Category Archives: Metaphysics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you see it?

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

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

Do you see it now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“To invite their input”.

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

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

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

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

God help us.

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

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

So know this:

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

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

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

Doesn’t exist.

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

Metaphysics, , , , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or…could it be something else?

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

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

Look at it this way:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

General Philosophy, Metaphysics, , , , , ,

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

Andy said:

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

To which Randy replied:

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

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

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

Let’s read it again:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Here is Randy’s comment, again:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me Saying I’m Not You is Not the Same Thing as Me Saying, “There’s Only Me”: A rebuttal to accusations of subjectivism

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

The knee jerk reaction to my ideas is to assume that when I appeal to the SELF–the individual human being–as the metaphysical irreducible and thus the only rational moral and epistemological absolute Standard (“epistemological” in this context meaning, how we know that what we know is in fact true), that I’m making the contention that my SELF is the only salient Self.

Several attempts have been made by people whose intellect I admire to link my ideas to Kantian Subjectivism in this manner…the thought being that since I deny a Standard of Truth and Morality outside of Self, that “reality”–as they call it, “external reality” (an illogical definition entirely) must necessarily be based upon whatever whim I, alone, devise.

Now, it isn’t that I don’t understand why some people believe this, it’s just that I think it is simply because they have been functioning according to the “this or that” dualism of Aristotle vs. Plato for so long that they aren’t able to integrate any truly new ideas.  Indeed, even averring that I am presenting “new” ideas would likely be taken as a grand apostasy.

But it is a logical fallacy to believe that just because I declare that I am ME and YOU are YOU, and absolutely so, that this must mean that I am the only one who actually exists; which is precisely what I am accused of asserting.  The loose logic is that since all knowledge is a function of the senses (it isn’t; its a function of the ability to sense, which is a function of the ability to conceptualize SELF as “he who senses”) which observe “objective reality outside you”then we must assume that “objective reality” is a function of the “cause and effect” of (invisible) physical laws which “govern”.  In short, any appeal to a Standard of Truth except that which the senses first observe is labeled subjectivism.

As ostensibly rational as this argument is, its fatal weakness is that it doesn’t come close to answering the question: What is man?  And as I have submitted on numerous occasions, if you cannot rationally answer that question then the rest of what you believe about anything is immaterial.  If there is no definition of man–and a definition of man cannot be: an absolute function of a reality OUTSIDE himself because that is a rank contradiction, and makes man a direct function of that which is “outside of him”…or said another way, of that which is NOT him–…yes, if there is no definition of man then there can be no relevance to what he believes. Because “he” must be declared something, and even more, something capable of being aware of his own relevance to the existential equation.  And this awareness cannot be a function of that which is outside of him, because that makes his awareness not his own, in fact, but whatever “caused” him.  However I submit that awareness must be an innate function of man’s ability to be himself; anything else removes man from his own consciousness, which makes all appeals to man’s existence a lie.  For a man who is fundamentally unable to be aware, and this awareness of himself, cannot be said to know anything.

Man’s ability to be himself IS his ability to KNOW himself, and his ability to KNOW himself is his ability to conceptualize himself as juxtaposed to the conceptualization of what is NOT himself.  Both the SELF of man and the Environment of man are predicated upon man’s ability to know–to conceptualize–them both.  There is no thing, “inside” or “outside” of man, which is not conceptualized in order to be understood, made relevant and efficacious, and applied to the promotion of man’s identity.  And there is nothing conceptualized which is not a function of man’s inherent ability to conceptualize.

From this I argue that reason is simply the internal rational consistency of the “conceptual paradigm” as I call it (I’m not a linguist by trade; they probably have an “official” name for that to which I am referring).  Meaning, man’s ability to take the concepts he uses to organize and reconcile himself to his environment, and thereby create his own specific identity, cannot contradict one another.

In other words, man’s relationship to his environment cannot be paradoxical (as in “contradictory”), and the only way to assure that this is not the case is to reject  descriptions of reality which are, within the conceptual framework–which is man’s only means by which to reconcile  himSELF to his Environment (the basis for “existence)–mutually exclusive.

For example, if we believe that John Immel (of spiritualtyranny.com, and a friend, a philosophical critic of mine, and a brilliant thinker and deft writer) is both determined by God and yet also has free will, we have violated conceptual consistency, since “determined” and “free-willed” cannot both have the same absolute reference.  John Immel cannot be given the characteristics of abstract concept X and Y when X and Y are conceptual opposites.  And this means that the assertion must be false.  John Immel cannot be both determined and have free will, because it defies reason (conceptual consistency) and thus cannot be a valid explication of “reality”, since “reality” is, in fact, its own concept.  And if reality is a concept then its definition must be non-paradoxical; that is, it cannot be defined by conceptual characteristics which are antipodal.  If we attempt to explain “truth” by appealing to conceptual opposites as its fundamental basis we have violated reason; and since reason is the only way to arrive at truth, we cannot violate reason and still claim truth.

Further, if truth is the means by which man’s SELF, man’s identity, is affirmed, a violation of truth is in fact a violation of morality, since man is the root conceptualizing agent and thus all truth rests with him as reference.  If he is denied, nothing can be called good (or evil), because “good” can no longer be defined, since the means to apprehend truth, man’s ability to conceptualize SELF, is invalidated.  Truth and morality are corollaries, I submit, and both are a function of reason.

Therefore to concede conceptual paradox as the basis for “reality” is both false AND evil, is my point.  Man’s existence is affirmed by truth; and since man is he who possesses the ability to conceptualize, he is the one whom truth serves.  And for truth not to serve him is evil.  Put simply:  insofar as truth and morality are corollaries, so are evil and lie.

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That which is said to be true cannot be predicated upon conceptual opposites.  Concepts are used by man to promote the primary concept of SELF upon the Environment, and this is not possible if those concepts used to promote the SELF are found to contradict on their way to concluding with the SELF as the metaphysical absolute.  This is the philosophical equivalent of doing a maze puzzle and claiming you arrived at the “END” by drawing a straight line from “START”.  You cannot blow through all the dead ends and say you’ve correctly arrived at the logical conclusion.  It just doesn’t work that way.

According to all of the above rationale, in order to condemn me as a subjectivist means that one must show how I can proclaim conceptual consistency as reason, and reason as truth, and truth as goodness, while at the same time denying that other human beings can be conceptualized any other way except as full-fledged metaphysical singularities.  In other words, as THEMSELVES, or OTHER SELVES.

But here’s the problem with doing that:  Since they can recognize ME as not THEM, and consistently and empirically use and apply the concept of I, and ME, and MYSELF, just as I do, it is impossible to define them except as SELVES without violating the conceptual paradigm and thus violating reason and truth and morality.  Therefore, in the interest of maintaining conceptual consistency, according to my philosophy, I must assume that I am NOT the only SELF in existence.  It would be a violation of the conceptual paradigm to call ME the only true SELF, and then relegate all other human beings to the status of mere objects.  Rationally, this simply does not work.  A chair, a car, a tree, a breeze do not use the pronoun “I” or “me”; nor do they refer to me as “YOU”.  Not even Artificial Intelligence (which is a completely false threat, and is based on the assumption that human awareness is a function of unconscious particles coming together as a function of the “causal” laws of physics which “govern”…which, um…yeah, unconscious cannot by defintion = conscious)…yes, not even Artificial Intelligence can refer to its own “style”, its hopes and dreams, placing itself at the very center of a conceptual paradigm by which it is understood by the very structure of what comprises it, that Truth is meant to serve it, and not the other way around.  A talking computer cannot pontificate upon or exegete its feelings or dreams or make itself as the subject of a “future” or “past”.  Only the human being can do that.

And even if the computer could do this it would not invalidate my argument; for we define a sentient being not by its body or its “objective” material form, but its ability to recognize itself as its own existential constant; its own metaphysical absolute.  “I” means not the body, it means the root by which all that is defined as existing, as an IS, has any relevance or meaning or purpose or truth or goodness at all.  In other words “I” is a metaphysical concept, not a physical one.

But what my critics argue is that somehow my philosophy demands that I observe humanity as a thing, not as a SELF; which I declare is impossible according to my rational plumb line: reason.  Which I define as conceptual consistency.

On the contrary, it is not my, but their objectivist, empiricist philosophy which demands human beings must be things, not metaphysical singularities; not sentient agents; not thinking SELVES.  They are the ones who demagogue “objective reality” as being a function of the “laws of physics”, which are unseen, unknowable apart from “material reality”, and unable to effect or affect anything at all absent material reality first, and man’s ability to conceptually organize reality before that.

It is their philosophy, not mine, which must deny any that another human being outside of oneself has any intrinsic character.  Their philosophy must proclaim consciousness an illusion and assume that all references to one’s own awareness are either illusory or madness.

It is their philosophy, not mine, which must deny any real efficacy of the senses, and ignore another person’s appeals to “self” and “me”, and to reference “you” and “us”, and dismiss them as merely the predetermined ramblings of programmed organic robots who have no actual understanding of such concepts because such thinking agents simply cannot rationally exist in the “real world” of the “objective” causal universe.  Outside of oneself of course.  After all, someone must be privy to the “truth”.

It is their philosophy, not mine, which must deny human conceptual consistency as that which is reasonable, fundamentally destroying and rendering inert both truth and morality.  It is their philosophy, not mine, which must observe human beings as external objects which can have nothing to do with those concepts which affect the “objective, observing self”, because “self” in this paradigm can only be defined exclusively as the one who can observe his own consciousness–“me, and no one else”–and thus the only one who can claim to properly observe and thus parse reality “objectively”.

They, not me, must assume that “future”, “past”, “love”, “want”, “need”, “hope”, etc. can have nothing to do with others they observe, because they do not concede that a rational conceptual definition of “other person” has anything to do with reality.  Other human beings are not products of their own ability to conceptualize SELF, thereby referring to themselves in the first person singular and placing themselves at the center of the conceptual paradigm, just as they do.

It is their philosophy, not mine, which subordinates all humanity to the subjective whims of the only one who can, by their rationale, be “real”.

And who is that?

It is he who calls himself: the observer.

But I do not preach the reality of the observer.  I preach the reality of the SELF, who must, in order to rationally define SELF, must define OTHER as his metaphysical equal.  Equally aware and equally valuable and equally entitled to the sum and substance of their own lives.

Get the Metaphysics Right and You’ll Get Everything Right

Metaphysics, , ,

Put on your thinking caps, ladies and gents.  This is no cakewalk of political pontification; no casual stroll down the primrose path of the subjective symbolism of flags or the contradiction of government to the individual metaphysic.  No, you’ll need to turn off the background music and send the kids out to play for a while.

If you are so inclined, of course.  Around here, no one forces anyone else to spend the capital of their own time in any way other than as they wish. I’m just giving you fair warning.  Gonna hit the pause button on this one a few times.  This will be decidedly non-intuitive.  But remember, that doesn’t make it wrong.  Only rational inconsistency makes it wrong.  And if you can point any out, please let me know in the comments section.

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In order for you to know, believe, or do anything, YOU must first be a part of the equation…YOU must be endemic to–you must be the reference for the relevancy, efficacy, purpose, and meaning of that knowledge, belief, or action.  In other words, without YOU, there is no knowledge, belief, or action, because those things–in conceptual form or otherwise–can have no meaning absent the frame of reference of yourSELF.  Without YOU, and your innate, inherent, and absolute ability to be YOU, I assert that there is no existence of anything, period, and the same is true for me.  For without the Self, by which the entirety of one’s existence is referenced, and of which there is no other absolute and and thus constant context, there can be no reference for existence by which existence qua existence can have any meaning.

Now, before you raise an index finger to protest this idea it is vital to notice that even those who proclaim the objective existence of things in the “objective material reality outside ourselves” do, and in fact must, declare such a notion only from the absolute context of themselves, that is, from the absolute and inexorable frame of reference of Self…and this context is for them, as it is for everyone, categorical.  No one can observe life/reality/existence, beliefs, ideas, actions, emotions, aesthetics, etc. from outside themselves, by definition.  This fact renders anyone claiming to know of an “objective reality outside themselves” either a weaver of false threads or at the very least unaware of contradictory “logic” of such a notion.  Even those “out of body experiences” about which we occasionally hear from people who are said to have died for a minute or two on the operating table still must speak of such an experience from a singular consciousness; a singular observational vantage point; a singular perspective; a singular context of Self.  They always speak of it as MY out-of-body experience, not OUR out-of-body experience.  And this is because human beings have no collective frame of reference, but only a singular existential perspective–that of Self.  There is no such thing as a dual, or group, metaphysic.  The reason why you always refer to yourself as “I” is because you cannot possess a collective frame of reference for your existence.  At the end of it all…at the end of every philosophy, no matter what you are told and no matter how desperately some Marxist proselyt might wish it to be otherwise, there is no such thing as “WE” except conceptually.  There is only YOU, period.  You ARE; and you ARE, absolutely.  There is no such thing as a group metaphysic.  It is a lie.  Which is why all civilizations rooted in altruism (the idea that man’s greatest moral good is to sacrifice the Self for the Group) always exist in abject misery and inevitably terminate at death.

As I was saying, the individual metaphysic then necessarily contradicts the idea of an “objective reality outside” a person.  The implication is that regardless of someone’s own frame of reference–regardless of the constant of the observational perspective of their own SELF–there is nevertheless an “objective reality outside them” which continues to be what it is and do what it does.  That is, they don’t necessarily have to exist in order for “objective reality” to exist.

The problem, however, is that there isn’t any way to prove this objectively (not to mention rationally), since there isn’t any way to observe reality but from the context of themselves.  They cannot proclaim an autonomous “reality” outside of them if their awareness of such a reality is always a function of their absolute frame of reference.  They must assume that they are the source of “objective reality”.  Without THEM, there is no way to claim that anything is in fact real.  Objective reality is a function of the individual’s existence, not the other way around.

Here’s the irony:

A person’s own ability to be themselves within a setting (i.e. the Universe) absolutely referenced to and thus given meaning and purpose by themselves is the only means by which he or she can express the (false) idea that the Universe exists utterly, fully, and autonomously without them.  This has the contrary effect of rendering themselves utterly irrelevant to the very idea they are promoting.  If everything exists outside of them, then what they think or believe or do is entirely irrelevant to the existence of that which is outside of them, by definition, which means they cannot possibly be integrated with reality, operating somehow from an infinitely separate frame of reference than the reality they observe (and how they can even observe a reality outside themselves is another problem), which means they can have no reference for their own existence, which makes the whole idea moot, as opposed to true.  And if what they think or say or do, being an absolute function of themselves (which it is, by definition), is irrelevant, then they themselves, in their very person, are irrelevant.  Which is to say that the “objective reality” outside of them will do what it does regardless of whether they exist or not.  For how can one advocate practical interaction with an environment which is absolutely objective and autonomous without the individual?

In order for man to manifest himself practically and efficaciously upon his environment, man must exist as an absolute part of it, which means that we cannot separate the existence of the individual from the existence of his environment.  There is no rational way to mitigate or compromise on the distinction.  If man is, and his environment is, then they both are…equally and inseparably .  (So then, where does the distinction occur, since it is not and cannot be a physical one? An interesting question for you to consider.)

Either man is a fully existent and completely integrated to his environment or he is fully, materially, distinct.  And the latter makes it impossible to argue that man exists at all because it puts an insurmountable chasm between man and that upon which he must manifest himself–as a juxtapositional reference–in order to claim that he is, in fact, observably himself from that which he is not, this being the basic and essential criteria in declaring that some thing–some unique thing–exists.  That is, in order to define what something is, the thing must be referenced to that which it is NOT.  Otherwise, it simply cannot be defined, because that which is infinite (absent a reference by which to juxtapose its unique and particular location in the Universe), or having no end, cannot be said to be “this”, because there is no “that” by which to make “this” mean anything specific.  (I know this is a bit confusing, hang in there.) So again, it cannot be defined.  And if it cannot be defined then it cannot be said to exist; either to itself nor to anything, or anyone, else.

This why I have denied the idea that God is an infinite Being. (Though he does have an infinite metaphysic, like the human individual does, which is a little different, because in the metaphysical sense, “infinity” is better defined as absolutely, meaning that man and God are absolutely themselves, in existential essence…their Self, which is their standard and reference for existence, is singular, not collective).  Because if God was in fact infinite, then He could not be defined as God (He could not even define Himself as God) because nothing could exist besides Him, which would remove any reference by which anyone (“anyone”, likewise,not being able to exist in the presence of a Being which is infinite) could know Him as God.  God would not be God, He would be an infinite IS, which is, practically speaking, the exact same thing as being an infinite IS NOT.  Meaning for something to be infinitely something is functionally identical to being infinitely nothing.  For there is no relevancy to what is infinite, because nothing else can exist for it to be relevant TO.  And if it isn’t relevant TO anything, that must necessarily includes itself, which, being infinite, and never ending, never ceasing, cannot be conceptualized, which means it cannot be integrated into the organizational paradigm (language) by which all things in the Universe are identified and granted efficacy.

Now–and I touched upon this in the parentheses above–it is important to understand that there is a distinction between the infinity of essence and the finiteness of material objects in the material universe which are given meaning and purpose by the human ability to integrate them into into a conceptual paradigm by which people organize and thus “know” their own environment.  The infinity of essence–the absolute metaphysic– is what I might describe as the infinite ability to be whatever something is; the idea that if something IS it can never be an IS NOT, nor could what is something be a direct function of nothing.  For example, take the doctrine of ex nihilo, or the idea that God created the Universe out of nothing.  Even a third grader can understand why this must be false; for nothing and something are mutually exclusive, where “nothing” is merely an abstract, conceptual placeholder, like the mathematical placeholder of zero, to describe the absence of a thing with respect to a specific situation or context.  For example, “John is doing nothing at home today”.  We all understand that John, because he IS, cannot thus be literally doing nothing.  For at the very least John is existing.  “Nothing” then is merely an abstraction humans use for the purpose of communication.  It is a linguistic tool, much like “zero” is a mathematical one.

The finiteness of material “existence”, or of material objects is based upon the human ability, as I previously mentioned, to conceptualize what he/she observes.  This is the ability of the sentient–the self aware–agent to make a conceptual distinction, via observation, between what he/she is and what he/she is not to an infinite degree (though this is not akin to “observational empiricism”; or “scientific empiricism”…which is the idea that the senses are the source of all human knowledge, as opposed to the ability of the human to conceptualize the Self as being the source of all human knowledge).  In other words, material distinction is a function of the ability to be self-aware (some might call it consciousness, but I think this muddies the issue; for “ability” is not consciousness), not a function of “objective material reality”.

Please understand that I am not being contradictory here.  I am not suggesting there is any such real, actual thing as the finiteness of material objects.  I do not, in other words, acknowledge the existence and efficacious power of “space”.  For space, or that which is the absence of objects, cannot by definition be an object itself which separates other objects into some kind of infinite vacuum of themselves.  Rather, “space” is merely a way human beings conceptualize the relative movement between objects they observe as distinct, but this does not make the objects actually distinct.  The ability to observe objects as distinct is rooted absolutely in the human ability to conceptualize their own Self; and this necessitates the ability to conceptualize what their own Self is NOT, and infinitely so.  The infinite ability to make distinctions between what you are and what you are NOT maintains the consistency of the infinity of existence, or of essence.  In other words, the infinity of existence is manifest in the infinite number of ways you can conceptualize the distinctions between Self and Environment.  You are not a cup, a car…you are not even the parts of your body…your hand, your hip, your kidney, or your brain, necessarily, when speaking observationally and conceptually.  You are not a table, the sky, the tree, God, Joe, that weird kid who stared at you in fourth grade, a bird, the number three, a magic trick, a preposition, the article “the”…and on and on the distinctions go.  You see, there is fundamentally no difference between infinity and an infinite number of objects moving in an infinite number of ways, in root essence…they are tautological.  But what renders a distinction between these two notions, and an infinitely meaningful distinction at that, is the human ability to, again, infinitely conceptualize the difference between Self and Not Self, the only purpose of which, incidentally, is for the promotion and perpetuation of Self.

(NOTE:  The question of how the human ability to infinitely conceptualize the distinction between Self and Not Self can be efficaciously manifest in a Universe where there is no such thing as space or time (these are conceptual abstractions)–where everything is utterly rooted infinity–is another article.  I will get to that in the near future.)

*

 Getting back to this idea that the human being exists “outside” of “objective reality”–there is no scientific “evidence” (the only real evidence is reason), and no rationally consistent philosophical argument, which can prove that the human body–that which we identify with the individual Self, as being indistinguishable from his/her ability to manifest existence–is somehow existentially distinct from the rest of the Universe.  For it is merely stating the rank obvious to say that all of the chemical compounds and fundamental particles which can be found in “objective reality outside of us” can also be found inside of us, that is, our bodies.  It is likewise stating the obvious to say that if the human body can interact with the “objective reality outside of us” then the human body must have categorical integration with such a reality, which makes the human body equally as real, thus rendering any distinction between the human body and a “reality outside of him/her” impossible.

The difference then is in man’s capacity, his absolute ability to recognize himself conceptually, in the practical form of his body (which I describe as the first fruits of man’s labor–the work of his own existing, which no one else can do for him), as distinct from the environment.  The distinction then is a function of man’s sentient frame of reference for Self–his own absolute and infinite perspective, and this, again, to re-re-reiterate, is a product of his own ability to know, and to thus be, what he is.  Existence then, and knowledge, and thus truth and morality (those things from which knowledge is derived) are a direct function of man’s ability to BE.  YOU must be YOU, before anything can be known, or believed, or done.  Without you, in other words, there cannot be anything “outside” of you.  Period.  You are the beginning and end of existence.  And not simply your existence, but existence absolutely.

Liberty is Impossible Because of Man’s Total Depravity

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The presumption is that man is fundamentally depraved and thus inadequate to his own existence. In other words, man, if left to himself, will by nature seek to torment, exploit, and murder his fellow man and himself.  Of course, what is never explained is how those in government get a metaphysical pass on their own absolute depravity. But we are not supposed to ask these kinds of questions.

In short, it always boils down to metaphyics; the question “What is man?” forms the basis of every political, religious, and moral discussion the world over.  These discussions are fundamentally philosophical, and the fundamental of philosophy is metaphysics.

And this is why ostensibly rational human beings can ask the ironical questions “Liberty is good, yes, but what of the inevitably destructive consequences of too much Liberty; TOO much freedom? Liberty, but at what cost to humanity?” And they ask these questions whilst completely oblivious to the irony.

The assumption that man is metaphysically flawed and therefore inadequate to his own existence makes liberty for man categorically impossible.

And so, since the assumption is that man is fundamentally depraved by nature, it is avered that the only way man can truly exist is in a collective. Thus, we get the collectivist metaphysic so prevalent in the world and is, I submit, at the very heart of all governments and all religious institutions–which are simply governments themselves. Man can only be “himself” in any relevant or efficacious way by identifying with this group or that.

This is why there is such a push to nationalism and militarism and symbolism in almost all countries, even as groups within those SAME countries are pitted against each other; and this in order to maintain and promote the de facto premise that groups by their very nature must assert their moral mandate to engage in belligerency against ALL those on the “outside”–a mandate which is merely a function of the group’s rote existence.

The individual we are taught must be sacrificed to the group, not only for the good of the many, but–and this is the truly insidious part–for the good of HIMSELF. Which is a rank contradiction that is also never addressed; because there is no answer for this evil idea.

The Ironically Titled Movie “Inside Out”: How it teaches the collectivist metaphysic of “Outside In”

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Let’s get to the issue at hand here: the collectivist philosophical irony of thinking that what is clearly an outside–in metaphysic–that is, man is a direct and absolute function of his environment–is really something which can relevantly include the individual man; what I would call the “inside”, or the Self, of man. I aver that this is the deception being propagated by the new animated Pixar film, “Inside Out”.

The message implied by the movie is basically the same message implied by American culture in 2015 in general, and it is that the individual somehow stands to gain by accepting the idea that all he or she is is a function of what they experience…of the causal universe; of what happens when the “discovered” physical laws which are absolute and inviolable, and somehow exist in an infinite, unseen vacuum of their own perfect and self-contained integrity, knock one thing into another thing, and then those things into other things, and so on and so forth until “you” appear.

And this is the root and unavoidable conclusion of this message:  that you are both you and NOT you.  That you have emotions and you don’t have emotions.  That you benefit from understanding these emotions and what they do and what they contribute and you don’t benefit.  Because you somehow exist and yet do not exist.  That somehow one times zero can equal something NOT zero.  That you are a direct function of your environment, and your emotional experiences attest to this, and yet, this in spite of the glaring and overt contradiction in the statement “YOU are a DIRECT function of your environment”.  For it does not take but a remedial understanding of logic and a cursory glance at reason to ascertain that if one is a direct function of his environment, then one cannot possibly exist in the first place…which renders the statement itself patently false, and thus inevitably destructive and murderous should it ever be implemented in any practical way  upon a society.  And by “society”, I mean individuals.

Now, let’s pepper the assertion “You are a direct function of your environment” with some educational (and ostentatious) parentheses, in order that we may render to it a proper translation and explication:

You are a direct (read, “absolute and inexorable”) function of your environment (read, “laws of nature”; read “determinative forces”; read “the causal universe”; read “someONE needs to be in charge of the masses because they can only possess the illusion of consciousness, which will be a disaster for them (read “the ruler’s self-assumed power”) if they ever decide to exist for and to themselves; read “group metaphysic”; read “destruction for the sake of destruction”).

And thus is revealed this formula:

Absolute causality = absolute determinism = absolute collectivism = group metaphysic = inherent vacuum of definitions/meaning/purpose for said group which any given member of the group at any given moment is unable to provide due to the very nature of the group metaphysic (e.g. the illusion of individual consciousness) = a select number of “divinely-appointed” rulers who must compel the unenlightened masses into “right” thinking and behavior = the categorical sacrifice of the individual for the group = destruction for destruction’s sake since without the individual and without a perpetual and external “threat” to the group there is no reference for the group in the first place = perpetual group vs. individual antagonism (wherein the individual is always collectivized into a rival group, since the illusion of individual existence must be maintained in order for the leadership to convince people of the need to passively accept and willingly offer up their own self-sacrifice) = rationally vapid, morally nebulous, never-ending calls to overt nationalism almost exclusively limited to unfettered pro-militarism, seemingly incongruously paired with the Balkanization  of society into competing groups who villify each other and vie for some illusion of power within the Central Authority structure which is in reality restricted solely to those “called” to lead the group by the mysterious and cosmic Divine Will.  And thus, the formula becomes circular, repeating itself over and over and over again, with literally no end in sight until nature alone finally brings about the end of humanity.

Only the individual can end the cycle, which is nothing short of hell on earth (or hell in general); but this necessitates that the individual become the absolute existential constant, fully of himself and to himself, and this necessitates an almost total re-defining and re-codifying of the accepted human metaphysical premise.  And given the pervasive and almost inextricably planted notions of Man-as-Extension-of-a-Causal-Universe averred by even the most trenchant and brilliant of libertarians and rationalists, I do not see an end in sight, if there even is one at all.  I mean, I see it for myself, because I live it with the understanding that my life is not a function simply of my environment, and that in some way, in some form, I, via my acceptance of my SELF as the only universal constant by which anything has any rational meaning at all I will perpetuate that Self irrespective of the environment or other people’s irrational ideas, and that death has no more claim upon my existence than “blue” or “left” or “heavy” or Planck’s Constant or any other concept which man has decided that though he created it, and he is the sole reference for which it can have any relevancy or usefulness,  nevertheless he is entirely subject to it, unto both life and death.

Which ironically (though this irony goes unnoticed) renders life and death one and the same.  Meaning that if you concede the moment you are born you begin to die, then logically you assert that the moment you come alive is the moment death lays claim to your existence.  Thus, life = death.  And since not even these two basic concepts can serve any rational purpose to any form of efficacy, because they lack even a nascent facade of practical meaning, what difference does it make what we think or do?  What difference does anything make when we declare death a direct, inevitable, and absolute function of life?

Here’s the answer you are looking for:  It doesn’t. Because we have no claim to SELF, because we have sacrificed it to the very concepts which are supposed to promote us.  For shame!

So..in short, you were born for the sole and determined purpose of dying.  And that makes you literally no different from any collectivist who may demand your sacrifice for his pleasure (sorry…the “group’s” pleasure”); from the collectivist you claim to reject; and your claims no different than claims you pretend to trample.

No.  Sorry.  It isn’t as easy as you would like, nor as you would think.  Rational consistency, it seems, itself must be sacrificed in service to “truth”, right libertarians?

Time to think a bit more about things.

*

The basic epistemological chain of reasoning, which bespeaks of the collectivist, determinist metaphysic (as I shall explain), on display in the movie “Inside Out” is this:  Your emotions are a function of your environment, and you are a function of your emotions. Which makes you a function of your environment (your environment = emotions = you, which means environment = you), according to transitive property.  Which is in perfect harmony with the group metaphysic.  Since you are a function of the very “laws of nature” which govern all reality, and therefore existence, you cannot really lay a claim to “yourself”, nor can you claim to possess any real truth because, again, there is no such thing as “you”.  “You” are just like everyone else, who really isn’t anyone else.  For everyone is a function of the same, inalienable, inviolable laws which govern everything, and so there is no means for you, individually, to obtain truth, or knowledge of any kind, or morality of any kind, or existence of any kind, except it be bestowed upon you from the outside, just as your existence is.  And the only ones who can do that are those who (in some manner or fashion, usually under the guise of a state “ruler” or “leader” or “pastor” or “priest” or “king”…some manner of “divine” proxy) have been somehow specially “called” to represent to the masses of humanity those forces (God’s Divine and Sovereign Will, the Laws of Nature, the Essence of the Party, or the Race, or the Culture, or the Nation, or the Tribe) which govern them absolutely.  How they get  a pass on their own absolute group metaphysic and their own insular and total determinism is a “mystery” punted into the cosmic abyss.  They never explain it because they cannot–for even they are merely lowly representatives of the infinite Will, they will say.  And even if they did explain it to you, you wouldn’t understand anyway because your lack of individual awareness makes you an nsufficient vessel to contain such lofty knowledge.

In other words you wouldn’t understand it even if they told you; and if you did understand it you would abjectly concede it, which makes understanding it quite irrelevant.  You would simply agree that it is rational; you would have no questions to ask; thus, there would be no discussion…no defense of it.  You would be a “called” one, fit to rule and to lead and to cajole and compel and to sacrifice and to profit and to absorb.  And you certainly wouldn’t question that.  For the benefit of such a role would be self-evident and readily apparent, particularly when it is in perfect keeping with the Divine Will.

*

If you see the movie “Inside Out”, or if you have seen it, you will notice or have noticed that at no time does the ability to maintain a rationally consistent conceptual paradigm ever enter the discussion.  Concepts, in other words, are presumed ipso facto…that is, they simply exist as the universal absolutes which compel material outcomes in the environment to which human beings have a corresponding, determined and predetermined emotional reaction.  This chain of causality does not change, you will also notice or have noticed, from infancy through adulthood.  Human beings have bestowed upon them, somehow, language, which is merely the codification and cohesion of concepts (abstractions)  into a practical linguistic framework allowing for group integration.  That is, we communicate via language because we are a natural product of the group–the collective–which has given birth to us, because we are it, as far as we can know, and not as a means to manifest our own individual personalities, wills, whims, and ideas upon our environment to our own ends and for our own comfort and pleasure and perpetuation.

Which is what language really is and why we really possess it.  In other words, we have language because we, individually, have the inherent ABILITY to have it; making us, individually, the only true reason for it.  The ability to conceptualize is the ability to communicate through language; and this is the ability to reason.  For reason is simply the rational consistency of the conceptual paradigm, applied through language.  Language qua conceptualization qua reason is only relevant if there is an absolute reference for it.  Since it is  the individual who has fundamental, existential possession of it, it is a direct function of the individual, which means the individual must be the absolute source and absolute objective of it.

But once you remove the individual and make him an absolute function of the environment qua his emotions, as this movie does, then you have no need for language, and thus concepts, because language is merely a means by which to compel people into the collective, period.  Language is not of the Self, it is of the group; but this movie is about ONE girl.  NOT the group.  And in this context, the individual “you” is merely a bundle of emotions, without rhyme nor reason; directed to and fro by the passions elicited by determined and inevitable environmental stimulus, trying to make sense of what is fundamentally senseless, because the true metaphysic of the Self has not been realized; and this is the message of the movie.  Without the group to tell you what everything is supposed to mean–to define your reality for you and to provide the interpretive lens for all the seemingly incoherent and capricious environmental influence…to give you a hook from which to hang your very existence–NOTHING fundamentally can prevail except confusion, which in the movie is rendered as “Sadness”.  And “Joy”, no matter how hard she tries, cannot overcome to emotion of “Sadness” because the truth of existence according to the group metaphysic is that ALL reality is doomed to crumble into an endless abyss of nihilistic madness and despair if one concedes that he or she has some manner of individual presence.   Individually, you are the rope being stretched between two competing, irreconcilable, forces:  the lie of Self and the Truth of the Group qua the Environment.  And though all emotions seem to have an equal say in things at first, as the child grows up left to herself, the power of Sadness becomes more and more dominant, subordinating ALL other emotions to its inevitable consequence:  destruction.  Destructive behaviors, destructive ideas, destructive conclusions.

It is the group’s responsibility to turn sadness, happy; to make the confusing, rational; and the meaningless, purposeful.  And when we are left alone (and the little girl in the movie is nothing if not the metaphor for the lonesome INDIVIDUAL, as we spend 90% or more of the movie inside her head), with no group available with which to integrate ourselves, then the environment will kill you.  The only way to control it is to acknowledge its power, and your complete inability to organize it on your own.  You need OTHERS.  And that’s the moral of the story, as we see when the little girl finally understands that she must either subordinate herself to her family–her parents–or die.

The perceptive among you will notice that the little girl never has any just cause for her sadness, or her anger, or her disgust, nor even her joy; though “Joy” is, I submit, a metaphor for the collective, because Joy always invokes images of belonging; whereas Fear, Disgust, Sadness, and Anger are the emotional displays of rank selfishness.  No, the little girl feels things without the corresponding conceptual rhyme or reason.  And what this means is that she can never claim to have been wronged by any circumstance, which means she can never claim to have a legitimate grievance against anyone else, and thus she can never claim that she has a right to justice.

This too is hallmark–an uber foundation–of collectivist philosophy.

Interestingly enough, the family “unit” is seen as the salvation for emotional-qua-environmental induced misery, and yet, through a few scenes within the heads of mom and dad, we see the following emotions in the “leadership” roles (in each character, there is the “boss”; the dominant emotion to which the other emotions defer). Mom’s dominant emotion is “Sadness”, and dad’s is “Anger”.  Which, yeah…interesting.  In the little girl’s head it is “Joy” who is the brains of the outfit, but Joy quickly gives way to Sadness (reluctantly…showing the stubbornness of the young in clinging to their individuality) when life’s circumstances take a turn for the worse and she is forced to move away from her friends to follow dad’s job to San Fransisco.  This speaks to the prevailing negative power of the environment, I believe, which is a subliminal way of criticizing America’s “free” society.  You see, no matter how hard we try, even as adults the negative emotions dominate, because there is just too much fucking freedom.  Even in a society ruled by the largest central authority the world has ever seen, individuals are just too burdened with their own choices and their own interests to ever truly be happy.

I’m sure more could be said about this, but alas, I’m getting long in this essay, even for me.

At any rate, this, I submit, is why the movie doesn’t spend any time at all dealing with concept formation nor language development in its treatment of one’s emotional evolution.  They remove the individual from himself (or herself, as it were) by making him a categorical function of his environment; his emotions being the primary and only relevant expression within the human organism of environmental stimulus absent the influence of the collective (and since the collective isn’t directly dealt with, per se, in the movie, there isn’t any reason to deal with concepts, which again are only useful in emphasizing group dominance).

I find it telling that there is almost no back story to this movie.  We know nothing about why the family moves to San Fransisco, or what dad does for a living,  or where mom went to school, or even if she did, or what either mom or dad like to do for fun.  They exist as merely props for the girl…a representation of the monolithic power of the environment to control feelings and thus behavior and thus existence; and then, near the movie’s conclusion, the conveniently provide the metaphor for collective integration.  For the life of me I cannot even remember their names, of if they were even given names at all.

The family  has no friends, no extended relatives, no work acquaintances to speak of.  Basically, mom and dad aren’t fully human, let alone ever portrayed as sentient, volitional individuals; and this is made even more poignant when we see that they, exactly like the little girl, are ruled entirely by the anthropomorphized emotions in their heads.  Mom and dad are the intellectual and metaphysical equivalents of the child.  Their only “advantage” it seems is that they have at least some semblance of group-awareness.  They understand that the key to happiness is to let the environment–your collective–define it for you.  Give in and let go.  Mom and dad, and later the State, will make it all better once you stop thinking that you somehow have a say in anything at all; as though you are anything more than a pre-programmed cog in the inexorable mechanism of universal causality.

*

The moral of the story, with respect to how to interpret emotions, is that all experiences are a composite of emotions.  That is, a given experience, to be truly matured and meaningful, is neither sad nor happy, nor angry, nor disgusting, nor fearful, but is a combination of some or all of these emotions.  Those of you now familiar with the implicit nihilism and futility of assuming an individual existence within a prevailing collectivist metaphysic will quickly make the connection to this conclusion and the fundamental assumptions which underlie this film.

Why do you think this is?  Why do you think we are to assume that no emotion has any singular, inherent meaning?  Why can no emotion stand alone as this or that, or as claiming absolute sovereignty over any given situation?  Why cannot losing your best friend be simply sad, and not both sad and happy?  Why are the emotions always mixed?

Is it because you are happy about part of the experience and sad about another part of it?  But “environment” cannot be compartmentalized, you see.  Environment is the singularity…it is THE governing force behind your emotions.  There is no partitioning of what is absolute, by definition.  You are a function, in totality, of your environment, and therefore there is no such thing as you deciding which experience means what to you; or which part of which experience means this or that.  Environment, and thus experience, is entirely monolithic, homogenous.  And this means what?

Right.  You’ve got it, I dare say.

The moral of the story is that of emotional equivalency.  The reason why emotions as they relate to environmental stimulus are always mixed is because, being a direct effect of the singular environment, they can have no distinctive value.  Sadness is no better nor worse,nor more rational or irrational, than joy.  Anger is no different than fear, practically speaking.  “Sadness”, “joy”, “fear”, “anger”, “disgust” are concepts, and concepts are the sole purview and prerogative of the collective.  They can have no meaning with respect to you individually. As such, whatever you perceive, as an individual, as a function of the environment, is the exact same thing as what you perceive next, or what you perceived before.  Feelings are simply not distinct in any practical nor relevant way.  You cannot claim to be sad, nor happy, nor angry at any given moment because there is no actual difference.  Emotions are the environment, and the environment is unequivocal, and YOU are the environment.  Meaning is conceptual, and conceptual reality is group reality.  Period.  Full stop.

In short, there is no need for you to be afraid, or disgusted, or angry, or sad; and there is no need for you to worry about being happy as though you, individually, are in any way responsible for that.  You only need to obey.

And through your obedience you will find all the practical emotional meaning and fulfillment you need.

Your Absolute Dependence Upon Pastoral “Authority” for an Efficacious Rendering of Reality (i.e. Your Sanity): Part FOURTEEN of “Collectivism Masquerading as the Christian Orthodox Ideal”

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

“Let’s face it; we’re all prone to wander.”  (P. 32, “Community: Your pathway to progress; North Point Ministries, 2008)

Well…no.  This is simply not true.  Useless conjecture; but even worse, it is patently deceptive.

We are not ALL prone to wander.  I could rattle off a half dozen people off the top of my head who I know are not “prone to wander”…whatever that means; I’m guessing here, because they haven’t defined it.

Ah…now that’s telling isn’t it?

Tell you what.  Hold that thought for a sec.

Furthermore, how in the hell is it possible to empirically verify such an assertion?  Did the authors interview every human being on earth both alive and dead to determine if they ever wandered?  And who decides what it means to “wander”?  And by what criteria and what consensus do they decide? And did the subjects they interviewed concede the definition?  And if they did not concede the definition, were they then excluded from the survey?  And if they were not excluded, by what rationale did the researchers decide it was legitimate and consistent with objective research protocol to disregard the opinions of the subjects with respect to the proper definition of terms?  And further, if they WERE excluded, does not that invalidate the initial claim–that “We are ALL prone to wander”–because, if some people are excluded from the survey, is not the hypothesis automatically disqualified on the basis that not ALL people were interviewed?

Also, what makes them the experts on what constitutes “wandering”? I mean, we can probably agree that, say, farming, homesteading, sharecropping, and squatting are pretty obviously not “wandering”.  But what about hunter-gatherer societies? Are they considered wandering? What about military families who move a lot?  Or traveling salesmen, or musicians, or acting troupes, or circuses?  Do they suffer from the blight of wandering as defined by North Point Ministries?  Should we demand they stop being so damn irresponsible and grow roots and put them down?  Or…um…is “wandering” merely a figurative term?

Hm…yes.  I think we may be on to something.

*

You see, once we understand that “wandering” is a euphemism for “sin”, and that only the “orthodox” ecclesiastical authority is allowed to define “sin”, this obviously absurd and impossible-to-substantiate claim (“we are all prone to wander”) is quickly revealed as an important and foundational part of the American Church’s very profitable deception.

Now, I’m sure it has, at this point, not escaped your attention that the author does not define “wander”.  And that, incidentally, is a glaring omission common in reformed literature, since the days of Calvin and Luther…at least.  You see, “sin” is never specifically defined in writings dealing with doctrine; and that’s because sin as a concept must have a fluid definition in order for it to be profitable as a tool of manipulation.  In other words, “sin” is whatever the ecclesiastical authority–(defined as those “standing in the stead of God” to shepherd (compel by violence, threats, or both) your spiritual “walk” (trail of tears))…yes, “sin” is whatever the ecclesiastical authority says it is at any given moment, in any given circumstance.  This way they can control the moral narrative of your life, and by this control the practical fruits of your labor; your existence.  Which is the whole point. The treasure is not in heaven as they have told you, but rather it is the fruit of your labor, and it is meant to flow upward, to the top of the hierarchical pyramid…and this is collectivism 101.  The government (the moral and intellectual supreme authority) of the church, just as it is in Marxist autocracies, is the only agency which really matters.  Said in an ironic way, you exist to NOT exist…that is, you exist to be sacrificed categorically to those who are “called” to ‘lead” you–where “lead” is a euphemism for “possess”.

You see, according to the metaphysic of reformed doctrine, there is no “you” distinct or autonomous from your “sin” (the reformed human metaphysic being, succinctly stated: man IS Evil; or man IS Sin).  Thus, in the process of purging you from your “sin nature”, YOU, the self-aware agent, must also be purged (and your awareness is an illusion at best; however, a self-indulgent lie and proof of your categorical apostasy probably better describes how individual consciousness is perceived by the eldership).  This purging is most effectively accomplished by destroying your cognitive ability to anchor yourself to a rationally consistent conceptual paradigm. And this is done by constantly manipulating the meaning of terms so that you remain in a perpetual state of confusion with regards to apprehending reality; that is, through manipulating concepts by implicitly teaching the constant vacillation of the meaning of words, the ecclesiastical leadership keeps you permanently dependent upon them for your sanity.  A denial of their “authority” is a denial of reality and condemns you to a state of madness from which there can be no salvation.  Of any kind.  Because “salvation” (or “Christ”, or “God”, or “YOU”) cannot have any meaning at all apart from their AUTHORITY.  That is, without them interpreting your life FOR you, you cannot tell which way is up or down.  You are as likely to wind up in hell as in heaven, and it doesn’t matter anyway because there is no functional difference.  It’s all misery because it is all undecipherable, disconnected images combined with sounds and utterances that have no reference in objective reality.   Truly it is psychological abuse and manipulation of the worst kind.  And psychological abuse is the worst kind of hell, because it lives INSIDE you.  There is no escape.  And this is why the American Spiritual Industrial Complex is so insanely profitable.  The threat of hell is, or can be, in a sense, and ironically, the worst kind of hell.  And make no mistake, it is FEAR which drives the payroll.  It is the insertion of a living and active hell into the minds of men which makes men dependent on any half-witted knob who merely claims, with absolutely no appeal to reason whatsoever and none asked for,  to have the “words of eternal life”.

*

Now, a rational definition of “sin” is pretty much that of which any sane person will assume; a definition, incidentally (for all your biblicists), one could easily garner by an honest, unfiltered, and unmolested examination of Scripture:  don’t do things that violate the the sanctity (the right to individual self-ownership) of your neighbor.  Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t covet, don’t blaspheme…pretty straightforward moral standards not unlike those found in a rather significant, but oft ignored (because it’s far too easy, you see), moral code known as the Ten Commandments.  But since ALL of Scripture is merely a function of the Reformed “gospel narrative”, the ability to grasp the true meaning of these moral imperatives eludes you, because you, unlike your Pastor, have not been given the divine enlightenment necessary to determine for yourself what “not-coveting” or “not lying” or “not stealing” really looks like (remember, they must provide the definitions for you, moment by moment by moment, in perpetuity…for this is the only reference for “reality”…for conceptual meaning).  Thus, your pastoral “authority” is forced to interpret the “narrative of reality” for you, because you, having not been called to stand-in-the-stead as they have, and thus having NOT been divinely bequeathed enlightenment (for according to reformed epistemology, truth is not learned but is bestowed) you cannot possibly understand the Ten Commandments because you cannot possibly understand what sin really is because your absolute sin-nature has precluded you from any reference of a rationally consistent reality by which you could interpret “sin” in the first place.  Simply put:  since your consciousness is an illusion, you cannot define anything you claim to see.  Thus, they must define everything for you, according to their pastoral “enlightenment”, and this “enlightenment” is the utterly irrational metaphysical construct of a “gospel-centered” interpretation of ALL reality; which is ironic because such an interpretive lens makes defining “reality” in any rational sense impossible.

It is by no accident that the interpretation of reality always begins and ends with discussions, though no consistent definitions, of “sin”; that is, sin is always a function of the present context; it is always in the NOW, which is why even after salvation we are all still “functional” sinners (active reprobates by nature); sin is NEVER relegated to the past; there is no cure for sin because there is no cure for YOU; your existence IS, and IS NOW, and thus sin is always “with you” because sin IS you. 

This is done to serve the narrative that your sin is perpetual, of course; that there is absolutely no moment of your life which is untainted or untouched by your debauched nature.  If they can convince you that you are always doing wrong simply by breathing, they can convince you that doing right is quite impossible, but only if it is outside of their “covering” of course. Naturally then, and quite logically, being humanity’s “covering” is a highly lucrative position.  And this is why there are so many churches, and so many wealthy churches, with so many very wealthy “shepherds”.

So now you understand why there is no consistent definition of sin, as you might see in the Ten Commandments where morality is referenced to the autonomy and right-to-life and right-to-self-ownership of the self-aware agent (God and Man).  “Sin” is only ever remotely  defined with any specificity when the ecclesiasty perceives a threat–real or imagined–to their authority; their ex post facto ownership of your mind, body, and property.  “How dare you question our beliefs?” They say.  “How dare you question our vision and how dare you impose the temerity of your blindness upon us? Your gossip and your lies and your recalcitrance trail behind you like a cloud of darkness, infecting and corrupting all the wonderful things God is doing in our church family. You are probably not even saved.  In fact, no…you are not saved.  I declare it. And I will rattle my keys under your nose in mockery of your apostasy.” Yes, this is the only time sin is given anything even approximating an objective definition.

And if this sounds too profound to be true…if you are curling your lips and upturning your nose at the absurdity of my assertions, well…then whatever “God-appointed” authority to which you’ve been lending your ear is admittedly doing his or her job with exceeding facility.  You are supposed to think people like me merely polemic.  You are supposed to recoil in fear and wince horror at such suggestions.  You are supposed to blow raspberries at anyone who would dare question the motives of those who have everything to gain from exploiting your love and, even worse, your fears, and who make it a blatant point to reject reason and to offer no further apologetic for their doctrines than “who can ever really understand His ways? [shrug]”.  You are supposed to instinctively reject any possible connection between the doctrines they teach and the destructive outcomes so frequently observed in the American Church (child sexual abuse, financial scandals, sexual harassment and exploitation of women, embarrassing and psyche-demolishing church-splits, heartless and vindictive attitudes towards non-believers, open and unrepentant hypocrisy amongst the leadership, rejections of Christ en masse by former believers…to name just a few).

They’ve been perfecting their approach for thousands of years.  Your knee-jerk rejection to the idea that you could possibly be exploited by these people for their own selfish benefit, either willfully or out of ignorance, is proof that practice has indeed made perfect.  I mean, let’s face it:  you won’t be convinced to jump in front of a train unless someone spends a lot of time practicing the approach necessary to convince you that your life is ultimately beside the point; that the train cannot go where it must go with you in the way…and that being in the way means existing at all.  That is, and ironically, unless you jump directly in front of the speeding train, you cannot help but to hinder its divine mission, which, you have been convinced, is somehow worse for you than rejecting the very life you believe God created and gave you in the first place!

Yes, and thus, like the proverbial frog slowly boiling to death, you sit in the sanctuary and stare at the plexiglass podium and nod at your reformed pastor’s message dutifully, unaware of the grave reality of your condition.  And upon hearing my message you psychologically assume the fetal position, terrified at my hyperbole and paranoia.

You see, for me to declare to some people that their lives matter and that human life matters has become a yarn of madness to them, and sends them into  fits of moral indignation, a sputtering of denial, and compels them to cry aloud “God-hater!” and “Heretic!”.

And when they’ve finished, I confidently proclaim my case rested.

Is Government Rational? Is Government Necessary? What Metaphysical Assumptions Does Government Make About the Governed?

Metaphysics, , , ,

I submit that government is predicated on the idea that men NEED governing. And this is because men, it is assumed, by their very nature are existentially insufficient to perfect moral behavior (ignoring, for the time being, the contradictory fact that all governments are run by men, so what exactly gives civil “authorities” an existential pass on their own fundamental moral insufficiency?). That is, though not all men will do evil, ALL men need governing because evil is endemic to the human condition.

If this is true then “governing” men is really a means of compelling them through force to “do the right thing”. But of course since evil is a natural function of the human condition, namely, existence, then men cannot by definition do the right thing. Their nature–their existence–ultimately precludes this capability (again with the understanding that not all men do evil but all men have the capacity for evil because evil is natural to man, thus all men must be governed). This being the case, government is really established merely to punish man for his evil nature, full stop. For since man is ungovernable because his nature is evil, the very idea of government is ultimately predicated on the right of government to wield FORCE. And force precludes governing. It is actually the admission that governing man is quite impossible.

This force is to punish man, not for his evil, but for his very EXISTENCE; since it is impossible to isolate man’s capacity for evil, because evil is endemic to his natural existence, “man IS evil” is the metaphysical premise behind government.

But if man is NOT inherently evil, and evil is a product of irrational ideas, then man, if he has rational ideas…well, there is no reason to think he will not function morally. There is no reason to consider him a slave to evil, which means there is no reason to think he MUST be governed.

Food for thought–and just one among the many topics discussed here that, should you dare bring it up, will make people slowly back away from you at parties.