Category Archives: General Philosophy

Why Can’t We Just Leave Politics Out of Our Relationships?

General Philosophy, government, Metaphysics, , ,

Though politics may be an uncomfortable topic for many, having the potential to rend relationships irreparably in two, or turn a happy Thanksgiving  gathering into a screaming hell, knowing someone’s politics can and often is immeasurably important.

This is because it necessarily speaks to one’s interpretation of reality, one’s core ethics and values. And since most people are not prepared to define their metaphysical, epistemological, and moral primaries (they have them, they just can’t articulate them) qua metaphysics, epistemology, and morality, talking politics is, I would argue, a great vehicle for learning them. Because , let’s face it, everyone has has an opinion–an articulated, and generally well thought-out opinion–on politics. Everyone. Even those who insist they don’t almost certainly do.

Political opinions are more than just a window to the soul…to the rocky depths of a person’s entire belief system.  They are a giant glass dome which offers a view into the foundational character of a person–a character based upon the philosophical assumptions by which they interpret all of reality, including and especially how they value other people, of which I am one.  And how and when I expose myself to philosophical assumptions from which either positive or destructive behaviors will flow towards me is something over which I prefer to have control. Because this is the key to happiness. That is, the key to happiness is avoiding abuse. And abuse is always applied as an  extension of the most basic ideas about the nature of reality, and especially the value of others. And one’s politics quickly and easily illuminate these ideas.

Add to that, you and I are not superheroes. We have a very limited amount of emotional and intellectual capital to spend, not to mention time. I’d rather spend it on people who do not hold drastically different assumptions, as those relationships are almost certain to fail, and with that failure will cost me the requisite amount of psychological and emotional fallout.

In 44 years of life never had a good–well, a close–relationship with a leftist–a collectivist: Marxist, socialist, Statist, a communist, or mystic (a religious person whose beliefs are rationally inconsistent…which is most of them). The reason is simple: these people concede something about human nature–at the most basic level; at the level of metaphysics and ontology–that is the categorical antipode of what I believe. This root assumption about humanity–about me–gives meaning and purpose to all they think and do. And because the core beliefs are so utterly different, there is no real compatibility in the relationship, and this must become evident sooner or later. In other words, if your fundamental beliefs are utterly opposed to mine, so must your behavior be also. And that’s behavior which I must, due to the value I place upon myself and truth, avoid to the greatest degree possible.

In other words, it’s hard to play checkers with you if you bring a racket to the table and proceed to swing at the pieces. If we have completely different fundamental ideas, we are playing at completely different games.

So…that’s why politics.

 

Cause, Effect, and Movement Exist Only by the Cognition of the Observer

General Philosophy, Metaphysics, Objective Relativity, Physics and Metaphysics, Space, Time and Space, , , , ,

The human ability to conceptualize from the frame of reference of the Self is not simply an evolutionary extension of the mathematically determined machinations of an “objective reality outside” of one’s consciousness/cognition, but is integral to objective reality itself, at the most fundamental level. I submit that absent man’s ability to conceptualize the movement of what he observes (that is, man as the Observer) and to establish Self as the reference–as the constant–it is impossible that there is any movement at all, and therefore can be no evolutionary/mathematical “cause and effect” interaction of objects in the material universe.

To claim that there is any such thing as as object movement, or cause and effect interaction, once the observer is removed from the equation is impossible. Because once he who provides the reference by which any such cause and effect interaction and/or object movement has any meaning (including relevancy,  purpose, direction, velocity, distance, etc.) there is no rational argument for asserting or believing that it is happening at all in some “objective reality” that can somehow excludes the very thing that gives that reality any value.

In other words, once movement is no longer observed (and by “observed”, again, I mean not only perception, but the cognitive power of conceptualization), movement has no specific context; no reference by which it can be gauged as “movement” qua movement. This means that without a reference, all movement–and therefore all cause and effect interactions and their “mathematical” deterministic mechanisms–is relative not to a specific but to an absolute degree. And absolute relativity of movement–that is, relative interaction with no set reference provided by the conceptualizing observer–means that all movement of all objects “mathematically” sums to zero. Meaning that absolute relativity, by nature, instantaneously nullifies any movement by any object at any given moment. And if all movement in all moments sums to zero because of un-referenced relativity, then there is, in fact, no movement at all; because movement with zero value is the absence of movement, by definition.

For a simple example, let’s take object A and object B in co-existing in a vacuum (where all must exist if we concede a plurality of existence–that things which exist are utterly distinct from one another). Because of the relative nature of movement, existence in a vacuum demands that any movement by A is automatically and instantaneously transferred to B, and vice versa. There is no way in this vacuum, absent an observer, to claim that only A moves, and not B. In other words, because their existence is again necessarily relative, any movement of A is also the movement of B. And by this I mean that B’s movement is not a reciprocal movement; it’s not a corollary movement; it is the same movement; the movement of A is the movement of B. There is one, un-shared movement. B moves equally as A moves as though B were in fact acting categorically as A.

How can this be?

A scenario where two objects with a single movement by both but no reference to measure which object has moved contradicts the plurality of existence between A and B. There can be no interaction between such objects; no distinction. Any action of one is the action of the other…and because existence is an action, even rank co-existence is impossible.

In a vacuum with no observer, object A moving relative to B while B is not moving, demands the corollary that B is moving relative to A while A is not moving; which means it is axiomatic that objects A and B in the instance of any movement must have both moved and also must have both not moved at the same time. And what this means is that movement in such an absolute relative relationship is a context where the movement of objects and the absence of movement by objects are one and the same.

Which is impossible. The integration of mutually mutually exclusive properties (e.g. movement and non-movement) nullifies them both, rendering to them an existential, moral, and rational value of zero; of NOT; of VOID. That is, of a purely abstract, imagined, placeholder status.

The relative context then, and again, necessitates at a fundamental, axiomatic level the conscious perspective of the observer, who is able to conceptualize relative distinctions between objects using himSELF as the reference.

Now, Objectivists and other “empirical” philosophers will almost certainly accuse me of promulgating a Primacy of Consciousness metaphysic, but this is in large part because they suppose that one can separately categorize evidence and reason, which is not actually possible. There can be no objective, empirical evidence which is also a conceptual contradiction. Of course the light wave/particle paradox is often trotted out as a rebuttal to this assertion, but this is easily rebuffed using reason (which I won’t explain here).

I wish to be clear that I am not proposing a purely subjective, “ethereal” metaphysic…and frankly, this is an amateurish criticism. On the contrary, because rational consistency is necessary to the apprehension and definition of Truth, as the above discussion on relativity and movement indicates, it is impossible that one can claim any efficacious philosophical (metaphysics through aesthetics) positions based purely upon subjective standards. This is because subjectivism necessarily equals contradiction. And contradiction is NOT an idea, it is the absence of one.

Further, to argue that the individual conscious observer’s self-evidentiary and necessary inclusion in anything objectively true (self/evident because truth is only known by conscious individuals) is somehow a bias and a liability to reality is the very definition of absurdity. But further discussion of this is better suited to a separate article…the topic is too complex and involved to serve as a side note for this one.

The point of this article is that man’s consciousness–his conceptualizing ability–is much more than a perfunctory extension of some ethereal, evolutionary, determinative force in the “objective” universe–a force which must necessarily contradict itself by spawning such a consciousness in the first place. Rather, it is a fundamental component of rational consistency, and thus is indespensible in any definition or discussion of objective reality. Human cognition; consciousness; conceptualization; awareness of Self is inexorably tied to the metaphysical axiom–the irreducible Truth from which ALL things spring.

Voluntary Valor: Let us remember this Memorial Day

General Philosophy, government, Voluntarism, , ,

This Memorial Day let us remember:

You cannot truly love that to which you are obligated by force and threat.

You cannot sacrifice to that which takes from you by force and threat.

You cannot fight for freedom if you or your fellow soldiers have no choice but to fight.

You cannot defend the “people”, or the “common good”, or the “nation”, or die for your country, because collectives do not exist. Only the individual–the moral agent of the Self–can be defended.  To claim any other beneficiary is fallacy.

A flag is a symbol, and therefore subjective. It has no objective meaning, purpose, nor life of its own. It’s relevancy is in the mind of the individual. To one, a symbol of good, to another, of evil. This is a simple truth; and violence against men doesn’t change it, it affirms it.

It is better to let a flag touch the ground than to subordinate one human soul to it. It is better to burn it than to punish the one caught doing so. For unless you let him be you concede that it should burn.

Do not subordinate what is (man), to what is not (symbolism, national pride, collective identity).

The thing which most makes a soldier great is not their fight, their courage, or their sacrifice, but their name.

–Voluntary Valor

 

Why Authority (Violence as the Primary Means of Achieving Objectives) is a Direct Function of Determinism

Ethics, General Philosophy, Metaphysics, Physics and Metaphysics, , ,

The primary ethic and politic of determinism is authoritarianism. That is, once individual Will becomes merely an inexorable effect of a Singularity of Cause which decides all purpose, be it God, or Natural Law/Scientific Empiricism, Existence (what “is” as its own end, where “Existence” must necessarily subordinate all other definitions of all objects, rendering their distinctions moot), or Social/Cultural Construction, or any other garden variety ideal like the Common Good, the Underprivileged, etcetera etcetera, then man cannot by definition act purposefully, on his own, to any relevant, rational, or moral objective, regardless of how this objective may be defined. Thus, all knowledge and purpose can only be ascribed to some kind of transcendent (and rationally impossible) revelation according to those who proclaim themselves the ecclesiastical (ruling according to “spiritual” mandate) recipients of the “Wisdom” or “Truth” of the Great Cause (the Singularity of Cause).  Examples of this can be found in religious leaders who claim divine rulership according to “God’s Calling”, the Representatives of States who claim to act on behalf of the “People” or the “Common Good”, or Intellectual elites who claim natural insight or acumen with respect to the “language of the Universe”, where the universe speaks in the arcane vernacular of mathematics, statistical analysis, genetic and evolutionary processes, various research methodologies, etcetera, etcetera. In all of these cases, Truth, and thus necessarily all that Is, is a function of an abstract ideal which causes absolutely, and therefore categorically determines all that man does, and thus, by definition, all that man thinks. Man then can only be compelled and controlled by force (violence), since he possesses no real capacity for self-awareness and therefore no capacity for self-control. He cannot think, therefore he cannot choose. And therefore he must be ruled–and absolutely so, by those who DO think, and DO know: those, again, who are the self-proclaimed extensions of the Determining (Singularity of) Cause. In other words, they rule you, because they are, as far as you are concerned,  indistinguishable from that which determines you.

American Socialism: Sympathy to be feared

General Philosophy, Metaphysics, , ,

I understand the desire to stand up to the forces of oppression, exploitation, and bigotry, and to recompense the victims of such things, and to safeguard the lives of those who may yet be victims.

But the way to do this is to dismantle the apparatus by which oppressors and bigots do such evil things, and that is the philosophical argument for the “right” of a Governing Authority acting on behalf of a Collective of the People to compel economic and social assembly and interaction by FORCE. This Authority acting on behalf of the Collective must, by its authority, define the Collective (the “People”) according to an abstract Ideal which thus subordinates the individual, and which necessarily creates a Primary Group–those who best reflect the Ideal (like “aristocracy”, “workers”, “minorities)–to which all other groups MUST be sacrificed.

And it is THIS philosophy which has been the intellectual and moral foundation for every atrocity that American Socialists (the Left, in particular) claim to abhor: slavery, segregation, voter restrictions, the genocide of Native Americans, etc., etc. For in ALL of these cases it has been the Authoritarian State, underwritten by the philosophical premises of Collectivism (some Ideal of “common good”)  which has financed, supplied, manned, and created the legal, and by extension moral, principles by which these programs are established and perpetuated.

In response to such tyranny the Left proposes about the most irrational and dreadfully hypocritical thing imaginable:

Enlarge the power of the State and with it, its Authority to subordinate individuals to itself on behalf of whatever group it decides represents the Ideal.

In short, they advocate the atrocity as a solution to the atrocity.

But, you see, remedial logic informs us that a problem cannot also be its own solution.

Except, apparently, in the mind of the American Socialist. Which is a mad, mad mind.

Enlightenment or Dogma?

Calvinism/Philosophy, General Philosophy, , , ,

It’s not enlightenment to simply parrot an ideology. To simply repeat the spurious assertions of others is to be a merchant of dogma, not truth.

To agree with others is to accept a rationale; and likewise to be enlightened. And to accept a rationale requires the ability to present a reasoned explication of the ideas with which you agree and to which you claim to be enlightened. And a reasoned explication demands rational consistency.

Enlightenment to and agreement with ideas thus goes only as far as rational consistency wil take it. And that is as far as the nearest contradiction.

To claim to believe something and to proceed to preach something that you cannot explain without categorical rational consistency is, again, simply dogma, and any rational and moral person should reject it as such.

To preach dogma is to advertise to the world that you have rejected the sufficiency of your own mind, and by that the sufficiency of your own Self.  You have become a missionary of death worship.