Youtube audio version with lots of extra commentary ❤️
All posts by Argo
The Gross Hypocrisy of the Dissident Right (Part One)
Put as clearly as I can, the “dissident right”—also known as the “reactionary right”—are an offshoot of the political right in the West, which eschews the conservatism which typically characterizes right-wing politics. Instead, they embrace a more centralized, implicitly or explicitly (depending on the dissident rightist in question) authoritarian, nationalistic version of government. In any given article or podcast, the central theme of dissident rightism may be race (specifically provisions for the protection and nationalization of white people), religion (specifically Christianity…they hint at a theocratic model of government, or at the very least a government which names and codifies its ethics as specifically Christian), the preservation/establishment/re-establishment of the White, Western nation-state (England for the English, Ireland for the Irish, America for the Americans, by which they mean the “founding stock”, by which they mean northern-European white people, Australia for the Australians, by which they mean the “founding stock”, by which they mean northern European white people, Germany for the Germans, etcetera, etcetera), or a combination of these things. Other tertiary issues may arise, like the economy, the history of their movement, the philosophy of their ideology, which is little more than mystical appeals to racial solidarity, racial-identity-as-national-identity, and even the deification of the nation state (a recent video by the Distributist saw him in a conversation with Sargon of Akkad where the later spoke of the erstwhile British Empire in openly religious terms, with openly religious reverence, which was curious coming from a well-known atheist like Sargon, but whatever…hypocrisy, thou art man). There is also the steady and annoying drip of Christian dogma which hits you on the forehead like Chinese water torture…and look, I’m a believer myself, but the “Christianity” found in the dissident right is an unsavory mash of dogmatic ethics and trans-denominational doctrinal gobbledygook…and they are appealing to a truth and cause which is “higher than themselves”, you see, where of course that which is “higher than themselves” bears a striking resemblance to precisely themselves. What else is new?
Politically, as I said, the dissident right is essentially an autocratic movement…and these people are not secessionists, they are fully committed the idea of their side consolidating existing state power absolutely. They are vigorously anti-democratic, and some are openly authoritarian. At the very least there is always an implicit presumption that some form of authoritarianism will be necessary to “right the ship’ as it were, at least in the short term. Which always becomes permanent, of course, but somehow, like the tyrants before them, they are fully convinced that they will be able to do authoritarianism right this time. If they can get enough people on board, and even though it may take a long time (they understand the “long march”), once they finally get their hands on the power of the State they will wield its hammer in service to a blemish-free ideology and summon forth the One Truth and the One Good and a thousand years of of peace and prosperity…and…yawn…shrug. The timeline of political history is just a boring ride on a slow, rusty carousel. Only the bloodstains make it somewhat interesting.
So…you get the idea. It’s the new boss, same as the old boss. They want to exchange the old Authority for a new Authority that is the same as the old one, except they’ve simply reversed the moral categories. What’s good is now bad; what’s bad is now good. Punish the bad and promote the good with all the power of the State, and the sad thing is that they, like all other communists and fascists before them, think that this is actually revolutionary thinking.
It isn’t.
What you have here is a sequel, same as the original…it’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which makes it even worse than the original because it’s hypocritical. It’s is a bunch of rank reactionaries who want a new ruling class that will simply use its violence in service to their particular brand of macaroni and cheese. It’s literally no deeper than that. They speak only superficially about the metaphysics of their movement because why wouldn’t they? Truly analyzing the metaphysical roots would only confuse themselves and their followers and they’d end up sounding like the “woke” left that they think they hate but actually admire. It’s never good to appeal to a metaphysical premise that you will ultimately punt into the cosmic abyss of esoteric mystery, just like all collectivists do. It’s easier to focus on how wrong the assumptions of your political enemy are rather than making an open, honest, and public exegesis of your own. Finger-wagging is where you make a show of standing up for something new. That’s bog-standard politics.
The long and short of the dissident right is the same as it is on the “woke” left: absolute power in service to a Collectivist Ideal, rooted in collectivist metaphysics, which is mysticism, which is gnosticism, which is a death cult which hates the individual and sees individualism, which they politically confuse and conflate with “liberal democracy” or “classical liberalism”, as the root of all evil. The “woke” left has allowed too many people too much individual freedom, you see, and that’s why we are where we are in the West…so they imply. Too many people doing whatever they want, egged on by surreptitious Jewish influencers, and the outcome is today’s leftist, neo-commie totalitarian hedonism, and what we need is a new sheriff in town to start kicking some ass in the name of Christ, and Race Realism, and the White Nation State, and get tossing the rabble into the pit for a change. Which, by the by, I have never heard a group of ruling class wannabes complain more about something that they are desperately trying to convince everyone else and themselves that they actually are. What they truly are, are aspiring tyrants, but they want the masses to think they are liberators. In other words, they hate libertarianism with a red-hot passion, but they complain about economic oppression, the tyranny of the “managerial class”, by which they mean Jews, the perfidy of the Global American Empire, the mendacity of the ruling elite and so on to the point of almost sounding like anarcho-capitalists, The hypocrisy is off the scale…but they’ve mitigated this, you see, by giving their brand of authoritarianism a facelift. They are like the left, but they are the “new” right, so they are better, you see; and once they are in charge, believe me, you’ll totally notice a difference. Totally. You can take that to the bank.
Make no mistake, the dissident right wants power; they believe that the truth is manifest in power, and rank coercive power that is what you will get when they are in charge. You will get the same tyranny you already have…which begs the question, why then should you care, other than that you might get a few generations of relief for the straight, white, Christian man? In then end, you will only get what you already have—a ruling class that hates you and wants you dead, even if you are a straight, white, Christian man. Which makes the whole exercise pointless, and worse, selfish.
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Now..look, I get it on some level. Meaning I understand why the “reactionary right” is reacting. The United States of American in particular and the West in general is an object embarrassment to itself at this point. Naturally a reaction to the wholesale selling out of the West and its people to a collection of satan-worshiping, child-sacrificing, neo-Marxists with the lust and means for world domination and who toss out blood libel against their paler brethren like a clown tosses out candy at a circus would be warranted. I get it. But the answer is not to replace satan-worshiping, globalist, neo-Marxist blood-libel with your own version of the very same thing. This is not not freedom; it’s not truth or morality or justice…it’s revenge. It’s pretending that offering people a devil they don’t know instead of the devil they do is actual change. To replace one lie with another is evil, and stupid, and at most it’ll buy a generation or two of respite if successful, and that’s a big if. In the end history will toss the dissident right onto the charnel heap with the rest of the rotting tyrants, and there it will remain as a cautionary tale, nothing more: Look at what man becomes when he conflates reaction with solution—he is a blind bully, wildly throwing haymakers, destroying both friend and foe alike, and not actually caring or even knowing the difference.
Reaction is easy, you see; solutions are hard; and the Millennials and late-Zoomers who comprise the bulk of this movement’s leadership and talking-heads have been fed the sugary morsels of easy more than any other generation before them or after, and believe me it shows. They are blasé and dismissive; arrogant and self-righteous; entitled, dogmatic, and narcissistic; over-educated yet spectacularly lacking in wisdom. They are, much like their formative years, the nineties and early oughts, almost entirely form over function; propaganda over art. So naturally and predictably they are reaction over solution. The politics are thus entirely perfunctory; the purveyors predictably self-aggrandizing, overly sure of their ideas, and deluded.
In the next article, I will get into the nuts and bolts of why the dissident right is actually wrong. This was screed…but in the next article you will see why it was, well…necessary. Or at the very least deserved.
END
Scientism: When science becomes a clumsy and dangerous religion
Science is fine…as science; and what science is, is a methodology man uses to describe various relative relationships—between objects, between himself and objects, between himself and others, etc.—he observes in his environment. Via this methodology he creates an abstract conceptual framework, commonly mathematics, which then can be transferred and transmitted around the world with relative ease, in language, spoken and written, and used to whatever practical (like building a ship), or abstract (like charting a shipping route), end is desired. Science is a cognitive, conceptual tool the observer, mankind, uses to organize that which he observers, period, full stop. Go no further. This is the sum and substance of science. Anything more than this is a lie.
Take evolution for example. In the purely scientific sense, evolution is perfectly fine and reasonable, and should pose no threat whatsoever to any spiritual person, like the Christian, for instance…because the idea that evolution has anything to say about God, the nature of man, or the nature of reality is ridiculous. Evolution is literally nothing more than a concept man uses to describe a certain, specific relationship he observes in his environment—for example, what this fossil looks like relative to that fossil…or whatever. To add to this any metaphysical assertion, or to use it to deny that there is any such thing as the metaphysical at all, and evolution becomes a philosophy…and, sorry, it is just not that. At all.
Ask the evolutionary biologist to describe the philosophy of evolution and he will give you a confused look every time. Even he knows (or should) that one has nothing to do with the other…and yet so many atheists will call the Christian a fool for believing in God and use evolution as “proof” of their argument, even though the concept of “God” has everything to do with what evolution does not—the nature, value, and meaning of Man and Creation, and, perhaps most poignantly, consciousness—whereas evolution merely and only deals with the description.
The atheistic response to this fact is to cultish-ly and predictably deny that anything other than the description actually exists. There is nothing objective beyond the description, they assert; there is no real value nor meaning nor purpose…you can’t get an “ought from an is”, they will explain. Of course they ignore or don’t realize that the denial of any real philosophical meaning to man and creation is in fact a value judgment because it implies that the pure description of reality, removed from value, meaning, or purpose, is preferable because it is more truthful; and truth is obviously and observably more efficacious. Which means that truth is more valuable. See the irony?
The fact is that the only way that any observer (that is, any human being) can make a truth claim in the first place is by conceding at the very least implicitly that the truth has more objective value than a falsehood. Without a root, inexorable value distinction between truth and falsehood then what is the difference? None at all. If there is no objective value to truth and falsehood, then there can be no objective purpose, which means no objective way of telling the difference. In other words, if truth and falsehood have no objective value then they have no objective purpose, thus there is no objective way to apply truth and falsehood in order to verify and/or determine which is objectively which.
The fact is that there simply cannot be any description (truth claim) without prescription (value claim)—no truth without value; no epistemology without ethics; no science without philosophy; no physics without metaphysics. The argument that there is only description but no prescription, only “is” but never “ought”, only truth but no value, is fundamentally to deny consciousness—which is precisely what these scientific mystics do—and to deny that anyone is conscious is to deny that anyone is ever actually saying anything at all. So why bother listening to them…”them”being the peddlers of this nonsense? There is no “them”. “Them” doesn’t exist!
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Do I have a problem with science qua science? Not at all. My problem is with what science has become, which is religion. Not that I have a problem with religion, but science makes for a particularly offensive, clumsy, and stupid religion…a uniquely unsophisticated gnostic-type mysticism I call Scientific Determinism, but which I think is more popularly called Scientism. I call it clumsy, stupid, and unsophisticated because it, by design, has no definable, articulable metaphysics or ethics, and openly denies them, whilst implicitly pushing the ever-loving daylights out of them to the point that its proponents (e.g. Dawkins, Hitchens) are perhaps the most vicious and sarcastic religious disciples I’ve ever had the displeasure of hearing. These hypocrites seethe at other belief systems to the point of pure loathing whilst pretending their metaphysics and ethics (i.e. meaning and value) don’t actually exist…which leaves one to ask why all the hate then? The answer is of course that they see other gods as threat their own; but since they cannot actually defend their god because they cannot articulate their own metaphysics, because their religion is stupid, they vomit all over everyone else’s god and pretend that they don’t actually have one. The hypocrisy breaks the scale.
In this religious capacity—science as scientism; where science co-opts metaphysics whilst pretending to reject them—science is no longer an innocent conceptual tool, but an amateurish yet supremely arrogant and destructive philosophy which seeks to describe the nature of man and the nature of his environment; the nature of the relationship between them; the nature of his existence; and, most disturbingly, the value of his creation and consciousness, by promoting the idea to themselves and others that none of this is actually real. Instead of seeing man as an objective frame of reference, which he is (the Observer), Scientism makes man’s frame of reference as the conscious observer a product of science…of “natural law” and “mathematics”, the “language of the universe”. The “laws of nature” are no longer conceptual tools invented by man to describe his environment and his place in it, but are now his Creator. In other words, they are no longer tools but gods. Man the observer is, in the religion of Scientism, now a direct function of that which he observes.
This of course is a rank contradiction in every rational and logical sense, but it is to be expected as Scientism is nothing more than bog-standard mysticism minus the explicit metaphysics and ethics, and, like bog-standard mysticism, Scientism looks first to subvert man, then murder him. Which it will do, inevitably, if left to its logical conclusion.
Under the mysticism of Scientism, science is no longer a conceptual framework for man to use in service to himself, but a cause of man, himself, which is ironically about the least scientific premise possible, should someone have thousand years to think one up. “Laws of nature”, like evolution, are not longer a conceptual abstraction that man creates from his own inexorably conscious frame of reference, but have their own “objective” and distinct existence “outside” of him. They are “discovered”, not contrived. Science is no longer a product of man’s consciousness, in other words, but man’s consciousness is a product of science…or it isn’t, and consciousness is punted into the cosmic abyss of epiphenomenon or transient illusion or some other such rubbish. The point is that under Scientism, the observer is somehow a direct function of what he observes; and the very inexorable distinction which is utterly required for observation to occur in the first place is magically obliterated.
If this isn’t rank religious mysticism then nothing is.
Proponents of Scientism deliberately or implicitly attempt to sidestep this bit of metaphysical pap by asserting that observation, by which is meant consciousness, is just an illusion, a-la Sam Harris…or that consciousness is some kind of ontologically transient epiphenomenon at best—certainly not objective, absolute, and/or epistemologically essential—as if this obscures the clumsy metaphysics rather than spotlight them…and, to be fair, sadly it does much of the time. Science as Scientism is no longer about what the observer observes but what the observer is; and what he is is nothing.
This is a death cult, period. Take a look around, friends…read the paper, watch the news, and listen to your political leaders…what solutions are they proposing for the world’s problems? Trust they science they say…and what does science think of you as an ontological individual with moral worth and agency? Not much. Not much at all.
Again, science is now just bog-standard mysticism, and probably worse because it lies to itself about its metaphysics, and this is what we all should be debunking…because the idea that man, the observer, is a direct function of those processes and forces he observes from his unique and distinct conscious frame of reference is rank folly, and simply cannot be defended rationally, which is why science interpreted this way becomes Scientism, which becomes a religion steeped old fashioned gnostic mysticism, which is nothing more than a death cult.
The fact is that the very truth and integrity of science rests upon an absolute distinction between the observer and the observed, as well as the basic, elementary logical understanding that the former simply cannot be a function of the latter. To assert otherwise is to obliterate both, and, most atrociously, reduce man to a mere thing, having no particular existential value at all, and dismissing his consciousness as nothing but an illusion at best, and more like an outright offense to reality, which obviously renders truth and morality as they pertain to man’s fundamental ability to actually, objectively posses them entirely moot. This is the stuff mass murder is made of…demonic.
By the way, if we follow the logic of the claim that “consciousness is an illusion” to its necessary conclusion, we realize that this means that man’s very ability to perceive anything at all, and certainly anything objective, is entirely absent from his nature according to the “science”. Man’s very epistemological and ethical frame of reference is fake…so of course he cannot perceive anything real. In which case, how can he actually know anything?
He can’t. Which is why he is implored again and again by his clueless and/or complicit leaders to “trust the science”…by which they mean “trust the divinely enlightened priests of Scientism’ because only they have been given the “grace to perceive” in the utterly gnostic sense.
Needless to say (or is it?) that what follows from this half-baked ideology is the rise of the tyrant-class—the “special”, “uniquely enlightened”, “divinely appointed”, “bred-better” philosopher kings, who by some religious magic have gained absolution for their own failed, illusory consciousnesses. These people have been appointed by the gods to compel the great, unwashed, unconscious masses into “right behavior” by violence and threats of violence, often manifest in the State, whereupon the masses are inevitably and summarily dashed against the rocks of what amounts to nothing more than the hedonistic whims of their “leaders”. This is where Scientism, like all cults, goes in the end.
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As stated, the very rationality and truth of science rests upon a necessary a-priori distinction between the observer and what he observes; between the mere perception of the senses and the singular self of the consciousness; between objects and the nature of objects; between mere description and value, or meaning; between science and philosophy. In other words, science cannot describe a metaphysic—a metaphysic must already be assumed before any science is actually possible; and that metaphysic is, again, the basic distinction between the observer and the observed. Once that is wrecked, there is no science, there is only a religion. And a stupid one at that.
No Christian, nor any other spiritual person, should ever feel threatened by criticism coming from anyone claiming science as a means of disproving or casting reasonable doubt upon the existence of God or any other spiritual matter. Science has nothing to say about metaphysics nor ethics, and without these things, no effective argument against any religion or religious idea is possible. Advocates of “scientific truth” as a means of dismantling religious and other philosophical ideas, in order to get at the “objective truth” of man and creation, become the witting or unwitting evangelizers of their own religious dogma; and their method of arguing their own metaphysical assumptions is to simply pretend that they don’t have any. The intellectual fraud and hypocrisy is shocking…and even more shocking is the fact that most of the time the disciples of scientism don’t even notice. They really do think they are being objective. Embarrassing.
Do yourself a favor—embrace science, but reject scientific mysticism, or Scientism. Science doesn’t make for much of a philosophy…unless violent, nihilistic, death-worshiping, dysgenic philosophy is what you’re after.
Then it’s the crown jewel.
END
The Evolutionary Process as a Line, Ray, or Line Segment, in any version—It’s all Nonsense
In the last article, I explained why evolution, itself, outside of the context of the purely conceptual (that is, the context of man’s mind) as an objectively existent, distinct, causal, creative force in the universe, is impossible, as this kind of ontological description of evolution ironically contradicts its objective manifestation in the objects it is said to “guide” and “govern”. For summary’s sake, the basic premise of my argument in the last article is:
a.) Evolution, itself (evolution qua evolution), if we accept it as objective and distinct, is the absolute source—the cause—of all stages of evolution manifest in objects.
b.) All stages of evolution, in order to be called “objective”, must be referenced to evolution qua evolution, as evolution, itself, is the only possible objective constant by which to identify various stages of evolution as objectively true…that is, as objective manifestations of evolution (as objectively evolving).
c.) Evolution, itself, does not evolve, because evolution cannot both be the source of evolution and a product of evolution, because this is a contradiction of both. (This is the same sort of logical fallacy as the Objectivist claim that “existence exists”—which, no, because the metaphysical primary cannot also be a function of the metaphysical primary…this is a null assertion. Existence cannot also be a thing upon which existence acts; evolution cannot also be a thing upon which evolution acts.)
d.) All evolutionary stages are equal expressions/manifestations of the absolute, non-evolving evolutionary constant (the evolutionary cause), which is evolution, itself.
e.) Therefore there are no actual, objective stages of evolution possible between objects. Any differences in evolutionary stages are merely the relative perceptions of the conscious observer, making them purely subjective, and purely conceptual.
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In this article, I would like to examine the nature of the evolutionary process, itself, not necessarily related to the objects it is said to “objectively” act upon, guide, and govern.
Let’s assume that the evolutionary process—or simply “evolution” as I might refer to it—is a literal thing; it exists distinctly, objectively, completely outside the mind of man. It’s a thing and it is there…wherever “there” is for something we can only ever observe indirectly, as its nature demands.
Well, what kind of thing is it? I mean, we know its a process, but what do we mean by process? Is it a line…is it a continuum that goes on forever and ever, without beginning and end? Is it a ray…does it have a beginning but no end; an end but no beginning? Does it have a beginning and an end…that is, is it a line segment?
In this article I will explain why evolution can, in fact, be none of these things, nor any conceivable iteration of them. Therefore, it cannot be a process at all—except conceptually—which further nullifies the idea of evolution existing outside of man’s mind—man’s conscious conceptual framework.
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Let’s consider the process of evolution as a ray. It starts at a point—the beginning—and extends infinitely. It is a beginning with no end. We could also assert an “end with no beginning”, but that’s redundant, being the “same difference”, and unnecessarily confusing.
So as a ray, evolution has an origin point (e.g. the Big Bang)…it starts at a place of non-evolution…and this is important. There is no evolutionary process, then it begins. We could say evolution is “dormant”, or it is “potential evolution” at this point; but regardless of how we describe it, the beginning of evolution is, in effect, NON-evolution…at the beginning, evolution, we could say, is “not evolving” (and thus, not evolving any thing). Here, evolution is not actually being that which it is—it is a process that is not actually proceeding. Then, abracadabra! it springs into action. The evolutionary process pops into procession, we could say; but here, of course, in the manner of a ray, the action, or more precisely, the process, never ends. From the beginning it just keeps on going and going, forever.
Now, from this we can see that any given point along the process of evolution is as far away from the “end” of evolution as any other. Every point along the evolutionary process is infinitely far away (or infinitely near…same difference) from the conclusion of the process…because, of course there is no conclusion. Evolution as a ray is perpetual, proceeding from the beginning (the place of non-evolution) to, well…ad infinitum…thus all stages of evolution share an equal distance from the “end” of evolution. In other words, all stages or states of evolution are infinitely away from being “fully evolved”, regardless of their proximity to the beginning. In other words, if evolution is a ray, then all objects which are said to be evolving are not actually evolving to anything or anywhere, in which case they are all simply regurgitations of the beginning of the evolutionary process, which, as I said above, is non-evolution, or the absence of evolution. Evolution starts at a place of non-evolution, and proceeds infinitely to nowhere, making the evolutionary process a self-nullifying contradiction…circular and redundant, because it means that ultimately, and fundamentally, there is no difference between an object evolving and NOT evolving; between evolution and NO evolution, or NULL evolution. Embarking on a journey with no end is redundant…that is, it is the same as not taking the journey at all. A journey with no end can only be referenced to the point of origin—the place where the “journey” begins…which is the place where there is no journey.
If every step along the way of the evolutionary process is infinitely away from the “end of evolution”, because there is no end, because evolution is a ray, then no object under the influence of the evolutionary process is actually proceeding anywhere. Which means, of course, that there is no process at all. All points, or stages, or states, of evolution can only be referenced back to the very beginning, before evolution began. Thus all evolutionary points/stages/states, if we say they exist at all, are ultimately relative to the observer; and, since science—more precisely, scientistic metaphysics—declares the observer’s observation, meaning his conscious frame of reference, meaning his consciousness, entirely subjective, then any evolutionary distinctions the observer perceives are necessarily relative and subjective only, never objective; and thus never actual.
So, evolution is not a ray.
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If evolution cannot be a ray, perhaps it is a line. It is an infinite, perpetual process, with neither beginning nor end. It’s a continuum that just goes on and on, outward (or inward, same difference), ad infinitum. Well, in this case it is easy to see the completely redundant nature of evolution. In this scenario, every stage/state in the process of evolution is an equal unit of infinity; evolving from nowhere, to nowhere, and thus, the process itself is entirely meaningless. No state of evolution can have any objective value because it is referenced to infinity…which means it is referenced to, by definition, a non-specifiable infinite “constant”, which means that no stage of evolution can ever be specifically defined as an objective manifestation of evolution. Further, within an infinite “process” of evolution, nothing is, again, actually proceeding to anywhere from anywhere, and thus evolution does not meet any rational definition of a “process” and thus cannot be in any rational sense evolutionary. This makes evolution as a line entirely redundant and self-contradicting.
So evolution is not a line.
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Well, if evolution cannot be a line or a ray, maybe it’s a line segment. It has two definite points—a beginning from which it proceeds, to an end at which it terminates; a beginning where the evolutionary process is not proceeding…it is only “potential” evolution, (which really means non, or null, evolution), and an end where the evolutionary process ceases to proceed…it is “completed”, which likewise means non, or null, evolution. The evolutionary process as a line thus proceeds from NO evolution to NO evolution.
Hm…I’m sensing a problem here.
In the case of a line segment, the evolutionary process has a definite beginning and end; it is finite…it begins at a place of perfect non-evolution, and proceeds to a place of perfectly complete/completed evolution—the end of evolution, where evolution is perfectly realized to a point where it is no longer evolving.
Hm…the logic is dodgy.
In the example of evolution as a line segment, at any location along the evolutionary process any given object is in a contradictory state of simultaneous evolutionary progression and evolutionary regression. You see, the terminus of evolution is at root simply a regurgitation of the origin—that is, fundamentally, a place of non evolution. In other words, the fundamental point of evolution as a line segment is to not evolve—to come to an end of itself. It goes from the beginning, which is a place of non-evolution, to the end, which is likewise a place of non-evolution. Evolution thus proceeds as a manner of regression. The process then, you see, is entirely redundant—pointless. Any object’s stage of evolution is simultaneously a stage of that object’s de-evolution, which means that the object is both evolving and not evolving at the same time. The redundancy of evolution as a line segment is manifest in the object’s perpetual state of evolutionary contradiction.
Now, to the conscious observer—which, again, scientistic metaphysics deems an entirely subjective frame of reference—objects may appear more or less evolved depending on the state in which they are observed, but evolution is presented to us by the scientific community as having an objective ontology fundamentally outside of man’s subjective conscious, conceptual framework. In this article we are considering evolution as science presents it to us—a distinct, existent, immutable component of Reality, itself…and even more than that, as that which guides, governs, causes, and creates Reality, having its own form and function…this is its “objective” existence. In this sense then, it simply doesn’t matter what the observer perceives. What he perceives is subjective only; evolution IS…it is the objective truth, outside of man’s mind. This is TRUE evolution—evolution, itself—evolution qua evolution.
Well, unfortunately, this kind of evolution—non-conceptual evolution—is complete nonsense..
Evolution as an “objective process” is simply a categorically false assertion. This “objective process” must manifest as a line, ray, or line segment at root, regardless of how science may attempt to obscure these inexorable fundamental forms with sophistic alterations and/or silly, arcane hypotheticals. The evolutionary process as “objectively true” line, ray, or line segment, in any form that scientists, or anyone else, may proscribe or envision, is perfectly irrational.
END
Evolution is Only a Product of Man’s Mind…audio links
Here are the links to the YouTube audio versions of the recent evolution article, with extra commentary. Thanks for listening!
Part One:
Part Two:
Evolution is Only a Product of Man’s Mind; it is Neither Causal nor Creative
Let us think of evolution in its scientifically accepted terms, where evolution is an objective ontological force which causes and creates, governs and guides objects hither and thither along their existential timelines. Let us think of evolution as an actual thing—objective, distinct, and wholly outside of man’s consciousness. Let us imagine that it possesses its own unique essence. Let us imagine that evolution is not a product of human consciousness but the other way around.
And let us never mind that defining a “process” (or “force”, such as gravity) as being distinct, objective, and possessing its own essence is fraught with rational errors…because a process qua process, like a force qua force, can never be directly observed. Which means that empirically it possesses no existential distinction—it is made manifest only via something else. It possesses no independent ontological value…no meaning or relevance on its own, removed from the objects it is said to guide and govern. Which makes it merely a relative expression of those objects—how object A is observed relative to object B; how object X is observed relative to object.Y, and so on. Which makes its existence purely subjective—subject to the objects it “guides” and “governs”—which means it, itself, does not objectively exist at all.
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Evolution qua evolution can never be directly observed; its “objective” existence which is “outside of man’s consciousness” can only be validated implicitly, which makes describing it in such terms, or even implying that this is its nature, a very curious approach to say the least. It’s more than a little ironic to claim that evolution objectively exists outside of man’s consciousness whilst evolution’s existential relevance requires man’s conscious ability to create meaning beyond what his senses merely deliver. So yes, let us ignore the rational errors inherent to claims of “objectivity” with regards to evolution. Let us pretend that all of the rational errors made by evolutionary apologists who conflate science with philosophy and vice versa can be waved away with a magic scientistic wand, and that, despite all logical and rational evidence to the contrary, evolution is indeed its own distinct thing.
In this case, then, my argument is that evolution, when considered as something existing beyond the confines of man’s mind—beyond the purely conceptual—is wholly redundant and thus wholly irrelevant, and thus cannot actually exist and, of course, has no actual causal nor creative power.
I will break down my argument in parts.
Forgive me, but I must warn you that this could get a little confusing—-not because you will necessarily have trouble understanding the material, but because of my poor writing. I’m aware that my scatterbrained, disorganized writing style is a problem…I’m just not aware of how to fix it yet. Apologies…to you and to myself. Anyway, here we go:
1. No object can evolve beyond the boundaries of evolution—this is a contradiction. The snake cannot outgrow the confines of its terrarium, so to speak. This means that no matter the degree to which a given object evolves, it’s evolutionary stage (the degree to which it has evolved) is always a manifestation of the law of evolution—the source of the process—which, among other laws, is said to govern reality; and since evolution is immutable and constant, and thus absolute, all manifestations of evolution are full manifestations of evolution—that is, an object in any given stage of evolution is manifesting evolution utterly so.
In other words. from the frame of reference of evolution, the root source of the evolutionary process, and the only objective evolutionary reference—the evolutionary constant—all stages of evolution are absolute expressions of evolution. Following the logic, we see that all objects are thus already fully evolved as far as evolution is concerned. Evolutionary stages then are perfectly redundant, objectively speaking, reflecting evolution back to evolution; so really, the entire evolutionary process is merely evolution circling back onto itself. As far as evolution is concerned, no evolution outside of itself ever objectively occurs, All stages of evolution fundamentally imply the singular immutable source, as they are direct functions of it, and thus all stages of evolution imply the fullness of evolution.
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To recap: The objective source—the root cause—of all evolutionary stages is evolution, itself, which is the evolutionary constant because it is immutable—that is, it does not itself evolve (because this is a contradiction); and evolutionary stages are only objective when they are referenced to the constant.
Now, are you ready for this?
Given everything above, we can see that all stages of evolution then are at root expressions of non-evolution.
Let that little bit of irony sink in.
Evolutionary stages are objectively referenced to what amounts to the fundamental absence of evolution—which is evolution, itself, because evolution does not evolve. Evolutionary stages then of course can only be purely subjective, never objective.
I hope that makes sense. Evolution, you see, is the singular constant from which all stages of evolution equally proceed, making all stages equal expressions of evolution. This means that from the objective frame of reference of evolution, no object has actually evolved more than any other object; and further it means that evolution hasn’t objectively taken place, because as far as evolution is concerned, all stages are utter expressions of itself; all stages mean simply “evolution”. In other words, there is no distinction between evolution and its expression in a given evolutionary stage. Distinctions between evolutionary stages only exist relatively—between objects which are said to be evolving; and this only when the observer conceptually uncouples the stages from the constant—from evolution. This makes every claim that a given object is actually evolving (or has evolved) purely a subjective claim, not an objective one. Such a claim is always and only relative to something other than the objective constant—evolution. (This “other” is, I submit, the observer.) Thus, there are no objective evolutionary distinctions, only subjective ones.
So, is evolution objectively occurring, then?
Obviously not. If we accept that evolution is a distinct, immutable, governing force of reality itself, then no, there is no such objective thing as evolutionary stages, or an evolutionary process, and therefore no such thing as evolution, period. It is only the observer perceiving and conceptualizing certain unique relative distinctions between objects in the environment he perceives. Evolution only finds any meaning when inside the consciousness of man. It is entirely conceptual.
Wrapping up this section, I refer you to the following summarizing points: That nothing can evolve beyond evolution, itself; evolution, itself, cannot evolve—it is immutable and absolute (it cannot be subject to itself…this is a contradiction of evolution); evolution, itself, is the constant to which any stage of evolution must be referenced if the stage is to be considered objective, because evolution, being immutable, is the only objective reference possible; thus no such objective stages of evolution exist since all of them are equal and categorical expressions of evolution. Evolutionary stages—comprising the evolutionary process—are purely subjective…and further, are entirely conceptual, which means entirely a function of man’s consciousness. In short, if evolution is the non-evolving constant from which proceeds all stages and states of evolution, then all stages and states are equal and full expressions of evolution, making evolutionary distinctions between objects purely relative, and thus purely subjective, and thus no object at any given moment is objectively evolving, making evolution entirely circular, redundant, and self-contradicting. Evolution is either a concept in the observer’s (man’s) mind which he uses to describe and organize his environment and his place in it, or it is nonsense.
Finally, to summarize the entirely of my argument in one relatively simple question: From the frame of reference of evolution, itself, which is the objective non-evolving constant from which evolutionary stages proceed, what stage of any given object’s evolutionary journey expresses evolution more so or less so than any other stage?
The answer to that question is precisely why there is no such thing as evolution…at least, no such thing outside of the conceptual realm of man’s consciousness.
END part One
The Observer and the Observed: Science cannot make the distinction, and thus it is philosophically illegitimate.
One of my primary metaphysical axioms is the following: The observer cannot be a direct function of what is observed. A rejection of this axiom implies that the observer and the observed are fundamentally one and the same, in which case there is no such thing as either, since no distinction is possible. Nothing is observed, therefore no knowledge is acquired, therefore nothing can be said to exist, either the observer or the observed.
The reason for this axiom stems from my observation that the science, the scientific method, and scientific determinist claims about the nature of reality, all being iterations of empirical, materialist ideas when discussed in philosophical terms (which they should never be, as science is NOT philosophy….meaning that it is decidedly NOT a meta-analysis of reality and existence, and does not possess the tools be such), all presume—that is, prima facia—that such a distinction between the observer and what he observes simply does not exist. The observer is his body, his senses, his brain, and these are all material objects existing empirically and thus whatever scientific knowledge is acquired about those things which the body, brain, and senses observe about reality must also apply to the observer.
This of course is a clear—or at least, it should be clear—contradiction, and only by engaging in the cognitive dissonance ironically seen in mysticism, can science make such an assertion. If the observer is, at his most basic level, just a function of the same materials and forces which comprise what he observes, then there is of course no distinction possible by which the observer may know and understand what he IS versus what he IS NOT, which of course is a clear and obvious prerequisite to actually observing anything in the first place. The materialist assumptions of science when it is asserted as a philosophical discursion render scientific philosophies entirely self-defeating, and thus, to insist that science has anything to say regarding the nature and purpose of reality, is to insist that the “truth” is purely mystical, which means, irrational. As a philosophy, science, the scientific method, and scientific determinism should be rejected out of hand. The very fact that science roots itself it the ability of a scientist to actually observe natural objects and phenomena makes all assertions of scientific determinism/materialism/naturalism with respect to the nature of the observer himself an exercise in irony so profound as to make it perfectly ridiculous.
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The predictable “scientific” defense appeals to an illusory consciousness, which is simply another way of describing the inability of science to make a meaningful distinction between the observer and what he observes. This begs the question: If consciousness is an illusion, then an illusion of what, exactly?
You see, the claim of “the illusion of consciousness” really means that consciousness—meaning the conscious frame of reference which is ipso facto necessary in order that any actual observation can occur at all—is in its fundamental nature entirely anathema to existence. In other words, the “illusory consciousness” is just the baseless idea that not only does consciousness not exist, it is completely antithetical to existence and reality at root. That consciousness is necessary to make such a claim in the first place—because someone must be in a position to know, and thus to be aware, and thus to be conscious of the fact, in order that they may communicate it—is seemingly never considered. Truly, when scientists stray into the realm of metaphysics and philosophy on the whole, the limitations of their intellect, or the the lengths to which they will go to ignore it, become obvious and quite startling.
Another claim made in service to the idea that science and its philosophical iterations can make a distinction between the observer and the observed is that space is the distinction. In other words, the space which separates the senses, and thus the brain and body, serves as the distinction between what is observed and the one doing the observing. However, this does not work either, because space, if we look at it fundamentally, removed from it abstract mathematical renderings (abstract mathematical renderings which ironically necessitate consciousness…that is, a distinct, independent, conscious observer) is not actually anything at all. Space, in other words, is not something which exists, it is, in its nature, quite the opposite…it is the absence of existence. Space is void…it is null. It, by definition, is not there. This fact is why I have for years found the concept of “wormholes” amusing and entirely fantastical, at least when described as “holes in space”. My response has been to question just how you can have a hole in space when space, itself, is the hole. For example, how can you have a hole in the hole of a doughnut? How can you have a hole in the hole? How can space occupy space? It’s nonsense on its face.
So, no, space does not suffice to serve as the distinction between the observer and the observed because space IS NOT. Space does not exist in the first place to serve as a distinction or anything else, because space, independently, is meaningless, purposeless, and categorically null.
And here’s the hard part. Unfortunately for all of the empiricists, objectivists, scientific determinists, naturalists, etc., and despite all of the (false claims) of my appealing to the mysticism of Primacy of Consciousness, we are at some point simply going to have to accept the fact that all distinctions between objects, including the brain, body, and senses of the observer and that which he observes, are entirely conceptual. This is going to be a hard pill to swallow, but there is simply no rational, logically consistent way around it. Consciousness is categorically necessary to realty and existence at the most fundamental level. Period. Full stop. The sooner we accept this the sooner we can start to talk real philosophy, and, somewhat ironically, real science for a change.
America: The Perfect Tyranny
On its current course, this grand “American Experiment” which is inflicted upon all Americans, willing and unwilling, can only end one way. You see, the purpose of the western Liberal State, the United States being prime example number one—a purpose of which most of us are only obtusely aware, or not at all, because it is only implicit in the premise upon which this nation was built, yet is nevertheless supremely fundamental—is to manifest Chaos…Chaos as an Ideal. It does this, and has done this, by first first blurring, then destroying the line between fantasy and reality, between the empirical and the abstract, until all meaning is erased, and existence is nothing more than a hedonistic wet dream for the ruling class, and a perpetual existential nightmare for the rest of us. The masses will have no means nor impetus to resist or reject this, because all meaning shall be expurgated, then obliterated. Even today, observe the contradiction and cognitive dissonance: There are no sexes, and no genders, but there are races…capitalism is evil, but billionaires own the law and use their wealth to casually assume great swaths of power…words are violence, but wars are justice…lives are sacred in a pandemic, but political and disposable in pregnancy…gas pipelines are oppressive; lithium mines are green. Welcome to the American Ideal of Chaos.
You see what I mean. Chaos. Meaninglessness. Contradiction. Systemic cognitive dissonance, all leading to obedience without thought…meaning that the masses obey without ever realizing that they are obeying because they are no longer capable of knowing the difference between obedience and liberty.
How did we get here? This is not an accident, not a political or societal wrong turn, not the concerted and subversive efforts of non-natives, at least not these things fundamentally. No, this is Constitutional. Meaning, if you read the United State’s Constitution, the zenith of Enlightened liberalism, or rather, read between the lines, you understand that it was always going to go this way. It’s in the premise, and the premise always finds its conclusion.
What do I mean?
The unique point of the American political system was to treat the individual as his own root political entity…as a single, or singular, political unit. Now, indeed this is what he is, but this can only be rationally manifest in a purely voluntary society, where cooperation, not coercion (coercion being the cornerstone of all States and Governments…meaning that without violence, there is no Authority, and thus no government) is the means of all social and political interaction. But the United Sates is not a cooperative society, it is not voluntarist…it is a State. That is, its citizens are governed, meaning that they are ruled. Being ruled means to be under the Authority of the Law…and Government is Law; Law and is Authority; and Authority is Force. That’s the political equation of every Nation and every State and every Tribe on earth since the dawn of humanity. So what do we get when we have a citizen who is his own individual political entity yet who is governed by the State? (By “State” we mean is the ruling class, and by “ruling class” we mean the small group of people who presume the natural right to coerce others into obedience to the law, which finds its purpose and efficacy and meaning entirely in the State. Convenient for the ruling class, isn’t it?)
What we have is an attempt to collectively legislate individuality. In other words, to collectively govern millions of politically distinct individual entities. To centralize individuality. In short, to integrate collectivist metaphysics and individualist metaphysics, which are, of course, mutually exclusive in nature.
Without going into too much tedious detail regarding metaphysics, which I do in many other posts on this blog, by the way, the only possible outcome is the chaos of which I previously spoke. The purely individual man is governed only by himself…and with respect to other men, he cooperates; with respect to men who have rejected his individuality by being murderers, thieves, fraudsters, etcetera, and thus have rejected their own, he defends himself and destroys them when he is morally obliged to do so; and he may and likely will cooperate with other individuals in this endeavor. There is no ruling class who has Authority over him…such things as ruling classes and governments and law and authority are purely functions of collectivist metaphysics, which are entirely antithetical to his individual and individualist nature.
So when we attempt to legislate the politically autonomous individual from a collectivist authority outside of him…that is, we attempt to thrust individuality upon him by the coercive power of the State, we destroy meaning at its root on a holistically societal scale. When we attempt to thrust individuality upon the individual citizen…when we attempt to force his root nature upon him from outside of him, we are attempting to manifest a contradiction….to make a square circle, as the old, but apt, cliche goes. The outcome will be chaos, which at first will look like hedonism for the masses, then it will become the enslavement of the masses to feed the hedonism of the ruling class. The final stage of course is the obvious and inevitable collapse of the State, with the ruling class bitterly fighting amongst and devouring itself before finally sinking into its self-inflicted black hole of contradiction.
Now, about hedonism here.
Hedonism, which is simply is the practical application of moral relativism, will be the only thing that the government, from its purely collectivist roots, can recognize as being that which is actually individualistic. In other words, when the government thinks “individuality”, or in political parlance, “individual rights”, it thinks hedonism. And from its inexorable collectivist metaphysical roots, it can only think hedonism. And by hedonism, I mean “people doing whatever they want without moral consequence”.
“Individuality” according to the collectivist metaphysical assumptions upon which the State is founded, again means “people doing whatever they want without moral consequence”…indeed, this is always the single most oft-cited argument in favor of the establishment of States. Without the government, we are told, people will do whatever they want without consequence, and this inevitably implies a grand orgy of self-indulgent atrocity, and the necessary extinction of the human race. Government, you see, according to its collectivist metaphysics, exists precisely because humanity is by nature, in the iteration of self-aware individuals, insufficient to its own very existence. Government IS humanity, then. Government is you, effectively, for you—it is your ability to be—and therefore it owns you, and this is why all governments, no matter how enlightened they may be, all become tyrannical unless they are conquered or collapse somehow before. Government is not for the people, it owns them, and dispenses with the notion of individuality, because to the collectivist roots of government, individuality is object lie, and individual consciousness is an fraud…an imposter to reality. Without the ruling class making rules and enforcing them by violence and threats of violence, the individual will destroy himself. His existence, on its own, is implied non-existence. The individual then, if ungoverned, is a walking, talking contradiction.
Now, in light of this, consider the utterly ironic and counterintuitive notion of a government “by the people and for the people” where the people are, in the Locke-ian sense, self-contained individual political units. What if we have a government that attempts to deny its own metaphysical roots, and instead of rejecting individuality, like all governments prior, attempts to legislate it…to make individuality a matter of law…of force…of coercion. This government, ironically, attempts to force the individual into freedom. What if there are enough enlightenment philosophers around doing enough work and being persuasive enough to convince a set of wealthy would-be ruling class land-owners to establish a nation based upon the principle that the government’s responsibility is to make individuality the fundamental objective of the collective LAW.
The result would be a disaster of epic proportions. It would be…the perfect tyranny.
The government is going to force you by law to accept the right of people to do whatever they want, where “whatever they want” is, and can only ever be, according to the immutable and inexorable collectivist metaphysics upon which all governments, including this American government, are founded, defined as the right of people to indulge their rank hedonistic desires. Not that it’s sold to the masses that way. It’s sold as freedom, life, liberty, property, natural rights, “all men are created equal”, and other such things. Hell, even the ruling class used to buy it.
What kind of society do you think you’d see as this political ideology evolves? Chaos? Contraction? Doublespeak? Moral relativism? The death of meaning and the death of objectivity?
Naturally.
And what is the inevitable outcome of all of this?
Mass psychosis? A society-wide death cult? Destruction and collapse?
Certainly.
The scary thing is that you will likely never even notice the perfect tyranny because it is the tyranny that tells you that you get to do whatever you want, and that feels so damn good and so damn free and so damn right. And if they can keep you fat and lazy and stupid enough for long enough, then you won’t realize until it’s too late that when people are governed in order that they may “do whatever they want” in the hedonistic sense, someone is going to want to commit murder, and therefore someone is going to be the victim…and the State, being obligated to do so, will start to look around for a politically convenient someone to be that victim, and eventually, somewhere after the babies and the school children and the elderly are throw upon Moloch’s alter, that someone will be you, and worse, that someone will be someone you love.
END
Why the Is-Ought Problem, or “Hume’s Law”, is a Fallacy: Hume’s Law presumes passive observation, and ignores the “shall”
Hume’s law says, in short, that one cannot derive an “ought” (a prescriptive claim) from an “is” (a descriptive claim). In other words, there is no such thing as objective morality because volitional behavior (the engagement of will being how we classify behavior as moral, immoral, or amoral) is always predicated upon purely subjective “if” premises. See the following:
The moral formula presumed by Hume’s Law is: “Because A is this or that (descriptive), you ought do behavior B (prescriptive)”. Now, implicit in this formula is an “if” upon which the subjectivity of volitional action is predicated—“You ought do B if you desire outcome C”. For example, “Because God is the wisest and most powerful being in the universe, you ought obey his commands”, with the implied “if” being—“If you wish to honor Him” or “If you wish not to be punished by Him”, etcetera. The “ought”, you see, is purely subjective because it is dependent upon a subjective valuing of the objective description. The fact that God is the wisest and most powerful being in the Universe cannot objectively demand that one choose to value that fact to this or that degree and then act upon it in this or that way. Only if they happen to value it ought they act this or that way. Yet whether or not they value the fact, to whatever degree, and whether or not they act according to that value, doesn’t change objective reality…it doesn’t change the objective description. “God is the wisest and most powerful being in the universe” is the description…the fact…the objective reality…the “is”. Whether that ought compel one to choose this or that action is utterly dependent upon the degree to which one decides that fact matters to them. What one ought do with a given truth claim always depends on the degree to which a they value it. If they value it, then they ought do this or that. That’s why morality, what one ought (or ought not) do, is only ever subjective. Morality (prescriptive) is purely an “if”, where reality (descriptive) is an “is”.
Here is my response to the assertion that objective morality is impossible, due to the ethical is-ought dichotomy:
That there is no such thing as objective morality—that there cannot exist objectively good and bad volitional actions—is an assertion which contains many rational errors, and all of them rooted in the following presumptive premise, implicit to Hume’s Law: that observation is at root passive, meaning that truth, and therefore by extension, knowledge, is in essence purely a description of reality which is entirely dictated to the observer from outside himself.
This is the premise, I submit, which has ushered in the demise of every argument heretofore attempting to debunk Hume’s Law, because virtually everyone either explicitly or implicitly accepts it on its face. Consciousness is passive; reality dictates its description wholesale to the observer who simply regurgitates it in some manner. In other words, there are no objective acts of will because will is a function of consciousness, and consciousness is merely an illusion of reality, or at best an epiphenomenal mirror which reflects it, but is not real, itself. Human behavior is merely the regurgitation of objective reality back onto itself. Human action is thus determined; consciousness, if it exists in any sense at all, is merely a bystander, an epiphenomenon, and thus fundamentally irrelevant to objective reality. Even Christian doctrine, the place where some of the most ardent defense of objective morality stems, ultimately concedes that truth, and thus knowledge, and thus the volitional application of knowledge, is strictly the purview of God; and that even if it were possible for man to commit moral acts, they must ineluctably be infinitely inferior in morality to God’s acts, rendering them only relatively moral, meaning only subjectively moral, and thus not truly moral at all. Yet I submit that, according to prevailing Christian dogma, even God’s morality is utterly relative to Himself, because He alone is the moral standard, making anything he chooses to do moral, thereby making objective morality a direct function of God’s subjective whim, which again means that morality is only purely subjective.
All of this makes every Christian argument affirming the existence of objective morality an exercise in rank hypocrisy. Indeed, Christian doctrine professes that Christ is the only one who can keep the Law of Moses perfectly—He is God; men are mere mortals, fallen, and immutably wicked in their root nature. Even after salvation (and why anyone gets saved at all is an object mystery, because men cannot earn it, as their very nature is evil, and thus there can be no reason anyone should be saved in the first place) morality isn’t theirs, but the “work of the Holy Spirit through them”. Jesus is the only man who can truly act morally, and thus the only one who can keep the Law. This is because He is God, and only God is capable of keeping his own moral standards. However, what is meant by “standards” is “whatever He feels like doing”, because he is God. This of course isn’t “standards” at all, but pure whim; and “objective whim” is a contradiction in terms.
At any rate…
Since the premise of Hume’s Law is virtually always conceded a priori, all criticism ultimately fails. In other words, if one builds his argument against Hume’s Law upon the very same epistemological premise that Hume presumes, then one must necessarily fail. One doesn’t win a debate by agreeing with his opponent before the debate even begins.
Let us consider a different premise, then.
I submit that observation is not passive, but active; that truth is not dictated to the observer but is, in fact, a function of observation, and thus a function of the observer. It is not reality which describes itself to the observer, it is the observer who describes reality for himself; and it is the observer who describes what is true, from himself, in order that he may promote himself truthfully in his environment.
Yet this is not relativistic or subjective truth. Truth finds articulation and meaning in language, and language is purely a function of the ability of the observer to conceptualize what he observes. What is extremely important to understand, and critical to objective morality, is that language implies communication, and communication implies that there are other observers with whom a given observer shall communicate, which means that truth is shared…it is not relativistic or solipsistic. In order that truth be objectively shared (that truth be shared truthfully, so to speak), it must be shared consistently. Truth is not “relative truth” or “subjective truth”—these are contradictions—but objective truth. This means truth is a matter of conceptual consistency, and conceptualization itself is the foundation of language. Thus, conceptual consistency is the only way truth, and thus actual, objective knowledge, can be shared. I cannot declare to you that I have created a square circle (and no, I don’t mean a bunch of squares set up in a circular fashion…as cheeky as that may be) because that is an entirely meaningless claim, containing a synthesis of concepts, “square” and “circle” which in such a relationship are contradictory…that is, conceptually inconsistent. You have no frame of reference for “square circle” because you simply cannot have one, because the very ability to conceptualize, which is the root of your consciousness, and that from which we form language, precludes it; and since language is necessarily shared because it ineluctably implies communication, and is, again, rooted in conceptualization, conceptualization must be consistent among all observers. If you have no conceptual frame of reference for contradiction then neither do I, and thus you know objectively that I am not speaking the truth. It may not be that I am necessarily lying—it could be that I am deluded or mistaken—but I am certainly not speaking the truth. It is an object falsity to claim that there is any such thing as a square circle, because this claim is conceptually inconsistent, and thus violates truth, meaning it violates a consistent conceptual description of reality; and it is impossible for the observer observe reality this way; and further, impossible for him to share it as truth.
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The idea that observation is fundamentally passive means that the observer’s knowledge about that which he observes can only ever be of that which is utterly outside himself, meaning outside of his consciousness, meaning outside of his conscious frame of reference as the observer. Therefore the observer can never truly posses knowledge in and of himself because the sum and substance of reality has absolutely nothing to do with him qua him at all, making observation entirely moot. This makes it impossible that there is actual observation occurring, since an observer who possesses no real conscious knowledge, because he is entirely irrelevant to the “objective reality” he observes, is an observer who is entirely obsolete, and therefore so is observation. Meaning that as far as reality is concerned, it is not actually being observed.
Without an observer, there is no observation, by definition. I submit that it follows then that a reality which is unobserved cannot be said to exist at all, let alone objectively, since there is no means and no frame of reference by which it can be defined…that is, described…in the first place. It is, absent an active, conscious observer, entirely meaningless, entirely purposeless, and therefor entirely irrelevant, all of which renders its existence null, since the question “What objectively exists?” or “What is objectively real?” can have no answer. With no observer, there is nothing to say—to describe—what it is or is not, which means that there can be no it in the first place.
Without an observer, reality cannot be described, and therefore it can have no description, and therefore there can be no descriptive claim, no “is” from which the observer can derive his “ought”. Objective reality, you see, cannot describe itself to itself…this is a redundancy which makes description null. With no active observer and thus no one and nothing to derive any knowledge of or meaning, purpose, and relevance from reality, that is, to describe reality to form knowledge and thus establish the actual truth of reality, reality remains necessarily undefinable, meaningless, purposeless, and irrelevant, and thus can never be described as being anything at all, and thus cannot be said to be a thing which actually exists and is real in the first place. The corollary relationship between the observer and the observed is simply ineluctable.
Further, the implicit (or even explicit) assumption that observation is fundamentally passive (and it is a fundamental assumption, dealing with the nature of observation at its metaphysical root) is false because that which is fundamentally passive is by definition not doing anything, including observing, and thus “passive observation” is the antithesis of observation. “Passive observation”, in other words, means “not observing”. An observer to whom reality dictates itself—or “describes” itself—is a passive observer, meaning an unconscious observer, and is thus not actually observing,
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The problem with the implicit-to-Hume’s Law assumption of passive observation and dictated description is that it is simply an impossibility.
Dictated truth—dictated description about what actually is real—to the observer by reality is impossible because this suggests observation without any objective meaning nor any objective use to the one doing the actual observing. In which case, observation itself is utterly pointless and irrelevant. The observer is not real, you see. He is outside of reality, or it is outside of him, in which case “observation” is nothing more than reality simply dictating its own description of itself to itself. Which is just another way of saying that there is no observation at all, and therefore no observer. The sum total of knowledge then is purely a meaningless, pointless description of that which has nothing whatsoever to do with the one who supposedly knows—the observer.
As far as reality is concerned, the observer doesn’t exist. You qua YOU, conscious you, have no true existence, only subjective, relative existence. Whether you live or die, objective reality remains fully objective reality. Indeed, this is the root of all “empirical” and “rational” philosophies: Even if you did not exist or never existed, objective reality is always objective reality. There is an infinite and eternal ontological chasm between the transient, fleeting observer—his consciousness blipping in and out of existence at random with birth and death, possessing no real meaning nor effect—and eternal, immutable reality. There is no corollary relationship between the observer and the observed except that of mutual exclusivity…which of course is no relationship at all.
If we accept that such a claim like “the sky is blue” is objectively true because it is an accurate and consistent description of reality, then we must accept that the observer who observes this possesses objective observation, and by declaring it—by describing reality in language—possesses objective knowledge. Knowledge, I submit, implies meaning and purpose, and thus must be something the observer can apply to such purpose. Which means that there is in fact an objectively correct way to apply knowledge and an objectively incorrect way—there are objectively right behaviors, and objectively wrong behaviors. In other words, that there is such a thing as volitional action which can be objectively valued, which means there is such a thing as objective morality.
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The observer is active, meaning he is conscious. He is aware of the the distinction between himself qua himself, the Conscious Self—he, himself, being not merely a body, but an observational constant, so to speak—and that which he is observing—that is, his environment—and understands that the distinction is corollary, not mutually exclusive. Observation is thus relevant, meaningful, and purposeful, which means that observation is knowledge which the conscious, active observer thus applies in order to orient, manifest, and promote himself in the environment. In short, objective reality is objectively observed by an objective observer who possesses objective knowledge by which he makes objective decisions about how to objectively act in order to objectively promote himself in the environment.
Or, we could say it this way:
He who observes objective reality is by definition an objective observer (he, himself qua himself, is objectively real), and he is fully capable therefore of observing objectively and thus acquiring objective knowledge, which is called truth. This objective knowledge he then uses to make objective decisions about how he shall objectively manifest and promote his existence in the environment. In doing so, he acts in accordance with objective truth and thereby acts objectively good, or, morally.
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Hume’s Law erroneously presumes that morality is fundamentally about something that one “ought” do. This is incorrect.
Hume’s Law presumes that “oughts” are purely subjective, and depend upon explicit or implicit “ifs”. This is correct, and would be relevant if morality were fundamentally about “oughts”, which it is not.
The logical extension of the assumption that morality is purely a function “oughts”, which are subjective, is that objective morality then must be devoid of things one ought do and instead contain things one must do. Of course if they are things one must do then they are not choices, in which case there is no volition involved, and thus we are no longer talking about morality. If one must perform certain acts then they are not volitional…they are not acts of will, and therefore these choices and behaviors cannot be said to possess any moral value.
So you see, If one does not get a choice, because there is no volition involved, because it’s about what one must do, then it’s not morality. Yet if one does get a choice, and thus does engage the will, then one does not have to make a specific choice, for this is the nature of choice—whether they do or not has no bearing on, nor anything to do with, objective reality. The “is” descriptive premise is neither obligated to nor dependent upon the “ought” prescriptive premise—and thus the behavior can only ever be subjectively moral. In short, you either have subjective morality or no morality at all.
Hence the reason why Hume’s Law is often informally rendered “Hume’s Guillotine”, the metaphor being that of a blade which decapitates any argument in favor of objective morality. Any appeal to objective morality necessarily terminates in a self-nullifying contradiction.
However I submit that this is not so, because the implicit premise of Hume’s Law—that morality is entirely predicated on what one “ought” do (a premise upon which the validity of Hume’s Law entirely rests)—is completely false, and fails to consider the more obvious ethical root of morality, which is not “ought” but rather “shall”.
“Shall”, in terms of moral ethics, is simply this: What one shall do are those actions which rationally and therefore necessarily follow from the epistemological premise, in this case, that truth exists as a function of the conscious observer and is rooted in his description of objective reality. In other words, what one Shall do is that behavior which is implied by the Truth.
“Shall” should not be confused with “will” or “must” which are entirely different concepts, ethically speaking. Objective morality is certainly a matter of volition, but this volition is a function of what the observer, as his metaphysical root implies. shall do because he is what he is. That is, what he shall do in the capacity of actually being that which he is: the observer. His choices and behavior shall be rationally consistent with himself, and to do not what he shall do is a fundamental denial and rejection of himself, which renders his volition a lie, because it denies the very source of volition—himself qua himself. In other words he cannot by his will deny that he has will. He cannot by his existence deny his existence.
Morality is not at root about what one ought or ought not do—not about making good or bad choices—it is about engaging the will in a manner consistent with the truth…the truth which exists in the first place because it is a function of the the observer; and that for one to attempt to act in manner inconsistent with the truth is a denial of one’s own self and is a contradiction. One cannot deny that he IS by an act of his will.
Morality is simply man acting out the truth that he objectively exists as himself qua himself. It is about valuing choices and actions according to how they validate man’s objective existence at his metaphysical root, and it’s about valuing consequences of actions according to the degree to which they validate him.
An immoral act is an act of self-rejection at the very metaphysical root, and the result is chaos, and, inevitably, suffering for the perpetrator, his victims, and those who choose to indulge him and his lies. The consequences for immoral actions are not “punishment”—this is a term and concept relevant only to legal ethics, not moral ethics (and, yes, they are mutually exclusive)—but the response of reality and truth to a metaphysical aberration. A man who attempts to murder another man has fundamentally presumed to own that other man’s life, which, this idea being wholly irrational and a lie, becomes in fact a rejection by the murderer of his own life. The intended victim is entirely justified then in using deadly force to defend himself. He is not obligated to respect the life of the murderer who refuses to rationally acknowledge his own, and will act out his lie by attempting to murder his fellow man instead of affirming him.
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The correct way to render the ethical “shall” premise is this way: You are, therefore you shall. Meaning that to attempt to do what you shall not do is a fundamental denial of you—“You shall do X if you want to deny yourself”, is an obvious error. The denial of you of course means that you couldn’t possibly do or have done X in the first place. Thus, to attempt to reduce “shall” to some form of ethical subjectivity results in a meaningless, contradictory assertion.
Knowledge must be consciously applied, which means purposefully, which means volitionally, which means that volitional action is a fundamental function of the possessor of knowledge…that is, the observer. If what is observed is objective, then observation must also be objective, because the “purely subjective observation of objective reality” makes observation and reality mutually exclusive. So if observation is objective then knowledge thus is likewise objective, and thus there must be an objective way to apply that knowledge. This objective application is objective morality—what one shall objectively do because one objectively is. To attempt to do other than what one shall do is an attempt to consciously deny oneself—that is, consciously deny one’s own consciousness; willfully deny will; choose to deny choice. This is meaningless and null.
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If the observer observes objective reality, then observation itself is necessarily objective. Subjective observation of objective reality is a contradiction in terms when we are speaking in fundamental terms. The observer, in order to be in a position to observe objective reality, must himself be objectively real. Both the observer and his observation, which is at root his consciousness, possess equal ontological value to that which is observed. The observer and his consciousness—the means by which he actively observes—are as objectively real as objective reality.
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Observation necessarily spawns knowledge of and about that which is observed; knowledge is necessarily meaningful to the observer; and meaning implies relevance; and relevance implies purpose. Knowledge therefore is practical, and its practicality is manifest and realized through application.
Application of knowledge must be volitional…it must be an act of the will. Non-volitional application of knowledge is impossible—if what is known cannot be willfully applied, then knowledge is irrelevant, and therefore meaningless. “Meaningless knowledge” is a contradiction and is thus null. Knowledge which is not willfully applied is not consciously applied, and therefore it cannot truly be called knowledge. Without knowledge there is no observation; without observation there is no observer. If there is no observer of reality, then there is no one to define what reality actually is. Reality which cannot be defined cannot exist, “What is real? or “What exists?” or “What is?” are impossible questions because they can have no answer. That which cannot be defined cannot be declared to be anything, and thus cannot actually be anything at all. If objective reality is not true to that which can conceptualize it, and translate its existence into something with purpose, meaning, relevance, and value, then it is existentially redundant. Without an observer, what something is is entirely irrelevant; and irrelevancy at the root metaphysical level means that there is no difference between a thing existing and not existing. It is fundamentally irrelevant…whatever it does, including exist, amounts to the very same degree of meaning and value as if it did not. It’s existence—its place in reality—is of the same root metaphysical value as non-existence. It exists as though it did not. This is a contradiction to reality and thus is null.
The truth is that not only is there no existential mutual exclusivity between the observer and the observed, they are inexorably corollary. One always implies the other. This would seem obvious—transparently axiomatic based upon the overt terms—“observer” and “observed”; “consciousness” and “that which consciousness is conscious of”. Yet Hume’s Law, as I have illustrated in this missive, implicitly and fundamentally bifurcates them to the point where not only does one not imply the other, but “objectively reality” implies that there, in fact, can be no such thing as an observer at all, because consciousness is nothing more than reality projecting itself back onto itself. This is a contradiction and is thus null.
Thus: No volitional observer, no conscious observer, no observation, nothing observed, nothing defined, nothing meaningful, nothing relevant, nothing at all. No will, no observer, no reality. Or, put most succinctly: No morality = no reality.
To summarize:
If what is observed is objective, then observation is, in fact, observation of the objective, which means that observation is not exclusive of objective reality and thus is likewise objective. This means that knowledge of the observed objective reality is also objective. Knowledge must be applicable to be meaningful and relevant, and application means volition, which makes the observer a volitional observer, which means he is a conscious observer (is naturally aware of the distinction between that which he is and that which he observers). Thus knowledge, being objective and implying willful application, implies that there must be an objective way to apply knowledge. There must be an objectively correct way to apply knowledge and therefore an objectively incorrect way; an objectively good way and an objectively bad way; an objectively moral way and an objectively immoral way; objectively moral actions and objectively immoral actions.
Objective Reality = Objective Observation = Objective Knowledge = Objective Application = Objective Morality
Reality = Observation = Knowledge = Application = Morality
Metaphysics (Observed, Observer) = Epistemology (Knowledge) = Ethics (Application of Knowledge)
Metaphysics = Epistemology = Ethics
It seems that the truth of objective morality has been staring us in the face for several millennia now. Who would have thought?
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The purpose of this post was not to elaborate upon which specific behaviors are moral or immoral, it was simply to prove that objective morality is both possible and necessary, and that Hume’s law rests upon false presumptions concerning the nature of the the observer and observation, the nature of reality, and the nature of morality. These false assumptions are a.) That observation is fundamentally passive, and b.) That volitional action is a purely subjective matter of what one “ought” do based upon information entirely dictated to the observer by an objective reality which exists utterly outside (meaning, entirely exclusive of) his conscious frame of reference. A further flaw of Hume’s Law is its failure to recognize that the assumption that knowledge is objective but the application of knowledge is subjective is in fact a contradiction and is therefore null.
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The Metaphysics of the State: Why Biden’s Supreme Court pick, based primarily on race and sex, was completely rational
I have heard heard conservative and libertarian media pundits, academics, journalists, and intellectuals complain about Joe Biden’s recent U.S. Supreme Court pick of Ketanji Brown Jackson. Biden’s criteria was simple and straightforward—his nominee was to be, first and foremost, a black female. This was in keeping with his campaign promise to nominate a justice upon such criteria should he get the chance. He did, and here we are.
The problem, were are told, is that we should not be choosing those who shall serve on the highest legal court in the land, for life, according to immutable characteristics such as race and sex, but rather on “individual merit”.
I just have to laugh, here. I mean no disrespect, but seriously, the government wouldn’t exist if it acknowledged that individual merit was actually a thing. My goodness…I’m incredulous every time I think about just how unaware conservative and libertarian thinkers really are.
Anyway…
This assertion that Supreme Court nominees should be assessed on “individual merit” is of course rooted in what is ultimately a metaphysical premise regarding the nature of human beings. To declare that people must not be judged as members of a collective, exhibiting the proper, yet spurious, group-identity marker, or markers, such as race and sex, is to declare that what really makes a human being a human being is their individuality.
Well, what does that mean?
One’s singular, conscious frame of reference—that’s what it means to be an individual. What makes you uniquely YOU, is that you observe, interpret, and manifest your existence from a single existential frame of reference. This frame of reference is, functionally, the distinction between YOU and OTHER, where OTHER is other persons (other individuals), and the environment (the material context for the practical manifestation of Self-ness).
The distinction between Self and Other is the inexorable distinction between all human beings, and is why every one of us is morally equal to everyone else. No one person is any better than any other person, because “better” would mean possessing greater existential value. This of course is impossible since each individual is a function of an absolute and singular conscious frame of reference. In other words, each one of us is, at root, absolutely ourselves, and thus each one of us equally exists as Self. No one person has more or less existence than any other—to assert otherwise is obviously ludicrous. Thus, one cannot make an existential value distinction between individuals. Everyone, by dint existing as a singular Self, is morally equal. They have equal value and relevance to Reality,
The argument which naturally follows is this: Does this mean that the murderer and the thief, for example, are as “good” as anyone else? If all of us are morally equal at root because we all equally exist, what difference then does it make what a person does with his existence? How can we judge the murderer and the thief as evil if the plumb line for moral value is simply existing.
Here is the answer: The murderer and the thief have, by their choices and actions, utterly rejected themselves…that is, they have rejected their own existence as Self. In doing this, they no longer have meaning nor purpose, and thus can have no value.
Let me try to explain.
By violating the life and property of their fellow human beings they have forfeited all of their existential value by declaring, implicitly or explicitly, that such value is a lie. In other words, he who commits murder and theft rejects, first and foremost, their own individuality, and by this, their own fundamental worth. Having utterly devalued themselves, and so stripped themselves of any rational meaning and purpose to anyone or anything else, the criminal forces others to deal with him as a rank existential aberration—an object threat to individuality, not an expression of it. In other words, once the criminal rejects his own existence by engaging in theft or murder, he can be of no meaning, purpose, or value to others, and thus others have a moral right (and a moral obligation) to restrain him, and if needs must, eliminate him. To boil it down to a simplistic metaphor: If the glass refuses to hold water, then it has become nothing to me, an I shall throw it away.
There is much more to be said about this, but I will move on to the main point of this article.
The argument is that we should be selecting Supreme Court candidates based on their individual characteristics—how they think, how they interpret the law, their personal philosophies and morals, their individual experience in this or that school, this or that post, etcetera, etcetera—and not on collective, superficial, identity markers such as race and sex.
The problem, however, and one which our conservative and libertarian friends never seem to quite grasp for reasons that escape me, is that government is a collectivist institution, not an individualist one. In other words, the State simply cannot judge anyone according to their individual merit because the State does not and cannot recognize that individuality actually exists.
When I say that government is a collectivist institution, I mean that its very establishment is rooted in collectivist metaphysics, not individualist metaphysics, and these are mutually exclusive. The government exists to govern, and to govern means, fundamentally, to coerce behavior by violence and threats of violence. There is no such thing as government outside of this. None. There is no other real purpose for government besides coercing human behavior in order to serve the interest of a given Collective ideal.
In the case of the United States, the government claims in its founding documents to act on behalf of what it calls “The People”. However, one should not take this to mean “the persons”…even if the Founding Fathers intended it to mean this, because, given the nature of government, it can’t. No, no…these are completely different categories, rooted in completely different metaphysics. “Persons” are a group of individuals. “People” are a a sociopolitical entity to which individuals are inexorability fused. Put simply, the individual is a function of the People, not the other way around.
Government is Authority and Authority is Force. The government cannot consider one’s individual merit because as far as government is concerned, there is no such thing as the individual. It cannot consider one’s individual experience, because individual experience is by definition a function of one’s individual existence, which the collectivist metaphysics of government do not recognize.
Government does not and cannot and never will act in the interest of the individual, but only in the interest of the Collective Ideal it represents. This makes sense even on a the most rudimentary of logical basis. I mean, think about it. Think about the nature of your individual existence—what makes you YOU—and the complexity of it, and then see how stupid and ludicrous is the idea that somehow all which makes you individually you can be compelled/coerced by some third party Authority outside of you, which you most likely have never met and will never meet, and which knows nothing about you as a person. Think about the thousands of choices you make per day; your fleeting whims; your changing opinions; your capricious tastes; the fundamentally unpredictable nature of your environment from moment to moment; your fluid schedule, daily, weekly, monthly, or at the very least yearly. Even the most organized and regimented among us is faced with a thousand options per day and a mind that is constantly analyzing and assessing, evaluating and critiquing; and though it may seem like many of us simply operate on rote in some meta existential context, I can assure that this is not the case. Existence is contextualized to the individual…you observe and manifest your life from a singular conscious frame of reference. You are, at root, an “I”, not a “We”, and you know this in your heart. There can be no such thing as a fundamentally plural existential frame of reference. The relative relationship between environment and observer, which is a necessary prerequisite for Reality, Itself, can only work if the observer is singular. A “plurality of root observation”, or, simplified, a “plural observer”,” is a contradiction in terms. Sometimes you hear it called a “collective consciousness”. It’s complete nonsense.
For the government to presume that it can control the individual without denying individuality is a lie; and until we all understand this, government will continue to reduce humanity to corpses and chaos, just as it has always done and will always do, because that is all its nature can allow.
All this being said, it is a farce to think that the government can ever fundamentally judge a person based on their “individual merit”, as though the State is able to acknowledge that such a thing exists, let alone care about it. For the government to acknowledge individual merit—to acknowledge that the indiviudal is capable of any meaningful manifestation of his or her existence without the presumption and intrusion of the State—is for the government to deny its own legitimacy and thus its own existence.
The government will always and forever collectivize humanity…and, again, this is entirely unavoidable because it is a function of government’s nature at root. If the government is not collectivizing humanity, then it is not the government. The government will never consider one’s “individual merit”, for the simple reason that it doesn’t accept “the individual” as a legitimate existential concept. The government will judge, vet, review, examine, and consider every single of one us, be it a Supreme Court nominee or the guy selling oranges on the street near the quarry, only according to whatever Collective Ideal it decides it is manifesting and expressing at any given moment—in modern U.S. terms, Social Justice, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The government will value each and every one of us based upon the degree to which we serve and affirm this Collective Ideal, and this means that it will not judge us according to the complexity of individual characteristics, but the superficiality of group identity—that is, whether we are black or not. and female or not, with respect to the case of Biden’s Supreme Court nomination.
The government will never consider a Supreme Court nominee, nor anyone else, for a position on the basis of “individual merit”, and it has never really done so. Just because the Collective Ideal which makes one valuable to the State happens to be more ham-fisted, less nuanced, today (i.e. skin color and genitalia) than perhaps in the past doesn’t mean that the government is any more tolerant of the individual.
Biden simply did what was, in fact, the most rational thing he could do in picking a Supreme Court nominee: Promote the interests of the State over those of human beings.
What else is new?
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