All posts by Argo

Equality, Social Justice, and the Inverse Corollary of Existence to Identity

General Philosophy, Metaphysics, , , , , ,

Since existence between objects is relative–that is, movement between two or more objects in a vacuum (of space) means that depending on how an observer chooses to measure the relationship, either object at any given time can serve as the reference for said measurement–the only thing which can be said to be fundamentally equal between objects is their existence.

Now, before I go any further, and before one of my many philosophically astute readers observes and comments upon the inevitable rational dilemma involved in taking “existence” as the metaphysical primary to its logical conclusion, let me provide you with the following disclaimer:

I submit that existence isn’t actually the metaphysical irreducible–that honor is reserved for “ability”.  The ability to exist (which really has its foundation in the ability to conceptualize existence), in other words, must precede existence.  But for the purposes of this article, and to use a concept that is more readily understandable and familiar to most people, “existence” as the assumed foundational metaphysic is acceptable.  In any case, whether we assume “existence” or “ability” as the metaphysical primary does not significantly change the argument within the specific context of this article.

Moving on…

Now, what I mean by “the only thing equal is the existence of the respective objects” is merely that the being–the IS–of object A is equal to the being–the IS–of object B.  This is due to the fact that objectively, and necessarily, each object, empirically apprehended, must be said to possess absolute existence.  In other words, each object is not an amalgamation or an integration of existence and NON-existence, for this would constitute an impossible contradiction.  Because the objects exist, they cannot, by definition, NOT exist in any measure.  You cannot integrate a NOT with an IS; and since clearly each object IS, then they are by no means any value of not.  And further, because there can be no such actual thing as nothing–for nothing, by definition, cannot be something–each object must be entirely, infinitely, and categorically something.  Put another way: each object must have existence, and they must have it absolutely.  And since the existence is in equal measure absolute, or infinite, there is absolute, or infinite, equality between the two objects.

This is validated by the fact that there is no way to observe a distinction between each object’s relative and respective existence, for all we can say about existence is that it is relative, which in no way mitigates or limits existence as the absolute metaphysical primary.  (On the contrary, I would argue that in order for existence to be relative, it must be infinite…it must be absolute and limitless; and the the contradiction is only ostensible, not actual.)  The identity distinctions between objects are based upon the premise that they each possess absolute existence first, in order that they can then be defined (conceptualized) relative to one another.  In other words, existence must precede any relevant application of relativity.

To put this in simpler terms, we can say that the moon, for example, absolutely exists, and likewise the apple.  One cannot be said nor measured to exist in a greater or lesser degree than the other.  “Lesser” and “greater” are concepts which require relative distinction, which is only relevant if the objects exist first in order that distinctions, which then are relative, can be made.  In other words, the relativity of existence is predicated upon existence, itself.  And…well…at the very least, relativity and existence are corollaries.

Because of the fact that existence between objects is utterly equal to an infinite degree, any attempt to apply equality beyond the application of the truth that both object A and object B exist, and this infinitely, and therefore literally, and unambiguously and, in the literal sense, indistinctly, is a gross logical fallacy.  The reason for the logical fallacy is as follows:

The absolute existence of object A demands that it, by definition, is simultaneously absolutely not object B, and vice versa.  As object A and object B have utterly equal (even, identical, really…but that’s another, even more nuanced article) existence, they are also simultaneously infinitely distinct from one another.  What this means is that these objects are infinitely different once we concede their absolute existential equality.  A succinct way of putting it is:  as their existence is infinitely equal, their identity is infinitely distinct.   Their identity is distinct to the same infinite degree as their existence is equal.

This is why any attempt to cultivate “social justice” based upon “equality” of individuals (a contradiction, since “social” is a collectivist, not individualistic, philosophical ideology) must fail.  It is rooted in the false notion that there can be an equality of identity, and not existence.  The notion is false because it violates the Law (as postulated by myself) of Existence as Inversely Correlate to Identity:  If A is itself absolute, it is likewise and simultaneously absolutely not B.  Or, stated more abstractly:

Where A(Existence) = B(Existence), A(Identity) ≠ B(Identity)

Practically applied, what this means is fairly obvious:  I (for example) am not you and you are not me–our identities are infinitely distinct.  We are each One…we are absolutely ourselves whilst being absolutely NOT each other, which makes us infinitely individual at the most basic level: existence; and only here, at existence, is equality rationally applied to society.  And by this I mean that equality simply means that one individual in society may not deny the other individual the right of pursuing his/her own life as he/she chooses and is able as an extension of their infinite existence.   And thus this individual, distinct, existence, being  ipso facto and therefore necessary, must be both True and Good.  And therefore pursuing such existence as one chooses–also by virtue of being the only one who possesses the singular frame reference of Self, absolutely, from which to manifest his or her life, and thus CAN be the only one who can rationally choose how to manifest his/her own life–can only be considered an explicit right.  Equality cannot mean that one individual has the right to impose his own, or a collective’s, wholly abstract standard of “equality’ upon a society of individuals.  For this (irrationally and contradictory) subordinates the absolute individual to the “group”, contradicting his/her existence entirely.  Which means that instead of making individuals equal, “social equality” denies them entirely.  And once individuals are denied, there is no frame of reference for either “social” or “justice” or “equality” at all.  Once the individual is eliminated from the existence equation, there is no way to define existence in the first place.  And without existence, you have no relative relationship between people or objects; and without those, there are no distinctions.  And without distinctions, there are no definitions, no concepts, and no values.  And without definitions, concepts, and values, there is no reality.

Because I am infinitely me and infinitely not you, how we express ourselves within the environment –being an extension of our unique individual Selves–must also be infinitely different.  But to demand “society” to give us equality of resources in the hopes of fostering an equality of outcomes is logically untenable.  Giving equal amounts of resources to distinct individuals, who are distinct at the the the most basic level, their identity, cannot possibly create equality in any practical sense because equality is not about identity, and doesn’t belong to it.  It is not about how we express our utterly unique and distinct Selves upon the earth.  Rather, equality is about existence.  Or, more formally, t is about sharing the same fundamental metaphysical absolute: existence.

And how do we exist?

As individuals.

And individuality is how we apply and express ourselves upon the environment.  The way we express ourselves, practically, or socially, is via not our existence but via our identity; that is, via that  which we are as infinitely and always distinct from that which we are not.  And in the “social” sense, what we are NOT…is other people.  We are NOT, then, the GROUP.  Because if we are the group, then we are not ourselves…in which case, we loose our identity, and thus the idea of “group”, or “society”, or “justice”, or “equality” (in the false collectivist sense) becomes entirely, and ironically, irrelevant.  You cannot advocate the equality of individuals without also advocating the identity of: “individual”.  And once there are no individuals, there is nothing to make “equal”, in the social sense.  And thus, the only way to make individuals “equal” in the social sense is to destroy that which makes us equal in the real sense (the rational, efficacious, moral sense): our existence.

And this is why all forms of collectivism (e.g. fascism, communism, socialism, religious gnosticism) will always destroy humanity, and horribly, violently so.  Collectivism can never prosper humanity because it fundamentally denies the REALITY of humanity. 

Now, this is all, of course, merely the petals on the flower of metaphysics; and also, it’s really important to understand that “existence” as a metaphysical primary breaks down spectacularly once we climb several rungs deeper into the ontological discussion (but not in a way that necessarily effects the veracity of this article’s assertions or its conclusions, I submit, as I mentioned in my disclaimer, above).  Nevertheless, the discussion of absolute equality of existence as an inverse corollary to the absolute distinction of identity is helpful in analyzing the practical applications of collectivist ideologies in general, and specifically the morally defunct and ultimately humanity-razing Marxist notion of “social justice”.

 

 

Church-22: The Fallacy, Irrelevancy, and Tyranny of Biblical Authority and Divine Inspiration of Scripture

Biblical Inerrancy, Calvinism/Philosophy, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recently I received the following question from a reader (see quote below).  I spent a few days mulling it over before I responded, and when I did, my comment, as usual, became so long and involved that when finished it resembled more an article than a comment . So, I decided the rational thing to do was to post it as such.

Indulge me a few words as an introduction first.

Heretofore, I have not yet dealt (not sufficiently, in my mind) with the question of how I, personally, integrate the Bible into my philosophy and ideas–a notion about as scandalous as it gets to Christians…for who am I to apply Biblical ideas to my beliefs, and not the other way around?

Anyway…

As a believer (I am no longer comfortable calling myself “Christian”, due to the Protestant and Catholic doctrinal assumptions this label necessarily implies nowadays), it is  important to be able to coherently explain how I appropriate the Scriptures, for they do possess much value, I believe…though I reject the idea that they exist in the form of some magical talisman or divine oracle–which is precisely how American, institutionalized Christianity interprets them.  This is a mistake, and has led to much abuse and misuse of the ideas of the Torah and the New Testament.  Ideas which in their purest, un-mystified form seem to affirm human life, and yet must subjugate it, I submit, when they are claimed to exist in a vacuum of “divine inerrancy”.

The Scriptures, in today’s Christian “orthodoxy”, have become the new Temple…, or, more specifically, the new “most holy place”.  A place where only God’s divinely appointed priests may enter; and a place where the untouchables of the laity and the rest of the world’s blind masses must inevitably find death and destruction should they gander a look around inside.  Oh sure, today’s priesthood of Reformed Elders (among other false teachers…like, say, the priestly lessers who advocate that most egregious of mystic false offices, the Papacy) pay lip service to “quiet times” and the importance of daily Bible reading.  But make no mistake:  by no means are they suggesting that you in any way have the divine and existential capacity or mandate to actually understand them apart from their–the ecclesiatsy’s–perpetual authoritative tutelage.  You are permitted to gaze lovingly and ignorantly from the outer courtyards of “truth”…you may examine the words as you would the walls of a fortress from the outskirts of town.  But to attempt to wander inside and examine the wells, the towers, or the bedchambers for yourself…to seek to apprehend the blueprint of the structure in the hopes that you may one day build your own…well, tsk tsk, sinner.  You are not an architect.  You are a brick.  Real understanding is the sole territory of the priesthood…the right only of those whom God has given His divine enlightenment, wholly apart from the graceless, bumptious, and pedestrian reason of fallen humanity.

Do you not yet understand, you poor, poor Protestant plebe; you Catholic spiritual leper?  Do you not realize that what is wholly inerrant cannot possibly be reconciled to that which is wholly depraved.  And that which is wholly depraved…is you.

And me.

So what do I think of the scriptures?  What do I think of a book that has had more revisions than the Ford Mustang and yet is continually and paradoxically adored as perfection in a vacuum?  Well, like anything else its usefulness goes only as far as reason takes it.  If its truths are beyond the context of human existence, as apprehended and organized via rational consistency, then they are irrelevant.  However, if its truths speak to the utter right of man to form his own moral standard, by his nature, and thus the perfect morality and necessity of his existence and essence, then the truths of the Bible are perhaps the most powerful to have ever graced the face of the earth.

The scriptures, as with all ideas, are bound to a standard of, as I mentioned, reason–that is, conceptual consistency rooted in the identity of the individual human Self.  Beyond that, they are meaningless.  In other words, the Bible, as is so often falsely claimed, is not itself axiomatically irreducible.  It is not, itself, the premise.  So, what is the premise?

The premise is…you.

And me.

Please, read on.

*

“Well, for me your key lines were: “examine [the faith] metaphysically, using Reason as my guide. My assumption is that faith must coincide with what is both logically and metaphysically consistent. I reject contradictions as being outside of reason[.]”

I’m the same as you in that regard — yet I also strongly affirm the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible. Therefore, while I’m committed to logical coherence, at the same time I draw no theological conclusions based on metaphysics alone. God’s word /must/ inform me.

So where in your line of reasoning about the faith do you “allow” (so to speak) Scripture to have a say in the conversation?

Andy”

Hmmm…I’ve been trying to decide how formulate a response to you. There is a lot going on in your comment…maybe even more than you realize. So, I guess I will just figuratively point at some spot on the chart in my mind and go from there.

Okay, first, I reject the idea of “authority” as a means to teach; to educate. Authority equals force, and so to claim authority is to ultimately claim the right to coerce by violence or threats of violence my beliefs and behavior. To claim the right to violence over an individual is in essence to claim ownership of that individual; in which case that individual cannot really be expected to learn, because the implication is that he has no right to the ownership of his body or mind. Which renders his existence as a volitional individual irrelevant. In other words, there is no need to appeal to authority to teach, because teaching becomes superfluous. Why instruct when you can simply force?

Next, I submit that when people appeal to biblical “authority” they are really appealing to the right of a select group of men to interpret reality for the masses according to a specific doctrine, which may or may not have anything to do with what’s actually in the Bible. For example, the words “the fall of man” and “total depravity” appear nowhere in Scripture, nor can one even reasonably argue that the bible speaks to these ideas despite its lack of direct mention. Nevertheless, man’s “fallen nature” and “pervasive” depravity form the whole of Christian metaphysics.

In general, I consider the concept of “authority” like I do the concepts of “perfection” and “inerrancy”. Since these are ultimately contextual concepts, their meaning is always contradicted. For example, the Bible is inerrant, we are told, however, I cannot use my Bible to pound nails; thus, its inerrancy is contextual. Out of context, it is in fact, wholly errant, contradicting the appeal to its inerrancy by definition. The same holds true for “perfection” and “authority”. The perfect car is not the perfect candy cane; and the authority of the police is not the same as the authority of a child’s parents.

In some cases, the concept of authority is equated to “expertise”. This is a fine application of authority, however, we must remember that in all areas of knowledge, authority is and must be subordinated to reason. If one’s doctor, who is an authority in the field of cardiology, tells you that you must swallow motor oil to lubricate your heart, you will naturally reject such advice on the grounds that it is absurd. In short, being an authority in a given subject does not give one license to deny reason. One cannot appeal to his expertise as grounds to completely spurn human identity. A human being, as we all agree and understand, cannot digest motor oil. It is contrary to his identity as a human being. Therefore, such advice, regardless of the source, must be false.

In the same way, when it comes to matters of Scripture, the idea of “divine inspiration” and “authority” must be subordinated to reason, which makes them functionally irrelevant with respect to Scripture. Even if God Himself declares something that contradicts man’s identity, and therefore his ability to ascertain reality, man is morally and epistemologically obligated to reject the declaration. Of course I’m betting that God would not declare something as truth if it destroys man’s identity. A declaration which hinders man’s ability to interpret reality must also hinder his ability to define God as God in the first place. Which makes the declaration moot.

Thus, when I read Scripture, I never actually consider ideas such as “divine inspiration”, “authority”, or “inerrancy” at all, because they have no practical application. They are ultimately irrelevant to anything the Bible says; and if we attempt to say they are, then the Bible becomes meaningless because “authority”, “inerrancy”, and “divine inspiration” denies the existential context of individual. For example, if am told that the Bible declares something that cannot possibly be true from the frame of reference of my identity as an individual, the only way I can accept it is if I do so by forced coercion. I cannot really voluntary accept it because I have no context whereby my volition is relevant. The declaration denies me as adequate to grasp and thus act upon such “truth”, because any such actions must be from my mere human context, which, again, is insufficient and irrelevant with respect to “God’s truth”. God’s “truth” trumps human truth, you see. But since my frame of reference is always human, I must be FORCED to accept God’s truth. I cannot verify it as truth because it is outside my context, so I can only act under compulsion. I cannot volitionally choose to accept it as true…for, again, I have no frame of reference.

Take for example the idea of human “total depravity” as a function of man’s very ontological nature. This doctrine cannot possibly be true because A.) it does not specify, by definition, where one’s depravity ends and where it begins. And B.) If man is totally depraved he is epistemologically insufficient to understand the truth of the bible in the first place. He “learns” by the forced coercion of a divinely enlightened priesthood established to compel the blind masses into “obedience”. Man’s pervasive depravity makes him entirely irrelevant to God’s goodness and truth, which makes the Scriptures meaningless to him.

This phenomenon is what I refer to as “Church-22”, and it is a direct consequence of the doctrine of Total Depravity:

The only way to be saved is to realize you cannot by nature be saved, because what is wholly evil cannot be reconciled to what is wholly good. And that the only way to choose to be saved is to recognize that you cannot choose to be saved…and that, again, is due to your sinful nature. You are told God has to choose you, for you, because you are insufficient to make your own choices for good. Which means that you are saved in spite of you, making you entirely superfluous to the salvation process. You cannot experience it, because it can only occur by the entire existential rejection of you, since you are entirely depraved.

This is rank fallacy on its face.

So, while I do read the Bible–and have many times–with great interest and find it to be of immense value to the objective of instructing humanity on the absolute morality of individual life, among other things, I apply it to bulwark and underscore my philosophical premises (i.e. my metaphysics, wherein the human individual is the moral and epistemological standard). I do not look at it as a means to subvert my premises simply because some self-appointed pontiff (God proxy, also known as the “senior pastor”, or whomever else claims a superior spiritual caste) tells me that it has some kind of spurious “authority” over them, and myself.

Christian Tyranny: The Ben Carson Presidency

Calvinism/Philosophy, Metaphysics, , , , ,

When it comes to the governing of any given society, discussions of  “government”, its structure and purpose, are always an appeal to authority. Keep this in mind.  It is axiomatic.

According to both the religious and secular collectivists (people who assume that man is most fully and truly represented in existence by groups, as opposed to individually) human depravity is the moral essence of man’s ontological state (ontology = the nature of being).  In other words, at the metaphysical level (the level of existence), man is depravity.  And what depravity is, is the idea that man, for some reason or another, depending on the ideological context (e.g. religious versus economic (e.g. Marxism)) MUST be governed by an outside authority in order to ensure his survival.

(As an aside, it should be understood that the contextual reasons for man’s depravity are ultimately immaterial.  For the functional conclusion of this ideology is always the same, no matter who holds it or why:  the death of the individual–the death of Self.)

Man must be governed by representatives of the collective abstraction (which, again, can vary depending on the ideological context: the State versus the Church, for example).  Because absent government, due to the individual’s inherent depravity, man is doomed to an anarchist orgy of sin and death.  Individually, it is assumed, human beings lack the sufficiency to “rational” and “organized” existence, thus they are determined to exist immorally, and ultimately, futilely without the forced coercion of government, which has been established by “providence” (and what constitutes “providence” again depends on the ideological context) to organize existence FOR, not FROM, mankind.

As I said in the opening sentence of this article, Government appeals to authority.  But authority appeals to force; and it is only by force that a man depraved–a man inadequate by nature to existence–can survive.  But before we go any further with this thought, allow me to discuss just briefly this idea of “existence”, because it is always to the end of man’s “rational” existence that collectivist ideologues push the notion of survival by, of, and to government.  By advocating their collectivist metaphysic, they explain that they are merely conceding the reality of existence.  Though masked as an objective metaphysic itself–which it isn’t–“Existence” becomes itself an ideology; it becomes a byword for the moral end of the abstract ideal to which they, by force of government, seek compel humanity. In other words, they need to force you INTO your existence.  In and of yourself, you, being entirely depraved and insufficient to life, cannot exist.  “Existence” also, you will notice, is a euphemism for “reality”.  Reality IS existence, and force is required to manifest both for the individual.

“Existence” is always the subjective abstraction to which every collectivist ideology claims to derive its reason, or rationale.  That is, individual human existence qua existence is ironically the reason man must be forced , through violence or deception or threats into Self-denial…into the collective authority’s idea  of what it means for the individual to BE.  And this is consistent with the ubiquitous and common appeal in all collectivist ideologies to the “reality outside of man”–and there is some variety of this notion in almost everything, from Marxism, to Objectivism, to scientific empiricism, and so on.  What this functionally means is that the individual can only truly exist by rejecting what he is told is the fallacy of  his own, individual and singular existential context…that is, the reality of Self, which they always claim is, at its root, subjective.  In other words, the individual is told, ironically, that he only really exists by accepting the idea that he doesn’t actually exist at all.

By this (backwards) logic, even man’s very birth can only occur under the auspices of the collectivist system (e.g. the “laws of physics/nature”) or society (e.g. the Workers Utopia; economic egalitarianism; the Church Body).  This presumes that such a collectivist system or society must have existence prior to the birth of human beings.  Of course, this is an impossible scenario because without the existence of the human being, there is absent the necessary frame of reference by which the collective could be organized or structured in the first place.

What all of this means is that man survives at the pleasure of the Collective, and in geopolitical terms, we refer to the Collective as the State.  And by the State, what we mean, practically speaking, is the Government; or, more specifically, the human Authorities which are the fleshly incarnation of the Collective Will.  And this means that individuals are obliged to serve the State for their own “good”…for their own existence, not the other way around.

For a man like Ben Carson, who professes to a belief in the sovereign (read, deterministic) Will of God, how is the State defined?  What is Government?  What is its role and purpose?  Its not particularly difficult to figure out.  Naturally, the Government is an institution established by God to enforce His Will, collectively.  And by that I mean, of course, upon society.  The Church, on the other hand, though intimately tied to the Government, is that institution–ruled by its own specific incarnate Authority of the Divine Will–which establishes the governing principles, interpreted from the Holy Texts (“God’s Word”) by divinely enlightened priests, which the State’s Authority (e.g. President Carson) will, through the establishment of specific “secular” law, level upon society through violence and threats of violence by its monopoly of force.

Ben Carson says that he “follows the doors God opens”.  This means that if he happens to become President, it is, according to his doctrine, because God wants it that way.  God determined him into the Presidency.  Any effort on his part or the part of the voters is entirely tangential, and ultimately irrelevant.  And what is it that God wants him to do then?  Does He want Carson to govern as though it is his duty to ensure the right of the individual to exist as though what God wants is NOT the individual’s obligation?

Of course not.  This is completely at odds with what Carson believes will have thrust him into the Presidency in the first place.  It is contrary to his entire existential belief system.  It is, for him, an impossible consideration.  It is an idea which simply cannot hold any efficacy.  It cannot possibly be true.  The idea of an individual’s Self determinism is utterly exclusive of Carson’s metaphysical premise: that man is a function of God’s Will. Period.  For Carson, “individual” existence is an affront to the “truth” of DIVINE REALITY.

Carson’s duty as President is for him to function as a direct extension of God’s sovereign and determining Will.  That idea is a function of his doctrine; and that doctrine assumes the metaphysic of man’s natural depravity.  And that means that man will be sacrificed to the State.  Because Carson does not and cannot make the existential, functional, practical, or moral distinction between the people, the government, and God’s Will.  “God’s Will” becomes the entirety of his metaphysics…and by that I mean it is the nature of ALL existence.  Therefore, there is no room for human beings–for individuals.  There is only the antagonism of God by the individual’s claim, either conscious or as a behavioral byproduct of his “depravity”,  to possess a separate, distinct existence of his own, and the requisite, perpetual, and  violent conflict which this claim demands.  And this means, when all the sophism and rhetoric is cleared away, that Ben Carson’s job as President is this, and this alone:  the subjugation of the individual for the purpose of eradicating the existential and moral affront which the individual’s presence presents to God’s Sovereignty.  Only the abstraction of “God’s Will” is Truth.  Only the abstraction of his “Sovereign Purpose” has a right to BE.  The individual presents a direct challenge to God because he lays claim to his own existence.  But this anomalous existence is one of depravity and insufficiency.  Therefore it must be governed, and that’s what Ben Carson will do.

But always remember that within the collectivist mindset, which is Carson’s mindset I submit, Government is Authority and Authority is Force. To govern the individual is to compel his life in service to the collective abstraction. That is, to govern the individual, according to the collectivist metaphysic, is to destroy him.

The Fallacy and Futility of the Vote: Is society a function of you, or you of society? (The intransigence of the metaphysical axiom, and its necessary determinism)

General Philosophy, Metaphysics, , , , , , , , , , ,

Is the individual a direct function of the society or is society a direct function of the individual? The answer to this question will determined how a society functions, as well as the “logical conclusion” of the society with respect to the life or death of the denizens within it.  That is, depending on which format we choose, the conclusion will either be a perpetual realization of freedom and life for humanity, or humanity’s destruction.

The conclusion, you see, is inevitable; we should not waste our time trying to think of ways we might prevaricate around the necessary end to the premise.  One way or another, and sooner or later, the logical conclusion of a given premise will be realized; and in this case, the metaphysical premise will dictate the outcome, truly life or death, of the individual–of the society of individuals–which holds it.  The premises accepted and employed in a society with respect to the ontology of man is, in fact, what defines reality for him.

Never mind the specious logic of the Objectivists or the Empiricists…there is no such thing as an “objective reality OUTSIDE of man”…at least, not in the idealistic sense they describe, where the environment “outside” of human beings possesses its own self-contained definitions, purposes, and relevancy.  Another self-evident problem with the notion of “objective reality outside of man” is that it thus implicitly avers that man is not, in fact, objectively real; and by this they man that man’s consciousness is inherently subjective–not possessing the inherent capability of ascertaining the “objective truth” of the material universe “outside of him” (though they will claim otherwise–that man IS able to apprehend reality via his senses; an impossible notion given that, according to the root idea, there is an absolute distinction between reality “outside” of man and man’s conscious mind (presumably, the place where his senses end and his consciousness begins)).  Which…if you believe this, any Objectivist or Empirical assertion you hold is irrelevant by definition. If you are not objectively real, then any notion to which you ascribe has no functional bearing on, well…anything.

Contrary to this, I assert that all of reality (what is real in the meaningful, relevant sense to MAN, which is the only sense which matters, because man is, absolutely, and only, HIMSELF; for that is his context, period) is a function of how we define man.  Either man is fundamentally his own singular existential reference…meaning, your conscious awareness of SELF is the absolute and immutable frame of reference for your existence, and for all that you can claim is real (it must be real TO YOU, or it cannot be defined as real at all), or your awareness is a direct function of something “outside” of you…some other absolute and immutable frame of reference, like the “laws of physics/nature which govern”, or “God’s divine/sovereign Will/Plan”.  In the societal sense, speaking of geopolitical nation states, the immutable frame reference and compelling force is the authoritative mandate of the appointed proxies of the Collective abstraction, which may be referred to as the “common good”; the “people”; the “nation”; the “tribe”; the “country”; or some social demographic (“minorities”, “disadvantaged”, “business elite”, “aristocracy”, “middle class”, “workers”, etc.).

Every person has, I submit, in his or her mind, already conceded the metaphysical “cause and effect” relationship in one direction or the other. Every human being who has reached awareness–who possesses the ability to articulate a distinction between himself and his surroundings–has embraced either the idea of the individual as a function of the group/collective/society or the the group/collective/society as a function of the individual.  Another way of stating it, is that every individual has conceded to the idea that he or she is a direct extension of his/her surroundings–his/her group affiliation (and these affiliations can be defined and categorized in many ways, but in this case, I mean “society”, or “nation”, etc.) or vice versa.

The ostensible, and completely spurious compromises people make as they integrate the mutually exclusive dichotomy (SELF vs. Collective Society) are nothing more that equivocations upon the inherent and necessary contradictions present as individuals attempt existence within the social structures of a collection of human beings all governed by a central ruling authority which possesses, above all, and at its very irreducible foundation, the source of all its power, a monopoly of force (violence) to compel individual outcomes in service to what it propagandizes as “the good of the many”, but what is in reality simply its own power and wealth.  Because, you see, in reality there can be nothing else to which the monopolizers of force can compel the citizens.  Its all about the logical and unavoidable conclusion, the idea of which I began the article, proceeding from the metaphysical/ontological premise: “what is man?”.  I will explain this in greater detail later in the article.

*

Both the fundamental individualist and the fundamental collectivist will entertain various contradictions in a lifelong, but futile, effort to avoid the inevitable destruction of a society ruled by a government intent on serving the “common good”, which is purely an abstraction and does not actually exist in any material or effectual sense, which is why such a government must eventually destroy the very individual citizens it claims to represent.  For example:

The law-abiding individualist will pay his taxes, obey stop lights even when there is no one else around, consent to warrant-less inspections and interrogations at sobriety, immigration, and public safety checkpoints; he will vote for his rulers in an ostensible display of democratic “freedom”, applauding this brazenly collectivist activity as a patriotic obligation to which all Americans are bound in order to honor the altruistic sacrifice of the Founding Fathers.  He will pledge allegiance to an anthropomorphized rectangular piece of cloth and dye, asserting irrationally that it somehow has a distinct and inherent value apart from his own individual presence in society, not understanding or not admitting that any such symbol only has meaning insofar as individuals find perpetual and absolute value to and for themselves in the society it represents, and that it literally has no relevancy beyond this.  He will consent to being pressed into military service for the sake of protecting his “nation” as though the nation has any value for him once its rulers demand that he kill another human being in service to it, or to openly and actively support those who do, under threat of violence (incarceration, seizure of property).   He will fund schools for the masses because he accepts that it is in the best interest of “society” if its “individual” citizens–again, ignoring the contradiction–are educated so that they, collectively, can compete with the rest of the geopolitical collectives of the world.  He will say “yes” when asked if he is an American, or a Unites States citizen, when crossing borders, as though such information is fundamentally relevant to anything at all except the irrelevant and irrational idea of abstraction (society/country/nation) as reality—as though being a direct function of a group does anything but contradict his own unique and distinctive existence.  Yes, the individualist will do all of these things because that’s what a good, law-abiding individual does.  He concedes the contradiction that being a good individual means complying with the strictures of society as dictated by the purveyors of force  (rulers) who compel him in service to the “community”; which he also understands (and yet implicitly denies), being an individualist, has no relevance beyond his own unique existential frame of reference: himSELF.

The collectivist, on the other hand, will also speak of the virtues of the vote. The good, modern American neo-Marxist known as today’s democratic party affiliate, will vehemently deny that our society cannot possibly be totalitarian, you see, or inherently destructive to the very essence of individuality, because each one of us gets a vote.  Each one of us gets a “say”.  Indeed this Marxist will even declare that it is our individual duty to vote our “free” conscience for those who will rule the collective, and force us into compliance with its mandates which are dictated by the monopolizers of force, even though at the very root metaphysical/ontological level, the collective can have no actual interest in the individual beyond their forced sacrifice to its abstract ideal.  And because we have the “right” to vote, and the “right” to speak, there must be, so the loose logic goes, inherent deference to the individual amongst the collective of society.

The collectivist will respect the rights of everyone to choose their own way, to employ their own expressions of morality and truth, so long as it poses no relevant or substantive affront to the epistemological and moral plumb line of the “common good”, as he arbitrarily defines it  He will tell us that each one of us can do whatever we want, and assemble and discourse with whomever we choose, so long as we don’t “discriminate” against whatever societal group the collectivist has deemed “special” or “protected” according to their subjective criteria.  In America the special groups which are seen as those to which a forced deference must be compelled by the ruling authorities have ranged anywhere from the business elites and early American aristocrats, military service members, and various Christian denominations, to the poor, the racial minorities, various non-Christian religious groups, and non-hetero sexual orientations.  And yet the collectivist either does not see or willfully ignores the irony and contradiction which says that one has a right to assemble and discourse and exchange value with anyone they choose and yet may not discriminate, as if there is no equivalency between the freedom to assemble and freedom to discriminate.

The collectivist will extol the virtues of the middle-class Main Street shop owner and then in the same breath will decry that shop owner when he or she will not serve, with his own time and his own property, members of some arbitrary “protected” class, and will demand government violence for the purposes of compelling that individual shop owner, with his or her “rights” of assembly and affiliation, into compliance with the collectivist “moral standard”.

The collectivist (even a “libertarian” one) will make overtures to the rights of individuals to worship as they choose, and yet will cry for the blood and incarceration of government workers who refuse to comply with a given demand that they affiliate, through their government post, with this group or that because it violates their religious conscience.  And instead of asking the more important and relevant question of why a government employee is in the position of having to violate his or her religious conscience in the first place (as though government has any rational business being involved in any relationship between individuals where no direct violations of human beings are occurring) they will cheer when violence is meted out against the individual who dares oppose the collective will.

But none of these equivocations, from either the individualist or the collectivist, unravel or parse the fundamental metaphysic involved in the root premise.  And this is because there is no such thing as compromise between, or an integration/intersection of, the ideas that man is SELF and man GROUP.  There is no middle ground.  There is no vacuum of space which separates you, the individual, and society.  One is a direct and uninterrupted function of the other. Period.  Any attempt to reconcile them practically will always result in the destruction of humanity, because once you compromise the individual metaphysic, you have no choice in the end but to compromise the individual himself.  There is no other outcome.  It makes no difference how much you desire or plead for there to be another outcome; how much you dream, or demand it.  Once you have chosen your premise, there are no other choices possible with respect to the necessary existential conclusion.  If man is not himself, he is nothing…he is not, and he is dead.  All will and choice is, from that moment on, fundamentally irrelevant.  A metaphysical, ontological premise will NOT be denied its conclusion.  It does not matter what you think or do or say or how hard you work.  Once you’ve conceded the irreducible, there is nowhere else to go except where it will lead you.  The premise you concede about what you are at your foundation determines your end.  You get either death or life.  And that, as they say, is that. The only way to avoid the necessary end of one irreducible premise is to concede its rank and polar opposite.

If you are SELF, then SELF is what you will reap.  You will reap the necessary reality of the singular, irreducible context and standard of truth and morality:  YOUR infinite existential, metaphysically singular context of YOU, alone.  Infinite and forever.  Life everlasting.  If you are NOT SELF…if you are “group”, then you will be sacrificed.  Death everlasting, starting from the very moment you decide that you are not, in fact, you at all.  That you, as an extension of the group, cannot possibly have a frame of reference for anything, because you are material and group is abstract, and there is no way for one to experience existence from the context of the other, because they are entirely exclusive.  Your only obligation is to become empty, so that what you “really” are–the collective–will “live”.  Whatever that means. Because, well…you cannot really know, can you?

*

The foundation of human conceptual thinking is, I submit, comprised of two basic categories.  The first is the material concept, and this category is comprised of the visceral “objects” humans can sense…the physical environment/universe, if you will, or what some empiricists, rationalists, and Objectivists might call “objective reality”.  To an extent, this is a satisfactory description.  It’s a bit narrow and lacks depth in terms of the metaphysics, but it will do fine for our purposes here.  Concepts in this category would be your concrete nouns:  tree, cat, car, skyscraper, Huey Lewis and the News, etc. The other category is comprised of the abstract concepts…those things which are not visceral, and cannot be observed.  Blue, left, fear, joy…as well as other, more complicated and arcane abstractions, such as mathematics, metaphysics, politics, public relations, doctrine, and the laws of nature.

With respect to “collectives” what is too often and falsely assumed is that the “collective” or the “masses” or the “group” is a material concept to be found in objective reality when in fact it is an abstraction.  Government, the Church, the Nation, the Race, the Workers, the People, Society…these are not material, but abstract. They are immaterial.

In other words, there is no such thing as a group, per se.  The nation or the community or society doesn’t actually exist in material reality.  The “people”, “the community”, “society”, the “Church body”, doesn’t take up space.  It doesn’t have volume.  It cannot be touched or felt or seen.  It isn’t there, is the point.  What I am saying is that once you remove the individual human being, there can be no group…no collective.  For the individual person is the only actual, physical component of any group.  There is no such thing as a “society” which doesn’t begin and end with the individual.  Subtract the person, and the collective becomes meaningless, and therefore, impossible.

Thus, all collectives are a direct function of the individual, not the other way around.  So, to ask an individual to make concessions to the group is to ask what is material…or, better said, to ask what is real to sacrifice itself to what is not.  To ask an individual to provide (often at gunpoint by the monopolizers of force) a measure of his property to a group of “others”, based upon a collective commonality that cannot be exactly and equally applied to each individual within that collective, is inherently irrational and must therefore be destructive.  It is impossible, you see, because there can be no collective equality when the collective is comprised of metaphysically and ontologically distinct, and infinitely so, individuals.   What I mean by this is you cannot make equal that which is infinitely and singularly distinct and fully of itself.  Each human being is distinctly himself, at the metaphysical level.  At this level–at the level of being–there is no connection to another.  It simply does not exist.  Each person is utterly themselves; the beginning and end of their own essence; existence; being; IS.  The idea of “equality” amongst group members then is impossible because it cannot be rationally applied.  You cannot apply an equality of individuals without violating the singularly individual metaphysic.  And this violation occurs when the collective metaphysic is applied to individuals, making them a function of GROUP, not of SELF. And once this is done we are forced to concede that the individual person is not an individual at all, but is in fact a direct function of the abstraction of “group” (“nation”, “society”, “race”, “community”, etc.).  With respect to your individuality then, what is declared “real” is the abstraction of GROUP.  What is not empirical–what cannot be sensed; what is not, in fact, physical, becomes the “real” truth, and you, as a physical, singular self-aware agent, becomes the abstraction.  The illusion.  The absolute servant of the collective “reality”.  He who thinks and observes himself as one, is not, in fact, himself.  He is everyone.  He is all.  He is society.

But how can it be rationally argued that the collective is not in fact fundamentally grounded in the individual? How does the collective exist once the individual is removed?  How is it possible to arrive at EVERYONE from a metaphysic which demands the existence of NO ONE (no individual)?  How do you get a group of people when the most basic and smallest component from which that group is derived is eradicated from the existential equation?

Well…you don’t.  It is impossible, full stop.  And this is why ALL nations, governed by a central authority responsible for governing on behalf of the “people”, and “society”, and the “common good”, no matter how ostensibly benign, no matter how rationally sound its Constitution may seem, no matter how benevolent its intentions are, must inevitably dissolve into the oppression, exploitation, and eventual murder of the individual on a mass scale.  Once each one of us becomes a metaphysical function of an abstraction like “society”, there can be no society at all.  We all must be sacrificed to society, because our self-evident individual material presence, and our undeniable singular conscious frame of reference–the existential reference of SELF–becomes a rank offense and affront to the collective of society.  The abstraction is absolute.  IT, not the individual, is the infinite metaphysical singularity.  Only it gets to exist, for “real”.  And as long as there are individuals out there saying the word “I”, its fullness cannot be realized.  Humanity must be destroyed so that the fullness of the “truth” of the collective can be realized.

*

A common refrain from those with left leaning politics is the idea that “without society” the individual would and could not be in a position to acquire the wealth and assets which they wish to commandeer at gunpoint (via the State’s monopoly of force (violence)) in order to redistribute it to the arbitrarily selected “special” classes.  This argument is nothing more than an appeal to the Marxist collectivist metaphysic I discussed above.  You see, the basis of this argument is the idea that the individual needs society–that it is the abstraction which allows for the existence, survival, and prosperity of the actual, physical, visceral individual human being.  Of course this is so obviously fallacious it is a wonder this argument gets any traction at all. But nevertheless, and unfortunately, it does.

Since the collective, or “society”, is impossible and irrelevant without its requisite smallest component–the individual–it is the apogee of sophism and irrationality to argue that somehow the individual, who rightly and reasonably employs the apparatus of “society” to his own benefit, affirmation, protection, and prosperity, is somehow, in turn, obligated to sacrifice himself to society…an idea which could have no relevance and certainly no practical application absent his existence.  Nevertheless this is the socialist/Marxist/collectivist ideology rooted in the requisite collectivist metaphysic.  It is the idea that somehow, that which cannot exist without the individual, and is in fact a direct and categorical product of the individual’s own mind, has some right to demand of its creator an ablution and an offering.

Obviously what is an abstraction, “the people”, or “society”, cannot possibly demand penance and property from the individual human being, and this is why the abstraction’s proxies must act in its stead.  Whenever a politician demands that this person must be robbed of his property in service to the group, or the “greater good”, know that this property cannot in fact go to any end except the whims and contrivances of those who are using their position as the monopolizers of force to “serve” on “behalf of the group”.  Remember, “group”, be it the “poor” or “disadvantaged” or “those without healthcare”, or “minorities”, or “single moms” is an abstraction, and these merely direct derivations of the primary group abstraction, “society”, or “nation”, or the “people”, or the “country” (which is why leftist politicians always conflate forced private property redistribution to the poor as of general benefit to “society”–for the “poor” is merely a sub-collective with direct roots in  the primary collective of “nation”, or “America”…there is no actual distinction in their eyes).  What is an abstraction has no need of material goods, nor can it even be in the existential position to accept any such goods, be them labor or money.  Those rulers who represent the group as its human proxies, on the other hand, can.  And they do.  As I stated in my last article, the Collective which is represented by its human proxies, the governing authorities, is already the epitome of existential perfection.  It is already the Standard of Truth and Morality by which all else is measured.  It has no need of anything…it dictates terms.  Its only requirement is that all individuals–all who utter the word “I”–be sacrificed and consumed in service to itself.  It’s inexorable need and objective is for its infinity be absolute and unchallenged.  Its human proxies–its “leaders”, “rulers”, “governors”–exist to make that happen.  They are the “authority” which “stands in its stead”.  They are the ones who absorb the life and property of the individual because, as far as you and I are concerned, there is no difference between them and the Ideal of the Nation; the People; the Society.

But the truth is that society collapses unless the individual is free to exploit it to its own ends, and this is because “society” is an abstraction–it is not human beings; and we need to be clear about this.  Society is a direct function of the individual’s mind, devised specifically in order to make it easier for he or she to realize their individual and personal and singular existence upon the earth as they see fit.  It is individuals coming together voluntarily to exchange value for value in service to individual life and well being; to ensure that each one of us manifests ourSELVES upon our world and our universe as we see fit, and of, by, and to ourselves.  Society belongs to us, we do not belong to it.  The Race, the Workers, the Nation, the Party, the Church, belong to us.  It is of us, and for us…individually; alone and unique and equally unequal.  The individual must always and only gain from his affiliation with and presence within society according to his own standards–his own ideas, his own objectives, his own goals, his own desires, his own purposes, his own schedule, and no one else’s.  Always and utterly, every minute and every second of every day, forever.  There can be NO loss for the individual, ever, to “society” in his eyes.  Because once that happens, its all over.  The minute man is compelled to lose something–to suffer a net and un-reimbursed debt–in service to “society” the metaphysics are flipped completely on their heads.  Once man is asked to give without any gain to the “group”, he has become a function of the abstraction.  What is has become what is not.  You are no longer you.  You, and all you know, are a lie.

Man is Self, and “society” is his abstraction he must use for his own individual, perpetual gain, as he desires and defines for himself.  Any other understanding or application of the idea of “society” is a rank corruption.  It is a lie, and it can do nothing and will inevitably do nothing else but erase its human progenitors from the face of the earth.

The Fallacy and Futility of the Vote, Part One: American Democracy and Its Inherent Destructive Collectivism (There is no escape from the logical conclusion of an accepted premise)

Calvinism/Philosophy, Epistemology, General Philosophy, Metaphysics, , , , , , ,

If you are like me, you cannot even bring yourself to suffer a single minute of a single political “debate” because you understand that the nature of such showmanship is purely obfuscation.  And it need not even be conscious…it simply is by the nature of the collectivist philosophy which underwrites the notion of a central governing authority.  Which, by its very nature, appeals to its AUTHORITY to act “on behalf of the people”.

Ah, but since the “people” is, and can only be, referred to in the collectivist sense–because no democratic government claims to represent the interest of just a person (“you” or “me”, individually)–then acting on behalf of the “people” (collective) really means acting on behalf of itself.  Why?  Well, because it alone possesses the mandate of force necessary to compel the group’s collective will upon society…which is to say, the environment.  And this mandate has been given to it by the collective, by the majority group, and not by any one person, or one citizen, in general.  Because any ONE person is, by definition, too small a minority to “elect” that which is being tasked with perpetuating upon the environment the will of the group.  It’s not your will, or any individual will, it cares about, because no such individual will has anything to do with a government that is elected by the people in the collectivist sense, which is the only sense the term “people” can have when we start talking about government…which is the Authority which acts on behalf of Group; and there is no such thing as a group of one. That is an obvious contradiction in terms.  This means that such an Authority can never act in service to YOU, yourSELF.

Your only hope then, once you’ve acceded to this governing Authority, is that it acts is in such a way that you happen agree with its actions; or that you are un-offended by them.  But by no means can you assume that the government acts on behalf of YOU as an individual, since it does not recognize YOU, individually, but only the collective it represents–which, being an abstraction, has nothing actually to do with YOU in the ontological sense at all. To vote then for a government to rule on behalf of the collective, which you as an individual must then by definition be completely and perpetually at metaphysical odds with, presents a very dangerous and intransigent existential dilemma.  You have, by conceding to the premise that man is, metaphysically (at the very irreducible heart of being) a function of the group, abdicated your ownership of Self; and moreover, you have abdicated the REALITY of Self.  You have denied your own fundamental material and ontological and self-evident Truth in favor of an abstraction.  You have rejected your own ability to interpret reality for the impostor of reality given to you by those called to rule you on behalf of the “people”, or  “society”, or the the “workers”, or the “disadvantaged”, or the “nation”, or the “kingdom”, or the “church”, or the “common good”.  You have willingly placed yourself inside the iron maiden of existential entrapment and have assumed as “truth” and as “benevolent” and as “moral” the idea that you, as an individual, are entirely insufficient to life.  You have agreed that you no longer get to be, in fact, you.

*

At any rate, since these politicians are vying for the job of ruling you, it seems odd that they would need to, fundamentally or relevantly, procure your permission for such a position.  You see, being ruled is, in fact, the polar opposite of being asked.  If you are asked, you can say no.  If you are ruled…well.  Try telling the IRS that you no longer permit them to draw taxes from your wages; try telling the politicians in Chicago that the gun on you hip is moral and justified because you simply chose to opt out of the article of city law which prohibits such items on your person.  Go ahead and see what happens when you try to “opt out” of the government you get to “freely” vote for; you get to “freely” choose; which “represents” “you”.  I’ll be sure to write you in prison; maybe send you a carton of cigarettes to barter for a week of chastity.  Or to smoke afterwards, whatever suits the situation.

To freely vote to be ruled is a contradiction in terms.  This is patently obvious.  Even if you assume that you have some say in how you are to be ruled (you don’t, if you are being rationally consistent to the idea of a governing authority which acts on behalf of the group), the fact is that since you cannot opt out and still be recognized as a free, legitimate, actual, relevant, moral, and equally ontologically valid self-aware being, voting to be ruled according to the ideas of the COLLECTIVE, even if you happen to agree with them, still must subordinate your individual identity to the identity of the group.  And since the group’s identity can only be manifest by the authorities “elected” to enforce it (that is, to make it “real”; that is, to manifest the group”s identity on reality; that is, to define reality), it is NEVER truly your will which is being expressed and rendered, but the collective’s.  And the logical conclusion of this is that the individual MUST be subordinated to the collective will.  And this cannot be done voluntarily because the individual cannot, by definition, from his singular frame of reference (his individual metaphysic) apprehend the reality of the collective.  Reality is a function of the collective, not the individual.  And those tasked with rendering reality are the proxies of the group, and no one else.  And those proxies are the rulers.  And rulers rule by authority, and authority is force, and force is violence.  Period.  Full stop.  And their authority is a direct function of the abstraction of the Collective, to enforce Collective Will UPON individuals, since it cannot enforce it upon the Collective, itself being a direct function of it.  The Collective and its ruling Authority are, in effect, one and the same.  They are corollaries.  They are sympatico.  It is not then the Collective which needs ruling, it is the individual.  The Collective is ALREADY the epitome of perfection.  It has no need to be ruled; it only has need to RULE.  And what does it rule?

You.

And you don’t see the destruction bearing down on you like a rolling thunderstorm just over the horizon because you are too busy worrying about who to vote for, and cheering the idea of “government of and by the people” as though its some kind of rational tribute to liberty.   But here’s the truth.  There is no “people”.  There is only you, and me, and he and she.  And we are not a collective, we simply are Self.  To vote to be ruled by a government committed to the electoral outcomes of a collective is to deny your very nature as a being of One.

And just how long do you think it takes before those in power recognize this dynamic, and realize that the collectivist philosophy to which they (and most of the citizens they “represent”) subscribe must place an insurmountable barrier between the individual and the collective which they have been called to represent?  Just how long do you think it takes them to realize thus that the individual citizen cannot possibly have any relevant or legitimate any say in the governing of the collective, be it through voting or any other means, because he is by definition contradictory to the GROUP?  Well, a casual glance at history will reveal the inexorable slide of every nation in every continent on the face of earth into the smoldering ruins of collectivist ideology (socialism, Marxism, fascism, feudalism, theocracies, monarchism, even democracies like, say…America). History would seem, then, to indicate that it takes very little time at all.  In fact, in my opinion, I’d say it takes on average less than two years after the formation of any society ruled by a central governing body before anything but an illusion of “representative” government, “elected” and doing the “will of the [individual] people”, remains.  And maybe even less than that.

*

Above, when I mentioned political debates at the very beginning of this essay you’ll have noticed that “debate” is in quotes.  This is because, to me, political debate is more like a grand advertisement for a product I don’t really need (a centralized juggernaut of force) but which I’m told I must have if I want to “fit in”.  And in this case “fit in”, means to possess an adequacy to my own existence.  In other words, if I don’t have some massive central governing apparatus with all its requisite leaders and rulers to define reality for me (e.g. tell me what to eat, to drink, to drive, to smoke (or not), who I can marry, when my kids are “properly educated”, and by what method, etc.), then I am doomed to death–the product of my inherent depravity.  In the religious sense, depravity means that I am the abstraction of evil in its visceral, material incarnation, and thus can do no good except I that am compelled by threats and force by God’s ministerial proxies “standing in His stead”.  In the political/governmental sense, my depravity is summed up by the generally unspoken but almost universally accepted notion that: Man MUST be governed; for without the collective (the group), led by its elected officials (the arbiters of the collective’s authority, which simply means that they rule, ultimately, by force) man cannot hope to survive.

The simpler translation of this is:  as an individual man does not possess the inherent tools to exist.  He needs the collective; and the collective, being purely an abstraction (because individual human beings are the only material, tangible, and visceral components of ANY group), needs its human rulers to manifest its authority (force) to regulate society (to define collective “reality”) in material reality in order that the infinitely depraved individual can survive.

Oh, what irony we live with!  The logical conclusion of this is: we must destroy the individual’s identity entirely in order that the individual may live. The individual doesn’t actually exist (and fundamentally cannot exist) because he possesses no relevancy to reality except that he be sacrificed to the Collective, in order to (ironically, and contrarily) ensure his survival.  For remember, the assumption in a democracy, though it is not openly admitted as such, is that man must be governed; thus, he cannot by nature provide any relevancy to reality because he is insufficient to his own existence as an individual.  Reality, you see, must be rendered only by the authority of the collective; because, again, it is impossible that the individual can render it because the individual, left to himself, MUST die off.

In fact, man’s death as an individual is so assured that one cannot make an argument that man as an individual can even be born at all.  For his insufficiency to existence is an infinite product of his very root nature; it is infinite ontological depravity; infinite existential insufficiency.  And because of this, it isn’t possible that man can be rationally considered as having any innate ability to be born as an individual AT ALL; since individuality and existence are, according to the operative collectivist philosophy, mutually exclusive. There is no birth into existence for that which is infinitely insufficient to existence.  There is no birth into existence for that which is infinitely unable to exist in the first place.

In other words, the collectivist metaphysic (and the root of all collectivist economic philosophies (socialism, Marxism, fascism, democracy even, dare I say)) demands, horrifically, that the real “abstraction”–the real “illusion”, is the individual.  The only “true reality” is the collective, which, through its agents of authority–rulers, leaders, officials, etc.– subordinate the abstract individual to the collective reality.  What YOU as an individual sense…what you as an individual claim to “know” from the singular existential frame of reference of SELF, is a lie.  Or an illusion.  Or a dream.  You have no say about reality because you, alone, individually, cannot possibly grasp reality by nature.  Your sole responsibility then is to subordinate yourself to the collective; or, more precisely, to those whom the collective has “called”  in order to meet you in your illusion–the individual human “authorities” which have been “elected”, or “appointed” or “called” or “divinely established”, or whatever, who have the human “form” you can recognize in your delusion.  And the reality is that all forms of such authority are ultimately rooted in force (violence) because, in your illusion and your infinite individual state of depravity, you cannot be trusted to actually ACT of your own volition in service to the “truth” of the collective.  For you, being infinitely depraved as a product of your infinite individual existence have no frame of reference for the understanding necessary to exercise volitional obedience.  So, even though ostensibly it looks as if your rulers are reasoning with you, and willing to reason, and entreating your vote, this is purely for show, whether they consciously know it or not.  Reason is utterly irrelevant when you have no choice but to obey.  Once they are elected, you either obey their collective mandates, or you, at best and if you are lucky, will find yourself deprived of the lion’s share of your material possessions.  In the end, however, the ultimate conclusion of such a system is always much, much worse, as history bears witness.   The sacrifice of the individual to the collective–which really means its human governing proxies–always becomes literal when all is finally said and done.

Take a long, pensive gaze at the dusky horizons of the past…look upon the smoldering civilizations littered across the crimson wastelands of human collectivist history.  It is always real blood spilled when those in power finally wake up and realize that there is only one “perfect” way to go about manifesting the “truth” of their “calling”.

How Does The Totally Depraved Person “Invite” or “Permit” the Counsel of the Divine Pastoral Authority?: Spiritual Marxism Masquerading as the Christian Orthodox Ideal, Part 16

General Philosophy, Metaphysics, , , , , , , , ,

“Or maybe you’ve watched a friend make an ill-advised purchasing decision.  It’s amazing how we can have such clear insight into the poor choices of our friends and family members.  If you’re connected to other people, there’s a good chance somebody has equally clear insight into implications of the decisions you’re faced with.  The only way to benefit from their clear thinking–the only way to avoid the deceitfulness of sin–is to invite their input…

We must understand that solid commitments and deep convictions just aren’t enough…  Who, outside of your family, has permission to talk to you and challenge you, if need be, about the things going on in your life?  Who’s close enough to warn you if you begin to drift?”

(Community:  Your pathway to progress, pp. 33, 34. North Point Ministries, 2008)

Notice the irony implicit in the use of these words…the ones I’ve put into bold print above:  “invite”, “permission”.

Do you see it?

Not yet?  Okay, let me give you another hint.

“–the only way to avoid the deceitfulness of sin–is to invite their input.”

Do you see it now?

Well, certainly some of you do.  For those of you who do not, don’t feel bad.  It’s really not a measure of your perceptive capabilities, nor your intellect.  It’s more a measure of how these spiritual Marxists excel at deception, which is the modern currency with which they buy their followers.  It has taken me years to develop my skills at spotting the fly in the ointment from a mile away, and your erudition will develop as well, in due time.  And once you see it…well, you will not be able to un-see it.  You will be called a skeptic, a doubter, a conspiracy theorist, overreacting, presumptive, and paranoid.  But what you’ll really be is smart.  What you’ll really be is someone who they can no longer exploit in service to there own interminable worldly appetites.

Notice the incongruent and contradictory relationship between a metaphysic which declares that you are, at the very fundamental root of your nature–your being, your existential seed–utterly insufficient to existence to the point where if you are not fully integrated into the Christian Marxist hive (the “church”) you can make no claim to existence at all, nor to the idea that you must “invite” or “give permission” to the collective (“the body”; “the nation”, the “race”, the “tribe”, the “people”, the “workers”…but in this case, specifically, the divine proxy known as the “small group”, which answers directly to the North Point Ministry autocracy known as the Pastorate, ruled by the Protestant Pope, the “Senior Pastor”).

Understand that you cannot make a claim that any one in possession of a “sinful nature”, which is the full sum and substance of his existence, has any natural right to invite people who MUST intervene in order to compel integration to the the group for that person’s “own good” (remember, according to the text I quoted, other people (the collective) inserting themselves into your life is the ONLY way to avoid the deceitfulness of sin).

Here’s a thought:  In order for one to give permission to the group to perform the daily ritual of intervention one must possess the inherent intellectual and psychological faculties necessary to determine truth from fiction, and good from evil.  But notice also how impossible this must be for someone whose nature is TOTALLY Depraved.  Who functions, above all else, always and entirely according to a “sin nature” which is utterly destructive to the individual, to the point where any rational “existence” by such an entirely debauched individual is fully impossible.

You see, since your depravity is infinite and absolute, there is no way to define SELF as somehow distinct from it.  This being the case, there can be no one who is capable of of the kind of intellectual and psychological attributes necessary to discern reality enough in order to make an invitation or to give permission to anything, or anyone, regarding any doctrine whatsoever.  Since you are entirely a function of your depravity, you must be blind to whatever “benevolent” reality North Point Ministries is so arrogantly and deceptively and so fucking blithely asking you to choose to “invite” into your life.   And this is because you, being entirely a function of your absolute depravity, cannot be distinct from it. Which means there is no way for you to discern reality at all, in order to make a value judgement concerning which group you “invite” to speak to you, and to ensure your safe travels upon the road of righteousness…a road which you must inevitably miss unless you “invite” the collective’s leadership to lead (force) you upon it.  But to be able to invite–to be able to give permission–is to be able to see the road to salvation for yourself.  But it is clear by the appeals to the metaphysic of man’s total depravity that this is simply not possible.  According to the doctrine of Total Depravity, and the adherence to the idea of the abject Fall of Man, and the categorical acceptance of man’s Original Sin which thus MUST determine man to self-destruction in the form of infinite and interminable torment in hell fire, man is no more inherently capable of seeing the road to salvation than he is of flying to the moon by flapping his arms.  In which case to “invite” the Small Group to come along and assist him in traversing it is obviously and demonstrably impossible.

Make no mistake then, the words “invite” and “permission” are simply there as tools used by these tyrants to diffuse skepticism.  To deceive people into thinking that there is some kind of cooperation being effected here.  This is the kind of conscious and intentional deception these evil institutions use to coerce otherwise intelligent men and women into surrendering the entirety of their lives and resources to the wolves who in past centuries and in past societies would have skipped the sophism and propaganda altogether and simply used threats of violence to compel people into the pews, and murdered those who refused or dissented.

*

“To invite their input”.

Listen, diplomatic terms like “invite” imply that one by natural right has full possession of his life and property.  Indeed, it implies that the only means by which anyone can legitimately seek to influence you–and the purposes and promises and objectives you have set for yourself by your own ideas and your own volition as an autonomous, fully sentient and fully competent agent–is to seek your permission; to entreat your invitation.  And this not by sophism or by deceit, but by appealing to your sense of Self…that is, by appealing to the idea that what they are proposing is that which brings value to the realization of your own existence, in a way which ultimately benefits YOU.  And by YOU–by Self–I mean one who is fully capable to his or her own existence, by nature, and thus possesses fully the means by which to discern fact from fiction, and therefore good from evil; one who employs reason as a means by which to promote the Self, which is the only rational context of existence, and that promoting Self, then, is the very definition of morality.

A casual examination of the doctrines of Protestant Orthodoxy reveals that this definition of Self utterly incompatible with the religion.  There is simply no fucking way any professing Protestant in good standing can with a straight face describe man’s Self the way I have done so above.  The metaphysic of man as an agent fully aware of himself, fully in possession of epistemological faculties resulting in a right and good discernment of truth, could not be further from the metaphysic of Christianity today, which makes no pretense of any notion of man which does not fully condemn him to abject self-annihilation to the point of rendering man fully non-existent even upon his birth, due to his categorical and singular fusion with the abstractions of “depravity”, “evil”, “fallen”, “insufficient”, “unable”, and “unholy”. In other words, the metaphysical presumptions endemic and categorical in Christianity today (and every day since Augustine, for that matter), which guide the entirety of the doctrinal cannon espoused in churches across the globe scream in bloodcurdling fashion a contradiction to the notion that anyone has any right, or any rational, psychological, or intellectual means, to “invite” or “give permission”.

I mean, the absurdity of it all makes one question whether or not he is awake or still in bed dreaming.

Nevertheless, this is what is touted.  And this is what people accept as reasonable.  This is what Christians pass off as “truth”.

God help us.

Look, it’s very simple.  The church today all but announces with every worship song and in every sermon in every church in America that you have no motherfucking right to self ownership. And that the sum and substance of all evil is to be found in the presumption that man is somehow an actual sentient and fully capable agent, fully divested with and fully sufficient to self ownership and thus possesses the necessary right to his own life…to do with it what he or she pleases in whatever fashion he or she decides, and that since in the name of rational consistency, ALL men and women must have this very same natural right, there can be no such thing as the idea that rationally and morally working out one’s existence can somehow violate the right of another human being to manifest his or her own existence; and that this, and nothing else, is the rational means to both individual existence, and the co-existence of individuals with other individuals.

No.  The church today will die, literally and figuratively, upon this hill:  that existence is fully a function of a metaphysic contrary to self-ownership and the sufficiency to one’s own existence, and that without the FORCE (the violent coercion) by those men who don title’s such as “Minister” or “Pastor” or “Father” and appoint themselves as divine proxies and then proceed to demand that the laity make no practical distinction between proxy and Deity, there can be no such thing as a human race at all.

So know this:

When they say “invite”, they mean they will invite themselves.

When they say “permission”, they mean they will permit themselves.

They will help themselves to a full portion of your life and property, because that, by their own doctrine, is their divine right.  And whatever you want?  Whatever you decide on your own behalf?

Doesn’t exist.

“Existence Exists”: The axiom which fails its own assertion, and why the “Law of Identity” and “Law of Non-Contradiction” collectivize reality, and thus do NOT identify and DO contradict

Metaphysics, , , , , ,

A simple Google search using this criteria “existence exists” yielded this result at the top of the page, from Importance of Philosophy.com.

“Existence exists is an axiom which states that there is something, as opposed to nothing.  At the core of every thought is the observation that “I am aware of something”.  The very fact that one is aware of something is the proof that something in some form exists–that existence exists–existence being all that which exists.  Also, to grasp the thought, “I am aware of something” you must be conscious.  Existence is axiomatic because it is necessary for all knowledge and it cannot be denied without conceding its truth.  To deny existence is to say that something doesn’t exist.  A denial of existence is only possible if existence exists.

To exist, an existent (an entity that exists) must have a particular identity.  A thing cannot exist without existing as something, otherwise it would be nothing and it would not exist.  In the statement “something exists”, the something refers to the axiom of identity and the exists  refers to the axiom of existence.  They cannot be separated and are like two sides of the same coin or two ways of understanding the same axiom.”

At first cursory glance, this notion of “existence exists” is rock solid.  So much so that scarcely anyone tries to disprove it, let alone succeeds.  The question begged then is: If this metaphysical axiom is so thoroughly rational, and so thoroughly complete, why has its effects not been felt more distinctly (if at all) upon the world today, in all aspects of man’s life, and particularly  his ethics and his politics?  Why does the world seem to slide faster and faster with each passing moment into the abyss of collectivist ideologies which demand a categorical refutation of such a metaphysic, whereby nothing at all can be said to exist except it be thus declared by a few men who have been “called”, somehow, to lead the unenlightened (un-elected) masses into right thinking and behavior by appealing not to reason, not to notions of “existence”, but to their right to possess a monopoly of violence, granted them via their authority as a function of their priestly position? For it seems that at the root of every major political, social, or economical school of thought today is the idea that the human individual belongs first to some collective–an abstraction–by which he obtains his identity:  the Race, the Religion (the Saved, the Called), the Sovereign Will, the Laws of Nature, the Party, the [select your flavor of socio-economic category], the Nation, the Gang, the Club…etc., etc.  You get the idea.

For truly if man is first and foremost his collective then he cannot ever really consider himself apart from it.  For the collective (or in actuality, those who are somehow infused with the “enlightenment” of the abstraction in order that they may speak for it, as the mediator between the Ideal and the Masses) is in charge of not only what man does but who he is, and therefore, of what he thinks.  Which means the individual cannot have a unique and distinct existence, which means that he cannot claim that any particular thing exists, because he cannot possibly be in the epistemological place to know, having no unique SELF by which to reference the definition of what it is being claimed to exist. In such a collectivist metaphysic then, it is impossible to make the claim that “existence exists” because “existence” is the sole jurisdiction of an abstraction of which man the individual can have nothing to do.  Because there is really no such thing as “man” proper, himself.

Keeping that in mind, to claim that existence exists we must proclaim that man, the individual, is capable of apprehending that which is said to exist, in and of itself, because he, himself, has his own distinct existence.  So, by this, he is in a position to know.  Since he IS, he can know his environment and all the things in it, by the context of him SELF, which is not collective, but is, in fact, distinct and singular.

In short, if we say “existence exists” we must concede that each individual possesses, and is sufficiently capable of, his own autonomous existence and therefore cannot first and foremost be the extension of a collective which functions by the “enlightenment” of a select ecclesiasty on behalf of the abstract Ideal which is said to be the source of all reality.

Therefore, it would seem, at least if you take the Aristotellian’s and Objectivist’s and Empricist’s word for it, that existence exists = individual identity = the individual as the moral and rational reference.  And this sounds very good, and indeed, the conclusion that the Self of the individual is the Standard of Truth and thus Morality is the only rationally consistent metaphysical, epistemological, and moral conclusion.

So…er…why is this not the overwhelmingly prevailing metaphysic today?  Why, if “existence exists” is so gosh darn impenetrable and flawlessly cohesive an absolute, as the smug little blurb posted above implies, do so many people obviously reject it?  Are they all imbeciles?  Are they all indoctrinated or programmed by their Marxists handlers?  Are they all willfully depraved?  Are they too committed to the lie? Do they have too much of their life’s blood at stake in the Marxist game to concede the genius and irrefutable reasoning of Aristotle and all his progenies?

Or…could it be something else?

Could it be that the assumption that “existence exists” is woefully inadequate at best as a metaphysical axiom?  Could it be that for years that what has been thought to be the final word on metaphysical truth is actually not, in fact, the final word.  Or, even worse, perhaps is fundamentally an appeal to the metaphysical “reality” of abstract Ideals in disguise, which demands a collectivist existence for each and every one of us and thus dooms us to a life of exploitation and annihilation?

For me, I aver that it is this last one.  That “existence exists”, because it groups all things into a fundamental abstract category of “existence”, must itself be inadequate when it comes to defining the very “things” it claims exist.

Look at it this way:

According to the notion that “existence exists”, what defines things is their collective, not individual, existence. However, notice that the notion also appeals to distinct or individual identity.  This poses a problem because it incorporates a fundamental contradiction.

You see, what exists individually, if it truly has a “nature” or “identity” which is fundamentally distinct from all other things, cannot actually co-exist with those other things unless its “existence” ultimately subordinates said nature/identity.  And thus the contradiction is this: A thing cannot exist absolutely distinct from other things by its “nature” and yet at the same time posses absolutely equal and indistinguishable “existence” as that of all other things which are said to exist.  In such a case, we are forced to somehow reconcile distinction and inclusion; collective existence with singular identity within a given context: the object in question.  This…just doesn’t work.  A is A, so goes the claim.  However A cannot be utterly A if A shares existence collectively with B, C, D, and so on.  And if it doesn’t share its existence…meaning if its existence is not fundamentally identical, and thus fundamentally indistinct, from all other objects then the claim that existence exists cannot be universal to all objects.  Since all objects only possess existence as a function of their own distinct nature, they cannot actually co-exist since the distinction is absolute.  In which case, existence as an axiom is impossible.  However, if the distinction of identity is subordinated to collective existence, then A is only A subjectively so; meaning A cannot be A unless A is also B, C, D and so on, inexorably connected by collective, indistinguishable existence.

And this is what I mean when I say that the metaphysic of “existence” is simply inadequate, and that’s being kind.  In its attempt to define existence by appealing to fundamental distinctions of nature it commits a moral logically fallacy…an irreparable contradiction in terms which renders the metaphysic a complete failure.  Certainly, it is in no way an axiom.  For any idea which relies upon contradiction in order to validate itself as “true” becomes irrelevant, and therefore, not true by definition.  For that which is utterly irrelevant (meaning it cannot possess even a contextual relevancy) cannot have any objective purpose in reality or in actuality.   Even according to the Aristotelian standards upon which it is based the idea “existence exists” is a failure.

Laws of Identity and Non-Contradiction are Not Compatible with the Metaphysic of Existence:

Once one claims “existence”, one must answer the question “what exists?”  And as soon as the that question enters into the equation, the notion of existence as the irreducible metaphysic collapses.  Because what is distinct, absolutely, by individual “identity”, cannot be integrated by absolute collective “existence”.  The metaphysic thus fails Aristotle’s Law of both Identity AND Non-Contradiction.  It fails the law of Identity because the object which is collective by its existence must be equal and indistinguishable from all other objects in order for existential interaction and integration to occur, and therefore it can have no individual or distinct identity, because it is always and fundamentally sharing the collective existence.  Further, it fails the law of Non-Contradiction on both the ontological and semantic levels.  An object is not ontologically distinct if it shares existence; and it is not semantically distinct if it is conceptually X because it is NOT Y.  Meaning, an object, like a rock, cannot be defined as a rock in a vacuum of itself.  A rock, in a vacuum, has no relevant nature…no relevant identity.  It becomes infinitely a rock, in which case, “rock-ness” is meaningless.  Infinite rock is functionally equal to NO or ZERO rock.  A rock is only relevantly, and thus rationally and truthfully, a rock if it can be juxtaposed to something which is NOT a rock:  This is a rock: that is a sandwich.  Only in this context can a thing’s nature…a thing’s identity, be relevant and therefore true.

So, in essence, “existence exists” is really a collectivist platitude, which demands that all things which are said to individually exist ultimately share, collectively, both existence and identity. Which means that fundamentally there is no such actual thing as either.

And this is why the metaphysic of “existence” has failed, is failing, and will always fail.  It fails the very test of its own assertion.  That is, it claims one thing but demands something else.  It claims the truth of the individual but demands obedience to the collective.

Truth Can Never Serve Under the Auspices of Authority

General Philosophy, , , ,

Read the title to this essay one more time.

I asked you to do this because it is very important to understand; and it is also important to understand that for all the words of this essay, it really is that simple, and it really does come back to that basic point.

Truth can never serve under the auspices of authority.

What does this mean?

Well, it means precisely what it says.  Truth does not serve, nor can it it serve, authority.  And this is because the two concepts are antipodal.  They are entirely opposite.  One, truth, is reasonable.  The other, authority, is violence…and violence by its very nature rejects reason because once it is injected there is no more discussion–for discussion ultimately becomes moot.  And once discussion is moot there is nothing left to talk about.  And naturally if there is nothing left to talk about then reason, which uses concepts, which uses words, is irrelevant.

Let me put it another way, this time in the form of a question:

Is appealing to authority the same thing as appealing to truth?

The answer of course is “no”.  And this is because truth and authority are entirely difference concepts, and, again, I aver that they are antipodal concepts.  If we attempt to integrate them we are attempting to integrate complete opposites.  To say that authority can incorporate truth on the practical level (like, say, in the neo-Reformed, neo-Calvinist Church) is like saying that left can incorporate right or that up can incorporate down on the practical level.  It’s a logical impossibility simply because one is considered the very opposite of the other.  That is, practically realized, if we empirically observe one we cannot, at the same time, observe the other from our frame of reference.

In the same way, no one can appeal to their authority whilst claiming to wield that authority by being in possession of truth.  This is because truth cannot be a function of authority, and vice versa. Just like up cannot be a function of down and left cannot be a function of right.  If someone appeals to authority to direct your behavior, he can never appeal to truth as that by which he also directs that behavior.  And the opposite of course is true.

What is authority?  Well, I have heard it said best by John Immel of SpiritualTyranny.com:  Authority is force.  And in this case, the reality is that authority is nothing more than a euphemism for threatening.  To claim authority is necessarily to threaten your life.  If you do not obey authority, you forfeit your existence.  Period.  For without that implicit (or explicit) understanding, there is no such thing as authority in the first place.  There is no appealing to authority ever, past, present, or future, anywhere in the world, where obedience to authority is optional.  If it’s optional, then the authority has no inherent right to compel outcomes in service to itself.  Or put another way, if authority is not authorized to compel outcomes in service to itself then it cannot, by definition, claim to be an authority.

What this means is that if I tell you that you must do X or Y because I am in authority over you, what I am actually saying is that I claim the right to force (violence) you to do X or Y. My authority grants me the right (and the “moral” right is implied) to compel your behavioral outcomes by force, whether you want to do them or not.  And of course, if I can force you into the behavior I desire then there is no sense in reasoning with you.  There is no sense in convincing you that you should do what I ask because its the more rational thing to do.  Again, reason, which is the formulation of truth, is beside the point.

I understand that there are those who will disagree with this assertion. However, I maintain that under the scope of someone’s authority any attempts to reason with those he claims are subordinate to his authority cannot possibly be ultimately reasonable.  Now matter how reasonable the argument may be in and of itself, once it is coupled with authority it becomes subordinate to force.  Meaning that the only reason one who is in authority over you might appeal to a rational argument in order to convince you to behave in a manner he desires is because in the present context, whatever it may be,  it is more expedient or efficacious to use ostensibly benign words and ideas to compel your behavior than physical violence or threats of violence. Thus, reason, when existing under the auspices of authority, becomes an artifice, nothing more.

Why is this?

It is because authority has only one rational practical outcome, and that is to compel obedience independent of and rendering inert the individual’s will; while reason (and its logical conclusion, truth), also has only one rational practical outcome, and that is to to affirm the morality, utility, and efficacy of the individual will as necessary to his identity as a human being and thus as necessary to human existence both individually and collectively.  Reason exists only to serve the individual–who, because he possesses an absolute and singular frame of reference for life, himSELF, must be the Standard of Truth and Morality– in order that he may manifest his own life as he chooses, to the promotion, profit, and perpetuation of that life.

The equation, for clarity’s sake, can be rendered something like this:

Authority = Force, while Force = Violence.  Violence compels outcomes, and these outcomes are then described as acts of “obedience” to the authority (though this is, in fact, merely a bastardization of the idea).   Violence to compel outcomes in service to authority necessarily disregards the will of the recipients of that violence.  Meaning that once violence is sanctioned as a moral tool to coerce an outcome, human volition is irrelevant.  You will obey or you will be forced to obey.  And if you cannot be forced, well…the only logical conclusion is your death.  If your purpose is to serve the authority whether you want to or not, simply because he is the authority, and you refuse to fulfill your purpose, the logical extension of the right to compel by violence is the right to murder those who will not be compelled, even by violence.

If your will is subordinated then to authority–which it is, otherwise authorities could not claim authority in the first place, as appeals to authority are ALWAYS and ALWAYS an appeal to force–then your very life, your very existence, which is dependent upon your own will in order to render and make choices to determine the outcomes of your life as an individual, moment by moment, becomes subject to the claimed authority.  And not just some of your life, but all of it.

It is impossible for an authority to claim the right to your will only contextually.  As a function of your very nature, at any given moment you are acting under the capacity of your own volition, and this entirely.  Or, said differently, your volitional decisions affect the entirety of your existence at any given moment.  Thus, to claim the right to compel your actions by force via an appeal to authority, and thus the right to disregard your will at a specific moment in time is to, if we take the premise to its logical conclusion, claim the right to disregard your will at all times.

I might render this idea this way:  To command your will by force is to command your mind by force.  And if your mind can be commanded by force then your cognitive assumptions by which you exist, and exist entirely, can be commanded by force.  And and since the entirety of your actions are dictated by the fundamentals of what you believe, and these fundamentals, like the rest of you, are subject to the authority, your entire life in all respects and all contexts becomes sacrificed, necessarily, to he who claims the right to compel you by his authority.  Anyone who claims the right to force the outcomes of your existence claims the right to govern, redefine, and/or eradicate your basic assumptions.  And since these assumptions are universal to your entire existence, he who claims authority in a specific context of your life must in reality be claiming it in all contexts.

Therefore, you must understand that when you place yourself, under an “authority”, you have committed functional suicide.  If someone else places you under authority, he has committed functional murder. You have ceased to exist, because your independent volition–your free will–governed by your own assumptions, has been eradicated and replaced by a proxy who claims, at his fundamental philosophical root, the right to murder you at any place, time, and for any reason.

And this is the real point of authority.  Authority is force and force is control, and that control can only be in service to that which claims ownership of you.  And to own you is to dispose of you.  Whether that dispossession is literal or figurative, as far as you are concerned, the outcome is the same:  eradication of SELF.

*

Because HE, the authority, decides you should do something, and YOU are utterly subject to his authority, you must do it, and when you are doing it you are doing it because, and for the sole reason, that he has claimed to the right to force you.  Whether you want to is beside the point.  Your choice is irrelevant, and so your will is irrelevant.  You act only–and for no other reason than because he can make you act.  For YOU are irrelevant because YOU have no actual say in the matter. Even if you agree, agreement is irrelevant when self-ownership is irrelevant.  The slave who agrees to do his master’s work because he “loves” the master is no less a slave than the slave who does so grudgingly because he fears the whips and shackles.

Willingly obeying appeals to authority it is the death of SELF in the practical, pragmatic sense; while refusing to do it is the death of SELF in the literal sense.  But the practical sense is the corollary to the literal sense.  In other words, to you, the outcome is the same:  the absence of YOU.  As I said earlier.

My friends…my readers…please, please remember this.  Anyone who claims authority over you, for any reason, cannot possibly be appealing to truth.  And if they are not appealing to truth there is no possible way they can have your interest in mind.  To accept an authority is to accept death.  Period.  Full stop.

All legitimate ideas will be ideas that are paradigms of consistently integrated concepts all affirming the right of the only legitimate Standard of Truth and Morality, the Individual SELF, to be promoted, affirmed, and prospered.  Truly there are GOOD universal mores to follow…truly there are moral actions which demand praise and imitation, and evil ones which demand justice and recompense and rejection.  But these are always a function of reason, and reason is always a function of the right of the individual to own his own life, fully and freely, full stop.  Truth, goodness, and meaningful outcomes are NEVER a function of authority.  Ever.

Whatever you believe and do, believe it and do it only because it serves you, practically, in the way in which you desire, and freely so.  Do not believe it and do it because someone threatens you with violence or pain or misery or death for not believing or doing it.  In such a case, you can be sure that there is NOTHING actually there to believe or do in the first place, because in such a scenario there is NO YOU to believe it or do it at all.

Where “Begging” Means Threats and “Imploring” Means Force: Collectivism masquerading as the Christian Orthodox Ideal, Part 15

Calvinism/Philosophy, Epistemology, , , , , , ,

I quote the following from  pages 32, 33  of  the booklet “Community: Your pathway to progress”, published by North Point Ministries, 2008:

“Let’s face it; we’re all prone to wander.  Commitment and conviction just aren’t enough to keep us from drifting.  If they were, we would be far skinnier and richer…Two out of three functioning legs on our proverbial spiritual stools just aren’t enough to support the weight of our lives.  We need the third leg of connection if we’re to remain upright.

‘See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.  But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. (Hebrews 3:12-13)’

We are corporately commanded to encourage one another.  The Greek word that’s translated into English as “encourage” is not the equivalent of a slap on the back…Rather, it’s an urgent appeal, an exhortation–a begging even.  The author implores us to join with a group of people willing to do whatever it takes to keep each other faithful.  It assumes a connection where accountability is welcomed and reciprocated.”

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Aaaaaaand…we’re back.  Welcome, my friends, to another episode of “How Many Presumptions, Contradictions, Deceptions, and Spurious Explications Can We Pass Off as Sound Doctrine”, brought to you by our esteemed mystic sponsor, straight from the hot and sunny nether coast of Hell itself, North Point Ministries.

*[Applause]*

Back to our show.

First things first. Let’s get the ostensible contradiction out of the way, and then we’ll deal with the larger issue.

Notice this portion of the quote:

“It [encouragement] is not the equivalent of a slap on the back…Rather, it’s an urgent appeal, an exhortation–a begging even.”

Now notice how the author(s) italicize the word “begging” for emphasis…that is not something I added.

Now, here’s the next part of the quote I would like to bring to your attention:

“The author [of Hebrews] implores us to join with a group of people willing to do whatever it takes to keep each other faithful.  It assumes a connection where accountability is welcomed and reciprocated.”

Let me give you a few minutes to use your impressive powers of observation and reason (and I’m not being sarcastic here…I understand well the rational faculties of my readers) to note the ostensible contradiction; and then to discern why contradiction is not really the problem, it is how they render the verse with respect to the Reformed epistemology of:

Encouragement = Accountability = Authority = Force (“whatever it takes”) = Obedience = “Real” Faith = “Salvation” = Encouragement = Accountability…and the cycle simply repeats itself (this is known in today’s counter-movement, The Truth About New Calvinism, fronted by the ineffable Paul Dohse from paulspassingthoughts.com, as the heretical, yet never expressly named, doctrine of “progressive justification”).

Okay…I’ll assume you’ve completed your examination, and commence to explicate what you’ve very likely apprehended already, but perhaps not in so many words.

The first issue this article will explore is, again, the ostensible contradiction.  If the “sinner” is in a collective of people who all, including the hypothetical “sinner” in question, welcome and reciprocate “accountability”, then why does the “sinner” need to be begged and implored to keep himself from sin’s allure VIA collective accountability within his community group?  Refraining from sin is a function of collective accountability, which, North Point Ministries says, is a function of small groups full of people who “welcome” and “reciprocate” such accountability.  So why all the begging?

As I understand it, to “welcome” and “reciprocate” something specifically indicates a prominent willingness to engage in that thing.

For example, you don’t, by definition, need to beg me to go to the coffee shop with you if I’ve already welcomed your invitation.  In the same way, if I then reciprocate the invitation, you don’t need to iterate or reiterate the practical, absolute, and/or relative benefits of coffee shop patronage.  This is what we colloquially call “preaching to the choir”.  I’ve already conceded the the value of coffee shopping with you, and welcomed and reciprocated the idea.  So why beg and implore? To beg someone who’s already said yes is actually counterproductive to the issue.  If you beg and plead in the face of rank acquiescence then you certainly show yourself a madman…one of which should be avoided at all costs, up to and including a restraining order.  Which means that your encouragement to a given end is beside the point.  You are insane and so must be, by logical extension, your ideas and avocations and group affiliations.  You don’t need to beg for something you already possess, is my point.  For all you Reformed Christians, you should save your begging for Judgement Day, because on that day, since your salvation is completely arbitrary, you might need it.

Then again, I suppose by the fact that Reformed “salvation” is by God’s arbitrary whim, and has nothing whatsoever to do with you, because you are evil personified according to your very own metaphysic of Total Depravity, you probably won’t.

At any rate, notice that the contradiction is, again, purely ostensible.  It’s not really what the author(s) are saying here.  And this is why we must be so very careful not to get involved with this movement (Reformed theology, especially new Calvinism). Because, for all of their sophism and the buckets upon buckets of cognitive dissonance, they are very good at presenting their appeals to their absolute authority and divine right to coerce you into their will by FORCE and VIOLENCE and INTIMIDATION as something to which you must personally agree and something which somehow involves your voluntary participation and permission and valued contribution.  They have had years to perfect their surreptitious approach, and they wield their subliminally seductive style as masterfully as a snake wields its technique of hiding perfectly still, with prodigious patience, until its prey is within striking distance and is utterly, utterly helpless.

You see, North Point Ministries is not actually engaging in contradiction here.  They are not suggesting that you be begged and implored to walk the straight and narrow path of righteousness and holiness.  They are begging and imploring you to affiliate with a North Point Ministries “community” group (also known variously as “care”, “small”, or “home” groups depending on which neo-Calvinist church you attend)…and in that group is where you will find a group of consciously or subconsciously indoctrinated thugs who intend to “do whatever it takes” to keep each other “faithful”.

And this phrase “whatever it takes” should naturally terrify us.  A cursory glance at the internet reveals just what “whatever” includes.  Specifically, I invite you to read John Immel’s article on spiritualtyranny.com which examines the history of former Sovereign Grace Ministries pastor, Larry Tomczak, and the terrifying horror show of his split from his employer.  A Hollywood script-writer could scarcely envision a more sinister and dystopian plot…one which involved, among other things, the abject crime of blackmail, whereupon Tomczak’s very child was used as leverage.  Indeed, Wes Craven, God rest his soul, would have been hard pressed to conjure up a greater form of evil in his prodigious imagination.

And these are the men who are going to beg you to do anything?  As if! You will all obey or you will, sooner or later, suffer the consequences of your temerity.  And so will your family and anyone who dares call you “friend”.

This is not to exonerate Tomczak, mind you.  As far as I’m aware he is a fully unrepentant Calvinist in his own right, who appealed to the very same right of pastoral authority as those who sought his excruciating demise until that authority was turned upon him.  And much like the serial killer who ironically begs for his life before being forced, bawling and blubbering and dripping with snot and spit, into the electric chair, Tomczak begged for absolution from his own Calvinist ideas without ever substantially rejecting them, and which demanded his treatment at the hands of SGM, and demanded that he affirm their actions as just.  The irony is just so glorious, and yet so overlooked by these people.

The point I am making is that when these mystic tyrants declare that they will do “whatever it takes”, they mean “whatever it takes”; and we would do well to remember this.  When you get down to the root of it, belonging to a church in America today is almost certainly not about salvation…or love, or peace, or prayer, or charity, or compassion, or encouragement, or acceptance, or benevolence, or counsel.  It is about Authority, and Authority is Force, and Force is always and fundamentally DEstructive.  It is NEVER CONstructive.  I promise you this:  should you involve yourself in the Reformed movement, with its appeals to the metaphysic of man’s Total and Pervasive Depravity, you will be removed from yourself, one way or another.  The point of the ministry is not to exonerate you before God, but to set you before Him–which means THEM, as they are “standing in His stead”, eradicating the difference from your point of view–for the purpose of abject, summary, and categorical destruction; and this after they have taken from you as much free labor and mammon as they can possibly get into their grubby little hands.

So…once you have been love-bombed into the church, and then “begged” and “implored” (which…hilarious choice of words because, as a church member, you have no real choice in the matter; you WILL join the community group or you WILL be ostracized, at best, and quite possibly thought of and pitied as an unsaved, devil-worshiping apostate)…yes, once you are in the church and then “begged” into your quaint little harem of “community”, the question which remains is: Why is it that you feel so obligated to “welcome” and “reciprocate” the “accountability” (sin-sniffing/relentless skepticism) within that “community”?

The answer by now should be self-evident.

Fear.

The fear of violence.  The fear of intimidation.  The fear of ostracism.  The fear of excommunication.  The fear of their Authority to pronounce you hell-bound for all eternity, whilst God and His proxies rejoice and eat s’mores over the perpetual combustion chamber which is your ass.

*

“…it’s an urgent appeal, and exhortation–a begging even.”

Now, this is where the suspension of disbelief is absolutely necessary.  For if we concede the metaphysic of man’s Total Depravity, we must concede the fact that man is entirely insufficient to existence.  He can DO no good because he can KNOW no good.  And he cannot KNOW good because he cannot DO good.  Knowing and doing—-assumptions and actions, are corollaries.  If man can know good then he must be able to observe the outcomes of good assumptions, for assumptions do not exist in a vacuum of themselves.  And the only way good assumptions can, in fact, be understood as good is to observe them efficacious to a good end.  And to observe good outcomes man must concede that they are good with respect to his own inexorable existential frame of reference: himSELF.  Which means that the outcomes of those good assumptions are such that man must directly and materially (meaning, in his body) benefit from those assumptions.  Which means at the very least man must be able to actively engage in said outcomes, even if he is not the direct cause.

In order for you to receive a good gift, for example, you must be able to enjoy it.  And enjoying something requires a material, behavioral interaction with it.  The emotional satisfaction one gets from a gift is only possibly if that gift can be physically engaged in some form or another.  And if this is true, and it is, then man’s body cannot be totally depraved because it is precisely man’s body which is the means by which man manifests practically and relevantly the good things he is given.  All of this is merely to say that there is no such thing as a man who can KNOW good but can never actually, practically, DO good.  For even simply enjoying a gift of God must involve not just the mind, but the body. That is, recognizing the goodness of a gift is only possible if man can physically receive it; and to willingly receive a good gift is, in fact, to DO a good thing. That good thing is: acknowledging the goodness of the gift and to physically accept it, or to emotionally or intellectually accept it (as in receiving the “good news”) and then apply its implications practically, which requires the action of the body…or doing, in the very physical and material sense.  I have said it before and I will say it again:  There can be no assumption without a corresponding behavioral action.  If there is absolutely no corresponding action, then the assumption is not, in fact, assumed.  This is axiomatic (and complex…and warrants several articles, if not more, in its own right).

But if we concede that man is totally depraved, then neither acknowledging nor doing anything good is possible.  Since man is governed entirely by his sinful nature (his depraved metaphysic), he possesses no capacity to choose between a good thing or a bad thing, be it an actual object or a message, and then to act upon that choice because he is entirely a product of his depravity.  Moral choice is precluded in such a case.  Man IS his evil.  There is NO distinction between man and depravity.  And since what IS depraved MUST always choose depravity, there is no such thing as choice at all.  If you must always choose coffee over tea, because your cognition (“consciousness”) is a product not of your capacity to be self-aware and to rightly evaluate your environment with respect to the absolute reference of your own SELF-context, then the very notion of “choice” becomes ineffectual.  It becomes moot.  A total contradiction; practically and relevantly impossible.

And since this is the case when we concede Total Depravity, what is the point in begging?  What is the point in imploring?  You cannot implore the rock not to fall any more than you can implore the wave not to crash.  You cannot beg the ice cream not to melt in the summer heat any more than you can beg the cream not to ice in the sub-zero temperatures of a winter’s day.  You cannot beg the flame not to devour the match or the shark not to devour the wounded sea lion. They do not respond to begging or exhortation because they are not capable of choosing.  It is in their nature to do the very thing you implore them not to do; in which case there is no such relevant thing, to their absolute frame of reference, their nature, as begging.

The only effective action is FORCE.

We must force the flame not to devour the match by snuffing it out.  We must force the shark not to devour the sea lion by either killing it, making a pretense of killing it and thus appealing to its survival instinct, or placing a barrier between it and the sea lion.  We force the ice cream not to melt by sticking it in the freezer.  We force the rock not to fall by moving it, or by stretching a steel net across it.

In the same way, the ecclesiastical leadership at North Point Ministries absolutely know that begging and imploring are useless tactics against the unwashed, depraved masses.

And even more, we must understand that in the context of the Reformed doctrine held by North Point Ministries, begging and imploring are not reasoning.  They, themselves, become a very means of force.  A cajoling by deception; a manipulation of man’s instinctual and base emotions.  It has absolutely nothing to do with appealing to man’s capacity to recognize good options from bad ones, and rationally so, in order that they may display a Christ-like charity which values the individual human being, and his exultation over his slavery to death and misery.

On the contrary, it is merely another manifestation of their assumption that you don’t really get to choose.  That your “salvation” must happen in spite of you and your time and your money.  You belong to them; and if they could use abject state violence and/or threats of violence to force you into the pews on Sunday, just as the Puritans did, they would.  And trust me, they are seeking state power like the dog which has gotten a taste for avian blood seeks the chicken coop where that blood was first taken.

And then, once they’ve manipulated you into the the small groups by their “begging”–by their ostentatious, obsequious, overtures of “love” and “understanding” and “compassion”…the small groups where accountability is “willingly” “welcomed” and “reciprocated”–they will do WHATEVER it takes.  And, trust me, that will by no means be limited to “begging” or “imploring”.

The pretense will eventually vanish; and behind the fog you will find not begging, but threats and fear; and ultimately, the greatest panacea to their constant striving for absolute authority:

Pain.

For the Collectivist, Destruction MUST Come Either Via the Individual or the State; Morality is Merely a Function of Which One Does the Destroying

General Philosophy, Metaphysics, , , , , ,

Recently, on a 2016 presidential election forum on Facebook, a friend of mine, Andy, was debating the idea of government coercion as a means to effect moral outcomes in society (e.g. “equality of opportunity”…whatever that  means).  Presumably, the person with whom he was debating, Randy, leans to the left; which means that he, presumably, appeals to the supreme power (the superior ability to render destruction upon its adversaries) of the State to create conditions of opportunistic equality…again, whatever that means.  (And don’t try to figure it out; there is no real logical premise, and thus, no real logical conclusion…but whatevs).

Andy said:

“…any success that I have in this world happens IN SPITE of government programs and not because (regardless of what party implemented them).  It happens when I use my God-given creative capacity to find a way to engage in a fair exchange of value for value with another individual as a means of ensuring my own existence as a person while at the same time valuing the existence of the one with whom I am engaged in said exchange.  That is the TRUE definition of fairness and equity and morality.”

To which Randy replied:

“If only you could make that work for 375 million of us I would vote for you as president.”

Now, before I being this article, and to critique the inherent ideological and philosophical flaws in Randy’s statement (and they are prodigious), I must make a disclaimer.  First, I am neither Republican nor Democrat.  I have an official political affiliation, for voter registration purposes, with the Libertarian party; however, I would not say that I am, in the modern political sense, a true Libertarian, the reason being that libertarianism, like conservatism and liberalism, assumes, I submit, the metaphysical necessity of governing man.  That is, it assumes that since man MUST be governed, that government is the means by which man obtains his “freedom”.  The contradiction and cognitive dissonance of this idea should be patently obvious to anyone who can put one premise in front of another and validate the conclusion.  Like, if you can understand how and why 1+1=2, you can understand how and why problems which arise from State force cannot be remediated by implementing State force.  Sadly, many libertarians cannot or do not understand this.  Which is why I don’t necessarily affiliate myself philosophically with libertarianism or libertarians.  Anyway, I mention this only in the interest of disclosure.

Also, I’m not “taking Andy’s side” here, either.  While I do agree ostensibly with his comment, I did not read the the full discourse.  Thus, I am only commenting on a small excerpt of their exchange, and specifically Randy’s comment, and the vast and dreadful and destructive outcomes it implies.

Let’s read it again:

“If only you could make that [the idea of individuals exchanging value for value, privately with their own property (the product of their labor and the extension of their own existence), and according to their own perceived needs, for their own edification and progress, without the coercive violence of the state commandeering said property and redistributing it to the “less fortunate”, whatever that means] work for 375 million of us I would vote for you for president.”

Okay, let’s examine that sparkling little tidbit of Marxist tyranny and death.

For me, this would have likely been the end of the conversation.  I would have gone no further until the metaphysics were settled…and they wouldn’t have been, because metaphysical contradiction is at the very heart of Marxist sentiments like Randy’s, and in almost all cases people like Randy are simply unable to see this contradiction, let alone look beyond it and consider a more rational alternative.   So…yeah, this would have been the end of the conversation.  I would have had no more use for Randy in this context.  He’s a blind man who somehow needs to recognize that he’s blind before he can be in a position to actually want to see.  And that’s not anything any rational argument can do.  This has everything to do with a person desiring truth; and that must come from themselves.  One cannot manufacture desire in another.  It just doesn’t work.

Randy’s comment clearly reveals his root collectivist metaphysic.  And it is downright stark.  I have often remarked that all disagreements, big or small, boil down to the metaphysics.  They always boil down not to the question “Who owns man?”, as some empiricists and objectivists and other devotees of Aristotelian philosophy and its many progenies assume, but rather, “What is man?” That is, what is the root essence of human sentience?  What is that irreducible thing which makes man man?

I argue that man is Self, and self is absolute and singular, and the fundamental root of that is Ability.  And so the proper metaphysic of man is:  the Ability to be Aware of (to Conceptualize) Self–of I, Me, My–as a singularity, absolutely distinct from Environment, Other…all that is Not Self.  The rationally consistent conceptual juxtaposition/reconciliation of Self and Other is called Reason; and Reason’s Standard is Self.  Or said another way, truth and morality are a function of reason (rational consistency), and the Standard of Reason, meaning the reference by which anything is declared reasonable or not, and thus moral and good or not,  is Self.

According to Randy, man is “group”.  He is a full-on advocate of collectivist metaphysics.  Man is never himself, because that makes man an individual.  But an individual cannot by definition be responsible for the “well-being” or “equality of opportunity” (whatever that means) of 375 million people.  Expost facto, man cannot actually be Self, but “us”, or “group”.  He, insofar as we can call man a “he”, in the singular, only has any real existence if we acknowledge his utter dependence upon “other”.  Which means there is no actual dichotomy between man and his environment…but rather man, at the root of it, is his environment.  He is Self AND Other; he is Self AND Not Self.  Thus, his moral obligation, to be consistent with the collectivist metaphysic, is, contradictorily (and impossibly) to be both dependent upon and self-sacrificing to the group.  To that which is NOT Himself; because “Self” is a false metaphysic; and thus any appeals to unforced exchanging of value between individuals as the only rational and moral form of economics reads like Greek to people like Randy.  Two individuals doing private business makes about as much sense as two halves of pi.  You cannot split the root metaphysic; and the root metaphysic of man is “collective”; which means you identify with the group.

Okay, but which group?  Well, that’s an easy one.  The group is whatever group the necessary central Authority which claims to speak on behalf of the group, and to compel by violence the behavioral outcomes the group, decides that group is.  “Group” can be the “less fortunate”, which in America means anyone not white of any social status, as long as they are liberal; the “nation”, the “workers/people”, the “party”, the “body of Christ” (successfully twisting this biblical doctrine into a Marxist abomination is just about the only thing in which the modern American Institutional Church excels), and so on and so forth.

According to Randy’s metaphysics, the idea of Man as Self (as Individual) is illusory at best, criminal madness–demanding the punishment of the State–at worst.  And this punishment, by the way, is always the functional conclusion of Randy’s political and economic philosophy…and I can declare this simply because I understand his metaphysics.  Do not doubt me.  Any collectivist who decides to debate is merely engaging in a standing on ceremony…a pretense of a commitment to ideas and discourse, nothing more.  The fundamental and only true of source of “morality” is violence committed by the group’s central Authority which claims a transcendent mandate to compel outcomes of individuals in service to the group.

Boiled down, this demands the following equation: violence = morality.  Metaphysics is a function of the group which means the individual can know nothing (epistemology) because he is not actual, which means that ethics (personal interaction) must be compelled by force (violence) from the ruling Authority (Politics) which is appointed or “called” to lead the masses into right thinking and behavior to and for collective interest, which they alone define.  And this is the sum and substance of Randy’s philosophy.  Full stop.

You see, in Randy’s economic paradigm, categorically due to his collectivist metaphysic, the only moral action that any one person (who isn’t real, remember, existentially speaking…the individual metaphysic is specifically rejected) can take is sacrifice to the group.  And since, as I’ve said, Authority in this paradigm is necessary to define the existential terms of the group, sacrificing to the group means, in the context of modern American politics, sacrificing to the State.  And what this then really means is that the sum and substance of human existence is simply the arbitrary sacrifice of one group of people to another group of people.  And the reason I say “arbitrary” is because there is no actual reason involved.  There is no rational consistency.  It merely boils down to who possesses the greatest amount of power which can be translated into violence (physiological/biological, psychological, intellectual, financial) and the abject and pragmatic willingness to use it.  A willingness which is empirically verified.  For example it does no good for the United States to claim status as the world’s most militarily powerful (greatest capacity for violence by Armed Forces) nation if it does not demonstrate its power and, most importantly, its willingness to use it under circumstances it alone defines as “necessary”.  Thus: Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  (Note:  I am not criticizing the use of the A-bomb in WWII, necessarily, I’m only arguing that its use was inevitable).

*

Here is Randy’s comment, again:

“If you could make that work for 375 million of us, I’d vote for you for president.”

Now, let’s remove the pretension, faux contrition, and underlying sophistry and render this statement according to his assumptions.  Here it is, properly translated:

“If you can somehow successfully combine your own individual interests with the interests of 374,999,999 other people, I would vote for you as president.  But since this is obviously a contradiction in terms, and therefore impossible, your entire argument that men have a right to exchange the product of their own labor with other individuals according to their own, self-determined objectives and fully in service to the affirmation and promotion of themselves, is invalid.  Thus, I am fully correct and morally inviolate when I vote for people who, in keeping with my own intention and desire to force you into my subjective opinions, will point the guns of the State at you and your family in order to intimidate and threaten you into your obligation of self-sacrifice to the collective, as I have defined “sacrifice” and “collective”…that is, what I have decided is the PROPER sacrifice and PROPER collective.  And further, I submit that the collective is morally and PROPERLY defined by the context of that which I will call the “disadvantaged”, according to my own subjective definition of such a context; meaning that my definition of “disadvantaged” is purely arbitrary, being based on nothing more than my own sentiments regarding my own subjective opinions about who is in “need” and when and by what means and according to which “oppressor” and purveyor of “unfairness”, and is thus “deserving” of your property, removed from you by violence or threats of violence, making this whole discussion moot, and simply a deception to trick you into thinking that I actually employ reason, and not purely emotion and feeling, according to my subjective whims, when it comes to formulating my ideas.

Moreover, I aver that man, if left to himself, must inevitably capitulate to his inherent depraved nature (which is a sophist euphemism for “inherent and intrinsic insufficiency to his own existence”), and exploit and abuse his “weaker” (according to my subjective rendering of the concept), and “less fortunate” (according to my subjective rendering of the concept) neighbor.  And this means that without government there could exist nothing but abject and unrestrained murder, theft, and destructive chaos.  Thus, since government is necessary for the good of the group, by man’s very metaphysical insufficiency, government is perfectly withing its rights (which are absolute, and thus, not “rights” at all, but merely its own desires, no matter how capricious and paradoxical) to use force to compel the more “privileged” (according to my subjective definition of the concept), yet depraved, individual into “right” thinking and behavior.”

Of course, since this explication specifically demands a totally depraved metaphysic–which then, in order to correct the metaphysical error, which even they with all their sophistry cannot deny makes the entire existential equation unworkable–it thus demands a COLLECTIVIST metaphysic, or a “man is good (good meaning: sufficient to practical and efficacious existence) if man is group” metaphysic.  Therefore, people like Randy can never really reconcile how government, which is comprised of individuals can bring order to the inexorable chaos of individual existence; can bring peace to he who is infinitely violent; can bring “equality of opportunity” (whatever that means) to society.  Further, since ruler/citizen dichotomies are by definition unequal, I’m still waiting to hear just how there can possibly exist any real equality of opportunity, since such a society is clearly and abjectly unequal at its root, and must be, according to the irreducible assumption: man’s collectivist metaphysic.

And that is the corner into which I always back them.

You see, we can argue ancillaries and tangentials until the sun burns out, but until we can agree upon the metaphysics its all merely pretense…semantics…tautology.  Meaningless; effecting no change.  The rock and the hard place metaphor.  And this is where those of us who laud reason never lose.  You see, with all the sophism and emotion and ad hominem, it is easy to be fooled into thinking that the collectivist has a rational point, and that you merely disagree with his reason…but not that his reason is, in fact, entirely unreasonable.  It is easy to assume that the idea of the “common good” can have a rational meaning.  But the reality is that “common good” is the most vapid, meaningless, reason-less idea which man ever conjured in the dark, wretchedly pungent and smoke-filled back rooms of Marxist devil-worship.  There is no such thing…but enough people accept it to maintain the illusion that collectivists actually have a solid trump card in any argument by appealing to the notion of “common good”.  But in reality the cognitive dissonance, the suspension of disbelief, and the abject contradictions necessary to sustain such a notion are so deep that it becomes so absolutely subjective that there seemingly exists an answer for almost everything.  The answers are never right, mind you, but since there is an answer, and answers again seemingly never-ending, they are able to maintain the effective facade of possessing an argument which is inherently given to avoiding logical corners.

But this doesn’t work with the metaphysics.  And it cannot.

Since the metaphysics are utterly irreducible, there is ONLY a corner…for everyone, including me.  Eventually, all ideas must begin with a definition of man, and there are only two to choose from:  Man is Self, or Man is NOT Self (Man is Collective; man is Laws of Physics; Man is Effect from External Cause;  Man is Objective Reality Outside Himself, Man is Creation from Nothing; man is Product of Divine Will/Determinism, etc.).  And one is clearly rational, and one is clearly an impossible contradiction.  One must lead to the rational fulfillment of existence, and one must lead to abuse, exploitation, and murder.

As I have said in the past, get the metaphysics right and you will get everything right.  It’s all about the metaphysics.  And it’s either Door A or Door B; X or Y; Red Pill or Blue Pill.  There is only one absolute; one is absolute Truth and the other absolute Lie.  One is absolute Good and the other absolute Evil.  Are you you? Or are you not you?  That’s the question upon which literally everything else depends.

*

People who extol the virtues of an epicenter of ruling Authority by which their subjective morality can be thrust upon everyone else are not actually opposed to oppression, exploitation, violence, murder, and chaos, no matter to what degree they may claim thus, and no matter how successful they have been in convincing themselves they are truly pacifists who want nothing more than the “disadvantaged” cared for, and opportunity equalized (whatever that means).  They merely view said violence and chaos, et. al. “moral” when it is centralized; when it is the sole jurisdiction of a select group of men who claim the divine/transcendent/etc. right to determine “goodness” and “truth” for everyone else by virtue of their “calling” to existentially define the collective for those individuals who comprise the collective.  Just as “gun control” advocates aren’t actually for gun control, they are only for controlling the guns outside the purview of the State Authority, so these Marxists are not for “peace” and “equality” and “compassion” and “justice”; they merely seek such “outcomes” amongst those outside of the power of the State Authority.  Of the rulership.  The Authority may employ all manner of violence, inequality, arbitrary punishment, and moral relativism in order to bring about said “peace” and “compassion” and “justice”, et. al.

The cognitive dissonance is thinking that peace can be a function of violence; that justice can be a function of compelling people against their will; that equality can be a function of setting up a State by which different rules apply to “leaders” and the “people”.  In other words, violence and abuse are fine as long as they are a function of the central Authority in order to bring about the subjective “morality” people like Randy assume.  Whatever is necessary to get the collective to obey Randy, as long as it is via the central Authority, is perfectly acceptable.

Further, if violence and abuse and oppression is used to affirm whatever group Randy decides is the moral plumb line–in this case the poor/unfortunate/marginalized/minority/disadvantaged/etc.–then said violence et. al. is fine.  It is just.  It is only evil if it is employed by the individual…someone using it in defense of their own, singular Self.

But the functional conclusion, according to their own metaphysics, must be the same for the “poor” and “unfortunate” and “minority” as it is for the “privileged” or the “majority”:  humanity must be destroyed.  And, if the philosophy is followed to its logical conclusion, humanity will be.  The only “moral” difference is whether the destruction comes via the individual or the central Authority.

Randy’s comment is a non-starter for me, period.  If I had been in my friend, Andy’s, shoes, I would have demanded he explain the contradiction or I would have withdrawn.

And here’s a teachable moment:  people like Randy–latent or blatant Marxists–NEVER want to address the metaphysics, because they can’t, having spent no time considering them in the first place.  Therefore, these political discussion groups merely bat around the same old tired issues, like a cat batting around an old ball of yarn because, having little or no object permanence, believes it to be new and novel, and eventually find their way to the same old conclusion shared by every political party in existence:  man needs to be governed; which means that man needs an Authority to define his reality for him (to define Self), which means man needs to be forced against his will–his own will being merely an illusion–which means inevitable violence, which results in man being utterly removed from himself at the metaphysical level, which means that the only point of the individual’s existence is for that individual to be destroyed.

And once that’s the conclusion, political differences of opinion are merely semantic.  Irrelevant.  A distraction from truth, not a path unto it.

This is why I no longer vote.  I aver that above all one’s vote is the greatest philosophical concession they can make to the idea of the State as the Standard of morality and truth.  Not the individual.  And the very fact that even limited-government libertarians assume that reductions in government must come from the actions of elected government officials acting in the capacity of ruler…as facets of that very same government reveals the rational disconnect within the minds of even the most well-intentioned people.

In short, once we assume that limited government can only happen BY government we have already conceded the right of government to infinitely grow and to compel all of man’s outcomes.

And this is the root of Randy’s argument.  He assumes that since all truth and morality can only be a function of those “called” to rule the collective, what works for the individual is only valid if it works for the whole of the group.  And what works for the group can never be a product of the individual because the metaphysics are mutually exclusive…it’s “group” versus “self”, and the only true metaphysic is the collective one, according to Randy; which means reality can only be defined by the governors of the collective, which means they must be in a position to force the individual into the “common good”.

What’s good for Andy MUST be exclusive of what’s good for the collective.  Which means Andy must be forced into sacrificing himself for the common good.  And this is the very heart of what Randy believes.