Category Archives: Man’s Ability

Questions Which Can Have No Answer…Why benevolent government is impossible (Finale)

collectivist metaphysics, forced compliance, government, government violence, law, Man's Ability, Metaphysics, Uncategorized

To be honest, this series is getting more long-winded than I intended, and you pretty much get the idea at this point, so this article is going to be the conclusion to the series and then I will move on to other things…there’s lots of stuff in the brain-hopper that I’d like to get to.

Like I said, you get the idea: “benevolent government” is a giant contradiction in terms, and it therefore can’t work and will never work.

Exhibit A: the United States of America, arguable the freest and most enlightened nation in history is now, in under 250 years, a violent, corrupt, broke, lying, third-rate, pseudo-communist fantasyland; and this is not in spite of the Constitution, it is because of it…and I am genuinely sorry to have to say that. I struggle to accept it, myself, and don’t confess it gleefully. Nevertheless, the simple fact is this: of all the documents to attempt to reconcile the mutually exclusive ideas of freedom and government, the Constitution arguably does the best job, yet we must understand and remember that two plus two can never equal five, and therefore even that which comes closest to making two plus two equal five still has an infinite distance to go. In other words, that which comes the closest to making two plus two equal five is still just as far away as anything else is or was.

The Constitution affirms government, and that’s why it was doomed to failure (in reconciling freedom and government) even before the ink dried. The Constitution affirms government, and as such, even despite all of the best intentions of the Founding Fathers, it necessarily affirms tyranny. It’s a sad, hard, cold truth. We don’t want to hear it; we don’t want to accept it. I get it, and I understand. But the sooner we accept this truth and move on the better. Nothing good can come from persisting in folly.

As explained in previous installments of this series, the State is founded upon the metaphysical principle of human existential insufficiency. In other words, the very reason why we must have government (for example, dismantling the government is never the solution to any social, economic, political, etcetera, problem…in fact, more government is almost always in some way recommended) is because if left to himself, the individual will inexorably succumb to his depraved root nature. Without the State, it is asserted, anyone can “just do whatever they want”. This is a common argument…intellectually barren, of course, but common. Naturally we can’t have people running around doing whatever they want (Oh, the horror!) because “do whatever they want” always translates to: “give rise to the selfish, violent, murderous, rapacious, exploitative, profane, sexually deviant, criminal reprobates that form core of their very root being, and which is only restrained, like with animals, by punishment and pain, and the threat thereof”.

The “punishment and pain” is a consequence of “breaking the law”, which really means “disobeying the will of the ruling class”, because the ruling class, in all practical actuality, is the law. Without the ruling class the law is entirely irrelevant. The ruling class knows this, at least implicitly—and often, explicitly—which is precisely why they are never subject to the law to the same extent (or to any extent) as the masses.

Which brings me to this business of “no one being above the law in a free, representative, democracy”. This is complete nonsense, and I think, buried beneath the many layers of denial and cognitive dissonance, most of us know it. It sounds good, but it’s a lie. Someone has to be above the law simply because the law, itself, is entirely abstract…it’s a concept, not an object. Without an Authority to enforce law, law is meaningless, which means it’s irrelevant; which means it doesn’t really exist. The Authority is the meaning, relevance, and efficacy of the Law. Authority then cannot be under the Law because without authority, there is no Law. The Authority then can never be questioned, held to account, nor considered in any way illegal (i.e. unethical). The Authority cannot break the law because this means that the law can somehow break itself, which is obviously impossible:

Those of us who are under the law can offer no relevant nor meaningful complaint to the ruling class, because our ideas and opinions are a function of value judgment; and this is something our nature precludes. If we possessed any real ability to make value judgments to any truly (objective) ethical end, then we wouldn’t need Law and Authority in the first place.

Do you see?

The very existence of the Law and Authority is rooted in premise which says that man’s own ethical ability is corrupt and insufficient as a function of our very nature—the fact that were were born at all is why we cannot be in a position to question the Authority and the Law. For us to question, let alone criticize or condemn, the ruling class and its laws, implies that we are somehow able to make proper value judgments on our own. An ability we lack, because, again, if we could, we would not be under the Law and its Authority. Our only proper response to the ruling class is obedience, then….we obey, period, or we are disabled and/or destroyed, There is no discussion; no compromise; no vote…there is the ruler and the ruled, the philosopher kings and the unwashed masses, the gnostic enlightened and the barbarians, the Good and the Evil, the Master and the Slave. We can bring the best minds to the State, the most benevolent of politicians, the most well-meaning of souls…we can attempt to inject compromise and cooperation into this arrangement, we can try to make the square also simultaneously a circle, the cancer also simultaneously the cure, but there will only ever be one conclusion:

Totalitarianism.

And from this, death.

The premise will always find its conclusion. Always. If you want a different conclusion, you must find a new premise. If you want to avoid evil, despotic rule, you must reject entirely the concept of “ruling”. If you want a benevolent government, you must reject entirely the very concept of “government”. It’s truly all or nothing.

And no, government is not merely one way man chooses to organize himself socially and politically, and this is because government, as I have explained in previous installments of this series, is not cooperative. Government—that is, the sociopolitical dichotomy of Ruler and Ruled—implies that it is necessarily the only way that man can be organized; and this is because neither the ruling class nor those it rules over really have any choice at all. The metaphysics of the State demand that there is no such thing as “choice”—at least, none which is fundamentally relevant to human existence—because the ability of humanity, as a function of its very birth; very existence, to make any rational, objective value judgments is entirely insufficient, and thus moot. Man’s actions, which are rooted in his inability to actually and efficaciously apply ethics, and this as a function of his inability to make value judgments, and this rooted in his inability to actually know anything (i.e. to know Truth), and this rooted in his inability to actually be himself—that is, to be a rational and efficacious existential frame of reference—can only ever be fundamentally anti-existence. Left to his own “choice”—which of course and again is a lie, man will only ever act in service to the destruction of himself and others.

So, no, government is not a choice, either by the ruler or the ruled. Both the ruler and the ruled suffer from their existential insufficiency. This being the case, the ruled do not choose to rule but are “called” to rule by the Transcendent Divine, in whatever specific or non-specific way it is defined,, be it “God”, or “the Gods”, or “Mathematical Processes”, or “Evolution” or some unnamed Divine Determinist Agent or Agency (e.g. an “Unknown God”, Acts 17:23). They are the Philosopher Kings, put there because God or the gods simply declared it thus. They are as much a function of the Transcendent Divine as those who are ruled.

The ruled, of course, are not “called” to rule, but to be ruled. This is how it goes, end of story. It’s all about obedience and submission for the unwashed masses.

This is the way it is, period. There is no meaning, no explanation, no understanding, and no purpose beyond “it is because it is”. At the end of it all, that’s the whole explanation.

The fruit of the State is the Psychopathic Trinity: Chaos, Misery, Death.

END

Coronavirus and Lockdown Overreach: Why the science is both odious and irrelevant

collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, forced compliance, government, government violence, individualism vs collectivism, Man's Ability, scientific determinism, tyranny, Violence, , ,

It is unfortunate that those of us who point out the unnecessary misery and chaos which has arisen from the embarrassing State overreaction to Covid-19 are compelled to include the epidemiological data in our arguments, as well as a variety of quotes and perspectives from scientific and medical experts in the field. And it is unfortunate for a couple of reasons.

First, it conflates and combines what are really two separate issues, the virus itself and its medical impact, and the government measures taken to manage it. The virus itself and its medical implications for you and me should have nothing whatsoever to do with the government. And if you ask me why, I will kindly direct your attention to the US unemployment and debt data, the current stats on psychological trauma related to the lockdown, as the burning cars and tire fires in front of the White House.

Second, it presumes and implies the lie that the State would have been perfectly justified and within its scope to seize control of private property, and dictate the terms by which individuals associate and where they are allowed to do so; that it would have been perfectly acceptable for the State to immediately claim ownership of every man, woman, and child, to collapse the economy, to plunge the nation into ever greater heights of unplayable debt, and usher in an pandemic of psychological fallout that shall dwarf the coronavirus and every other pandemic which came before it.

I find it ironic, if not rather depressing, that people feel that they must resort to mortality and case fatality statistics, SIR models, and R rates in order to defend the philosophical axioms that make individual existence, and all of that scientific data, possible in the first place. Among these philosophical axioms is the inviolable (without disastrous consequences) truth of one’s sovereign ownership of one’s own Self and correspondingly of one’s own labor. Further, I submit that an appeal to the epidemiological data as proof that the State has acted incompetently is really, in fact, only proof that one does not understand the State at all, nor appreciate the fact that if the defense of freedom from tyranny and exploitation were left in the hands of the scientists, with their tenuous grasp on philosophical reasoning and their irrational devotion to ludicrous determinism as an explanatory basis for anything, documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights never would have been written in the first place; and representative democracies throughout the world would never have seen the light of day.

The idea that I have to prove that the coronavirus is not particularly medically dangerous and represents no existential threat to man nor society in order to make a digestible and acceptable argument for ending the lockdown makes me, quite frankly, sick to my stomach. Neither the State nor any other agency or institution, nor man, woman, or child, may claim a right to my life, body, property, or associations, in any circumstance, ever, be it the coronavirus or a giant asteroid or a “war on terror”, a locust plague, a famine, a drought…anything. Government should never be in the business of risk management, because government, frankly, sucks at it.

The State’s answer to saving and protecting life means creating a situation in which life is not worth living. Risk management, the protection of individuals from the dangers of simply being alive, whether it involves climbing a ladder, flying on an airplane, driving a car, eating certain foods, engaging in certain sports, or navigating through the scary microscopic world of viruses and bacteria—whatever—requires nuance, an understanding and appreciation of context; it requires flexibility and temperance, a sense of proportion, and above all, an acceptance of the truth of the individual as a singular and singularly free-thinking agent, ultimately unattached to some collective ideation, and thus able to make efficacious choices in pursuit of a moral existence on his own—that is, that the individual in and of himself is naturally sufficient to his own existence.

Government understands none of this. There is nothing nuanced or delicate or nimble to the State. The State is blunt force…it is murder, it is flattened cities, it is prison, it is one-size-fits-all; it is bombs and guns and tear gas and jack boots and mushroom clouds, it is FORCE. Every drawing it makes looks like scribble, every photograph it takes is black, every song it composes is a shriek. The State knows nothing about protection, only SUBMISSION. It attacked the coronavirus with the same tool it uses to attack any problem, the only tool it has—a hammer. It cannot medically subordinate the virus…for that takes knowledge and experience and forethought and experiment; it cannot discern the at-risk from the unaffected and make public health recommendations accordingly, for that takes nuance and discernment and strategy and mercy and compassion. It cannot smash the virus into oblivion, for the virus is too small and elusive; and it cannot threaten the virus, for the virus cannot recognize its authority.

The State can, however, demolish the lives of the citizens it rules…it can “save” them by destroying them before the virus does; it can make the virus look like a party compared to the misery the State can produce. It can, within the span of a few short weeks, amass numbers of dead and dying that make the coronavirus look like a mole hill, rendering the virus completely innocuous by comparison.

How do you flatten the coronavirus curve?

By making a bigger curve out of the misery and destruction of the population you govern.

THAT is what the State is good at, and that is just what it has done.

So spare me the science; tie it to a rock and throw it in the lake. Show me a man who believes that you and I have a right to our own lives ONLY when the science shows that there is no longer any risk from the coronavirus, and I will show you a man who believes that you and I NEVER had any right to our own lives in the first place.

END

Lockdown Hell: Altruism Instantiated (Part ONE)

Authority, collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, Ethics, forced compliance, government, individualism vs collectivism, Man's Ability, Metaphysics, morality, Violence, , , , , , ,

One of the many interesting aspects of the unprecedented and disturbingly open, unabashed, and undisguised unconstitutionality being foisted upon the American public during the fabricated coronavirus crisis, is the novel iteration of the western sociopolitical zeitgeist, altruism. Altruism, in a nutshell, in its sociopolitical context, is the State-forced sacrifice of those deemed “privileged” to those who are deemed “under…or un-privileged”. This of course contradicts the very notion of “privilege” in that it by definition makes the “unprivileged” the greatest beneficiaries of the State’s coercive power, and the “privileged” the greatest victims…which renders the categories quite ironic, in that they are, in actuality, opposite. The ‘unprivileged” are significantly luckier than their privileged counterparts. But don’t strain your mind or credulity by attempting to square that circle. It cannot be done. The ethics of altruism are based on collectivist and determinist metaphysics which are by nature utterly irrational, and therefore in actuality inscrutable, which is why under the authority of the government agents of altruism you are not called to understand anything they say, but to simply obey. They are the enlightened philosopher kings, you are the unwashed barbarian masses. Comply or die. That’s the sum and substance of your usefulness to them and the total value of your existence, period.

When interpreting the categories of “privileged” and “unprivileged” according to our State overlords, we must understand that these, again, are ideas which are rooted in the inscrutable metaphysics of determinist collectivism, and consequently are interpreted according to mystical and thus fundamentally obscure notions, yet paradoxically they are quite  hyper-specific when physically dictated. At any rate, the general description is that being “privileged” or “underprivileged” has absolutely nothing to do with the “why” but only the “what” of human existence. In other words, WHY someone is categorized as “privileged” or “unprivileged” is simply “because they are”.  And by this I mean that it has nothing at all to do with the volitional choices and subsequent actions of the individuals so classified, or those related to the individuals so classified, such as parents or friends, with whom the “privileged” or “unprivileged” individuals may have been in some manner meaningfully related and thus so influenced. It has everything to do with one’s root existential state. That is, if you are “unprivileged” it is because you were born that way, and vice versa. “Privileged” and “unprivileged” is a product of your nature. That’s it. Thus, there isn’t anything you can do to manifest or could have done to prevent or ensure this natural condition. This is precisely why the State must implement equality and equity by force (legalized violence), and cannot rely upon citizens to work out their differences by their own choices and actions. No action or choice can change one’s very nature, for all actions and choices are a product of that nature, and thus all actions necessarily affirm and reinforce one’s “privileged” or “unprivileged” status. At the same time, ironically, or perhaps contradictorily, there is a sense of absolutist ethics which are secondary to the ethical primary of altruism, and these ethics are known as “social justice”, which is imbued and implied by one’s existential status as either “privileged” or “unprivileged”. The “unprivileged” are victims of some great and terrible injustice which though could not have been avoided as it is a function of their nature and not of any volitional action or consequence on the part of themselves or others nevertheless entitles them to ALL the legal benefits the State has the violent power to grant them in the interest of “social justice”, which again is the notion of existential and universal equality, which of course can never be achieved because the distinction between “privileged” and “unprivileged” is ALREADY, a-priori, itself existential and universal. Now, concordantly, the “privileged” are the evil perpetrators of all the injustice to which the “unprivileged” are so tragically subjected, and thus must be “held-accountable” and forced at State-gunpoint to “pay their fair share” in the interests of universal equality, despite the fact that there is no choice nor action which could have prevented the “privileged” from exploiting those who are “unprivileged”, or which could have prevented the “unprivileged” from actually becoming “unprivileged”, or themselves from becoming “privileged” in the first place…because, again, both groups are simply born that way.

And here again we see the inscrutable nature of collectivist metaphysics roaring to the forefront today with predictably disastrous consequences…those disastrous consequences being the complete undermining of the American Republic and the plenary and indefinite suspension of constitutional law, not to mention the irreversible and alarmingly substantial diminishing of the economy and faith in the nation on the whole in service to the “protection” of the public from the latest contrived boogeyman, but this one a phantom, which is supposed to be even more scary, called coronavirus. Once again do not try to apprehend the reasons, do not try to interpret or discern the meaning behind the actions of your government overlords, for it is not yours to know, because it is not you who has been given the “grace to perceive”. For that is reserved for those who have been called to rule. For you, on the other hand, it is forever a cloud of steam in your fist. The metaphysics of collectivism and the concordant ethics of altruism require only your submission. The “unprivileged” are required only to receive, the “privileged”, to sacrifice.

But which one are you?

Now that is a very interesting question. And the answer is predictably enigmatic, as I’m sure you understand: it depends. In the meta, you are both and neither…it is subjective, it is fluid. In context however it is terrifyingly empirical, objective, and corporeal.  And as we are talking about the manufactured coronavirus crisis, here I can provide a much more specific answer. Which I will do in part two.

END part ONE

Birth and Death: Paradoxical Bookends of the Absolute Self (Part Three)

General Philosophy, Identity, individualism vs collectivism, Man's Ability, Metaphysics, Physics and Metaphysics, reason, , , , , , , , ,

“…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

Science Confirms the Existence of Gravitational Waves; Reason does Not (Part 2)

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“Gravitational Waves are ‘ripples’ in space–time…”

“‘Waves’ of changing space–time would propagate in all directions away from the source like waves in water caused by a stone…”

-Caltech LIGO page on gravitational waves

*

Space cannot both be a vacuum and occupy a vacuum…e.g. “waves of spacetime”, where space, the vacuum, is displaced into the vacuum of itself.  And time cannot both be temporality and occupy a temporal location. In other words, time cannot have or possess specific temporal value—e.g. “the end of time; the beginning of time”. It cannot fluctuate with space in waves or ripples because these fluctuations imply shifting temporal changes within time itself—that time, can move with space to shift its own temporal location. This is simply impossible, because it contradicts time itself. Time cannot itself posses a specific temporal value which can then shift with space in the presence of gravitational changes. This is a redundancy which nullifies the very root essence of time.

Let’s look at some other examples of science, and material philosophy, which contradict themselves by presumptuously reducing their own irreducibles:

-Energy cannot both be the measure of action potential (the ability to do work) and the instantiation of action (work) and possess energy, itself. That is, energy cannot both be the manifestation of work and a thing which works.

-Gravity cannot both be that which pulls and a thing which possesses the capacity to pull. That is, gravity cannot both be the manifestation of gravitational pull and be a thing which pulls on other things.

-Existence, which is considered the irreducible context for Realtiy in empirical and objectivist philosophies, cannot itself be a thing which exists. That is, the context in which material realtiy exists cannot be objectified as a distinct object which distinctly exists. Existence cannot exist in its own existential context. This is a redundancy which contradicts and nullifies Existence. This of course is the inherent self-defeating fallacy in the metaphysical claim “existence exists”. It is a futile proposition which attempts to correlate the metaphysical to the physical, which is of course a very noble endeavor, but here the endeavor fails. To claim that existence exists is to state the redundancy that existence possesses existence; that it does what it is. Which is a rational error. Existence, being fundamental, somehow yet acts in order to verify itself to itself. In other words, to state that existence exists is to objectify existence as not a metaphysical context for the interaction of the physical, but as a distinct object which is specific from that which exists “in it”, or “in its context”, and thus is not a basis for object existence, but an object which is merely relative to other objects. “Existence exists” undermines existence as being fundamental and primary.

And more to the point of the redundancy of “existence exits”…let’s use “tree” as an example of the rational error committed when material objects are correlated and conflated with their value upon the greater environment (e.g. other objects). It makes no sense to claim that a tree, for example, itself, possesses “treeness”. That the tree does tree. Treeness is entirely irrelevant to the tree, itself; just like existing, or “existence-ness” is entirely irrelevant to existence, itself. “Treeness” is the role the tree plays relative to other objects in order that the observer may conceptualize “tree” as distinct from say “bird” or “dog”. Treeness, or “doing tree”, is a relative action that is a consequence of the tree’s existence relative to its environment. “Treeness” is a concept that results from the tree plus its environment plus the observer. In other words, the tree cannot be a tree to itself. The tree does not act relative to itself. In the same way existence does not act relative to itself. Existence does not exist any more than the tree does treeness. Existence, once objectified as a thing which exists, only exists because it acts relatively to other objects in a greater environment. And this means that existence is not in fact primary, which means it is not irreducible, which means empirical and objectivist metaphysics are incomplete. I propose that the reason objects act relatively to other objects, and why the observer observes and conceptualizes these relative distinctions to create epistemology and ethics, is because they are able. Ability is the singular commonality which binds all material realtiy, then. Ability is the metaphysical primary. And you would not say that “ability is able”, because ability doesn’t need to be able. Ability implies action, and action implies that which acts. And that which acts is what is able. We could even say that “that which exists is able to exist” if we still feel the need to inject existence into metaphysics. This makes existence a rational metaphysical concept because it recognizes that existence is in fact reducible. If we remove ability then we are left with “that which exists, exists”, which is merely another way of stating the tautology “existence exists” (“existence does existence”) which is meaningless. We could say that “existence implies that which exists” if we are going to force the issue of existence as metaphysical primary. But this begs the question “how does that which exists exist?”. And the answer of course is “because it is able to exist’.

END part two

The Problem Science and Relgion Share: The Self

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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

A Fulcrum is Not for Balance but Imbalance: Why government implies destabilization

Authority, collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, forced compliance, government, Identity, individualism vs collectivism, Man's Ability, Metaphysics, Violence, Voluntarism, , , ,

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

What Ayn Rand Gets Very Right and Christians Get Very Wrong (and why Christian Orthodoxy is Not About Love but Loathing)

Calvinism/Philosophy, Christian fallacy, Ethics, Man's Ability, Metaphysics, morality, , , ,

The greatest contribution to ethics in the twentieth century I submit is Ayn Rand’s popularization of the Virtue of Selfishness.  Because what she gets so very right, up to the point of being utterly axiomatic (if our ethics are indeed rational), is that one who acts wholly in his own self-interest cannot but help be concomitantly acting in the interest of his neighbor.  Without fully delving into the metaphysics behind this axiom, in the interest of time and context, the root of this perfect ethic is that others are the complete existential equal of the Self.  This means that the default root moral status of all others is existential equality to the Self, and thus when one’s Self is pursued and its interests sought, the interest of the Other is a natural consequence, and manifests to a qualitatively equal degree.

Allow me to explain. And here, understand, is where I will deviate from Rand’s specific metaphysics, and exposit my own defense of virtuous selfishness.  The following exposition very much depends upon a completely different metaphyscial primary than the one subscribed to by Rand (existence).  My primary is Ability, and from this I assert that individual consciousness is a proper and necessary component of any rational metaphysics; and, being the ONLY thing which can develop and apply reason (conceptual consistency), which is how reality and truth is established AT ALL, consciousness, itself, at root, is an ENTIRELY objective manifestation of reality.  Conversely, Rand rejects consciousness as having any particularly necessary function within reality taken holistically, and sees it as intrinsically subjective, as its primary function is, as Objectivism implies, to interpret that (existence) which is fundamentally exclusive of interpretation.

*

Every individual human being exists metaphysically as a Self qua Self (YOU (or I) as a function of your SELF…the “you-ness” which IS YOU in the most fundamental sense); and the FACT of that existence is itself the PROOF of the propriety of one’s existence.  In other words, the FACT that one exists is the proof of the de facto NECESSITY of one’s existence—reality NEEDS one’s existence to be, in fact, REAL, you might say.  Reality cannot be absolutely real if its components—e.g. one who exists—are not essential.  For example, it is irrational to assert that one who exists could just as easily not have existed (been born); this means, effectively, that their existence is not fundamentally necessary to reality.  The reason this is irrational is simple.  We have NO frame of reference for the non-existence of what exists, because non-existence and existence are mutually exclusive contexts.  Or, simplified, IS and IS NOT are mutually exclusive frames of reference.  If I AM, then my frame of reference is from the place of WHAT IS (what is real, and exists, period, and absolutely).  Which means that I can ONLY observe and describe what likewise IS.  In order for me to talk of you, for example, not needing to exist, you NEED TO EXIST.  Do you see the contradiction?  I cannot claim that your existence is not necessary since it is necessary that you exist in order for me to make the claim in the first place.  Whatever exists, exists; whatever is real is real.  Period.  The hypothetical thought experiment of “what if X did not exist/had never been born” is INIFINITELY hypothetical.  It is entirely irrelevant to anything, except perhaps, a good science fiction story.  Now, it is quite tempting here to dive into the rabbbit hole of choice and free will, but I have to end this article sometime before retirement, so let’s just leave it at that for now.

As I was saying, the fact that one exists is proof of the de facto necessity of their existence.  And here is where it gets interesting…because here is where metaphysics inexorably incorporates what I call the Morality of the Metaphysical.  What I mean is that metaphysics, in order to mean anything, must have, itself, intrinsic value, and thus cannot be entirely cordoned off from eithcs.  It’s fascinating just how the five categories of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, aesthetics) incorporate and even embody one another so precisely.  Because one’s existence is necessary, one’s existence is necessarily GOOD.  Put generally, existence (or reality…the two are essentially equivalent, metaphysically speaking) is Good, because it MUST BE; and since man exists, he likewise MUST BE, and therefore he is, in his root existence, likewise Good.

Thus, all men being equal in their metaphysical value (Good), and understanding that the Individual Self is that from which and to which all men (being at root Individuals) act, and understanding that the Self is the reference for reality, communicating meaning with other Selves (other men) and drawing a consensus of meaning together, then all men who thus act in service to their own Individual interests will necessarily and concomitantly act in service to the interests of their fellow man.  And this is what is meant by the “virtue of Selfishness”.

For example, if I choose to marry and have children with a woman I note to possess virtues I find valuable, based upon a RATIONAL definition of virtue, then in keeping and fulfilling my wedding vows I am serving my own interests as much as I am serving the interests of my wife and children, who have entered into the relationship voluntarily (the only way a true relationship is possible).  And, yes, I know the children didn’t “choose” to be born, but (without going into metaphysical detail here) it is simply irrational to consider anyone, even children, as someone OBLIGATED to a relationship against their will.  It is my job as a parent to make sure that I provide my children with an environment that reflects their right to the sanctity of their own lives, body and property, with abundant displays of affection and genuine pleasure and privilege with respect to their company, so as to accurately represent the context of what a voluntary relationship should look like.  In short, I am obligated to provide my children with an environment that they could CHOOSE to be in, by all rational standards (love, resources, negotiation, the absence of corporeal punishment,  shared responsibility to whatever degree possible, shared input, respect, rejection of any Authority/Submission dynamic, etc.etc.).

Getting married and devoting resources to having children then is not sacrifice, it is selfishness.  It utterly serves me…and in rationally serving myself, I have served my family.  And this is precisely why there is virtue in selfishness.  If I build a business to serve myself, the corollary is provision of value to my employees and customers.  I never have to think about their needs and desires directly or explicitly.  Their needs are fulfilled as a function of fulfilling my own.  All notions of altruism, sacrifice, charity (in the “giving of one’s self” sense) are entirely superfluous.  Real moral utopia then is not found in sacrifice, but selfishness.  And as scandalizing as this may seem, this is, in fact, the ONLY true and rational morality possible for man.  Period.

*

In order to employ virtuous selfishness we must eradicate Self-loathing from ethics entirely.  In other words, we must understand and accept the inherent value of man at his metaphysical root.  Because man is metaphysically Good, he must possess an innate and existential sufficiency to the apprehension of Truth (epistemology), and Truth’s corollary, Good, and then make choices in service to these things.  Man is by his nature able to define and apprehend the distinction between truth and falsehood and good and evil and then make volitional choices based upon that knowledge.  Man possesses AGENCY, which is capable and efficacious, as a function of his very metaphysical IDENTITY.  Man in his natural state is Good, and thus in his epistemology (capacity for knowledge) capable of Truth, and thus in his ethics (capacity for morality) capable of choosing Good, and thus in his politics (capacity for efficacious moral action) capable of manifesting (acting out) Truth and Goodness.  Man’s sufficiency to the knowledge of the true and the good is one with his root nature…it is not bestowed upon him post-conception by some external force, be it God or be it Nature.  Certainly, man is not born knowing…he is not born wise.  This is not what I am saying.  I am saying that man IS born ABLE to know, and ABLE to acquire wisdom.  He learns because he IS.  His abilty to think and do is HIS, from himself, by nature.  It is not given to him…it IS him.  And it is here where my apostasy with respect to orthodox Christianity comes to a fine point.  Orthodox Christianity rejects this metaphysic to the point of war, literally.  And it is why Christianity is an unmitigated disaster by any rational measure: social, emotional, intellectual, psychological, political…it is a shared psychosis that eats humanity from the inside out.  It HATES humanity with a red hot passion…it knows absolutely nothing of love at root.  But we will get to that.

For man to act truly morally, he must accept a root nature that has endemic/intrinsic moral value; and thus, from this, knowing it and knowing its ethical implications, when he acts (necessarily) from and to himself in his own best interest, he concordantly and concomitantly acts in service to the Interests of his fellow man.  This is the reason why those who accept their own natural moral worth are the ones who are the most compassionate.  In almost every case, on the contrary, those who loath themselves prove to be the most insufferable and vile of the species, either explicitly or surreptitiously.  Every narcissist and psychopath in the world operates from the metaphysical principle that declares themselves to possess no root worth, and thus neither does anyone else.  Their occasional sense of grandiosity is a mask for their terminal and inviolable self-hatred.  I submit that this is axiomatic.  There is no way you can despise your fellow man and love yourself, where “man” is defined RATIONALLY.  There is only one rational morality, and it begins with innate Self-worth and bestows that same worth upon others.

*

Here then we can begin to see the categorical failure of the orthodox Christian Ethic.  It is an ethic that asserts obedience to Authority (the divine Ideal, the Church, and the State…the unholy trinity of Platonist ethics) as man’s highest moral obligation, not the making of moral choices; asserts punishment, not rational self-inflicted consequence, as the proper outcome for ethical failure; asserts fear, not love, as the primary form of human motivation.  Bear in mind that this is NOT what Christ ACTUALLY teaches, nor what the Bible declares in either of its Testaments (though I will submit that the Apostle Paul’s grip on rational ethics often gets quite tenuous).  But orthodox Christianity has about as much use for Christ as Tiberius.  Christian ethics of the last 1500 years or so is a derivative of pagan gnosticism, with its interpretive lense brought to bear upon Christ’s legacy first by Augustine of Hippo and formally canonized and organized by the Martin Luther and John Calvin.  My point is simply:  don’t blame Christ for the abject failure of Christian ethics.

Orthodox Christianity espouses the metaphysical insufficiency of man.  He is not in his nature Good, but Evil, and therefore utterly incapable of apprehending Truth and choosing Good.  His very IDENTITY is antagonistic to TRUTH.  This is why Christianity asserts that all knowledge and morality must be DICTATED to man.  His natural insufficiency to Truth makes him capable of no real understanding.  He must thus be treated, fundamentally, as one would an animal.  He is to be trained, not taught.  He is to be motivated by threats and violence, and rewarded with condescension.  It is why the concept of “humility” has been bastardized by the Church to mean a rejection of the idea that one possesses an inntate, natural sufficiency to goodness and truth.  To take credit for one’s own success and accomplishments is viewed as “sinful pride”, because anything of true value comes not from within man, but from without.  Any moral behavior exhibited by an individual always occurs in SPITE of his humanity, not because of it.  It is why even “saved” Christians still speak of “needing the gospel”, and explain that they don’t actually do any good thing in and of themselves, but operate entirely “under God’s grace”.  It’s the whole false idea of “but for the grace of God go I”—an Individual making good choices according to his own volition, and reaping the benefits of such choices is anathema to Christian ethics.  In Christianity there is no fundamental difference between the unsaved criminal being marched to the dungeon and the saved Christian spectator observing from afar.  Both are criminals at root, as far as God is concerned, it’s just that by some divine mystery God decided to spare the Christian.  It has nothing to do with the Christian spectator actually CHOOSING to turn away from criminal activity and because of THAT avoiding a date with the iron maiden.  And even if Christianity might equivocate and concede that choice is possible, it is only because God grants one the “grace” to make that choice…so no, it’s not actually man making the choice at all, it’s God.  Left to himself, man will NEVER make the right choice.  And this assertion denies man any REAL choice entirely.

Christians understand, at least implicitly, because the doctrine declares it EXPLICITLY, that there can be no actual justification of or for that (man) which is absolute evil at its existential root.  The whole salvation process is very much an appeal to inexplicable mystical powers which transcend man’s “finite” reality; his intellect and his reasoning.  There are no answers to the paradoxes (rational contradictions) of Christian theology because they are utterly beyond the mind of man…beyond his very existence.  Man is saved, but he cannot say why beyond “grace”, and then a shrug as to what this actually means.  God chooses some people over others, seemingly at random.  There is some plan God has, we are told, but the wherefore and the why…who knows?  Christian metaphysics deny that a thing like salvation is possible, but somehow it happens anyway.  The whole philosophy is a massive boiling cauldron of contradiction simmering into a cosmic soup of “God’s mystery”.  Just take the cup and drink.  Don’t spend any time thinking about it.

So for all the talk of man receiving a “righteousness from God’, or a “new birth/new nature”, or being “Justified by Christ”, Christians implicitly understand that they are still Sin of Sin.  And this is why abject misery is so common in the Church. These aren’t congregations of broken people getting healed, as we are told.  These are execution chambers where people are slowly gassed into a brain dead stupor by contagious conginitve dissonance brought upon by the endlessly wafting sedative of rank mysticism.  The life of a Christian is not the fulfillment of the Self, but the sacrifice of it.  The Christian is not imbued with a sense of empowerment, but is instead entirely disarmed, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.  He learns not how to take upon himself true responsibility, but to hand off his duties and questions to God, letting “His will be done”, in yet another bastardization of the words of Christ.  The Christian does not learn to take up the mantle of his own cause and pursue his dreams with strength and confidence, but to utterly submit himself to “God’s plan”…outsourcing his brain to the Divine, as though God gave him a mind purely on a lark.  He is not given the freedom to exercise his own intellect, now unfettered by the lies of the world and the devil, in service to his own passions, but is sternly reminded that his greatest moral obligation is to obey Authority.  Once saved, the Christian soon finds himself under the “divine mandate” of the church leadership, who are expecting him to sacrifice his time and reasources in pursuit of not his own interests, but that of the greater Christian Ideal.  Of which, of course, they are in charge.

Thus the Christian, now saved and yet still lacking ANY REAL understanding of his own innate worth, is incapable of Self-love, and thus is likewise incapable of loving his neighbor.  The ONLY real, necessary, and ultimately relevant difference between one who is saved and one who is not is that he who is saved has recognized that the sum and substance of his life’s meaning and purpose is to annihilate himself in service to the Christian Authority placed over him, which is God and his Will as manifest by the ecclesiastical powers of the pulpit.  In other words, he is saved in order to sacrifice himself to the worldly ambitions of other men.  Period.

*

According to the ethics of Christian orthodoxy, Self-loathing, not Self-love, is one’s default ethical frame of reference. Through the instruction of accepted orthodox doctrine, consistent in its essence amongst all protestant denominations and Catholicism, man is taught to hate his own existence as an act of his own First Sin (his birth) and thus concomitantly the existence of his neighbor.  He therefore implicitly yearns for the destruction of both.  In other words, as the orthodox Christian proclaims his love for God he implies his disgust for humanity.  The relationship betweeen loving God and hating man is indeed direct.  And this is scarcely surreptitious amongst Christians today, though perhaps not said quite as bluntly.  I have heard it stated this way:  that as one’s recognition of God’s glory (i.e. God’s supreme existential moral superiority) grows, a recognition of one’s own moral insufficiency (i.e. man’s supreme existential worthlessness) likewise grows.  And THIS, it is said, is the mark of a true Christian.  The mark of true salvation is that he continues to grow in the understanding that he HAS NO RIGHT TO EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE, because his very existence at root is an offense to God.  And from this we can extrapolate further to see then the FOUNDATIONAL mark of one’s salvation:  the growing knowledge that he, being evil incarnate, is unable to possess a frame of reference for SALVATION AT ALL.

How is that for a kick in the crotch with irony?

It is this basic orthodox Self-loathing which is the reason Christians are so in love with rules and obsessed with punishment.  Man, being morally defunct in his existence, is insufficient to truth and to moral behavior.  And thus control, not freedom, and dictated behavior, not choice, is how the ethics of one’s salvation are to be worked out.  It is why Christianity has always promoted corporeal punishment for children, and has lusted endlessly after the power monopoly of the State—the Church almost ubiquitously imitates their own brand of absolute power (dictating behavior, punishing rulebreakers and wrongthink), routinely implementing Authority-Submission polity to the greatest extent it can get away with.  It is why churches are so often brothels of the worst kinds of moral degeneracy imaginable, like blackmail, child rape and all other varieties of sexual abomination, extortion, manipulation, deception, indoctrination, intimidation, oppression, theft, and murder.  It is why Christianity holds excommunication over the heads of the laity like the sword of Damocles, and why church schisms occur as often as Communion.  It is impossible to show love to others or one’s self when the metaphysics of one’s philosophy declare man’s very birth an act of moral corruption and a violation of God’s perfect creation.

Love, you see, is the desires and behavior generated by employing rational ethics.  Rational ethics places the Self as the moral frame of reference.  Rational ethics recognizes the legitimacy of man at his natural root, and understands the Self to be the singular essence of each human being, and which is necessarily good, and thus shall not be violated.  It shall be free to exist, not enslaved to Authority.  And since all men are equal Selves at root, making the SELF the reference for truth and morality (virtuous selfishness), it is ensured that an Individual, unfettered by the false chains of Authority, who will thus freely act in service to his own wishes and wants, will necessarily act in service to those of his neighbors in the form of cooperation.  All interactions with one’s fellow man will result in the mutual benefit of value exchange.  But again, notice how this—how this rational love—demands that man have intrinsic natural worth.  It concedes that man’s birth is an act of Divine Expression, not an offense to the Divine.  Since Christianity asserts that the birth of a human being is an expression of one’s natural depravity, and as such is an act of rebellion against God, rendering unto man an existential worthlessness to an infinite degree, love by any measure is simply impossible.  Man possess no frame of reference from which to give love or receive it.  And this is why salvation comes from God to man in SPITE of himself; indeed, all expressions of “love” from God or from others comes to man in spite of himself.  And all his acts of “love” are never done BY him, but THROUGH him, by the Spirit.  In other words, man qua man (man, himSelf) is merely a bystander to love and morality in general.  He is a two-dimensional character in a predetermined bit of theater, written and directed by the Divine Author.  He, himSelf, thus, being wholly unnatural with respect to God’s perfect and perfectly moral reality, doesn’t actually exist at all.

*

In order to truly love—that is, in the way that Christians cannot—humanity must accept its own innate natural worth, and reject the satanic notion of innate moral failure.  This is the difference between Self-love and Self-sacrifice (or Self-loathing)…and yes, these are mutually exclusive concepts.  The former always acts in love whilst the latter never does. The former always saves, the latter always murders.

END

The Cognitive Dissonance of “Easy Contradiction”: Why I am accused of being too rigid and abstruse (PART ONE)

Christian fallacy, Epistemology, General Philosophy, Man's Ability, reason, , ,

I have heard it a million times…it’s become simply a toll I must pay daily to make my commute to philosophy and back. I am too much of an absolutist (I love that one…makes me sound almost tyrannical); too “black and white”.  I am unwilling to compromise…things are either this or that, yes or no, there’s no room for negotiation, no allowance for mystery, the unknowable, divine intervention, truth beyond man’s mind; that there are notions and ideas which matter but which we cannot fully explain.  Which of course begs the question: If we can’t really explain them, then how do we know they matter?

But we won’t worry about the rational failures coming from my critics.  Rationality clearly isn’t a priority.  Pity.

By being labeled an absolutist, too committed to stark demarcation between truth and lie; right and wrong; black and white, it is insinuated that I reject the bell curve.  That I believe and assert that there is no such thing as degrees of anything, but all either is or is not.  This is ludicrous.  Now, I can understand how one might initially perceive this to be the case with me, as my focus is on rooting out contradiction from meaning and understanding…which is to say, to indicate what MUST be false, and from that determine what MUST thus be true, and then explain why truth then cannot be integrated with its own nullification (though I’m not sure why this needs explaining at all, exactly…once we know what must be false it seems to me a pretty direct and obvious line to the determination that it cannot also be true).  So, in the sense that contradiction is in fact NOT a bell curve, yes, I am an absolutist. For example, the contradiction that says that it is somehow relevant for us to know that God controls all things but yet we are still responsible for our own moral choices is COMPLETELY false.  Why?  It’s obvious!  Why does this even need explaining to anyone not five years-old or younger?!  You cannot integrate the concept of personal responsibility with an utterly determinist God.  To attempt to merge these mutually exclusive concepts is not “thinking in degrees” or some form of virtuous compromise, it’s complete bullshit and should be rejected out of hand by anyone with an ounce of intellectual integrity.

You don’t have ANY frame of reference for the assertion that A is simultaneously B!  You can’t assert that such a contradiction is true without implying that you have NO MEANS by which you can EVER ascertain truth.  Because your fundamental epistemology is rooted in the fact that something can both be true (God controls ALL things) AND false (man makes his own choices and thus bears responsibility for them, which means that God doesn’t actually control all things) at the same time.  In which case truth is impossible, because it intersects with falsehood.  Truth is and isn’t true, in other words.  And THAT is nothing.  Just irritating noise coming out of your mouth hole.

But by making it a constant theme in my philosophy that contradiction cannot somehow pass for rationally consistent truth I am called too rigid…an absolutist.  Just too doggone black and white.  No compromise; no bell curve.  The only two flavors are chocolate and vanilla.  The only dinner options are Italian and Mexican.  The only breed of political ideology is American Republican or American Democrat.  By rejecting contradiction as in any way meaningful, I somehow reject the existence of strawberry; believe that Chinese food is a myth, and declare that Libertarianism is only practiced in Fantasy Land.  There are only dog people and cat people, no one ever owns a turtle; there are only squares or circles…the liar claims to prefer rectangles.  There is no gray…no spectrum of color.  My philosophy is fundamentalist in the most LITERAL and OVERT of ways.  EVERYTHING is an illusion that isn’t A or B.

C, D, E etc. are mere interlopers.

I show myself nothing more than an immovable ideologue…nothing but “black and white” philosophy, you see, because I DARE commit the OUTRAGEOUS intellectual sin of declaring that black cannot simultaneously be white.  This makes me a moral pariah to “learned” and “less judgemental” Christian acquaintances, who are much more versed in the holy and compassionate virtues of wisdom, compromise, temperance, and forgiveness than a recalcitrant asshole like myself could ever be.  I’m a prick because I won’t let people have their cake and eat it, too.  The bromide of soft contradiction is something I refuse to ingest, and that makes me a criminal.

Do you remember who it was that was so intent on convincing Adam and Eve that knowledge (truth) came from OUTSIDE of themselves, from a tree, and not from their own rational minds…not from living life as a thinking agent?  Do you remember who it was that was so enthusiastic about the idea that man’s own reason had nothing fundamental to do with reality?  That truth is a function not of man’s own innate ability to reason fact from fiction, and thus integrity  from perniciousness, morality from mendacity, but from some special,  magical, ethereal enlightenment granted from beyond?  And thus implied that man’s mind itself could not be trusted to SAY what is TRUE at any given moment because what man says “IS” might simultaneously be “IS NOT”, and so man should simply accept a DICTATED truth, rather than think for himself….do you remember who this was?

You who are so quick to judge me as stubborn and cruel and arcane and abstruse and exacting and pedantic and judgemental…why don’t you root out the serpent in your own tree?

END PART ONE

Rethinking Prayer: Asking or telling? (Part TWO)

Calvinism/Philosophy, Christian fallacy, Determinism, Man's Ability, Metaphysics, , , ,

What do I think prayer is?

Well, this question cannot be answered without discussing what I think God is.  So, both questions will be looked at here, though not necessarily in any particular order…and I cannot say this will be an easy read.  These are complicated subjects, but if you apprehend the essence of what I mean then I’ll consider it a win for both of us.

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Prayer, or more specifically the answer thereto, is the necessary response of reality—specifically its underlying RATIONAL philosophical apparatus, and this apparatus is God.  In other words, God is reality as expressed, and as possible (efficacious), through the objective rational principles which utterly imply it.  Starting with an irreducible metaphysical primary (which can only be Ability, because existence must be active for it to be possible, and all action must be underwritten by the Ability to act), and proceeding through epistemology, ethics, etcetera, etcetera, where all the root philosophical premises (epistemological premise; ethical premise, etc.) proceeding from the metaphysical primary are corollary to promote, affirm, and reinforce the primary (and therefore themselves) thus creating  what I call the Great Corollary…or the Many Truths (the premises) from the One Truth (the metaphysical primary).

Now, I know this explication is pretty abstruse (though less so if you follow my blog) and this is a function of the complexity of the subject.  And the reason, in large part, for this complexity is because the church has spent almost the entirely of its existence avoiding the question.  The substitution of truth by the Church, you see, with equivocation, tarted-up logical fallacy (contradiction explicated as Truth), mysticism, pagan and neo-pagan syncretism, despotic absolutism and collectivist authoritarianism, emotional blackmail and outright blackmail, spiritual manipulation, excuse-mongering, and plain old lying, has made getting to the truth of what God is, and thus what is meant by prayer to God, exceedingly more complicated and enigmatic than it ever needed to be if we could have avoided the past two thousand years of the intellectual error of the sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists and fools who have traditionally comprised Christianity’s ruling (priest) class.

If you have spent any time in the Church you will know, unless you are a child or have the spiritual mind of a child, or are blinded by or thoughtlessly committed to the Platonist propaganda which passes for truth there, that there simply does not exist any actual definition of God anywhere therein whatsoever.  And you will understand that this is precisely why no one in the church really knows what prayer is, means, or how to do it.  Oh, for certain there are some mildly clever attempts to provide a meaningful answer to the question “what is God?”, like “he’s the Creator”, which in reality tells us not what he IS but what he DOES, and this only vaguely and insufficiently; or we might hear “he is the Alpha and the Omega (first and last)”, which only obliquely describes his nature and utterly omits the relevant practical implications of such a claim, and does not describe how such a label has any meaning beyond the mere figurative and/or poetic.  Alpha and Omega implies an infinity of being, which is fine, but what is required, and omitted, is how one reconciles the paradox of an infinite Agent manifesting as somehow distinct (finite) in reality. I am not saying that such a paradox cannot be resolved, just that the church has never done so…and will NEVER do so.

Next, of course, we have the extra-biblical assertion that God is a “Trinity”…the “Three in One”—whatever that means.  And don’t bother asking, because NO ONE knows.  If you do dare put on your hazmat suit and wade into the fetid abyss of Christian apologetics and ask about the “Trinity” you will get a smorgasboard of  equivocation amounting to, in practicality, a big fat shrug.  All explanations of the Trinity are designed to dazzle, not inform, because the church realized some five hundred years ago that explaining a rank contradiction in terms was impossible, even with all the divine clarivoyance of the whole medieval priest class, including the Pope with his magic tin can and string direct to God.  Back then, of course, demurring from the orthodox interpretation of God as Trinity was apt to get one murdered for heresy.  Today, murder is not the church discipline de jure, as much as the modern priest class would ABSOLUTELY embrace that power being that it is entirely consistent with Christianity’s doctrinal premises, however, disagreeing with the unbiblical notion of God as “Three in One” indeed marks you as an outcast and a troublemaker, unsaved and evil, denying even the most basic of God’s “truths”.

And here’s something else about the Trinity, as long as we are on the subject…and this relates to my overall point in the article here anyway.  I submit that the doctrine of the Trinity is a thinly veiled ADMISSION that Christian orthodoxy has absolutely no idea what God is or how to describe his nature.  Thus, a contradiction in terms (Three which is simultaneously One) has become the final word on God’s essence…and it is assumed that  this makes him somehow awesome as opposed to ridiculous.  We are supposed be inspired to literal and figurative prostration at the thought of our Creator as that which man cannot possibly fathom by any cognitive faculty or conceptual framework.

And herein lies the whole damn problem.

In an effort to make God astonishingly vast and complex, and thus to inspire man to worship and tremble at his feet, Christianity has instead made him a farce—an arrant joke—by placing him utterly beyond anything rational, and thus (and most abominable) playing straight into the hands of his those who mock and scorn his existence.  God defined as “Three in One” creates an interpretation of the Father which has been punted beyond man’s cognitive, conceptual, and intellectual frame of reference.  By defining God as a contradiction, Christianity has ensured that man cannot possibly apply the Father’s existence to reality in any way at all, making him utterly irrelevant to man, and exchanging practical and rational theology for mysticism, superstition, spiritual despotism, and willful ignorance; and making these things virtues whilst mocking, condemning, and murdering as heretics those who nurture a pure, holy, innocent, and RATIONAL desire to know him.

And finally, it would do us all well to remember that the madness known as the doctrine of the Trinity saw its Protestant canonization punctuated with murder when the scoundrel and false teacher, John Calvin, had Michael Servitus burned at the stake for rejecting it.  And this is the spiritual primordium from which today’s Christians claim to know God?!  I think not.  Look not to the church, my friends.  God is not known there.  The church has ghosts, but they are not holy.

Needless to say, then, since Christianity contains within all its disputations, catechisms, liturgies, and doctrinal interpretations no description of God which may pass for even a remedial or marginally realistic definition of the the nature of the Almighty, it clearly cannot provide a definition of prayer to him, nor how one should pray, nor what one should pray for, nor when, nor what one may expect with regards to its efficacy and outcomes.

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So what is prayer? Well, I will tell you…understanding that this is a summary.  Giving full attention to such a topic would, I think, necessarily fill volumes.

Prayer is an extension of man’s right not to be governed by deterministic cause and effect (cause and effect being purely an abstract rendering of what is an entirely relative relationship between objects when excluding the presence of the observer).  Prayer is an extension of man’s existence as a function not of abstract natural law, but of reason.  Reason extends beyond the mere physical/ontic parameters of the “laws of physics”, and demands that reality accommodate man’s RATIONAL will.  And this either by man’s physical OR metaphysical extension of himself.  That is, either by his hands or by his rational will—his understanding of his intrinsic right to witness his rational desires BEYOND those hands; that man’s will as it controls the object known as his body may likewise control ALL of that which is rationally obligated to affirm his absolute Self.  And because prayer is an expression of man’s categorical right to his own rational and absolute existence, he need not ask or entreat or beg or bargain with reality.  He commands it.  And then it shall obey.  God, you see, then, is not the worker of the effects of man’s prayer.  MAN, himself, is.  God, however, being an extension of the rational/moral (rationality and morality being corollary) existence of man (or, rendered more allegorically, he is Father and man is Son) is man’s PARTNER in manifesting the outcomes of that which is commanded.

END