have consistently recognised a common enemy: Liberal capitalism, with its individualism, its limited government, its separation of church and state, its fairly constant view that education is not primarily a matter of political socialisation, and its persistent Whiggish optimism about prospects for peaceful trade and cooperation between members of all nations and groups."

"By the early twentieth century (...) the dominant issues for most continental political thinkers were not whether liberal capitalism was a viable option - but rather exactly when it would collapse - and whether Left or Right collectivism had the best claim to being the Socialism of the future. The defeat of the collectivist Right in World War II then meant that the Left was on its own to carry the Socialist mantle forward."

"Accordingly, when the Left ran into its major disasters as the twentieth century progressed, understanding its fundamental commonality with the collectivist Right helps to explain why in its desperation the Left has often adopted ''Fascistic'' tactics."

Another fateful innovation was set in by the counter movement. As had been the logic during the long period of Church authority over arts and science, all modern mainstream Enlightenment thinkers had accomodated the new advances in science and mathematics into Christian belief. Defying Aristotlean wisdom, human nature, as well as Hume's Law - the confusion of 'is' with 'ought' - the Counter-Enlightenment philosophers following Rousseau, Kant and Hegel - even the atheists - reversed this orthodoxy.

Instead - perhaps even subconsciously or by implication - they developed political models, which reflected religious ideals, the re-creation of paradises on earth, perhaps in an effort to fill the void left by the Ancients Regimes. These political models sought to mirror the heavens, on the basis of 'as above, so below', macrocosm - microcosm: the ideal society. The tenets of the Enlightenment were abandoned and replaced by opposing principles: realism made way for Idea-lism, and individualism for collectivism; emotions, intuition and Revelation were adopted as sources of knowledge rather than reason and experience, social theories replaced liberal capitalist theory.

Universal Enlightenment values were applied, but were limited to specific themes. In these themes God was replaced by whatever fitted the theme: nationalists replaced God with the nation, state adolators deified the state, Socialists society, etcetera. We'll return to that after having a look up close at the main, early protagonists of the Counter-Enlightement drama.

Up next: ... Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712-1778) personal life is marked by traits sounding akwardly contemporary ...

Related dossiers

- "Postmodern Ravages"

- "The Dialectics"

- "Pomo Lingo"

- "The Unholy Alliance"

- "Science as a Narrative"

- "Justice, Pomo Style"

The Obama: the Marxist, Anti-Colonial African Colonial - Update

L.E. Ikenga is hot on the trail of D'Souza's wanting analysis in "The Obama Agenda and the New Global Elite". The Left were quick to categorize the article as "highbrow birtherism" (their assault themes are really getting quite worn at this stage). Ikenga deals with it without throwing around labels ad hominem:

Mr. D'Souza fails to understand is that post-colonialism ceased being a cantankerous "cause" or a "crusade" a long time ago. Instead, it now identifies a new way of thinking about the world in global terms. Post-colonialists have long since stopped attending "Reparations Now!" rallies and academic "roundtables" on race and politics. They are now the heads of liberally backed NGOs, Ivy League Institutes, or countries like the United States. (...) >>>

Read it all ...

September 14, 2010

Dinesh D'Souza is once again doing what he does best: narrowly missing at target practice. He gets the general drift and then dashes off after some red herring.

In an analysis on Forbes, "How Omaba thinks" he's bringing up a number of flabbergasting policy decisions by the Obama administration and concludes on that basis: "The President isn't exactly a socialist" and "Obama is a socialist--not an out-and-out Marxist, but something of a European-style socialist" to finally conclude Obama is actually an anti-colonialist.

D'Souza could do with a few courses Objectivism or perhaps study a tome on non-contradictory thought.

All Obama's policy decisions are perfectly explained by the Marxist narrative, which to a more or lesser degree and intensity follows the same simplistic, dialectical world view, broadly reading as follows:

The world is made up of two groups of humans: oppressors and oppressed. The battle is to entice away as much value as possible from the oppressors and hand it over to the oppressed. Since this is serious warfare and the ethical goal outweighs any other consideration, the end justifies the means.

The battle has been raging for almost two centuries.

In turn Marxism rests on the false theories of the German Idealist thinkers, notably Immanuel Kant and his follower Hegel who pushed the fallacy that the outside world - reality - for its existence is somehow dependent on man's mind (thought creates reality, or subjectivism). This is the basis of Progressivist thought.

While others have noted that Obama doesn't share the 'slave blood' of African Americans, the notion that Obama's background should be seen against the light of a black African, was first laid out in June of last year in an article on American Thinker by Nigerian born L.E. Ikenga. In the article the author explains the mental makeup of the typical African colonialist.

Ikenga's 'African colonials' have adopted a Western consciousness and took colonial thought and ideologies in order to advance the anti-colonial agenda, usually to the detriment of the former colony. All Obama is doing, is projecting the anti-colonial Dreams From His African colonial Father.

The same is true of Obama's 'Christianity'. On the basis of Islamic doctrine the case could be made Obama is formally a Muslim. But the fact remains, he's been sitting for over twenty years in the pews of the fire and brimstone emitting Reverend Wright, a typical exponent of Black Liberation Theology.

The tenets of postmodern Liberation Theology are in fact nothing more than a slightly Christianized version of the Marxist dialectic based on the Frantz Fanon's anti-colonial Sorelian myth, "The Wretched of the Earth".

Any doubts of Obama's Marxist root could be laid to rest by his early political exploits in the Marxist New Party (photos also here and do read all the Obama files on New Zeal).

That ultimately brought Obama to the highest office, where he's been redistributing value from his own quintessential 'oppressive' country - the USA - to those nations that share the Marxist dialectical world view, to wit Iran and its proxies, Brazil and a number of other Neo Marxist caudillo countries, the Chicoms, autocratic Russia, and the rest of the laundry list of beneficiaries, of allies thus far thrown "Under the Obama Bus".

Related

- Forbes: "How Obama Thinks", by Dinesh D'Souza
- American Thinker: "Obama, the African Colonial", by L.E. Ikenga
- Key Wiki
- Discover the Networks

Related dossiers

- "The Dialectics"
- "The Pomo Presidency"
- "Under the Bus"
- "Ruled by the Mob"
- "The Obama Civil Defense Force"
- "Stop The Obama Constitutional Crisis"
- "Obama's Radical Connections"
- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "The Pomo White House"

The Culture War Moves to Twitter

A recent discourse in 140 miniblog positions on the peculiarities of the world we live in, resulted in a challenge from an unknown entity in the Twitter universe of what turned out to be a postmodern, self-confessed 'scientist'. His alma mater or field of work remains unknown to this day, but his bio sports such ethical pursuits as animal rights, humanism, consciousness research, evolution, cosmology, agnosticism, vegetar., portuguese coffee, science, and writing.

The first tweet pressed upon me the blessings of the state and of pomo dogma in regard of  morality and ethics. Didn't I know that religion has no monopoly on morality, and was I not aware that such tenets are simply subjective group conventions - a consensus on the norm if you will - and that the state as a neutral arbiter should put a ban on all religious manifestations and expunge it from the public domain? A diatribe on how  religion usurped morality from the societal domain ensued (the divorce between the secular and the sacred has been at least since Plato's time).

But here comes the full view on the Leftist mindset in its full, dictatorial glory: "It's the duty of lawmakers to regulate the behavior of people" (which is a marked deterioration on the view that it's the duty of politicians to offer hope and consolation). This point of view explains why so many - primarily in the Obama administration - are meisters in public manipulation at the perceptional level (e.g. Cass Sunstein and his Nudge). In this flat, two dimensional world this is the main level of consciousness (for a proper understanding read also "The O Team: Mental Babies With Razors").

"In democracies the average morality (to be understood as something akin to etiquette) is reflected in the law" (which is presumably why the US Constitution is a living and breathing document): truth has made place for fleeting 'norm' or 'consensus'. E.g. if the consensus has it, that children can have sex from the age of 12, then so be it. Once the law says it's okay, hey presto, having sex with children as of the age of 12 is no longer immoral. Here we have in a word, why 'consensus' is taking such a central place in the relativist narrative: it is the moral arbiter. In dictatorships the tyrant dictates law which equals morality: Corporal Hitler would have been proud!

Since years of rubbing shoulders with relativists and subjectivists has as yet to result in any fruitful interaction - and isn't likely to yield any in the foreseeable future - I tried to shake the challenger off with a few generalities about time constraints. As said, fruitless. Their dogma and self-righteousness compels them to attack objective thinkers whenever and wherever they may find them. More importantly, what really set him off were my claims in defense of Christian ethics against the onslaughts of n oxymoron: a liberal, moral dictatorship. That could not stand!

Another exposé on the nature of morality as a group subjectivity, hit my In Box the next day, pressing upon me what is in essence the fascist narrative of polylogism. It enabled Nazi theory to see the fate of the German people as separate from other nations. But in the present case it's religious groups that may engage in whatever backward and appalling practice their faith may proscribe, as long as they don't hurt other people outside their tribe, or God forbid, animals. Apart of that, religions should have no longer have 'privileges' other than, say filatellist associations or boy scouts.

And was I aware, that apes and primates are actually very moral animals? And how could I say, that free will is at its root?! Free will is but an illusion in which humans are inherently caught up and is as futile as my claim that morality is about a choice between good and evil! I should know that  morality consists in the conscience ... (eh?) And since his morality isn't mine, how dare I claim my morality - what advances life is good, what abrogates it is bad - is objective! Death can be very beneficial to those suffering from it (life, that is).

Subjectivists live in a universe of their own making - quite literally. They are the masters of that universe but everyone else is a Narcissist! There's nothing you can tell them that makes any sense. See, they aren't seekers of truth, but ideologues with an agenda who interprete the world as it fits their narrative.

Free will must be torn out by the root, otherwise there won't be any victims fueling their dialectic world: a place propelled progressively forward by the struggle between the oppressors and their inequal victim groups (vintage Hegel and Marx, the essence of progressivism).

The state must usurp the place of God at the center of the universe. If the Government is the moral arbiter between unequal groups that are forever at each others throats, it renders them like children, for always dependent on the Government for goodies and hope of peace.

Animals on the other hand, must be fitted with a sense of morality if they are to claim any rights! Since in this approach morality is 'social convention', I suppose you could call it 'morality' of sorts. At least admits in animals this doesn't involve a conscious choice. Expect apes on trial next, for the murder of smaller animals! Just like in the Middle Ages when a pig was famously put on trial.

Truth and reality do not exist. Good and evil do not exist. The lie does not exist. There's just fleeting, temporary perception. Morality is state-mediated consensus.

Through the falsehoods at the root of their thinking, the result is ever the opposite of what they claim to achieve. "We love culture so much", one shrieked once, "that we think retaining ones culture should be a human right!" And they proceeded to throw them in the great multicultural witch's cauldron, and out came Balkan balls and sectarian goulash!

Higher education now produces no specimen of humanity, other than the one whose reality we just peeked into. The divide between the two philosophies on the nature of the universe and human thought is now so huge and so fundamental, that it's hard to think of one subject where the two aren't at the very opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. If anything, the gap is widening ever further.

The subjective side has now amassed all ingredients the fascists and National Socialists had at their disposal, save a sense of personal victimhood and a culture of militarism: pragmatism, group subjectivism (polylogism), passion and emotions as cognitive tools (anti reason), collectivism, a denial of truth and objective reality, the negation of good and evil, law equals morality, anti capitalism and anti individualism, and a end-justifies-the-means mindset.

In "The New Totalitarianism That Dares Not Speak it's Name" we introduced Professor Ernest Sternberg's publication, "Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For" into the mix of arguments. It is an investigation into the merging of Leftism and Islam. Sternberg explains that the Left has largely refrained from serious violence because they see their religious terrorist comrades as proxies. The target is evidently Western cultureas a whole, with the United States and Israel as the primary targets.

The onslaught continues.

Update

Obama has said Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization for killing innocent civilians racist, because they do not advance the careers of blacks in the ranks of the terrorist organization. Is it any wonder we're dog's breakfast! Morality, anyone?

Related

- "Why Multiculturalism Is Racist and Evil"
- "The Power of Ideas"
- "2009: Reintroducing Class Justice"
- "The New Totalitarianism That Dares Not Speak it's Name"

Relativist Foreign Policy and the Free Gaza Propflot (update)

This wasn't a one off, but a new tactic in assymetrical warfare toolkit - or should that be warfare under the guise of humanitarian aid? Lebanon is now preparing to send propflots, only they are no longer propaganda tools, but covert warfare. Here's the collection point on Articles.

Al Manar TV: "“Flotilla Assault Marks the Beginning of the End for Israel”"

June 6, 2010

There was a time in human history, not that long ago actually but it seems like eons now, that the ideal state of mind when judging others, was to be as objective as possible. The notion is built on the idea that all men are created equal and all are to be judged by the same moral standard. It is symbolized in the statue of Lady Justice, weighing her cases blindfolded.

A murder is a murder no matter who committed it, whoever the victim, and whatever the circumstances; the idea being that men are judged by the contents of their character, not by the color of their skin, or social class.

That's no longer the case. When the Left embraced relativism, it accepted with it, it's nasty little sibling, subjectivism. So, whereas one murderer gets life for killing a human being, another is getting away with a few years, depending on the circumstances and the history of the persons involved.

Where social classes have largely disappeared from most Western societies, other victim groups have been created to keep the social warfare alive. It's done on the basis of the dialectic of oppressors versus oppressed, or postmodern varieties thereof. Persons are judged and treated according to the victim group they stem from. It happens to also nicely pave the way for the apartheid of Sharia law, one law for the natives, another for Muslims - that is, as a first stage to total submission.

Some liberals like to think of themselves as non judgmental, but that moral neutrality is a myth. We discriminate all of the time, but no longer based on an objective standard of ethics, but by different standards depending on whom we are judging: we are guilty of practicing the hypocrisy of reversed discrimination.

The same is true in international relations. One commentator on a post on the shocking events in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean this week, assures us Israel is held by higher standards than the Palestinians, because they are a liberal democracy, not the usual Middle Eastern hellhole ruled by a dictator.

How evil and unjust that double standard is, can be measured by its effect: in Western culture it is responsible for the 'down with us' syndrome, effectively foisting upon ourselves a handicap, not unlike fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. And that is just to make it fair, because the other feller is only half our size. Yet we stand idly by when two thugs are bashing each others heads in, since neither seems to know any better. (In the civil world - thank Heaven - they still end up in prison, maybe.)

If you project that on to the world of international relations we end up precisely where we are today: with Israel condemned for defending itself, and the thugocracy of Iran getting away with enough fissile material to produce two nuclear bombs. How's that for a debilitating effect of subjectivism?

Caroline Glick describes the objectives of the Red-Green (Left and Islam) coalition as follows:

It seeks to delegitimize Israel's right to exist and it seeks to make it impossible for Israel to defend itself. If these aims are met, Israel's destruction will become an historic inevitability.

Far from advancing the peace process, the result of this effort is the destruction of the state of Israel, which is rationalized in any sort of way: it is racist because it is Jewish, yet the country consists of Jews, Christians and Muslims which are treated as equals before the law. But Muslim countries on the other hand are backward dictatorships, so their discrimination against women and religions other than Islam, do not matter because they're held to lower standards.

Muslim countries have never had any intention of tolerating the liberal democracy the size of a postage stamp in the midst of its conquered lands. On top of that, they have now managed to get the Western postmodern Left on its side in a Red-Green fascist coalition; the brew is toxic in the extreme.

A commentator in the US has made it be known that ... of course the aid convoy was a ruse to cover the real objective: breaking the blockade of Gaza so that heaven knows what may be brought into the port. There's nothing illegal about the blockade and what's more, it's sheer common sense. Only subjectivists go to the point of requiring entire countries and cultures to commit suicide in order to be considered ethical.

Time and again, whatever patches of land the Iraelis restored to the Palestinians, it always became a launching pad for violence and terror. They have no reason to trust the Palestinians with whatever concession in the name of the unspeakable 'peace process". The hellhole of Gaza itself is a case in point.

At first, in the relativist's reasoning, there's no moral difference between the Israelis and the Palestinians: both have an equal right to exist and resist. Initially it makes no difference that Israel is a liberal democracy that treats all equal before the law and the Palestinians have proven themselves time and again the pit of moral depravity. They then move over to the other side and call for Israel's destruction.

Welcome to the upside down, inside out world of moral subjectivism applied to diplomacy and international relations.

Related

- Washington Post: "Those troublesome Jews", by Charles Krauthammer

Pomo Politics: Why it is Shallow and Evil

If it's one thing that is standing out like a muzzleman at choir practise it's the staggering superficiality of postmodern thinkers. It struck me years ago when I came across some propaganda of the Dutch Liberal Democrat party D66, that has adopted not liberalism, but elements of Pragmatism as its in-house philosophy.

It was an awkward read, and unaware of relativist thought as I was at the time, was unable to pinpoint the source of the cognitive dissonance I felt. Later it transpired that Pragmatism, a branch on the Postmodern tree - unlike Classical Liberalism - is a form of collectivism. It doesn't deal in social classes as Socialism does, it doesn't deal in the nation or the state as nationalism and statism does, but it breaks down society in social classes based on culture and race, but also in categories as lifestyle, fashion, subculture, income brackets, age groups, levels of education and the like, almost as is done in marketing.

Progressives for their social engineering love putting people in boxes. This shallowness is exacerbated by their essentially materialistic world view. Man is but a sum total of cells, synapses, hormones and other bio-chemical substances. At night, one doesn't rest the mind, but one reduces adrenaline levels. After the mechanical and computer model of humanity, now the chemical factory.

But there's more. Postmodernism is hollow by definition. In "The O Team: Mental Babies with Razors" and many posts since, we've analyzed the nature of pomo lingo (or Leftist rhetoric, if you will). They deny the existance of objective truth and morality. It follows that anything goes. Early victims of this world view are concepts, abstracts and universals (e.g. 'the' quintessential Briton, or Britishness).

Words, language and meaning in classical philosophy are reduced to the sensory level and therefore have a referent in reality. This won't do with subjectivists, as they deem the senses untrustworthy epistemological partners. Instead they delve into their own minds, and find but meanings, narratives and agendas according to the collective to which the thinker belongs.

Karl Marx was supposedly right when he came up with the dialectic of oppressors versus oppressed, but later on in the evolutionary process sub collectives were added. The Left discerns meanings, narratives and agendas according to social class, race, culture, religion and increasingly also related to the gender of choice, life-style, income bracket, and level of education. The result is what is called identity politics.

Everything is facade - all form, no substance.

You still with me? That's it, folks - the vacuous universe according to pomo! Behind language and words go subjective social agendas, pitting one group or class against another in competition for the zero sum game that is life, pomo style. Rhetoric and written texts need 'deconstruction' and 'close reading' in order for the subjective group narrative to be 'unmasked'.

Philosopher Stephen Hicks, an authority on Postmodernism (his book "Explaining Postmodernism" is now available online) has posited that:

"Postmodernism is the first ruthlessly consistent statement of the consequences of rejecting reason, those consequences being necessary given the history of epistemology since Kant." 

"Postmodernism is the academic far Left's epistemological strategy for responding to the crisis caused by the failures of socialism in theory and in practice." 

"Postmodernism is a symptom of the far Left's crisis of faith. Postmodernism is a result of using skeptical epistemology to justify the personal leap of faith necessary to continue believing in socialism."

I've put it this way:

Postmodernism propagates the in essence political agenda with the defense argument that if reason makes no sense to what you're saying, as reality clearly shows otherwise, you attack reason as superficial and pernicious, and you try to persuade the world that reality doesn't exist!"

In view of all of the collectivist debacles in the course of history, the current, covert onslaught of Neo Marxism may well be the very last chance of establishing a truly global collective. Barack Obama and his transnational progressive brothers in arms at the EU and UN are doing their utmost to strike successfully this time. Remember, it's always the operatives and never the ideology that is at fault: this time they'll show us how ethically superior they are!

Expediency is therefore required. Pragmatism provides it and pomo lingo is the weapon of choice. It's an ultimate fight to the death, unrestrained by any rules or niceties. While the opponent is held to live up to his own standards (Alinsky), the rhetorical pomo warrior is have a free-fight: fibs and lies, ridicule, equivocation and double standards; logic, facts and reality have become irrelevant; no punches held and the occasional temper tantrum or tear jurker is also thrown into the mix.

Some have held that true moral relativists don't exist. Such a person would have to be a psychopath. Well, isn't that a coincidence! James Lewis, writing on American Thinker, has actually identified them as such as early as September 25, 2008 in a remarkable, eye-opening read: "Barack Obama and Alinsky's Rules for Psychopaths". Do read it all!

From the above we draw the conclusion that, on the contrary, it isn't reason that is shallow, vacuous, hollow and superficial, but that it is postmodernism that is out of its depth, is all of the above, and evil besides.

Quote of the day
"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."
-- Barack H. Obama

Update

- Outside the Beltway: "Elena Kagan Lesbian Rumor Smear Neither Smear Nor Rumor", James Joyner
- The Examiner: "Clinton links McVeigh to Tea Parties", by Robert Moon

Related

- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "Postmodern Fallacies" (PMF long, worksheet)
- Excerpt of "The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism", by Richard Wolin (Google Books)

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• Does Stanley Fish Know What Reason is Missing? (trueslant.com)
• The Real Power of Ideas (newcitizenship.blogspot.com)

Of Human Hubris, Coverups and the Debilitation of the Mind

Two results of a number of enquiries into the University of East Anglia's Climate Unit (CRU) are in. Complete whitewashes, as was to be expected. Here are the results. But after I've reported on a typical anti-human, Rousseauian narrative on radio last night, an interview with diver-photographer Dos Winkel (do visit the site; like Riefsenstahl's, the artwork is simply stunning).

The problem is, these self-appointed researcher-activists-Cousteau-wannabees are talking through their hats! Winkel is wildly peeling the alarm bells as entire species are disappearing and seas are being drawnetted dry. He knows, because as a diver he has witnessed the devastation with his own two eyes. Who wouldn't take him seriously?

But when you come think of it, there's something highly subjective and selective about such reports. Climber-activists have been doing the same in the Himalayas and the Alps as we know to our detriment. Some of these amateur-researcher reports have 101 found their way into the UN's IPCC 2007 Update without further ado, where they were used to influence politicians and other decision makers at the expense of the tax payer.

- Caption: photo by Dos Winkel - 

There's nothing scientific about these sightings (or lack thereof). How misguided are these people? Very. A Dutch commuter newspaper is suggesting there may be no summer this year "due to Iceland's volcanic eruption". A volcano is now standing accused of "polluting the climate". How dare it, they exclaim, as they're shacking their fists at the angry ghost in the mountain.

Robert Moon is reporting today in the Examiner that the climate lobby in the media are making the case, not of a direct cause and effect as they did with climate warming and hurricane Katrina and the Minnesota bridge collapse in 2007, but are now concocting a narrative as if there were a relationship between volcano eruptions and a decline in the weight of gletchers (whatever).

Human hubris can at times be quite staggering. This goes for the entire man-made global waming hypothesis. In the face of the mighty forces of nature, it's the question if man is capable of such a feat in the first place. The notion is the result of the erroneous postmodern habit of confusing the metaphysical and the man-made. Their minds have reached the level of the medieval bumpkin who's blaming the plague on demons (see reports on man-made climate warming being responsible for massive earth quakes).

Besides anti individualim, anti reason and anti capitalism postmodernists share this confusion with the Islamists: an Iranian cleric has just discovered that earthquakes are caused by extramarital sex. It beggars belief what divides these two members of the Unholy Alliance!

A debilization of the mind has taken place as a result of a world view that is a fallacy. Like the foundation of a house is out of whack, causing eventually the entire edifice to crumble, this warped world view produces nothing but inside out, upside down bolderdash - crap in, crap out.

I recently retrieved some of my earliest work on the critique of postmodern thought, laid out in - for want of a better word - the PMF (postmodern fallacies). It needs updating with the latest discoveries on present confusion (which is rife!), and the analysis of what constitutes pomo lingo (read also "The O Team: Mental Babies With Razors").

Here's a digest of the Climategate cover-up, but I encourage you to read the entire original article - it's quite concise.

National Post: "Climategate whitewash", by Peter Foster

'Climategate scientists cleared of wrongdoing” read the headline in yesterday’s Post. Who expected anything else? The two self-inquiries launched by the University of East Anglia into its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were always destined to produce whitewashes, as did a recent UK parliamentary inquiry, and as will an “independent” review by the UN.

The first of the UEA reports, from a committee headed by ardent warmist and anti-carbon profiteer Lord Oxburgh, appeared this week. As Lawrence Solomon points out elsewhere on this page, the choice of Lord Oxburgh indicated that the fix was always in for an inquiry which fails to address, let alone probe, most of the major issues. And yet there is a mountain of condemnation-by-faint-exoneration between the lines of the report’s ridiculously slim five pages.

Its attempt to present CRU head Phil Jones, and his beleaguered band, as unworldly boffins who were blindsided by all this attention is ridiculous. (...) The CRU’s data has appeared in two forms: raw and cooked. Much of the raw variety, unfortunately, has been “lost.” This is treated by the review as infinitely excusable due to the pressures of the academic life. You know, tedious admin meetings, the pressure to publish, the need to get in those applications for multi-million dollar grants attached to proving man-made global warming. But how can ditching the fundamental data on which your science depends be dubbed mere carelessness with “non-essential record keeping?”

As for the cooked data, the CRU has been accused of “manipulation” not in the legitimate statistical sense, so that different data sets may be comparable, but in support of the results required by government-funded, highly politicized science. Without data suggesting rising temperatures due to anthropogenic emissions, there would be no justification for massive global programs such as cap-and-trade, redistributionist “clean development,” or the hefty subsidization of alternative energy. The CRU is also gently fingered for its lack of statistical sophistication. (...) >>>

Related

- James Delingpole: "When the Germans give up on AGW you really do know it’s all over…"
- "Greenism"
- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "Global Warming: a Problem That is not Supposed to be Solved"

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• Oxburgh blesses Climategate boffins (go.theregister.com)
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• 'Climategate' scientists criticised for not using best statistical tools (telegraph.co.uk)

Thought Creates Reality, or The Slaughter House Rules

The critique of postmodern thought is the centerpiece of present blog. We've been doing it since 2006 when I left my native country, the Netherlands for Greece, to embark upon a quest to find out, what TF had happened to my country.

It soon transpired - the Pope pointed the way - the problem was relativist thought. Further investigation disclosed there's a container expression for it and a host of other fallacies as its result: it's called postmodernism. For those unfamiliar with the subject, let me explain it as succinct as possible.

The core of postmodernism holds that "the truth" (or more precise, concepts) do not exist. Every school of thought, culture, race, religion, ideology is equally valid (except the West's, which are uniquely evil). We know this as multiculturalism.

They hold that language consists in arbitrary labels, and isn't an expression of a concept rooted in reality. As a consequence they believe that if you give something another name, the "essence" of the object itself has changed (I place essence in quotation marks (or postmodern irony marks), because they deny that as well).

A train of further fallacies ends in the notion that thought creates reality, instead of the other way around, and that thus, an object in "the real world" depends upon our consciousness for its existance. A postmodernist might well ask, will the sun rise tomorrow if I die overnight?

Once disconnected from the reality, literally anything goes.

This utter nonsense is all around us, but it is unique in history that we can observe the disastrous consequences from up close, in the US Democratic party in general and the Obama administration in particular. In this instant I am refering to the "Slaughter House Rules".

I give you the Wall Street Journal of this morning:

WSJ: "Slaughter House Rules"

We're not sure American schools teach civics any more, but once upon a time they taught that under the U.S. Constitution a bill had to pass both the House and Senate to become law. Until this week, that is, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving to merely "deem" that the House has passed the Senate health-care bill and then send it to President Obama to sign anyway. (...) 

We have entered a political wonderland, where the rules are whatever Democrats say they are. (...) Democrats are, literally, consuming their own majority for the sake of imposing new taxes, regulations and entitlements that the public has roundly rejected but that they believe will be the crowning achievement of the welfare state. (...) >>>

Staunch objectivists might call it a coup, yet others might question their sanity. But postmodernists aren't insane, or even psychotic in any physical sort of way - they are the victims of a very vicious anti-ideology that is essentially a philosophical war crime: it's a war on reason. They have a completely warped sense of reality.

Mind you, we're talking here about the core piece of the Obama's "fundamental transformation" of the United States, a Bill that will change the relationship between the citizen and the state, in a reversal of the philosophy that is at the heart of what is America: Liberty. It is also a government take-over of 1/6 of the US economy. (...)

And it is constructed under the notion that ... thought creates reality. Be afraid ... be very afraid.

Related

- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "Pomo Lingo"
- "The O Team: Mental Babies With Razors"

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• Insanity Rules (newcitizenship.blogspot.com)