Link to the youtube audio…I speak extemporaneously on this. I’m not the best extemporaneous speaker…hope you forgive me. I’m working on it!❤️
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5r4otWyiDac&feature=shares
Category Archives: Identity
Birth and Death: Paradoxical Bookends of the Absolute Self (Part Three)
“…how can one be born if one does not exist in the first place? How can you experience birth if birth is the fundamental beginning? There is no YOU to be born prior to your birth, and so the consequence is birth but there is no action which involves you at all. The action which is entirely mutually exclusive of you somehow concludes with you.”
I understand how abstruse and arcane this quote is, taken from part two of this series, so I decided to dedicated part three to clarifying the point made, and also insofar as this point necessarily relates to death. Also, in reading back this quote I was able to anticipate possible objections and concerns as a function of the overt complexity of the argument; those will likewise be addressed.
To begin with, let’s look at this analogy. The car you drive (if you have a car, that is…if not, well, you’ll still follow) did not always exist as the car, per se. Prior to being your car it was merely a collection of parts, and before that, piles of metal and glass and plastic and paint; and before that, raw minerals which were mined from the ground, or chemicals mixed and refined in some industrial laboratory. After a few years, the car is disposed of, and will then decompose and break down, back into its multiple parts. But these parts, prior to and after the existence of the car, per se, continue to exist. They do not return to oblivion in the same way that they do not spring from it. After all, we know that according to the law of conservation of mass that matter cannot be created and destroyed; and philosophically this is form of the logic of non-contradiction. Meaning that the reason matter cannot be fundamentally created or destroyed is because a thing which exists cannot spring from non-existence, and it cannot become non-existent. Its existence IS; it is axiomatic, it is a-priori; it is de facto.
Likewise, one might say that while a human being did not exist as such prior to birth, there did exist a collection of parts—hormones and fertilizer and eggs and sperm cells and enzymes and proteins, DNA…you get the idea—which eventually came together to form the human being—let’s say you, in the interest of casualness—that we recognize as a specific individual person. Following death, you shall desololve and decompose back into the many parts which formed you. All of these parts existed prior to you, and they all will exist after you. You are the parts, and the parts are you, and the parts remain in some for as a-priori existing; they are absolute; eternal.
Here is the problem with this explanation, and I’m sure you’ve probably already discerned it. The car, coming from a collection of parts, does not have a sense of Self. It possesses no singular consciousness…it does not recognized, or rather, it does not observe and interpret its environment, and all of reality itself, from a singular, specific, constant frame of reference. The car, in other words, does not know it’s a car. The collection of parts which make up the car do not suddenly, once in “true” car form, begin to associate as a single entity, able to conceptualize itself as a single object, and likewise its environment and all things in it. The parts of the car do not suddenly reject instinctually and naturally their distinct existence and begin to call themselves “I”, “Myself”, “Me”.
Do you see what I am getting at here? The difference between a car and a human being is that human beings DO possess a singular consciousness; a single observational and conceptulaizing frame of reference which demands and necessitates that the parts are not in fact fundamental, but merely form one’s body. Yet one’s SELF—that by which those parts paradoxically utter the words “I”, “Myself”, “Me”, and “Mine”—is the true nature and essence of human existence. To deny this is to relegate consciousness to some inexplicable epiphenomenon, or infinite mystery, or an illusion, or some random blip of mathematical uncertainty…and yet none of these claims can possibly be true because Truth itself necessitates that they be entirely false.
And it is this Self—this singularity—which I mean when I say that the human being is said to begin at birth and end at death. Of course the parts of “you” live on…and of course “you” were born of parts. I am not obtuse or blind to this obvious and pedestrian fact. But the real YOU, your SELF…your agency, awareness, will, consciousness…is NOT of parts, because there is no One from many parts; no I from Not I; no Self Awareness from infinite unconsciousness. And absolute consciousness does not “return” or dissolve into absolute unconsciousness; what IS does not become object oblivion. The law of the conservation of matter must also infer a law of conservation of consciousness (Self Awareness; which is the ability to conceptualize Self and Other) unless we are prepared to claim that consciousness is a lie or an illusion…a claim is very easily debunked and dismissed as the very mysticism and irrationality that those who peddle it claim to oppose.
And this is why I utterly reject the notions of birth and death. Not because they serve as anthropological and biological concepts to describe the cosmically and mathematically prescribed evolution of a human bing, but because they are a deception, and their fundamental meanings are completely spurious at best. Birth and death can only apply to he who is conscious, and yet they utterly contradict consciousness because they render it transitory, coming from oblivion and returning to oblivion, and thus render consciousness a moot and worthless concept. Which renders birth and death themselves moot and worthless. And yet if consciousness IS, and is ACTUAL, it must be absolute and constant, and thus likewise birth and death are rendered moot and worthless. In either and all cases, birth and death are fundamentally meaningless. They may serve as convenient contextual and subjective descriptions of a person’s existence, but they are not absolute, and are not objective, and have no actual bearing on the root nature of human existence. Birth and death are irrelevant with respect to parts. The parts, being absolute and perpetual, according to the law of conservation of matter, are not ultimately born, and do not die, and thus if man is like a car, made up of perpetually existing parts in some form or another, then he does not die and he is not born any more than a car is born or dies, except in the purely figurative sense.
But man is said to be born and then to die; and any way you try to rationalize this claim, it fails. And it fails for one simple reason. Man, unlike his car, knows himself.
END
The Problem Science and Relgion Share: The Self
How could man’s brain be created by God or nature, out of either “nothing” or the material of nature, to—by design—observe and conceptualize a singular Self (consciousness); and this Self as intrinsically distinct from God and nature…as separate, as absolute, as a constant, and not a direct function of God or nature? That is, how can God or nature, being wholly responsible for the existence of man, determine that man shall observe God or nature (or God and nature) as though they were outside of him? For that which is absolutely created and determined by divine omniscience/omnipotence or natural law cannot possibly possess a unique existential frame of reference by which the distinction can be observed and defined.
The real conundrum from both science and religion as they stand today in their particular orthodoxies is not evil, or free will, or finding absolute truth, or answering the Question of Everything. It is the intrinsically singular, absolute, constant Self of the invidual…the “I” of each one of us; the One existential reference by which we value and define all that we observe and all which exists, including God and nature.
END
Collectivizing Virtue: The neo-Marxist scourge of political relativism
To qualify virtue is to collectivize it. Thus, it becomes not a virtue, but a prison for the individual; an evil; a tyranny; a siren song for the immutable socialist desire for the abject destruction of the Self. Qualified virtue is only virtuous when it conforms to collectivist identity politics. It has no meaning, in other words, beyond the imperious authority of those who determine the plenary worth of human beings according to group identity, which is about as callow and subjective a marker as can be devised. But no one has or will ever accuse the socialists of being ethically or politically imaginative: “White man, bad. Brown man, good.”—which has a “Me, Tarzan. You, Jane,” sort of ring to it—is pretty much the extent of things. And this is intentional. The more remedial your ethics and your politics, the easier it is to get people to murder for them.
An example of qualifying virtue is the Western neo-Marxist political trope of “social justice”. You see, to claim distinct versions of a broad, and I would argue, a priori, virtue like Justice is of course to divide it…to make it mutually exclusive of itself. There is no such thing as justice qua justice. It ceases to be foundational to human existence, itself, but merely a cursory function of polictics. For example, in today’s neo-Marxist politics of the left, justice isn’t really justice until after its been qualified according to one’s collective identity based primarily on race. Justice is a function of politics, you see, not the other way around. Justice is soley determined by those who claim the authority to decide who is virtuous and who is not according to skin color (and to a marginally lesser extent, their sexual orientation and their religion; their IQ, gender identity, and even in some cases their weight—“fat shaming” being a modern, neo-Marxist imprecation leveled against anyone who dares assert that being overweight is in general neither healthy nor attractive…which, it isn’t).
It is completely mendacious—entirely politically self-serving—to claim that there is a meaningful distinction between justice for the individual and social (collectivized) justice. Justice is an ethical premise, and thus is rooted in the individual, not in categories of individuals, In other words, it begins and ends with the individual—with the Self—and applies thus to groups only insofar as they are groups of individuals. To collectivize justice then is to cut out the individual entirely from its scope and influence and turn it into a political weapon. Trust me, when any white, cisgendered man who doesn’t have some kind of “in” with the politcal left (as a hedge against the “original sin” of his being born white and straight) hears the words “social justice” he knows he’s in trouble. He knows that it means the opposite of justice for him. It means that justice is nothing more than a scapegoating of his race and sexuality and a call for his destruction. This makes justice, as far as it can apply to him, an existential threat and totally evil. He knows that a justice which declares him existentially unjust because he happens to have been born white and straight is an entirely subjective version of the virtue and cannot possibly, under any circumstance, be actually just. “Justice” in the contextual, collectivized, and socialist sense is nothing more than another terrible and terrorizing political irony, like “equality” or “compassion” or “gun control”. But don’t let yourself be fooled. This impostor of justice known as “social justice” serves no one, regardless of whatever arbitrary collective identity one happens to possess. It is merely another iteration of political propaganda meant to lure humanity into the clutches of an authoritarian ruling class. No one is safe. You can tell yourself all you want that the white man is finally getting his comeuppance, but it is a very tight race between all of us. The margin is razor thin. One single documented commission of wrongthink by the black man and soon he will find himself not so black after all. In other words, anyone who dares stray from the path set for them by their neo-Marxist overlords is white.
And thus we have the dirty little secret: it isn’t white people the neo-Marxists hate, its individuals. You, no matter what your color, orientation, or creed, are a threat to the ruling class on the left (and to some extent even the right…for they are both collectivists at their philosophical root). Because you think as a single, self-aware agent—as a natural, existential “I” and not a “we’—you must be utterly subordinated to the socialists who shall govern you.
Summary and conclusion:
Contextual justice, like “social justice”, is like contextual morality—a fundamental contradiction in terms. “Contextual justice” obligates the foundational ethical premise of Justice to a subjective standard outside itself. This contradicts justice because it means that Justice is no longer the reference for what is truly just. The reference for justice becomes the capricious political category of “group identity”, which strips individuality and thus individual will and action from the virtue of Justice entirely, and makes how one is or is not declared just merely a function of whatever group into which the politcal ruling authority has placed him. Justice then no longer serves the individual but the ruling class—who in turn serve only themselves by appealing to some absolute, yet abstract, transcendent, and ethereal Collective Ideal of which they represent the earthly incarnation. The ruling authority decides who has existential value and requisitely metes out “justice” simply on the basis of what color someone happens to be, or how much money they make, or what sexual partners they prefer, or what religion they are, and so on.
To qualify virtue, like “Justice”, is to pit it against itself, and this necessarily enslaves man, the individual, to the subjective, contextual, collectivist reference by which virtue is now to be measured. Man no longer has a natural birthright to justice but instead finds himself enslaved to some fickle collectivist brand of it.
For the neo-Marxists on the left, the key it seems to delivering justice is to implicitly deny that real Justice actually exists at all.
END
A Fulcrum is Not for Balance but Imbalance: Why government implies destabilization
The seesaw…a common playground fixture; we’ve all been on one in our youth. It’s a long, often wooden, plank, with a handle on either end, resting on a fulcrum a couple of feet off the ground. Two children sit opposite each other on either end, ideally being of comparable weight, and they proceed to rock the plank up and down on the fulcrum. And this is the entire point of the thing. The fact that either end of the plank does not remain stationary is the purpose of the seesaw. The plank, you see, is not suppposed to be balanced…hence the fulcrum at the center. If the intention was to balance the plank, the fulcrum would be removed and the plank secured to a fixed point. But you cannot do this and still have a seesaw. That is, you cannot balance a plank when the very asserted and accepted fundamental nature and purpose of it is to be imbalanced.
And this contradiction—a fulcrum which is irrationally and contrarily repurposed as a balance mechanism—is a good metaphor for government. Government’s ostensible intended purpose—to bring balance to conflicting groups—is contrary to its use and observable efficacy, and this article will examine why.
The government is a fulcrum which must pivot, but is somehow—for some not too terribly rational reason which is predicated upon some not too terribly rational metaphysics—intended to bring balance (and I speak primarily of Western democracies, like the United States) to either ends of a “plank” (humanity) which is described as being in perpetual conflict (imbalance) with itself according to its nature. The point of the State then, it seems, is to balance that which cannot actually be balanced. By bringing the plank of humanity then to the fulcrum of government, we in fact focus and accentuate the conflicts endemic to humanity as a general function of humanity’s very existence, with disasterous consequences.
The overt and objective incompetency of the government to its purpose—balance—is a clear verification of this. Government fails at balance because of the metaphysics which underwrite its very existence. Man cannot be made passive, moral, or equable, because of the root insufficient nature of his existence, experienced wholly through his own singular consciousness, to apprehend reality. Man possesses an inexorable sense of individual Self which is in endless conflict with the “truth” of a collectivist reality…be this reality defined according to scientific determinism, divine/religious determinism, agnostic nihilism, or simply the depressing endless smorgasbord of politcal-economic theories which incorporate the State.
This contradiction—government which must by its own admitted purpose and presence act as a fulcrum, thus accentuating and focusing the rank vagaries of inexorable capricious and irrational human nature, but is intended as a fixed point of balance—yes, this contradiction, and the constistent stubborn attempts of man to appeal to contradiction as a means of organizing reality, is why the government fails again and again. Healthcare, welfare, education, social integrity and harnmony, equanimity, liberty, international tranquility, justice, transparency…all of the foibles of man it is intended to set right and steady it can only fuck up to the point of mass destruction. It hones and focuses the conflicts—the imbalances—of mankind by implicitly affirming them as ipso facto and then elevating them to the level of supreme ruling Authority, weilding supreme destructive violence as its method of practical implementation. You look at lady (centralized) justice and you see the blindfold and your hopes are dashed as you realized that the fact that she is blinded isn’t because she is fair but because it doesn’t matter. Her “justice” will only affirm the root and infinite injustice of man’s nature. She is blind to what he IS because the death of man—his absence from reality—is the only possible outcome of government in the end. The only way government “balances” the chaos of human existence is by elevating the chaos to the point where the species implodes in on itself and takes governemnt with it. There is great “balance” in the neverending blackness of humanity’s absence, and by extension, the absence of government. The State is the square peg to mankind’s round hole, and the government can only stubbornly force them together, persistently so, until both are ground into dust.
*
For the past…well, several millennium, humanity has decided (for reasons we shall not address here) that the State—the formal installation of a supremely violent coercive Authority—is the ideal way of bringing balance and equanimity to all manner of broadscale human conflict; and this conflict due to an inexorable, fixed, and unchangeable human insufficiency to its own existence (its degeneracy into self-annihilation absent someone or something forcing it into “right” thinking and behavior). And yet, for millennium after millennium humanity has remained blind to the slagheaps of contradiction which plague this philosophy like boils. The infinitely irreconcilable difference that men have with one another, which means the inevitable destruction of the race on the whole, are nevertheless sought to be mitigated by an Absolute Authority on High. God is not a reliable Authority because his practical manifestation on earth in realtime is too sporadic, of course, and so men establish the State to serve as God’s proxy—his incarnate Authority on earth, if you will. And we need not necessarily define God according to specifically religious terms, because what he is, really, is simply an Ideal, you see. A collective Ideal to which all men must be categorically submitted and subordinated. They cannot do it themselves, collectivist metaphysics tells us, because of their infinitely individual perspective (their singular consciousness and volition). Thus men are forced by the violence of the State to accept the dictates of the Ideal, whether it’s “God” or the “gods”, or the “People”, or the “Workers”, or the “Race”, or the “Nation”, or “Diversity”, or whatever…it doesn’t really matter. The Collective Ideal is simply a superficial abstract placeholder for the practical Authority of the ruling class—that is, the Government.
*
The intention of the government (particularly in Western democracies) is to serve as a fixed point upon which to bring balance and stability to the inexorable social conflicts endemic to humanity according to humanity’s metaphysical identity (and this according to collectivist philosophy); but because of the inexorability of these conflicts due to the fact that they are a product of man’s absolute nature, the government in practicality becomes not a fixed point, but a fulcrum upon which to focus and acutely assert the imbalances of human existence. This magnifies and raises the destructive consequences of the conflict by giving competing groups a position of supreme violent coercive power (the State) over which to fight and to use as a giant hammer to smash opposition. By manifesting as a fulcrum instead of the intended anchor, the government actually concedes the inexorability, inevitability, and necessity of man’s self-destructive and nihilistic nature, and wholly surrenders to the reality of it, and thus brings about the very destruction of mankind it is intended to subvert.
The rational foible of the philosophy of government is rather shocking, truth be told.
*
The governemnt becomes the hub of human conflict…an intersection where competing groups will meet and are made to to adhere to rules which dictate which side shall yield the right of way and how often and to what degree. Thus, we can already see the failure of the notion of “government-as-balance” or “government-as-anchor”. The basic practical application of the State is not to eradicate the differences between competing groups—for if that were possible according to the prevailing (collectivist) metaphysics then government would be unnecessary in the first place. On the contrary, government is declared indispensable to human kind precisely because humanity is said to be so invariably and utterly contentious according to its most fundamental essence. There is no humanity absent conflict, that is. The two are metaphysically corollary. If men were capable in and of themselves (that is, absent coercive Authority) of reconciling differences and ending conflicts, let alone eradicating them altogether, then there would be no point to installing a supreme coercive Authority to force men to get along—which of course their nature prevents them from doing anyway. (That man’s nature categorically precludes any lasting conflict resolution is a collectivist assumption which one cannot be reminded of enough.)
*
The government is intended to reconcile differences between competing groups by acting somehow as an instrument of compromise where all groups can be heard and represented and differences resolved without having to resort to and experience the mass violence and death which must otherwise inevitably accompany such differences. Yet herein are made two critical errors of logic which undermine the whole endeavor and validate the common proverb that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
First, we underwrite government with the metaphysics that declare man incapable of compromise and conflict resolution according to his most basic and primary nature, thus destining government to fail in its stated objective even before it begins. We can use all manner of authoritative force we want, and we do, yet man can never change his nature any more than a fish can change into a battleship. The force we bring to bear upon man can only lead inexorably to his destruction at the hands of the State, as the eradication, or the absence, of man is the only real solution to the metaphysical problem his existence presents. All governments imply a “final solution” you might say, then, and this solution is carried out to various degrees depending on the stage of evolution a given State happens to find itself in.
Second, we believe that somehow an institution of supreme Authority can have a real interest in compromise and balance; or have any real interest at all beyond that of its own Authority…Authority being, in fact, merely the practical incarnation of a monolithic collectivist Ideal (the People, the Workers, the Nation, the Tribe, the Race…etc.). The State is not an instrument of compromise, but of force. For that is what Authority is. Authority is force, and compromise is the very antithesis of force.
The governent is not a solution to human conflict, it is conflict institutionalized. It is a place where competing groups go to seize power and then use that power to crush their adversaries with the most violently efficacious means man can possibly devise. The State is not an andedote to the chaos of human nature, it is a concession of it, and the implicit acceptance of the idea that man, because his mind and will and his reason are fundamentally at odds with reality, must be annihilated in order for peace to be possible.
Not that there will be anyone around to see it and define it as such.
The nature of government is rank, crass, and uncompromising coercive force which will bring about the destruction of man according to his predestined existential failure due to his insufficient nature. Period. Man is the plank with opposing ends; government is the fulcrum upon which the opposition and imbalance is accentuated. Man’s insufficient nature and the State work together to manifest perfectly the failure of man to his own existence according to the prevailing collectivist metaphysics.
The government is the fulcrum, and remember this well: If the board ever stopped pivoting there would be no use then for governent. And thus for those of you who demand that the State bring balance to the people? Well, the government wouldn’t do it even if it could.
That’s it’s nature.
END
How Christians and Secularists Both Define You as Nothing (Part ONE)
The other day my daughters received a thank-you note from a sweet little old lady to whom they had given a small homemade gift on Easter Sunday. The valediction read “May you continue to use the gifts that God has given you.”
And within those sweet little words we find the devil. And thus began quite a long lecture—given to my girls on the spot—on the dangers of ideologies which reduce existence to an idea which enslaves them to authoritarianism for the rest of their lives. That idea is that life and existence are UNEARNED. And though Christians are more ostensibly to be blamed for this evil, the idea is in fact a foundational component of secular metaphysics as well.
Wow. Hmm. Where to even begin. This is tough. There is so, so much wrong with this that it’s like trying to determine which of a thousand maurading orcs I should decaptiate first.
Let’s start with the obvious and aforementioned presumption that one’s talents are gifts. Which implies that they are unearned. So, let’s work backwards to the premise, and from this we shall then have our conclusion as to what this really means…and we will see how sinister it is.
You want to build a cabin, but you have no tools. So someone gives you them. You don’t work for them, they are gifts. Now, you might have “earned” them in the sense that the giver must like you or at least value you as a human. So that’s something. I mean, you didn’t work for them, but you can argue that there’s some inherent value to yourself that serves as the reason why one would give you something out of the profits of their own time and labor.
So, can you call the cabin you build from gifted tools your own? Yeah. Probably. I mean, you’d have to thrown in the obligatory “I could never have done it without you” platitude pretty much every time you had the person over, but they’d be hard pressed to take any real credit for your work, or even more, to claim some kind of shared ownership of it.
What about if the materials for the cabin were gifted, too? Hmm…getting a bit harder to claim that you’re the sole owner of it. At this point, you could still call it yours, and appeal to the meaning of the word “gift” as grounds for sole property rights, but you’d probably have to give the gift-giver carte blanche when it came to using the cabin. They probably could convince you to allow them to come and go at will and to stay for as long as they felt comfortable.
What if they also gifted you the land on which to build the cabin? Now its harder still to claim it as soley yours. But still, it’s a gift, right? And a gift means that you now own the thing gifted and thus can do as you please with it.
True, perhaps in object principle. But let’s be honest, here. When that much is gifted, propriety, etiquette, social convention, and basic consideration at this point imply and, I submit, necessitate a level of gratitude that begins to bleed over into obligation. It’s “your” cabin, but only in abstract principle at this point. Still…you could make a claim based on the strict meaning of the word “gift”.
What if the food and water were also given to you so that you had the energy to build the cabin? And the clothes and the work gloves and the work boots? And the medical insurance in case you got injured, and the pick-up truck for trips to the hardware store and lumberyard; and the gas for the truck and the insurance for it? And the fees for the permits, and the water which will be piped into the cabin, and the electricity which will power the appliances and provide heat and air conditioning? What if all the training on how to build the cabin was also a gift? No fees. Just a free ride at the vocational school of your choice?
Well, you might still appeal to the very definition of “gift” to make the case that the cabin belongs solely to you. After all, you might argue, this is pretty much what it means to be a parent. You provide all of these things to your children so that they can go out and build their lives and you don’t necessarily claim to own the things they acquire after they leave home and start their independent lives. And true this may be, but lets’s be honest. There is still some expectation placed upon the children. All things normal, it wouldn’t be considered anything less than rank insult if the children left home, with all the knowledge and resources the parents have provided, and then declined to have anything to do with them. So, there is some quid pro quo expected, even in the parent-child context.
At this point we must begin to face the obvious. “Gift” doesn’t really imply no strings attached. In fact I would say it’s quite the opposite. Which is why when there are no strings attached to a gift, the giver usually has to make that specifically clear:
“Hey, Bill. Got you this new putter. And don’t think you have to pay me back…this is my treat, and I’m not looking for you to return the favor. No sir, not one iota. No strings attached, bro.”
Still, you could argue a technical right to categorical ownership. One is never obliged to give a gift, and thus the recipient can’t technically be obligated to provide return value. I mean, yes, you can make an ethical argument, which is compelling and is the norm in real life, but “legally” the receiver of the gift is not on the hook to return the favor at all.
So, while it’s unlikely, we could at least at this point technically say that God has given us, as gifts, the talents we have and use. It doesn’t mean that we necessarily owe him anything or that we didn’t necessarily earn the gifts. I mean, we could say that we “earned” them in the way that children earn the gifts of their parents. Certainly there is value endemic to the children in their very person that compels parents to provide nice things for them, right? And similarly God could be said to give us gifts because there is inherent value to us, in and of ourselves, that drives God’s desire to give us skills and talents and potential, right?
Sure…this is all possible, if we don’t wade any further into the quicksand of untenable Christian metaphysics. And frankly, the idea that we aren’t obligated to God in EVERYTHING and in EVERY WAY is complete anathema to the church.
Now, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I stopped here. To explore Christian metaphysis no further than this is why the Church is the rational disaster that it is. Thus far, though we are speaking technically, it still sounds relatively hunky dory. God gives us our talents as gifts because he loves us. Of course in our gratitude we’d use them “for his glory”, as they say. But we still own them, and this is because we are valuable to him.
Of course, in order for us to be valuable to God there must be an actual “we” somewhere in the equation. Meaning we must have an existence of our own, independent of God, for us to be loved and thus the recipients of his affectionate gifts.
And here is where Christain metaphysics take their inexorable sinister turn. This is where all the talk of love and value and affection and gifts goes right down the toilet. Because the truth is that there IS NO WE. There is no “me” to me. And no “you’ to you. And you’ll see what I mean as we move further along with our cabin example.
So, we’ve already hypothesized that our resources, including clothes and food and education and tools and raw materials, are all gifts to us. Let’s take it a step further. What if your vision is also a gift. What if your very ability to see the nail in order to hit it with the hammer was given to you…you didn’t work for it, didn’t earn it. It’s a true gift. And what if your ears and hands and feet are gifts, too? And your very brain, and all therein, and thus your very capacity for learning; and the roots of that capacity, as well—your innate potential to be good at this or that…your natural, genetic proclivities, like your IQ, your talent for abstract thinking and organization, and your creativity.
Not seeing a whole lot of “you” in the mix are you now? Starting to feel a little squeezed, huh? Starting to wonder just who it is that is receiving these gifts. You’re starting to see that there is a very fine line between “you” and “that which you have been gifted”.
Well, that make senses. Because the root premise is that there is no line. Because there is no distinction. Because there is no you at all.
Your DNA is a gift. Your genes are gifts; and the interaction of the genes by which you are formed in the womb, and the atoms and molecules, and the inherent ability of these things to interact in meaningful and efficacious cause-and-effect ways…these are all gifts, too. The very ability of any of these things which make up you at your most fundamental physical root are God’s gifts. And beyond the physical then we must go, deeper and further until “gifts” comprise all of your reality, and your existence, itself. The very ESSENCE of you—the ABILITY of you to BE you—is not of you, it’s a gift. Indeed it’s no strain on credulity at this point to admit that YOU, YOURSELF, are a gift.
In other words, YOU are given by God…as a gift to YOURSELF.
But wait. That doesn’t work. YOU cannot be something God gives TO YOU. If your “you-ness” isn’t of you then there is no you in the first place in which TO GIVE YOU.
And now we have arrived. This is the whole point.
When a sweet little old lady tells you to “use the talents God has given you” she is actually implying many, many Satanic things, which is disappointing and terrifying.
She is implying that your talents, and thus ALL of the fruits of those talents is unearned. This is meant to stem the sin of “pride”, but “pride” is only sinful when it is irrational. To say I am a better man than you simply because I am rich and you are poor (I promise you I’m not, by the way) is an example of pride as a sin. To claim that a cabin I built is a wonderful cabin and to take responsibility for its beauty and functionality is NOT sinful pride. It’s merely a statement of fact: my hard work has EARNED me a beautiful cabin of which I certainly can, and I would argue MUST, be proud. But Christain metaphysics make no such distinction at all. You see, because your very talents are gifts from God, you can fundamentally take no pride of ANY kind in anything. You cannot claim to have done anything, in and of yourself; you can claim no ownership nor credit for any thing of value you create. Without your talents, you can do nothing productive…because “talents” is a broad, broad category. Everything from your intelligence and creativity to your physical deftness and dexterity, attention to detail, your wit, your ability to organize, your innate understanding of color, your conscientiousness, your photographic memory, your compassion, empathy…and on and on and on. And this evil, false, thoroughly anti-Biblical idea of “talents as gifts” or “talents on loan from God” has been used by the church to guilt, terrify, manipulate, and exploit the masses of believers for thousands of years.
Next, the sweet old lady’s words imply that one can draw some kind of objective and verifiable distinction between “you” and “your talents”. As though there is any frame of reference for yourself ABSENT the very things that make you YOU, like your creativity and intelligence, contentiousness and organizational skills, your physical dexterity…etcetera, etcetera. These are all things that distinguish you from others. Without these things, who exactly are you to me or anyone else? Take away my wife’s tremendous organizational skills, her intelligence, her extraordinary work ethic, her compassion, her careful and caring nature, and yes, even her occasional rush to judgment, her critical disposition, and her relentless drive to finish her list of chores which never ends, and I don’t know her at all. Take away her talents, and even her foibles, and you take her away from me.
The claim that man has no innate and inherent talents that really belong to him, and BECAUSE of him, and from and to none other BUT him, represents—when followed back to its premise, and then pursued to its logical conclusion—the very death of man, and God by proxy. This is the premise: that God made YOU, entirely, completely out of nothing, or out of something completely NOT you. And thus there is nothing constant…no you QUA you, and thus you can claim NO aspect of yourself that you fundamentally own from beginning to end, and thus you can claim to have earned NOTHING that you acquire and possess in life. It doesn’t belong to you because there is no you.
This premise is the bane of man, and has been an excuse to terrify, torment, and murder human beings for thousands and thousands of years. It is evil. It is not true. It should be rejected for the rank lie that it is.
The dirty little secret behind “the gifts God has given you” is that there is NO YOU at all. You are nothing. A placeholder for “God’s will”, or “nothing”; at best you are merely a character in the cosmic play of God’s divine determinist plan. You are an illusion…a name on a page, an actor without will. You have no Self, and therefore you have no right to anything. Not even your very existence.
In the next article I will explain why this idea, or a semantically different form of it, is loved and adored by many strains of secularists and scientific determinists the world over, who only THINK they are different from the Christains they ridicule as blind and/or stupid.
END PART ONE
Tyranny Does Not Thwart the Constitution, It Perfects It: A controversial look at the philosophical roots of our government (PART TWO)
In the last article we left off by discussing how Authority (Force) and Freedom are two completely distinct, antithetical ethical and political premises. We continue now with the breakdown and examination of my response.
”[Government] implies that human interaction must ultimately occur only via dictated terms from an Authority placed over him…”
Government exists to enforce Law, which is an ethic that requires man to OBEY a DICTATED social contract. The more man obeys the Law then, the more he affirms government as a legitimate and necessary institution. Law is a tool of government used to promote ITSELF, not the individual. In other words, obedience does NOT affirm CHOICE, it by definition affirms AUTHORITY. The whole point of law is to elevate and promote obedience over choice; authority over will; compliance over freedom; Government over the Individual. The Law, and thus the goverenment, because one cannot exist without the other, cannot promote a MORAL society but merely an OBEDIENT one, because there is no such thing as morality absent volition…that is, absent choice. And at root the Law does not care what you WANT or what you might CHOOSE, it only cares what you FEAR, and from that, the degree to which you OBEY. It uses fear of punishment and condemnation (from government…or from Authority, that is) as THE means by which it establishes the supremacy of its ethics. The one who at root has no use for his own self-will, in the face of overwhelming violent coercive power, understands, even if only subconsciously, that he has no fundamental use for his own self-IDENTITY. And thus he becomes existentially fused with the collective (in our case, the “People”) and the obedient hive-mind of the masses. And every time he votes, it doesn’t matter for whom—the victor is ALWAYS the antithesis of freedom. A vote for Authority is a vote for the nullification of one’s self.
“The problem is that since all men are human, and humans are said to be fundamentally flawed, morally (meaning they are insufficient to their own existence absent an external power which dictates their behavior by force), who shall be put in charge? There can be no rational answer to this question.”
I think this is pretty self-explanatory, but I hope that its significance makes a deep impression on the reader. The universal, ceaselessly repeated trope that “we can’t just let everyone do whatever they want” SPECIFICALLY, inexorably, unquestionably, and unavoidably proclaims a fundamental, metaphysical, and thus absolute depravity of mankind. It is a declaration that man has NO endemic, natural capacity to act in service to what is good, and thus necessarily implies that his WILL is corrupt to the point where it cannot legitimately be called WILLFUL at all. And if man cannot really ever choose good of and by himself according to his nature, then what use has man for knowledge? And this rhetorical question means that knowledge itself is, for all practical purposes, entirely wasted on man. This arrantly evil metaphysic condemns ALL men to “spiritual” or “moral” and epistemological (man cannot know truth, because he cannot discern between good and evil) death as a corollary function of their very birth. According to this metaphysic then, the birth of man is utterly impossible—THE contradiction of all contradictions. That God or Nature gives life to Death. That birth is the Affliction of Afflictions which is that one can only ever be conscious of his own fundamental unconsciousness.
“…what happens is that man is collectivized into an Ideal…and THAT, not the individual, is what shall be served. That Ideal then implies rulers…those who are seen as mirroring its virtues most closely. So [because of this fact], even if we are “freely electing” our leaders [the ruling class] we are…doing so not based upon what is best for Man the Individua, but Man the Ideal.”
To establish government is to metaphysically presuppose that man must be ruled, full stop. Anyone who thinks that government is merely an OPTION for mankind as a means of social organization has not thoroughly thought through that assumption, or is intellectually incapable of it. “Government” and ‘absolute control of reality, itself” are synonymous, philosophically speaking; and at any rate, regardless what you or I may think, government NEVER considers the possibility that its power is transient, and that its institutions are purely emphemeral. Government by its nature IS, and what it is is authority; and that Authority is necessary for the perpetuation of reality, ITSELF. It CANNOT imagine itself as a memory because it cannot, by NATURE, fathom ANYTHING outside of itself. It thus cannot get smaller, only bigger. For even reductions of government control are only forthcoming by ACTS of the governemnt (e.g.tax cuts), making these reductions simply manifestations of government power. Which is why I chuckle at people who run for office as Libertarians. Their basic philosophy is: they will reduce the power of government by acting in the capacity OF government; they will restrict its authority BY its authority. Sorry, but it doesnt work that way. That’s like saying you can wish away gravity. Gravity is not subject to your feelings, hopes, dreams, or ignorance. It IS, and will do what it does to its greatest and absolute possible extent, ALL the time. And any action you might take to reduce the power of gravity MUST concede it as a constant. Gravity is FORCE, PERIOD. It’s never less than that; it’s never more. And it is always itself to the maximum degree. So it is with government.
And yet, amazingly, Americans, who consider themselves THE very perfect progeny of the Enlightenment, persistently speak of the Constitution as THE guardian of Inidivdual Freedom. As if Freedom can be a function of rules, enforced by the the State through violence. They seem shocked at the rank and shameless expansion of their government, and the utterly non-subtle erosion of their rights and property, and speak of such things as a corruption of the Constitution. But these things, my friend, you must understand, are not a corruption of the Constitution, but a PERFECTING of it. The government, regardless of how it is organized, is never a stepping-stone to freedom, but is in fact the very antithesis of it. The conclusion of the premise which declares “controlled and compelled” behavior as THE means by which man’s existence is enabled, ensured, and perpetuated is: ABOLUTE CONTROL. And this should be obvious to us, if not by reason then by the empirical evidence of thousands and thousands of years of human history. When has the government ever been a stepping-stone to LESS of itself? When has the State ever conceded, via its own volition and based upon its own underwriting philosophical premise, that it is merely one option of several for man to select as a means of social organization?
It has never happened because it CANNOT happen.
The fundamental, metaphysical premise of government is that man must be ruled in order to ensure his very existence; that is, man, born an Individual, is not by nature nor root identity sufficient to LIFE. In other words, for man to be himself, and not the Collective Ideal of the State, is for man not to BE at all. The destruction of Individual will then is an existential necessity, and is THE fundamental purpose the State serves, by nature and implication; the Indivudal must die to SELF, in order that he may live to the State. And to live for the State—to live for the Authority which compells him to the Collective Ideal (e.g. The People)—is the only way he can live at all.
And it is here where we can begin to see just how even a Representative Republic with free elections is no hedge against the inevitable absolutism of government power. Once man has accepted the metaphysics of Collectivism implied by the State, then he simply CANNOT act politically in a way that affirms the Individual. And once this premise has been conceded by a society, and set in stone, literally, by the establishment of government, there is no going back. The establishment of Institutional Authority is a bell that cannot be un-rung. You cannot reject a master…even one you have “elected” and “freely chosen”, because it is of course no longer up to you. Humanity in a “free republic” has declared its need for a master by appealing to its existential insufficiency, which means that the master cannot EVER be in a position to entertain any cries for freedom because he exists precisely because humanity, by its OWN admission, is incapable of ever knowing just what it needs in the first place. For the government, even in a “free republic”. to think that it shall become LESS controlling rather than more is a rejection of its mandate to SERVE humanity. To give you freedom is tantamount to allowing a child to run headlong into traffic. It is FOR YOU that you are made servile, don’t you see?
The autocracy rules the masses for its own sake, but the democracy rules them for THEIR sake. Which, of course, in practicality becomes likewise ITS sake, but the intentions are thought more benevolent. The autocracy travels as the crow flies, you could say, whilst the democracy takes the (ostensible) scenic route.
”The American Ideal is “the People”, which is as close to Individualism as you might get from government, but it is still a collectivist Ideal and thus the road map take us to Tyranny, even though we are sure we intended to go to Freedom”
Just like every rock of any size will sink to the bottom of the ocean, every government will descend into the nightmare of authoritarianism.
END.
Tyranny Does Not Thwart the Constitution, It Perfects It: A controversial look at the philosophical roots of our government (PART ONE)
This is controversial…I’m just going to say it. I know it, and yet the facts are still the facts. I cannot pretend that a square is also a circle, and so I cannot pretend that Authority is also Freedom. Authority is force, and force is the antithesis of freedom. The Constitution canonizes government rule…government authority. And though it decrees “limited authority” I submit that this is a rational contradiction in terms. Government authority cannot be limited because it is the root IDENTITY of Government. It IS the irreducible core of the State. Everything the State does flows from its Authority to compel individuals by force against their will (force necessarily making “will” fundamentally irrelevant).
When we speak of limiting the government we are talking about limiting its Authority; which means we are talking about limiting its identity. But how do you limit the identity of a thing? It cannot be done. How do you limit the identity of a bird, for example? How do you make a bird less of itself? A bird is a bird is a bird. BEING a bird is absolute. There is no such thing as a bird which we know is a bird being somehow not as much of a bird as another bird. Somehow bird A is a full bird but bird B is a “limited bird”. It’s BIRDNESS is somehow truncated. This is complete nonsenses. To claim we can limit the Authority of the government is to say we can limit the GOVERNMENTNESS of government. This is also complete nonsense. So the Constitution, necessarily and by definition affirming the State and thereby its Authority, affirms State Authority ABSOLUTELY. It concedes the full “governmentness” of government…and yet attempts to limit that identity. It declares the bird a bird, and then goes on to describe how this particular bird will somehow be less of a bird than all the other birds which came before it. This bird, being birthed from other birds, will somehow have a root identity of BOTH birdness and not-birdness. It will be both a bird and the opposite of bird.
Madness. Beautiful and perhaps well-intentioned madness, but madness nevertheless.
Look, the only way the Constitution could ever limit government power is if it were claim that there is no government at all. Which, if the Constitution did that, it wouldn’t exist in the first place.
*
The other day I was debating a fellow commentor on a blog I occasionally visit. We were at odds over the feasibility of the American Republic; the Constitution, and the intentions of the Founding Fathers with respect to establishing a truly free and just society. If you have read much of my blog, you already know which side of the fence I sit on. I am a voluntarist, categorically, and this means that I accept as rational and efficacious only the utter ABSENCE of Ruling Authority when it comes to politics. The State, being FORCE, necessarily rejects individual will and choice as necessary or even fundamentally possible to the establishment of a truly ethical and efficacious society. And this is the very antithesis of humanity, period. Government undermines the identity of man and replaces it with the identity of the State, and substitutes choice with force, value exchange with violence, and morality with legality.
My fellow commentor is of the small-government, libertarian persuasion, through I’m not sure she identifies hereself as officially a Libertarian party member. At any rate, during the course of our discussion she said the following (edited for clarity and brevity):
”…our Constitution…was supposed to be our road map…We were supposed to have a very limited government. I’ve read enough of the founders to know that most of them thought of government as being evil but necessary.”
And I replied:
”…I understand your points. I agree with you on the Founders’ intentions. The Constitution being a road map implies a journey. Unfortunately it cannot be to capital “F” Freedom because it implies government, which implies Authority, which implies a metaphysic that declares man, at the level of his natural identity, incapable of establishing a just society absent violent coercive force. It implies that human interaction must ultimately occur only via dictated terms from an Authority placed over him. The problem is that since all men are human, and are said to be morally flawed creatures at root which is why government is necessary (meaning that man’s nature makes him insufficient to his own existence absent an external power which compels him into “right” behavior by threat and force), then the question is: who shall be put in charge?
And of course by the very metaphysical premise—the inherent depravity of man—there can be no rational answer to this question.
So what happens is that man is collectivized into an Ideal…and this Ideal he understands is what shall be served. That Ideal then implies rulers…those who are seen as mirroring its virtues most closely.So…even if we are “freely electing” our leaders, we are doing so not based upon what is best for Man the Individual, but Man the Ideal. The American Ideal is “the People”, which granted is as close to Individualism as you will ever get from government, but it’s still a collectivist Ideal. And thus the road map takes us to Tyranny, even though we are sure we intended to go to Freedom.
And, not being snarky here, honestly, but if an evil is NECESSARY wouldn’t that actually make it good?”
*
After reading my comment a couple of times, I realized that I only superficially touched upon what are pretty complex issues with respect to government and the philosophical principles which underwrite it, and in so doing I did not do justice to them, nor to my fellow commentor. But in the interest of not wanting to post a comment under a blog article which was longer than the article itself, I kept my points as brief as I felt reasonable. Unfortunately I believe I might have merely sewn confusion rather than clarity. Thus this article here on my own blog, where space is unlimited, if not my readers’ patience, so allow me to fill in the gaps. I will do this by breaking down my comment into sections and explicating accordingly.
*
”[The Constitition] cannot [take us] to ‘capital F’ Freedom because it implies government, which implies Authority…”
Governemnt by nature is FORCE. The ROOT and FUNDAMENTAL and ABSOLUTE purpose is to exercise coercive (violent) power to compel specific behavior, which by implicit and rational logical extension means that it controls ALL behavior. This is because the Individual—he who is the SINGULAR source and author of the behavior to be compelled—cannot be metaphysically parsed. In other words. man is by natural identity a creature of will; this is what separates him from the animals. The very cornerstone of man’s Identity is his Will. He is a VOLITIONAL agent, not an instinctual one. Which is why man can be held morally culpable for his actions where an animal cannot. If man cannot by will CHOOSE to act, then his behavior cannot be categorized as moral or immoral. In which case, by what basis can it be argued that man should be governed? The claim is that man is morally insufficient, which is why he must be compelled by force into right behavior. The ability of man to CHOOSE is implicit in the argument of the necessity of government. The fact that man is a moral agent is WHY there is government. Of course by subordinating individual will to State power man’s morality becomes moot. By claiming that man will inevitably CHOOSE wrong on the whole when left to himself becomes the reason why choice must be nullified by Authority. But if man no longer can choose then man is no longer a willful agent. And without will man has no identity; so what govement implies is the destruction of man in order that man can live a successful existence and not destroy himself.
That’s…a lot of contradictions and other logical fallacies. But that’s govement.
Anyway…
Man’s will is singular…that is, ALL his actions proceed from ONE will…His Own. To claim the right to force man to do this or that (as government does), or not do this or that, by threat of punishment (unto death) is NOT merely a limiting of the will but a rank commandeering of it. Will is absolute. It cannot be limited; it is indivisible. To force a man to act or not act one way necessarily subordinates ALL of man’s subsequent actions to force. All subsequent actions occur within the context not of freedom but of coercion. In other words, if govement forces you to act one way, it doesn’t mean that you are free to act in other ways, it only means that you are ALLOWED to act in those other ways (and temporarily at that, if history is our guide). And being allowed to do something is NOT the same thing as being FREE do it.
END PART ONE
Memory Implants: Another impossible sci-fi trope
Implanting memories on some unsuspecting, or suspecting, victim or person…make them believe that they have done or said this or that by giving them a memory, from OUTSIDE of them. They thus accept it was derived FROM (or within) them. We’ve seen it more than once in fiction…and fiction is where it shall remain, I’m afraid.
Think about it…think about how this idea contradicts all rational consistency, and thus must contradict all practical utility. Before a memory implant could actually induce a memory one would need to implant, as a necessary corollary to the memory, a sense of SELF…an “I” to serve as the constant…that is, the existential frame of reference for the memory. For without this reference, there can be no memory. There may be an image—like a mental picture—but not a memory, which is a very, very different thing. A memory is a personal experience; and an experience, to be personal, needs one’s singular existential frame of reference. The memory is ACTIVELY manifest by the personal and singular experience of the ACTOR, not DICTATED to him by another…this is why it’s a memory and not merely a mental image. I can think of a green car, but the memory of the green car I saw parked at the store yesterday is a memory because it is in my mind not as an abstraction, but as an OBJECT which I physically ACTED upon to and of and from my SELF…I SAW it. The memory requires me to be an active participant/observer; the mere mental image does not. And for one to be an active (conscious) observer requires an “I”—a Self—and that can only come from within, not from without. MY singular sense of MY SELF, which is the crux of memory, cannot be implanted into me from outside of me. It is not dictated TO me, it IS me, and “me” (me qua me) is absolute, and absolutely necessary to make a memory a memory. The metaphysical ME is the foundation of all memory. Memory is grounded in the ontological singular frame of reference, which acts upon the physical (through the senses) to create one’s wholly unique existential experience.
So, no, memories cannot be implanted from one to another. One, from THEIR singular ontological frame of reference, cannot experience FOR another, and thus cannot GIVE them a memory. There is no way to do this since by definition one cannot BE another FOR them. The idea of a “memory implant” is a fundamental violation of rational human identity, in which case, there is no “one” to whom a memory can be given. The idea of a memory implant collapses upon the very logical fallacy, making the whole endeavor a categorical waste of time. We can psychologically manipulate another person, control them by deception and suggestion, but we cannot BE them FOR them. An implant may one day control the mind of another through manipulation of the brain, but this is only euphemistically called a “memory implant”. You may be convinced that you experienced something you did not actually experience, but you cannot ACTUALLY experience what you did NOT ACTUALLY experience. And this is the subtle, but profound, difference. One is psychological manipulation, the other is memory.
And this topic relates to why I have asserted, and continue to assert, that it is impossible for consciousness to be created OUTSIDE of itself…this is one of the great rational and philosophical paradoxes. Consciousness, for a human, for a computer, for an android, artificial or organic (not that I accept that consciousness has been achieved “artificially”, or that it will or can be achieved) may involve the actions of humanity or nature or God, but it will never be CAUSED or CREATED by them, fundamentally. Consciousness represents a wholly singular ontological perspective…it is absolute, period, and thus is only and can only be a product of Itself. The root of man is his identity of SELF, and this is utter—absolute. There is no before it which can be claimed by it except FROM it; there is likewise no after. In order to speak of “before I was”, I must BE; in order to speak of “after I am”, I must BE. The ontological constant is the Self…and the Self is, was, and shall ever be. It is infinite. And this is the mark of God upon man.
“I” cannot be function of “NOT I”; consciousness has no frame of reference for a cause outside of Itself. If it could be created or caused from outside itself it could not exist. To say “my memories were given to me”, or “my Self came from another”, is like saying “there is no such thing as absolute truth” or “it is impossible to know ultimate truth”. The claim completely nullifies its assertion. It’s rational madness; dead on arrival. Mouth noise.
For the same reason that “you” cannot also be “me”, and “me” cannot also be “you”, “I” cannot cause “you”, and “you” cannot cause “I”. This metaphysic may be paradoxical, yet it IS rationally consistent and, I would submit, even consistent with empirical reality. The very reason why man is able to exist and thrive is because the natural root of his powers of conceptualization and language is that meaning NEEDS a reference, and that MUST then imply “I”. “I am” must be BEFORE meaning can be determined. “I” is not dictated, IT does the dictating. “I” is not created, IT is the creator.
END
Leftist Witchcraft: The Collectivist Metaphysics (and Hypocrisy) of “White Privilege”
The power of “white privilege:
In two words, one phrase, the sum and substance of a white person’s achievements are deemed unearned and undeserved; simultaneously these achievements are rendered morally depraved…as failures, not successes, and thus not achievements at all, but the expression of a rapacious hedonism which is characteristic of his nature; and simultaneously still, the white person is accused of the very Sin (racism) from which “white privilege”, itself, is so utterly hatched.
*
If possessing the proper collective identity is the means by which members of a group (a Collective) are valued, then the group’s only real function—meaning the only behavior ultimately relevant—is the exploitation and destruction of outsiders…that is, members of other groups.
Now…
If all of the members of a given group by nature and definition possess the requisite collective identity, then achieving individual merit within (with respect to) the group is impossible; and even if it were possible, it would be irrelevant. The expression of the group—its collective identity—within the group is a redundancy. In order, then, for collective identity to matter it must be projected and inflicted BEYOND the group (which is why collectivist societies are always so enthusiastically antagonistic). Individuals (such as they are…meaningless beyond their collective identity) within the group are valued ONLY according to how their actions spread the Collective Ideal—which is collective identity, like “Race”, IDEALIZED— beyond the group, making those in the group by nature exploitative and destructive towards outsiders.
The individual within the group, you see, is merely an expression of the group…being in (metaphysical) essence, one and the same. The group, being the only LEGITIMATE sum and substance of all of reality (reality being merely an expression of the Collecfive Ideal) cannot abide the existence of outsiders…which it necessarily collectivizes as Outside GROUPS. The destruction of these outside groups in the interest of spreading the Collective Ideal is the only meaningful ethical obligation for those in the group, and the only real measure of achievement and value.
So a group is either devoted to the Collectivist Ideal which is expressed in the collective identity (like race), which means that the exploitation and destruction of outsiders is the primary ethic and means of attaining value, or there is no collective identity, and thus no Collective Ideal, and thus the group is merely a byproduct of individuals happening to gather together in a given context/location for the purpose of individual self-expression, which in THAT context is the primary ethic and means of attaining value. The former is rooted in a completely abstract, subjective concept, like “Race”, where the individual is a function of his race rather than the other way around; and the latter is rooted in the empirical reality of individual persons working out their existence by conforming their ideas to what is objectively observed, and to that which can be rationally and objectively KNOWN to be the case…i.e. that we all observe reality via a singular existential frame of reference: One’s Self, and thus we get “we” from “I”—the group from the individual—not the other way around. The former is mystical, the latter is rational.
So, understand what I am driving at here. By accusing white people of promoting and assuming “privilege” the neo-Marxist racists and racial opportunists of the left are accusing whites of having endemic, intrinsic, in-group bias, and this as an essential function of their very nature AS “White”. One’s “Whiteness” (the presumed and presumptuous Collective Ideal of white people)…that is, their existential identity of “Whiteness” demands pervasive, absolute, and institutional racism against the opposing Collective Ideal of “Non-Whiteness”. In other words, if you are white then you are the very INCARNATION of racism. Racism is “personified” in the EXISTENCE of the white person, so to speak.
The spectacular hypocrisy of the neo-Marxist racists and racial opportunists of the left is this: In order to accuse white people of natural collective-identity bias based upon race, they must ALREADY presume as de facto Reality as a manifestation of Collectivist Metaphysics implying the Universal-to-Humanity Collective Ideal of “Race”. In less abstruse terms, if white people have a natural in-group preference and thus are naturally racist, then so are ALL races. They admit that race IS the Universal Collective Ideal which is an expression of the collectivist metaphysics to which they appeal in order to claim that the white race is naturally racist. One cannot claim that ALL whites are racist BECAUSE THEY ARE WHITE unless one admits that race is indeed THE universal Collective Ideal of which humanity is AN EXPRESSION. All whites are racist BECAUSE all whites are an expression of their race; and if whites are an expression of their race then all others are necessarily an expression of THEIR race. And therefore to assert that whites as a group experience “white privilege” is to assert that blacks as a group experience “black privilege”, and the same is true of brown, yellow, and red people, etcetera. And this is why the racist and racial opportunists of the left who level the accusation of “privilege” at white people are either useful idiots or shepherds of idiots. To assert race as THE Ideal of Collective Reality means that the evil of racial in-group preference doesn’t magically become good if the group is non-white. Collective identity as the standard of value is naturally exploitative and exclusive no matter what the group is.
We might also look at it like this: If it is evil for whites to have an in-group preference based on race, then it is evil for ALL races to have an in-group preference based on race. Conversely, if it is good for other races to have in-group preference based on race then it must also be good for whites to have an in-group preference based on race.
The point is that once individuals are collectivized into abstract Ideals, then attempting to value one Ideal over another becomes nothing more than an exercise in the arbitrary and subjective. That whites are bad and other races are good, and thus white in-group preference is oppressive “privilege” whilst the in-group preference of other races doesn’t exist or is somehow non-oppressive is an IMPOSSIBLE argument to make because its METAPHYISCAL prerequisite is utter hypocrisy. Which makes the argument entirely self-nullifying.
Thus, the accusation of “white privilge” is clearly nothing more than leftist projection. The political left openly advocates collectivist metaphysics, which necessarily makes collective identity THE ONLY relevant means of determining a person’s basic existential worth, purpose, and function; and in America at least, the left has shamelessly selected race as THE Collective Ideal to which all individuals shall be subordinated. We can be sure then that it is the socialist and the communist, not the voluntarist, libertarian, or capitalist, who are ACTUALLY guilty of racism. The left ALWAYS collectivizes and arbitrarily values individuals according to some spurious group identity in service to the acquisition of political power. THEY are the ones who employ in-group preference—privilege—as a means of repressing competition, criminalizing dissent, and exploiting those of “inferior groups” based upon race, religion, class, politics, or whatever happens to be the Collective Ideal du jour.
As usual, if you want to know what manner of evil the left is suckling at any given moment, look no further than that of which they accuse their political enemies.
END
unreformingtheology 