A weedy florilegium

Once, the idiots were just the fools gawping in through the windows. Now they’ve entered the building. You can hear them everywhere. They use the word ” cool” . It is their favourite word. The idiot does not think about what it is saying. Thinking is rubbish. And rubbish isn’t cool. Stuff & shit is cool. The idiots are self-regarding consumer slaves, oblivious to the paradox of their uniform individuality. They sculpt their hair to casual perfection, they wear their waistbands below their balls, they babble into hand-held twit machines about that cool email of the woman being bummed by a wolf. Their cool friend made it. He’s an idiot too. Welcome to the age of stupidity. Hail to the rise of the idiots.
–Dan Ashcroft (Julian Barratt) of Nathan Barley

Literalist:
I believe that God exists.

Corollary:
Rightly deemed lunatic, supposing there are any left who genuinely hold “God exists” to express some truth about the world rather than about this world. Why so rash and forward on this? Any speech act involving the telos places you without question into the moderate category: a consequentialist believer is a moderate believer. The question is: What counts one as a consequentialist? I doubt anyone can avoid such a label. It is the storytellers, the marveler, the wonderer, the philosopher, the amazed, the dazzled and dreaming, the rationalizer, the emoter, the reactionary, the pundit, the modest, the artist, the aestheticist; honestly, if you are conscious at all, you likely fall into this telos-tick. But the literalist, should it exist, is permitted to speak because we have in our control the ability to not listen; when the story becomes clearly too fanciful for our wit or mustard, we will await the modicum moment that the platform on which the literalist speaks disappears. By the gears, windings, workings and rules of polite communication, we see the end to the tunnel of the mundane in terms of the terms of art of certain, privileged mythology.

Hedonist Moderate:
I believe that believing that “God exists” is a good belief to have.

Corollary: This is a pragmatico-utilitarian line, which falls under the broader religio-consequentialist line. God, or belief in God, is seen for its fruits. Indeed, we might as well put God in scare-quotes for the first disjunct. “God” in essence becomes the limit of the cultural imagination. Here’s where we get benign or artistic (existentialist) pantheism, where the “collective [WORD]” arranges the properties of its most popular deity (the ontologically dominant entity of its zeitgeist). Here, pantheism and monotheism of the moderate have no concretely distinguishing properties. Their linguistic behavior produces a quiesce of ideological strife, consent is borne from the property-blending of statements, referents of statements are masked by intuition and good-feelings. “God exists” for one is simply assumed to mean roughly the same for all, where the mode of presentation strictly does not fall out. The culture is parasitic on the nature of this generalization (”God exists” just means “Some god exists”). And everyone person may have its delightful deity in this pathological pool of noncommunication, drenched in the wires of progress, poetry and pity.

Merciful Atheist:
I believe that Y believing that “God exists is a good belief to have” is good belief for others to have.

Corollary:
This line of reasoning involves the atheist in the belief that literalists are blind and thus are by their nature unable to step beyond the cognitive capacity of at least the moderate. The atheist here sees the ills of religion but imagines a world darker, more cursed, vile and horrid. For the sake of avoiding such a state of affairs, the atheist will avoid dissemination of the “higher learning” and the “politically correct.” The atheist will see themselves as stepping into the age of reason, thus to countenance a kind of aristocratic intellegentsia. It will be a condescension for the only possible good, constrained by the principle, of course, of utility.

These positions are exhaustive and mutually exclusive.

“To put it very simply, he is our first African American president, or he will be, and we wish him well. But his choice, basically, is whether he’s going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations,” professes Ralph Nader on KTRH Houston.

So let’s talk about “race matters” as if race matters. Likely I’ll clear something up about this presumed low point in American history — or you’ll rashly pluck out a term rather than acknowledge the whole in which it is but a part, become overheated, and wonder why post-racial America is getting strangled and hamstrung by such “racist resurgences,” as if we’ve “made it.”

Nader’s Dilemma invokes the background against which our president-elect will find himself: 40 percent of black American children age 5 and younger reside at or beneath the poverty line; school segregation of Hispanic and black youth is endemic; in the last 8 years disparity of wealth, income and education has increased; roughly 20 percent of black Americans are without health insurance coverage, 34 percent for Hispanics while 10 percent for whites; the unemployment rate is twice that for blacks in comparison to whites; on that very Nov. 4, Proposition 8, a measure that legally “protects” the sanctity of marriage from same-sex couples, was approved.

Judging from this background, Nader’s point is decisive and poignant: The lower classes and minorities are expecting something – a radiant liberator in the belly of this crushing institution. If you think we have achieved something alone in putting an African American in Office, then you must agree with Nader’s point, all the racial baggage therewith. You’re on the lookout for an Uncle Tom. We are indebted to Nader for this ammunition, for this historical underpinning perspective, the real hope that manifests in virtue of our awareness and scrutiny.

The popular doctrine demonstrates theatrically resentful behavior to any notion of race being relevant to our pageant politicks. Shepherd Smith of FOX News, in interview with Nader, captures this hypersensitivity with his primed pseudoretort, “(dramatic pause) Really?” When asked to recant his statement, Nader impressively poised responded, “(raises eyebrow) Not at all.” In that act we see a high point for democracy, a beacon of social dissent. And why would he retract? What “in hindsight,” so Smith supposes, is there to speak of? an inconsequential “tsk tsk”? If these are the only responses you can give, or something similarly unsubstantial, unargumentative and dimwitted, you probably should not have voted.

If you voted for Obama because of a warm feeling or because you believe you share an “identity,” you might as well have voted for him because he’s African American. Can you coherently and clearly divide Obama up into “ethnic” and “presidential” portions, to say you voted for a faceless hero?

Now, Nader did not in fact call our president-elect an Uncle Tom. The condition is that if our president-elect does not support the downtrodden and those with bleeding wallets, he will be an Uncle Tom.

If you believe Nader revived unduly any racial connotations, here’s my reply. Either we can look at our president-elect as having no “character,” no face (someone you cannot identify with), in which case he owes no allegiance to any class (which I think just primes him for assimilation into the only non-human “class” in this country corporate “persons”), or we can view him as an ethnically-featured president-cum-human who is rooted in human concerns first. With his ethnicity comes his tie to “the people.” If you take the former view, you get perhaps a corporate “toady”; if you take the latter, you get your warm feelings, your vote for “hope.” This dichotomy rests on the premise that you cannot coherently and clearly dissect Obama into “ethnic” and “presidential” portions, but you can certainly see a faceless and indifferent captain advance the agenda of a faceless and indifferent profit maximization engine.

Is our president beholden to one class over another (corporate over minority classes, say)? Some non-voters might see an undeniably moral conundrum here: voting just means eating your own (enthusiastically so). Nevertheless, if you did not ask yourself this question before voting, again, you probably should not have voted.

“… for the corporation” is most important: Despite the title character’s inspirational resoluteness, his submissiveness wrought his death – of course, he was not destroyed. But will the American people endure such a venture, cleaved to breast an ideology? This is what Nader captures; this is the embodiment of what the term, later interpreted, historically came to mean for black progressives of the 60s and 70s. Will we suffocate with our gods at electric sliding door of this horrible machine, from “profits” and of bailouts? Will our president-elect let us become martyrs? Do not expect the faceless to walk in our shoes, to understand our pain, to possess the compassion Uncle Tom maintained.

What, in fact, is “equality”? The term has been much invoked but little analyzed. A and B are “equal” if they are identical to each other with respect to a given attribute. Thus, if Smith and Jones are both exactly six feet in height, then they may be said to be “equal” in height. If two sticks are identical in length, then their lengths are “equal,” etc. There is one and only one way, then, in which any two people can really be “equal” in the fullest sense: they must be identical in all of their attributes. This means, of course, that equality of all men — the egalitarian ideal — can only be achieved if all men are precisely uniform, precisely identical with respect to all of their attributes. The egalitarian world would necessarily be a world of horror fiction — a world of faceless and identical creatures, devoid of all individuality, variety, or special creativity.
–Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature by Murray N. Rothbard; http://mises.org/story/3071

But we say “the means of obtaining equality is the essence of the distinction.” Thus, one means for obtaining equality is better or more warranting of approval than another. And we get bogged down into a discussion of these “means” and “measures” of obtaining our object. Is the implicit assumption that “equality is impossible, so your worries are not of concern to us”? Interesting that one should seek what one believes one cannot really obtain. Does one mean equality of “class”? Who determines the “class” which we, each of us, falls under?

So we seek “equity.” But what is the relation between these two concepts? Is it a relation between signs (something manifest–where we say, ah yes, this is the end for which we each fought) or is it a relation between objects (the material conditions of our labor)? What counts as target for our goal of attenuating the ailments wrought by our “System”? What does “The System” corrupt? We will run with your theoretical object (this “System”) until we drill our ourselves and our children into the dirt.

We will be alike in kind to a person who sees many faces of the world, almost every glimmering, bright, dusted, cracked, enamoring eye. But we will demand, And now show me the world.

It is before all things useful to men to associate their ways of life, to bind themselves together with such bonds as they think most fitted to gather them all into unity, and generally to do whatsoever serves to strengthen friendship.
But for this there is need of skill and watchfulness. For men are diverse (seeing that those who live under the guidance of reason are few), yet are they generally envious and more prone to revenge than to sympathy. No small force of character is therefore required to take everyone as he is, and to restrain one’s self from imitating the emotions of others. But those who carp at mankind, and are more skilled in railing at vice than in instilling virtue, and who break rather than strengthen men’s dispositions, are hurtful both to themselves and others.
—Ethics, Part IV, Appendix, 12 – 13

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the power and the advantage of any private person. For the riches of any private person are wholly inadequate to meet such a call. Again, an individual man’s resources of character are too limited for him to be able to make all men his friends. Hence providing for the poor is a duty, which falls on the State as a whole, and has regard only to the general advantage.
—Ethics, Part IV, Appendix, 17

[...] the supreme right of deciding about religion, belongs to the sovereign power, whatever judgment he may make, since it falls to him alone to preserve the rights of the state and to protect them both by divine and by natural law.
[Theologico-Political Treatise, 199]

Where it is shown that authority in sacred matters belongs wholly to the sovereign powers and that the external cult of religion must be consistent with the stability of the state if we wish to obey God rightly.
[Theologico-Political Treatise, Ch. 19]

1 Moral facts reduce to socially, psychologically, or culturally crafted feeling-states which express certain physiological predispositions. (”Abortion is wrong” translates to “When I hear a nearby opinion on the issue I get a queer feeling of this sort.”)

1.1 Physiological predispositions express (speech, letters; in public, directly or indirectly) themselves as “emotional states” which are public only if perceived by another individual who too bears physiological predispositions; this can cause a ripple effect in the social and political waters. (Indirectly: “Susan told me her views on abortion, and I’m inclined to agree. She might not do anything about it, but her ‘private views’ have compelled me to public action”, etc.) If an emotional state is not public, then describing it as “emotional” would lead to a performative contradiction. Emotion presupposes a social context (a public discourse); without a public environment, emotions are communicatively inert. Emotions presuppose some kind of effect (transmission of an idea); otherwise, they are only physical states without meta-data (ideas). (I cannot be or become angry without focusing on an object that acts as a referent for my emotional state; the object and my state go hand-in-hand, otherwise, I cannot be said to be “cognitively active.” Further, “emotion” needs a third party; for something to be called “emotional” or a “display of emotion,” an emoter, an object of emotion, and a perceiver (someone to receive the relation between, or idea that describes, emoter and object) are all three necessary.)

1.2 Physiological predispositions of individuals originate from prior causes and the building of societal edifices which presuppose the within themselves the tools for future modification and change. (”Headline: Candidate propose change to the political climate”, etc; but the candidates are largely influenced by the environment they wish to change, even if just to learn, as if very distanced and tactical, how to change it; nevertheless, it will touch them in a significant way.)

1.21 These presuppositions of change which inhere; that is, the negation of themselves (society qua society), define the limits and identity of every societal context—the society itself. It cannot stand as society if not changing. (Heraclitus asserted, “All is flux, nothing is stationary”; here is the principle that we share with Nature.)

2 Moral facts impose themselves like possible worlds onto our factual world. (”I have read the book of salvation, and I purport the world it describes…thou shalt not!”) Possible worlds demand urgency of argument, though undeserving, and even the principle of possible-worlds theory untenable; this is the only world, and its possibilities are infinite. “Everything that can happen (is possible; not an outright contradiction or is fictitious) has occurred, is occurring or will occur”—this is the principle of the world’s necessity. Possible worlds reduce to this world with its “modifications” by virtue of our finite intellects that posit their plausibility but lack the capability to describe them to any meaningful extent.

2.1 Every individual moral fact (”Murder is wrong”, etc) asserts more than its evidence allows, if even it has evidence. Moral facts, which depend on no evidence, are like souls: You are kind to your neighbor (You obey the fact’s implicit imperative) because you fear the negative consequences its power (speaker) implies.

2.2 Moral facts do exist, but they do not exist in the sense that they ought to be argued. They do not carry truth-value assignments. But you will argue with them; however, your argument is necessarily for persuasion (power). Read books, study the debate, etc only to enhance your sense of power.

3 “power” is the influence entities maintain that displaces. Every thing displaces. What is the nature of this ontological fact?

i. Physically, what do you displace?
ii. Morally, whom do you displace? (And do not let arbitrary geographic or bureaucratic “boundaries” preclude probable answers!)
iii. Metaphysically, why do you displace?
iv. Logically, when and where do you displace?
v. Scientism: What does it morally reduce to? What does it ignore in principle?

3.1 Ask yourself absurd questions like these. You are guaranteed contingent answers; that is, answers which promote real further movement. This is “philosophy.”

3.2 Moral facts are subject to the weight of power; power of entities (people, communities, etc) will dictate the travel and impositions of certain descriptive, or more precisely “culturally representative,” moral facts, which are only the expression of those entities’ strength. Moral facts of this sort carry (or presuppose) those identities they just so happen to consign to whatever unresearched political or social environment. This is the problem of “capitalism.”

3.3 Your “moral facts” do not fit our paradigm, our machine, in the way we unwittingly, though specifically, defined it; nevertheless, we reposition you in this way. Capitalism is the deus ex machina of the world. Pun aside; I would drop the Book too.

4 We argue for what is most pleasurable (rational). Rationality has become a pleasure. It is an object which contrasts “emotion.” (”That sculpture shows a keen sense of rationality. Did the sculptor go to such-and-such university?”)

4.1 This word (”rationality”, “rational”, etc) does not break free from the confines of the language-game in which it originated. It has been and always will be used as a way to describe what is “ordered,” what is easily apprehended by our memory, our mind. “Rational,” like “emotional,” must be viewed as stripped of all superlative descriptions. Like emotiveness, we in principle cannot confide in our rationality. What is the “rational” equivalent of murdering your children? Is everything I write here symbolic of a “rational outburst?” We look at emotionality through the scope of psychology. Do the same for “rationality”! Perhaps I—we—have lingered too long on postmodernity?

4.2 Rationality is therefore a “moral fact” that is too subject to power; it is a feeling-state. “I feel rational”, “The government has legislated rationally”, etc.

5 Weapons and might are superficial, and thus fictitious, objects which express “power.” Arsenal, infantry, numbers, etc are all arbitrary facts of matter and position; they do not travel without meta-data (missions, purposes, names, geographic locations, diplomacy).

6 What is the relationship between relativism, knowledge, and power?

6.1 Relativism: The moral facts are everywhere seeking a Final Author or a Document of Standard written on the walls of Nature. Call this a “continuous state of affairs.”

6.2 Knowledge: Increases the gravity of the state of affairs with more evidence, more conflicting cultural viewpoints. “Relativism is true because my friends all disagree in detailed ways which I ought to respect and understand if I want to keep them happy.”

6.3 Power: My knowledge enhances my tools for persuasion of those external to me (external to societies, governments, etc).

6.4 Persuasion: Let’s call it “twisted euphemism for slaughter of ‘false ideals,’ with weapons or with words” (the effect of the massacre is what we analyze, what moves us); all life is a moral war that is translated into different aspects of the same struggle. Science is a moral war; Academia, the same, the media, the familial battleground, etc. I steal an idea: These are all inter-related/-locked language-games. We must distinguish the “enemy” within each and simply move that enemy aside. (”Let’s not impeach and hang Bush, but hope that the layout of Presidential term limits displaces his overarching authority, re-establishing our own.”)

6.5 There are no checkmates, only repositionings; life is movement, displacement; if you move, say, pull, etc, you are moving against, uttering to, pulling from.

7 This is morality: The mere repositioning of figures on a game board.

7.1 What is the rule for this game?—that one has the power to move others in various ways (persuasion as science, persuasion as religion, etc).

7.2 Jaded liberals will say, “Religion is more moral than Secularism. Look at what religion now accomplishes!” This presupposes that religion had the means to re-invent itself so that it could adapt. This is an incorrect view. Ideas do not re-invent themselves; ideas do not evolve. Humans evolve and through language and failed memory give names, which are pinned to ideas new life. (”Let’s call it ‘libertarian socialism’ instead of ‘anarchy’; or, “Let’s re-label our ideologies as such: [adjectival] + [adjectival]“; but what are we describing?) Back to my point: Religion is not the impetus for human salvation; religion does not “call to arms” for social justice. Human beings do so, and call it “religion” or “religious” because they were under the linguistic umbrella to begin with. We’re damned for new terms, and we’re stuck in the old. This is “synthesis.”

7.3 Jesus said, “…let the dead bury their dead”. Most interpret this as him saying that we ought to leave worldly matters behind as if dead, spiritually vacuous. Go a step further (keep him consistent)! Leave those people spiritually vacuous behind, the kingdom of heaven is not theirs, etc. This shows that Jesus was incongruent to human nature (proving his divinity and perfection). How? We assume no one is morally bankrupt. We travel great distances to “save” those “as Christians” or “as Muslims,” etc. Jesus had no home team to represent. He was the home team; his psychology was radically contrary to our own.

8 Again, we make presuppositions which stem from the our inclinations to modify things (”this is how it ought to be”): our limited societies implant in us those peculiarities (because society itself lacks) which make it seem fragmented and unstable. In fact, this gives it an identity that necessarily contains moral strife. The nature of every entities’ internal war necessarily involves at least a relationship with externalities, i.e. “science is part of the moral war”, “ethics [of] …”, etc.