Monthly Archives: September 2014

Part Six of: Collectivist Philosophy Masquerading as the Christian Orthodox Ideal

Calvinism/Philosophy, Epistemology, Metaphysics

We last left our discussion of Christianity’s collectivist philosophy by examining the assumptions behind a few questions asked of the new “home group” member, according to the North Point Ministries primer on collectivist re-education entitled “Community:  Your pathway to progress”.

As an aside, I must admit that I take serious issue with the use of the words “your” and “progress” in the title of this booklet.  Because, insofar as “your’ is concerned, let me say this: within the pages of this Marxist-Leninist allegory there is nothing but the utter denial of the individual and his or her efficacious existence; which naturally destroys the concept of the SELF altogether.  In other words, there is nothing of you or your to be seen within the collectivist paradigm to which this booklet is entirely devoted.

And as for “progress”…snort.  That’s a laugh and a half.  Progress?  Only if you consider a return to the bloody days of Stalin’s gulag, Hitler’s Jewish ghettos, or John Calvin’s pyromania  (among other examples)  a “progression”.  And in such a case, the facts of history and the stark glare of reality would like to have a few words with you.  Indeed, it is pointing out the obvious by now to say that this little ode to the Christian Marxist collective takes as many soaring liberties with language as any work of despotism does.

At any rate, let’s continue with our evaluation of said ode.

2. How have these people [the “friends” mentioned in question one, see my previous article here] influenced you?  What is something that you have learned from each person?

(p. 19, “Community:  Your pathway to progress”, North Point Ministries, 2008)

Notice how this question leaves absolutely no room for one to answer:  I have not been influenced at all. I have enjoyed their company, and they mine, but we do not share a hive mentality. We all have our own ideas about what’s best for our own lives, and any “influence” is nothing more than the free choice we each have made as individuals to appropriate some manner of behavior or thinking which we have deemed to be of benefit to our unique situations.

No…the idea of “influence” categorically eliminates such a definition of “friendship”.  One begins to wonder whether these “Christians” have any idea what friendship actually is in the first place.  As far as they are concerned, it seems it is little more than mutual osmosis: the idea that simply being around another human being brings changes to your behavior, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, even personality, wholly and utterly apart from your will or choosing.  And this is because, in part, Reformed Christianity does not recognize human beings as having a will.  The doctrine of God’s Sovereignty, which is as non-biblical as any other Reformed doctrine, forbids such an ability.  And I submit that any equivocation of the matter by your nearest Protestant “orthodox” friend will invariably arrive, should you push the matter far and long enough, at the place of “God’s mystery”, which of course is the sepulcher where ALL “orthodox” beliefs are eventually laid to rest when confronted with their glaring rational contradictions by one not afraid to clearly  spell them out.

So “influence” openly implies a lack of will on your part.  You have been influenced, and this is not open for debate or discussion.  Your only job is to explain how.  And if you shrug and say you don’t really know…well, the “influence” is apparent.  Your exposure to the devil’s world has blinded you to the facts of your existence.  You don’t even realize how colossally rebellious and unaware you have become, to proclaim some kind of immunity from or ignorance of the inexorable “influence” of others…that is, the group, be it whomever they are, which will commandeer your body, mind, and soul, because this is your metaphysical reality.  That is, you are NOT and NEVER will be your SELF.  You are always and infinitely an extension of the group; the truth is always outside of you.  YOU don’t exist.  You are sacrificed to the collective as your divinely compelled existential and moral obligation from the moment you are born.  The only difference then between your group of “friends” and this new “home” or “care” group is that they are the real collective…the one that God really likes.  And all the others are frauds, forgeries, fakes, and impostors.

So, the assumption is that your friends, constituting the secular (monstrously evil and depraved; despised by God; the devil’s play thing, and utterly destined for hellfire destruction) group, must have influenced you, because you, by metaphysical axiom, are unable to resist the group’s influence.  The trick, then, is getting influenced by the “right” group.  Which is, as I alluded to, whatever group in your immediate vicinity which happens to be pushing the Reformed metaphysic; the Calvinist/Lutheran hermeneutic, which is the sum and substance of all Protestantism, and which, again, is entirely collectivist in its philosophy.

“Think About It“

Do you tend to think of spirituality as private, or as something to be experienced wit others?

(p. 21, same source)

After all that has preceded this fucking loaded question, and in light of the obvious group metaphysical presumption, we can recognize its bullshit rhetorical nature.  And it infuriates me because it is deceptive on its face.  They are not interested in what you really think about spirituality.  They don’t believe for one second that you might have a great point, though it may be different, or even contrary to their assumptions.  In short, they aren’t interested in a fucking discussion with you, and they know it.  This question is purely self-serving; it is purely designed to test how successful they have heretofore been in indoctrinating you to their collectivist mentality.  Have you conceded? That’s the real question.  Are you buying it yet…or is it still too early?  Well, any idiot can understand what the answer is supposed to be from their perspective, but how you decide to answer and how you defend your answer helps them know just how much pressure they still need to apply.  What’s the next step, and how much force is required?  Are you ready to concede, or do you still not understand, or refuse to accept, that what they are really asking you is to abandon your “rebellious” ways and embrace their complete authority over your life?  Are you still operating under the assumption that you have a choice or say in the matter?  Or are you ready to forsake SELF and throw yourself upon the mandate of their divine calling?

The vile motivation behind such a question, particularly located at a very early point in the booklet, cannot be understated.  It is arrogant presumption, and it shows us just how highly they think of themselves.  Their influence is soooo divine; their “reasoning” soooo compelling; their apprehension of doctrine and truth and spirituality sooo fucking extraordinary that they don’t even make a strategically-placed pretense of requiring anything but a few short pages to completely rip you from reality…that is, the perfunctory and starkly obvious individual SELF of your existence.  That the idea that YOU don’t exist, but are merely an absolute extension of some group…some “force” outside of you, is soooo obvious and yet soooo mind-blowing and they soooo divinely adroit and eloquent and deft and enlightened that they would think it appropriate to ask this kind of question so early is the pinnacle of empty navel-gazing and wicked self-worship.  I mean, even physics gives you whole text books and semesters to plod through before it expects you to surrender your individual existence to absolute forces that exist in the blank cosmic ether where they transcend objects and observation.

Assholes.

“Who are the wise people in your life?  How can you incorporate more of their influence into your life?”

(p. 21, same source)

Again, this question is a test of their strategy heretofore.  How you answer is indicative of their success or failure in leading you towards conceding their ecclesiastical authority structure.  That is, in asking how you might “incorporate more influence”, they are asking if you are ready to appropriate the beliefs and actions of those you must, if you are a good Christian, concede are your “intellectual” superiors.  And your concession is not something that depends necessarily on whether you actually agree with, or, more appropriately stated, are epistemologically capable of agreeing with, these “wise” people…for your acceptance of their ideas is irrelevant.  They are “wise”, and therefore you are obligated to obey them.  Because, to the Reformed, agreement must equal obedience since TRUTH is not learned, but divinely granted.

Let me explain:

Obedience is the only meaningful response when the assumption is that “wisdom” is not a function of reasoned learning, but rather a function of divine enlightenment.  You cannot agree with the “wise” man until God grants you the “grace to perceive” what they are all about.  And once you receive your own cognitive dispensation from above, you will naturally recognize their “wisdom” as truly “wise”, and perpetually so, and therefore they will remain your authority, which you are obligated to obey, because God has revealed to them the “truth” first…that is, before you.  And indeed this is how the Christian caste system works.  Those who are first called to enlightenment have a head start on their divine “wisdom”, making them perpetual spiritual and therefore intellectual superiors (which is why so many Calvinist leaders are such arrogant tool bags).  Thus, you, in a manner of speaking, are always playing catch up…operating on a smaller amount of divine insight than they are.  And so, yet again, your ability to truly understand their wisdom is perpetually truncated by your inferior spiritual status; your understanding always lagging behind their own.  So in this case “incorporating more of their influence” means nothing more than shutting the fuck up and doing what you’re told.  And of course the leading nature of this question becomes all too apparent:  the ostentatious point is that they are the most wise of all, because they, meaning the ecclesiastical authorities–pastors, priests, and all who come before you in the God-ordained pecking order–are the only ones who have been “called” to “stand in the stead of God” (words actually uttered by pastors in my old mystic iron maiden, Sovereign Grace Ministries…egregious).  In other words, they possess a “wisdom” that defies the sum total of your understanding and your ability to understand, and cannot possibly be reached or breached.  There is no one–and I mean no one–who can ever be in a place to question the ideas of the supreme pope…that is, the senior pastor, and those upon whom he dispenses his “authority”, because this kind of “wisdom” is never learned, it is only bestowed.  It transcends human understanding to the point where if the senior pastor declares the earth six thousand years old, and only six thousand years old, then any critic is summarily dismissed as base, blind, and unsaved. Even Einstein, that old sage and genius, should he be compelled to hazard a critique, can go fuck himself.

Because in the Reformed construct reason-based understanding (from which real TRUTH springs, and there is no truth besides rational truth) is not understanding at all.  It’s “man’s wisdom”; which is a polite way of saying that all of the ideas by which we organize our universe and recognize our place in it are complete horseshit. “God’s wisdom”, you must understand, according to these people, is contrary to reason. That is, “real” truth…God’s truth,  is utterly unreasonable.

And that, my friends, is terrifying.  Because if there are no benchmarks of truth to which an individual can make reference in the event that the church attempts to violate his or her person or property, then there is no moral standard whatsoever to which he/she can appeal for justice and protection.  If truth is completely a function of the subjective whims of one who is “called by God” to “stand in His stead”, making him utterly impervious to any contrary idea, and this by God’s perfect Will, then in the event that the monster who actually believes this kind of insanity and is willing to act upon it ever acquires absolute civil power, he will murder massive numbers of human beings in the interest of perpetuating and maintaining his “authority”; because his authority is on par with God, Himself.  Everyone will be sacrificed to his whims, because whims, and only whims, are exactly what you get when you jettison reason as the rails upon which truth must ride.

Thus, what I am saying is that there is absolutely no philosophical difference between the authors of this booklet–that is, in general, the Reformed Ecclesiastical leadership, a.k.a., your Pastors–and the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS), or the Khmer Rouge, the Soviet NKVD, Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety (and though this was a product of the the French Revolution, notice the rank use of the word “public”), and even the common drug lord.  None of them recognize the right of the individual human being to appeal to, nor the ability of the individual to apprehend, truth, be it rational or moral.  All of them rule by the collectivist metaphysic: that the prime existential obligation of the individual is sacrifice to the group, as led by those who claim divine calling as the authority by which they rule absolutely.  And this sacrifice may be either figurative (e.g. the devotion of all of your time and resources to the perpetuation of the group’s philosophy and the compelling of humanity by force into the group’s sphere of influence), or it may be literal.  As in, you can “rightly” be murdered in cold blood if the leadership deems this to be the most effective and profitable way you can serve the group.  And this is why Joseph Stalin had zero problem with ordering the slaughter of tens of millions of men, women, and children on behalf of the Workers Utopia…which was Stalin, himself.

His job was to lead.  Their job, predestined by “God”, or whatever primary consciousness compelled him, was to die.  Period.  Full stop.

And in like philosophy, welcome to the mind of the Protestant priesthood.

Welcome to Home Group.

Welcome to Care Group.

Welcome to hell.

“Objective Reality” Outside of Man is Dangerous Moral Equivalency

Calvinism/Philosophy

I mean…it’s like this.

There are some people who have a vested and emotional interest in towing the Reformed theology line.  For the people in power (Pastors, Elders, Apostles, or whatever the fuck they are calling themselves these days…Dalai Lamas, Ayatollahs, whatever), the interest is obvious.  Power, wealth, security, bragging rights…the list goes on.  Whether they truly believe what they teach is besides the point.  Deep down I submit that every teacher of this bullshit who isn’t registered clinically insane understands that their theology is a series of contradictory doctrinal shish kababs.

But what about the laity?  The “everyman” who will literally die on the hill to defend the idea that he has absolutely no value, no purpose, no SELF, no power, and no ability to even comprehend what it means to be alive in the first place, because there is no definition of “life” anywhere in the philosophical framework?  What about that everyday church goer who benefits nothing of any sort of efficacious value whatsoever from his beliefs and yet still demands that what he thinks, as siphoned off of the Reformed authoritarian teat, is what the rest of the world is obligated to submit themselves to, and WILL, whether they think they will or not?

In this person’s mind, human behavior is pre-programmed, and human reactions are simply an instinctive response to inexorable and intractable universal forces which “cause upon” him.  These forces are direct functions of God, who is, they declare, the “uncaused first cause”, whatever the fuck that means.

The sum and substance of this Reformed patriot’s message concerning ideas like “God sets the standard of truth”, “suffering is inevitable” is this:  that what you think and how you observe your own individual life and context is irrelevant. You simply act in accordance with the irresistible and all-determining forces of “objective reality”.

In this case, “objective reality” is God; but it can also mean other things as well.  Now, normally we do not associate the phrase “objective reality” with Christians, particularly “orthodox” Christians (your Catholics, your Protestants, and all the sundry flavors thus of each, which are basically all the same except for some doctrinal piffle, which they make a colossally huge fucking deal over, wasting yet more time and more money in pursuit of total irrelevancy…but, whatever).  More commonly, “objective reality” is a phrase reserved for those considered more rational; more…well, scientific.  Those who believe that objective reality is built upon the idea that man can observe his environment and its repeatable interactions and consistent causes and effects, and “discover” the forces which cause objects to act, react, interact, become, and fade to nothing.  That reality and thus truth has nothing to do with man’s ideas, nor his philosophies; and certainly has nothing to do with God, who pales in comparison to the wondrous voices of the material universal denizens, in all their various forms, who sing to us in soaring folk songs of mathematical verse.

The “objectivists” among us, you might say, are the ones to whom we ascribe the term and doctrine of “objective reality”; that is, the the idea that the only true reality is essentially a mathematical reality.  A reality of empirical natural laws which only certain, cosmically gifted men are able to codify, translate, catalog, and ultimately apprehend.

And here is where it gets really interesting for me.

The Reformed Christian is thus not functionally different from the sober physicist.  The chanting mystic no different philosophically from the wild-haired, lab-coated genius who adorns the chalk boarded stage at MIT or Cal Tech.

Interesting, and troubling. Troubling because I now understand that great intellect is not a hedge against the constant, seeping drip of Platonism.  Even those whom I consider to be some of the world’s finest thinkers and best, most adroit, theologians, offer, at the bottom of it all, nothing more than the notion that objective reality is summarized by forces which compel us in spite of our will; a will which cannot possibly exist in the first place.  And now I truly understand that if we don’t pull up every corner of what we believe and scrutinize it inside and out…well…we always seem to miss something, don’t we?

*

I submit that a defense of “objective reality” according to the the world’s objectivists (those who genuflect before Ayn Rand’s philosophy, and those who assume the that the existence of the physical universe rests upon the Standard Model: the pragmatics, the “sensible”, the “rational” atheists amongst us) can only find its premise in the idea that matter humanity observes is at its root governed by the laws of physics, which they declare as having absolute, actual, quantifiable, and causal power over man and his actions.  And this is especially true of those philosophies, like Objecivism, which, being atheistic in their approach to the question of “how did everything which is here get here”, has no other choice than to defer to science. And science defers to the laws of nature which it “discovers”.

On a side note, have you ever noticed that physicists don’t invent, they “discover”? I find it so interesting, and so disturbingly telling. Newton didn’t invent “gravity” as a way to explain the nature of a specific relationship between two or more objects in space, he “discovered” it. The laws of motion and thermodynamics aren’t invented as ways to explain different relative relationships between objects, they are likewise “discovered”. Same thing with Time Dilation and Dark Energy, and Dark Matter, for that matter (no pun intended), cosmic Inflation, the equations of the quantum, the laws of wave mechanics…all of these things have always existed and exerted causal, determinist force over man and the universe, only later to be “discovered” by those who have the unique insight which makes such discoveries possible (and these folks would be your textbook Philosopher Kings, but scientists don’t like to talk about philosophy, so they have conveniently forgotten their full-on Platonist roots).  And this is ironic because NONE of these laws can be directly observed, but are only ever seen by man as a DIRECT function of what is available to the senses of man…that is, the tangible objects the scientists claim these laws “govern”.  And yet instead of the objects man observes–which are a demonstrable and reasonable prerequisite to the laws having any meaning or relevance whatsoever–the laws are not a function of the material objects.  Rather, the material objects are a function of the laws.  Now, in strictly rational terms…

…this is broke-dick ass backwards.

The philosophical, salient, and practical problem of this perspective is, of course, that as soon as you give matter completely over to invisible powers beyond the realm of human senses which we are told exist in some fantasy land of fairies named fermion and boson, lepton and quark, all singing songs in mathematical verse, you have erased the lines between tangible reality and the the powers/spirits of the sky which pull the strings from somewhere man cannot see and cannot go and cannot ever really know at all. Thus the irony in declaring reality objective is rooted in the fact that these people have done the very opposite, and have doomed man to an entire life of writhing in and choking upon an endless torrent of utter subjectivism.

*

You see, man exists as a function of absolute “objective reality”, so the logic goes, which must include his mind, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, observations, etcetera.  And since the laws which govern “objective reality” must be absolute and infinite, and infinitely determinative, there is no difference, moral or otherwise, in what one man believes and concedes versus another man.  Arguments are moot.  Truth unknowable.  All anyone does or thinks is an equal component of “objective reality”.  Morality has been destroyed…moral equivalence rules the day. There is no functional difference between robbing you and killing your puppy in the process, and bringing you flowers on your birthday. Both acts are equal members of objective reality…both observable and quantifiable outcomes of the absolute laws of physics.  And since neither act defies the laws of physics which govern, neither act can be rationally condemned as shirking the moral code.

Do you now see the abject danger of submitting all of reality to objectivity, unless that objectivity is the SELF of the individual? Because if reality is objective outside the individual, then the individual MUST become wholly irrelevant. What he does and what happens to him makes no difference at all. Every act of murder, torture, tyranny, spouse battering, child abuse, chattel slavery, thievery, adultery, etc, etc. is as morally sound and objectively “real” as as any act of kindness or mercy, love or charity. Man exists as nothing more nor less than a direct function of the laws of physics, which are the plumb line of reality (truth) and goodness (morality). And as soon as anyone who concedes the actuality of physical laws (and therefore their absolute causal power) declares that man is able to somehow efficaciously and consciously observe “objective reality” and make moral claims upon it, they become an intractable hypocrite. YOU cannot claim to observe reality because YOU are nothing but an extension of the absolute laws of physics. YOU cannot claim to wield moral categories with relevance and purpose and truth and meaning to any rational effect because EVERYTHING that exists in the universe of which EVERY action is a direct function is governed absolutely by the absolute laws of physics, which are the only moral and epistemological standard, period. There is nothing which happens, in other words, which wasn’t SUPPOSED to happen, and MUST have happened.   And therefore, you see, any cries for justice are supremely irrational.

This is is my problem with those who propose an “objective reality” beyond the context of the individual. It utterly destroys man at his metaphysical, epistemological, and moral root. There is nothing for man to know besides what has been already determined for him to know. There is nothing for man to be or do which has not already been determined; whatever happens must happen and so it has functionally happened already. To cry foul and wail for justice over some perceived moral slight is to pretend that what must have happened and could not have happened any other way should have somehow happened differently.  But because we are speaking in terms of LAWS, no such thing is possible.

Man’s ability to observe and conceptualize the SELF is meaningless…a full-on farce and a lie. Man’s observation is really blindness, for he observes nothing but that which has already been predestined for him to observe; and so what he observes he has effectively observed already, and thus his present observation, which is perpetually his context (man’s observational context is always NOW) is totally irrelevant.  Again, it is in actuality not observation at all, but blindness; it is the awareness of nothing at all.  Which incidentally contradicts awareness itself.  Man is not aware of SELF (is not self-aware) because man cannot truly observe SELF.  Man’s observation in the moment of his existence which is his inexorable frame of reference is an observation of nothing, period.  Full stop.

And from that vantage point, how on earth does one argue for the existence of an “objective reality”?

Answer?  One does not.

*

There is nothing for man to know because what he knows is merely a direct product of unseen and unknowable laws of nature. Observation offers man nothing. It does nothing. And if it does nothing then man cannot rationally claim his own existence. For existence itself is an act, and if man’s existence is not his own, and is not a product of the ability of him SELF to BE, and to observe him SELF in relative context to that which he observes, then there is no such thing as man, period. Man has no TRUTH to himself because man has no life; and if he has no life he has no right to life; and if he has no right to life he has no right to SELF, nor the property of the SELF, nor to decide where that SELF goes, nor to decide what that SELF does, nor to declare with whom that SELF exchanges value.

And so what do we do with man given all of this?  He is as pointless and mute and insufficient to life as he can possibly get.  And so I ask again, in light of all of this, what the fuck do we do with such a beast?

The only thing this philosophy allows us to do. We compel him by force to ends which do not serve him but rather benefit the all powerful “gods” of nature which govern all things, as dictated to him by those specifically called mediators who somehow defy the empty nothingness and infinite blindness of their human existence and act as divinely “called” mediators of the gods, with their categorical affirmation and limitless approval and mandate for these mediators in “authority” to wield hook and crook and iron maiden and rack and stake and firing squad and prison and dungeon and dunking chair.  And all of a sudden its deja vu and Rome is burning while Nero fiddles and Caligula is raping wives and throwing children off of cliffs and Ghengis Khan is slaughtering women and children in the name of his “heavenly calling” and John Calvin is nodding his approval as Michael Servetus begins to smell the flesh of his ankles as the ropes which held them to the stake have long since turned to ash and Stalin is massacring the land owners in the name of the Worker’s Utopia and Hitler is building oven tombs for the Jews in the name of the Racial Ideal and nobody will do a motherfucking thing about it because we all just shrug and say, “It’s God’s will, you know.”

And thus it is that I will NEVER concede any idea which must lead right back there…there, right there before your very eyes, in place of your life, where you have erected that mystic idol of “objective reality”; to that place we are all trying so hard to flee.  And I don’t care if you are proclaiming that the Bible is “God’s Word” or that there is an Objective Reality outside of man…it is all just one big circle which leads straight back to the mouth of hell from whence it came.

And no one will admit it because they are all just so fucking smart.

We will see.  When NOTHING changes for all of their work and all of their words and all of their time, we will see.

My Blog Truancy, and Arguing with Those Who Have the Invinsible Advantage of Contradiction

Calvinism/Philosophy, Physics and Metaphysics

Apologies for being so long in posting.  A few things have happened…none too life-threateningly a deal, but all contributing to my truancy here at the blog.  The first was that my immediate and part of my extended family went to the beach at the end of August (as I finished up my last post) whereupon, on the second day, I promptly got sun poisoning…which, if you’ve never had it, I would highly recommend you stay away.  That?  Er…was not pleasant.  It was my feet, a common culprit as I understand.  They swelled to the size of bread loaves, caused me nausea and headaches, and I couldn’t wear shoes for ten days.

To a lesser degree I burned the shit out of my neck and chest as well, and currently everything continues to peel with great frequency and in copious amounts.  On some mornings I wake up wondering if  I had not in fact been skinned and flayed alive in my sleep by some protagonist.  It is…quite disgusting, I can assure you.

Now, this was not, as some Calvinists might claim, an act of a sovereign God, nor can this be attributed to my “sin nature”; nor, for the objectivist determinists in our midst, a perfunctory outcome of the inexorable “laws of nature/physics” (the law of thermodynamics most readily coming to mind…ha, ha, ha [wryly]).  Not that I wouldn’t love to attribute this act of supreme stupidity to an all-pervasive force like God or cosmic laws, or “objective reality” (whatever the fuck that means; honestly, I’ve rarely run across a more perfunctory and obtuse phrase).  But alas, that would in fact be in frank denial of efficacious reality, which is simply this:

I was a fucking idiot.

I didn’t wear sunscreen, like I knew I should.  I didn’t sit in the shade, like I knew I should.  I assumed that the fine and robust breeze from the ocean was not only keeping me cool but protecting me from the destructive effects of an observable and demonstrable giant ball of fire in the sky, of which I should have known better.

That, and nothing else, is the cause of my sun poisoning.  And the moral of the story is:  Argo will not ever let that shit happen again.  Ever.  Cuz it suuuuuuuucked.  And somewhere–and I understand how controversial this statement is to our Reformed compatriots and our objectivist determinists who read from the virtual ether out there–but somewhere I feel like God is nodding his head in approval and thinking, ‘That’s why I gave you a brain, eegit.  Cause and effect may only be a concept, but concepts are intended to promote life as a natural outcome of self-awareness combined with observation.  And in this case “pale white man in sun too long means pale white man no longer so pale…pale white man become puffy red man who prays for death”‘.

Lesson learned, my friends.  Lesson learned.

After we returned from the beach trip (which for me was a staying-in-the-shade-of-his-room-while-everyone-else-went-out-and-had-fun-without-him trip, my wife promptly left town on business for a week, which left me caring for and peeling all over my two daughters.  A task that I don’t mind but is infinitely easier with another adult around…especially when that adult can wear shoes and, you know, walk normally.

Then my wife returned home whereupon I promptly came down with a dreadful cold because the weather here in Pennsylvania dropped something like thirty-five degrees literally overnight.  When I realized that we hadn’t actually been hit by a meteor and were not all going to die for the same reasons that killed the dinosaurs, I realized that I was going to get sick because that shit always happens when the weather changes so drastically.

And in the midst of all of that I was casting pearls before a swine known as “Tom” over on John Immel’s blog, SpiritualTyranny.com, in the hopes that someone, somewhere was reading and could see the points I was making and find some comfort in them, because “Tom” sure as hell wasn’t ever going to; and maybe it’s because he lacks the intellectual capacity but probably because he’s sort of a colossal asshole.  And this really stressed me out because I finally realized what a massive waste of time the whole exercise had been.  On a blog where I don’t moderate I cannot possibly see who, if anyone, is reading, and therefore, since no one else was commenting (for obvious reasons…all who tried were summarily and violently assaulted with the worst kind of verbal horror from that idiot), I understood that for all I knew I was simply trying to turn a brick into a bird…yes, therefore, I did what I should have done something like one million years ago and quit the whole stupid square dance, cold turkey.

As you can see, I’m pretty pissed about it.  At myself and just generally, you know?  The moral of the story is that at a certain point people aren’t going to get your message.  Those people do exist, and they can be anyone at all.  And that’s fine.  It  happens.  I can’t do calculus.  I just can’t.  And some people can’t do this.  They just can’t.  And when you throw on top of that an attitude that isn’t fit for the worst kind of viper, I mean…you gotta cut your losses.  There are still people out there who think the world is flat, is what I’m saying.  There are Ph.D.’s out there running the most venerable of scientific institutions who claim that the universe is however many billions of years old while at the same time declaring that time was created after the Big Bang.

Try figuring out that mind-fuck.

You can argue with them for hours, and I have, but after a while you just have to let it go.  Paradox is in our DNA.  It is who we are as a civilization.  It is the nature and inevitable product of the concession of our minds to four millennia of Platonist assumptions.  And there are simply going to be people who are too far gone to ever think otherwise.  It is perhaps because they are not able to; but in an equal measure, if not more so, it is because they have been psychologically programmed their whole lives to not want to.  And it is only when these certain people have reached a place in their lives where their psychology and their situation form that perfect storm of utter frustration with and rejection of life combined with the indefatigable will to live…yes, it is only when these two existential states go to war deep in the soul that a complete rejection of ALL philosophical contradictions, be them scientific or religious, in favor of the only TRUTH which can possibly be true–a reasonable TRUTH–can begin to form.  And only after that is it not a complete waste of time to argue with them.  You can make points that they cannot refute; you can show them that in order to believe what they say they do they must accept that the restrictive tent of contradiction is where they must live, content with smoke-signal philosophy…that is, the burning of rational truth in favor of their peculiar message.  But even after they concede this, or ignore it all together, they are simply incapable, I submit, of a redemption to reason.  They have hardened their hearts and there is no cure for that from without.  It is a choice they alone make and they alone can undo.

On a salient note, ignoring the contradictions is what both Tom and John Immel, I am sad to say, did.  Tom because he would rather hurl feces like an angry monkey than concede his blatant insufficiency (and I cannot be more specific because I’m not sure if its intellectual or a function of his awful personality, or both…but whatever; he’s insufficient, is the point); and John because he didn’t have the time to put the requisite “intellectual capital” into the debate.  Whatever the fuck that means.

I mean, either you are able to provide a rational and consistent counter-perspective or you are not.  But to post a drive-by comment whereupon you accuse me of promoting a primacy of consciousness model (which…I deny the assumptions behind that label anyway) and then confess that you actually haven’t thought your criticism through is…well, at best uncharacteristic of John.

My thoughts?

I think I offended him when I rightly claimed in a comment on his blog–in which the general point was to criticized his concession of the causal power of the laws of physics–that if indeed the laws of physics were actual and therefore causal they would be inexorably determinative, and therefore one could never be rationally held culpable for one’s “choices” as choice would naturally be impossible.  If the laws of physics extend all the way to the most elementary of particles, and the brain of man which is the mind of man is comprised of those same particles, then it is impossible to separate thoughts from laws.  And if you cannot separate thoughts from laws then you cannot argue for the ability of man to make choices, nor to observe “objective reality”, for the simple reason that if the laws of physics are inexorable and all pervasive to the point where the laws cannot be observed as distinct from the matter they “govern”, then one cannot make a distinction between man, his mind or his actions, and the inexorable and all-compelling laws of physics which cannot by definition be resisted, nor even observed, by anything or anyone.  And this is because, in the presence of all-pervasive and all-compelling laws of physics, you cannot rationally claim the existence of anything or anyone outside of those laws. Everything and everyone is by logical extension of the very concept itself merely an extension of the absolute laws of physics, which are infinite and infinitely determinative, having no beginning nor end, because what is infinite and all-determining cannot possibly possess a beginning or an end.

This is both perfunctory logic and categorical reason, which can only ever help.  But if one has decided that, for whatever reason, playing at truth is better than actually arriving at it because it offends one’s most deeply prized philosophy (for John I submit that this is utterly Objectivism); and that rationally consistent truth is thus something that is not particularly welcome…well, even those whose intellect you lionize become something rather pitiful.  And I know that sounds harsh but…

I provided a premise and spent weeks upon weeks and stores upon stores of energy, and thousands upon thousands of words arguing with an idiot who took every opportunity to savage me and some of my dearest blog friends–people for which Tom would not be fit to scrub toilets–to defend and explain my ideas, and no one could refute them, and that’s a fact; and Tom even admitted as much; and John never did but he summarily went AWOL, so….  At any rate, what I got from John was merely a regurgitation of a previous accusation that I was a Platonist in Objectivist clothing (I despise both, and am neither,and have always rejected the fundamental premises of Objectivism) and a declaration that I was all wrong but he didn’t have the time nor the “intellectual capital” to explain why.

And that, besides being nonsense, is not to me how you discuss purely philosophical differences with friends.  So I was forced to deduce that there is something more.  Not that it particularly matters.  The operative point I want to make concerning this episode is that the fault is mine.  I assumed we were friends…but I had no real reason to believe this.  I am merely a “commenter on [his] blog” (his very words), nothing more.  And I accept that completely.  Again, the fault is mine for assuming anything else.  In retrospect, after spending time with John in person and having many, many conversations with him, I suppose I should have understood this from the beginning.

Which, again, is fine.  I am sad, not because of this realization, but because I fell for the illusion.  And again–and again–the fault is utterly mine.  People are free to decide who amounts to what specific value to them in their specific context.  It is a philosophical axiom I swear by and one that I will never, ever deny.

Anyway…because of all of that, you have seen me at moments few and far between here on this blog. But now that I am on the mend in all and every way, I look forward to getting back down to business. The next article, coming soon, will be a continuation of our look at collectivism disguised as “doctrinally sound” Christian orthodoxy.  Don’t miss it!

-Argo