Engage

Saturday November 20, 2010 • 3 Comments 

About half way through this article I realized was having a grand time.   Oh, I love to write and relish thinking, but I was just having too much fun pounding this one out.  Then I let some people read an early draft and they didn’t get it.  Well, they got maybe 15 percent, but the rest … hmmmm … not so much.  Just so you know, they are long time readers and not dense.  So, the problemo, the source of the disconnect, was with the content of the article.  After a bit of weeping, I decided that all was not lost; at least, I had a good time doing it. The thought occurred to me that I should just shelve it for another day.  I have about 39 articles, lying around in various states of disrepair—that have suffered as similar fate—so, what is one more?

But … I was having such a good time.  Pleasure addict that I am, the reasonable thing seemed to be rewrite, and rewrite and rewrite and see if we could get the 15% closer to 1,000,000%.  (No one will ever accuse me of thinking small.)

For the better part of three years, I have been nibbling around the edges of a much, much larger cookie, with occasional assaults on a chocolate chip in the middle.  Actually, the cookie is more like the proverbial Antarctica.  The Arena of Ideas is a landmass all on its own with a hostile environment that requires some very specific gear and survival skills.  My ongoing mission is to boldly take you where few men have gone before, by summarizing and repackaging a conversation for public consumption.  Most importantly, I’ve wanted you to see that specific ideas are the foundation of tyranny in all forms in all ideologies.  These ideas are as consistent as their outcomes.

The simplest way to show the ideological cause and effect is to show the specific manifestation, identify the ideas, and illustrate how they work out into actions. That has been the bulk of Spiritual Tyranny’s focus.

But of course, the inevitable question is … so what are the right ideas? I started to address the right ideas, or the sources of the right ideas in the posts Consciousness and Moral Clarity, but the posts are far from comprehensive.

In an effort to get more detailed thoughts from me, I was recently accused of hiding my true and full thoughts behind some lofty intellectual-ism.  (I actually laughed out loud upon reading that sentence.)  My articles are driven by an overt intellectual energy, indeed I relish that reality, but what does a guy have to do?  Bill Belichick and other Lessons in Silliness?  Musing in my Underoos? Paul Revere, Shrek and Donkey? It’s not like my articles can be mistaken for Aquinas’ Summa Theologica.  I even admitted to wearing spandex!!  There is very little left to the imagination after a few hundred thousand words.

I am hardly hiding, but have avoided being express in laying claim to some intellectual or spiritual pedigree for three reasons:

  1. To let my critics twist in the wind.
  2. To let interested parties come to this historic conversation without having to wade through the preconceptions embedded in those pedigrees.
  3. To illustrate that I don’t give one good rip about being an intellectual pure blood vetted by the historic consensus and refuse to pay homage to dead men’s ideas.

On some level, I am sympathetic of the request for my intellectual pedigree. I’m openly waging war against some seriously entrenched, longstanding Icons that have been historically deemed off limits.  Their iconic blessedness enforced with bonfires, swords, and evil portents of quick trips to Hell.   I suspect a few antagonistic lurkers have muttered the word “heretic” in the general proximity to my name as they denigrate bloggers in their underwear and the evils of the postmodern polyglot hell.  To be sure, I received an email likening my commentary to Sherman’s March in Christian theology.

Too funny!  I replied: more like Nagasaki.

>snicker<

I understand that the substance of what I write makes people twitchy.  They want to know the endgame so they don’t throw their intellectual and spiritual hat in the ring with me and find out I’m a raving lunatic.   They want to make sure that at the end of the day, I don’t make an appeal to some funny glasses, conversations with Moroni, and live in Idaho, in my mother’s basement with a harem who calls me Lord Prophet Maha Johnny.

First of all, Maha Johnny is not a cool name for the ruler of the world, so you’re safe. That isn’t my name.

Second of all, here is the beautiful thing, dear Spiritual Tyranny reader.  The theme that should BLAZE forth from this blog is my absolute commitment to YOUR ability to get Truth. I have never made an appeal to some implicit authority to conform YOUR thinking to my instruction.  So on many levels, my failings, my shortcomings and flaws, my misapprehension and cognitive errors are not specifically relevant to your self-appointment.   Your loyalty is not to ME. Your loyalty is to the ideas successfully grasped by YOUR rational, intentional, effective judgment.

So if I have a harem, it really doesn’t matter.

Uh…

Errr…

Ehem….

Anytime a man decides to dig into the bowels of metaphysics, he risks flooding his web hosting server with an avalanche of data requests as everyone rushes to add their 0.94 cents worth to the conversation.  But hey … I like to live dangerously.   This blog can’t always be about poking some spiritual thug in the eye.  I mean, I like beating up on philosophical kindergartners and wondrous covering Apostles as much as the next guy, but there is more to life.

So to round out the casual discussions on Spiritual Tyranny I have decided to take up a request by Ben, a poster on the article Defining Insanity. (Ben on November 12th, 2010 8:46 pm)  He asked me a series of questions about the nature of truth and the implications of revelation and absolutes.  I’ve known that these questions would come, and maybe now is the time to set a course towards the center of the cookie.  I am thrilled that my readers are engaged with the content of Spiritual Tyranny and looking past the articles to the very important next steps.  Ben’s questions need addressed, at least on some level.

I decided to treat it like a Q and A: Ben’s comment first then my answers.

Of course, the downside is this means I’ve jumped into the middle of some very important concepts that have not been previously discussed which means some of you may not be familiar.  And I’m not sure how to remedy … so … if you are inclined, ask me for definitions or do some research on outside sources. There is plenty of material out there; remember as Eric “phenomenal” Simmons warned: heresy is just a mouse click away.

Speaking of which, I’m going to reject some very dearly held mental models and offer my own take.  That could get exciting ‘cause bonfires are hot.

I fully expect my ideas to be drubbed unmercifully; that is how they get refined, but I always look for people who can advance the conversation.  As was said above, I’ve had some pre-readers looked at me like I’d lost my mind, asked me some questions, and identified points of contention.  To be sure those exchanges have ended up summarized in this final draft.  After the answers were clarified, they resuscitated my ego by explaining that their intellectual tripping was because their shoelaces were tied around some deeply held assumptions, presuppositions, and filters.  The problem they had was in the reconciliation if those assumptions with my comments.  This is a prime example of someone engaged with the whole conversation discussed on this blog: challenge me, challenge themselves, challenge the tyrants … everybody wins.

So … to that end … as Jean-Luc Picard said: Engage.

We will start here with Ben’s comments on Defining Insanity:

First, a few assumptions:

          1.  Instead of good = truth, I argue that by definition that good can exist only if there is truth.  To make a value judgment is to refer to a standard, namely, truth.

          2.  Also by definition, truth must be absolute.  Said another way, truth cannot be relative.  This is not to say that all human action has a case specific absolute, but that eventually, at some hierarchical level, absolutes must exist.  Most secular ethics are relative:  to say, for example, that some morality naturally selects itself is relative.  Utilitarians are relative.  And obviously, so is “majority rule” in all its forms.

          3.  It follows then, that absolutes must be derived from a source outside the human sphere.  Any configuration conceived by humans, even unintentionally through biological process, always reduces to relativism.

First, my choice to use GOOD in this article is a vague allusion to the Platonist reference of “The Good.” The goal of the article is to press the failure of Plato’s (and Augustine’s, and Calvin’s, and the bulk of Christian Ecclesiology’s as outlined by Alexander Strauch) theory of governance. With the exception of Strauch, I didn’t name these people directly, but called them Demagogues of Dictated Good.

Plato, divided existence into two parts:  A perfect ultimate Form that is inhabited by “The Good”—which is sort of his God concept—and the Shadow World of imperfect material and the subsequent shortcoming of men’s existence.  The logical outcome of such a worldview means that only a few men, having dedicated their lives to an utterly rigorous pursuit of “The Good,” could hope to fathom the smallest measure of this highest existence.  Plato’s governmental theory necessitated that an Oligarchy of philosopher kings would rule and impose their enlightened values on barbarian masses.  You can insert any of these words in place of barbarian: unsaved, sinner, reprobate, stupid sheep, Am Herratz, unenlightened, der Untermenschen, decadent bourgeois.

Plato is the father of this concept in Western thought, but he is hardly alone in the assertion. The vast percentage of human history has been built on this idea.   I coined the term Demagogues of Dictated GOOD to capture the inevitable outcome: GOOD defined by an-other worldly source, stewarded by an ethical/moral elite in behalf of those who will never, can never, obtain GOOD for themselves.

Second, I chose GOOD in this article is to make the point that GOOD and Values and Truth are actually inseparably linked.

What we value is ultimately what becomes defined as GOOD.  I will address the subjective part of this equation in a minute… but I want to make this point first.

Let us assume that God is Cthulhu of H.P. Lovecraft fame. The Call of Cthulhu is a story about the a god who is the personification of evil.  Since our conception of GOOD comes from our conception of God, what if that God is evil? What then is our definition of GOOD?

Universities, like Harvard, Yale, MIT et al. have online philosophy courses. When you check them out, notice that most such classes begin with this metaphysical starting place: God is GOOD. And GOOD is defined as, Omni-benevolent, Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent.   This exulted status of OTHER, this transcendent reality, is super qualified as the existential ideal.  Therefore, the metaphysical starting place for Truth precedes human existence.  (In the discussion of metaphysics, this is called a priori Truth.) The logic then continues that Man has no moral starting place because he is temporal, finite, and flawed.  Truth must therefore precede human understanding and his physical existence.   The sum of God’s character and his edicts are expressions of his superior judgment and therefore the highest and best for Mankind.  And since Man is temporal, finite, and flawed, he can never get GOOD in any appreciable means: therefore, man should be compelled to God’s highest and best standards. And as they say: “The rest is Tyranny.”

Now, let us evaluate:

First of all, notice this discussion of metaphysics presumes that Man—the finite and flawed creature—has intrinsic knowledge of divine character.   Somehow he has bridged the gap and affirmed the very nature of God and decided that it is Omni everything: the strongest, the fastest, the bestest, the loving-est.  But this same Man remains unable to grasp the nature truth and a subsequent ethical action.  This means that man condemns himself by his own a priori assertion.  I find this tautology wonderfully ironic and deliciously hilarious in light of Dictated Good or its sister doctrine Original Sin.  What a profound conceit, but that is another article.

Second of all, notice that implicit within the foundation is a presumption on the nature of God—to wit, He is GOOD, Benevolent, Omni Present, Niscient, and Nipotent.   If we decide that “any configuration conceived by humans is suspect,” then why is our presumption about the nature of God not suspect? There is no empirical demonstration about God’s omni anything. One of the leading criticisms of Christianity is: “Where this God that you preach?  What does he DO?”

The default answer to the question is the old standby: Faith.  “You just have to believe…”  But this is no answer.  The reality is we could have “FAITH” in Cthulu.  Or FAITH in Loki and his character defined by capriciousness.  “God” could be utterly malevolent and his character could be defined by hate. Think of it this way.  Cthulu is God; he is an evil entity bent on the very destruction of everything he created. Are we then compelled to accept that HIS will is GOOD?  What are Cthulu’s values?  Death and destruction … or said another way Anti-life.  Now notice how this affects Values, and Truth and GOOD.  By definition, Cthulu as a Metaphysical origin means the revelation that gets handed down to man is a VALUE of destruction.  Of course, no man can survive that value statement. So, can it be called GOOD? This is why I said that Truth, Values, and GOOD are inseparably linked.

In college, the question was asked: What is truth?  And after some thought, I responded with this John Immel Original: Truth is that which gives everything value. With this in mind, I am going to offer this as a different mental model:

Truth is irreducible but Value is relative.  Truth and Value exist in dynamic tension within the highest expressions of GOOD.

Are you with me so far?

With this predicate, I submit that the anchor point of all value is LIFE because LIFE is GOOD.

(This should be ringing some bells inside the resident Bible scholars’ heads.)

Truth therefore gives Value to that which makes Human life possible.  Of course, this begs the question: what makes Human life possible?  I have addressed the answer in other articles, so I will not cover it here.  But the answer to this metaphysical question is crucial to grasping the starting place of our epistemological definition.

The article Defining Insanity deals directly with the contrasting starting places of human understanding.  My goal is to illustrate the failure of otherworldly GOOD defined by Stewards who conceptualize their existence as Dictating Revelation.

Ben, in point 2 you make a reference to Secular Ethics and a subsequent relativity.  The relativity is not the important part.  As an aside, Moral Relativism is in fact as much an assertion of moral absolute as any other ethical standard.  At its core Moral Relativism’s defining assertion is: “there are no absolutes.” This is by definition a metaphysical absolute.

Notice that Moral Relativism’s ethical premise is in service to Man’s moral clarity by destroying the concept of moral clarity. The loose logic being, if man has no moral standard, he cannot be held to a moral standard. This is the metaphysical equivalent of the endless mulligan. It doesn’t matter how you swing the club, just keep dropping the ball wherever you like.  But like all such lawlessness, it makes the game unrecognizable and keeping score meaningless.  The relativism is in service to moral guidance by removing all moral responsibility from any action. And just like the meaningless Golf game, this is the fast track to making Life futile.

Now back to my main point.  I want to drill down on the Sacred vs Secular assumption and the presumed superiority of the sacred, other worldly, source for truth.  In point three you say: “… any configuration conceived by humans … reduces to relativism.”

See, here is the problem:  by definition all truth from otherworldly sources is Revelation. Yet for Revelation to be consumed by Human existence, it must be reduced to a cognitive form.  Preaching might be a hot fax from heaven delivered by the mouth, but every listener must use language (a cognitive function) and validate the speaker (a cognitive measurement) or the content (a cognitive measurement) of what he hears. How can Man do this without submitting the content to human configuration?  Some might advocate that true Revelations are written; the measurement has already been done by those who were successful stewards of the revelation, and all we have to do know is read the “objective” word.  This presumes the very flaw I was addressing in Defining Insanity; a Steward of GOOD dictates and everyone magically gets objective power to declare HIS conclusions good because they could read.  Of course, this makes Spirituality LITERACY. This is a really funny defense of Revelation considering the fail point of human metaphysics is his subjectively doomed cognitive nature.  Reading is a function of Literacy (a very complex cognitive function) and the printing press (technology is a product of cognitive action.)  Hahaha … by definition, Reading utterly subordinates the Revelation to human rational ability.

And what are the truth metrics on Taste, Touch, and Smell?

So no matter how pure, how flawless the revelation at every point for human consumption, the “other worldly” truth must be imported into human existence. And the moment that happens, it is subject to that very same relativistic accusation.  I don’t care how the revelation originates; it must at some point enter the realm of human thought and is therefore “subjective.”

The notion that man is cognitively secure because he finds another worldly source for his ethical action is observably false.  History has illustrated this in bold strokes.  Here is a short list of other worldly Revelations.  The Thuggee cult of Kali kills people by ritual strangulation. Molech advocated human sacrifice.   Islam advocates the purging of Infidels.  Christianity has stoned homosexuals, witches, and heretics.   The tribes of Iryan Jira were cannibals because their gods said eating enemies gave them power.  I could go on and on. In each instance, Truth was the purview of another worldly source.  Are we going to argue that these cosmologies made their adherents cognitively secure? The very judgment declaring Kali superior to Jesus is by definition a relativistic exercise.  It requires man to use a specific standard of values and the rational ability to apply empirical measure to the superiority of a contrasted divine nature.  So Truth, from otherworldly sources does not guarantee man’s cognitive security.

By indoctrination we have been conditioned to believe that there is something implicitly wrong with the human apparatus to grasp truth.  This presumption permeates almost all conversations on the subject.  Indeed, your leading assumption takes this rational breakdown for granted and dooms man to inevitable relativistic failure.

The article Defining Insanity goes directly to the failure of this assumption.  When Man is by default disqualified from grasping Truth, he MUST have someone dictate what he can never grasp. We then play all sorts of games to absolve these Demagogues of Dictated Good from the very human frailty by which everyone else is condemned. This is axiomatically absurd.

There is no such thing as a non-biological, non-man centered process for the human acquisition of truth. It is essential that one and all get this point.

Whatever the eternal nature, the absolute character of Truth, it must be obtainable, graspable, and achievable by all men by the apparatus given their existence. Everything else descends into the tyranny of the Demagogues of Dictated GOOD presiding over der Untermenschen of evil.

*****

Ben went on to ask these questions:

           Do you believe in absolutes?  What I am trying to get at is your conception of individuality and personal discovery of ‘objective truth’ and its relation to a relativist v. absolutist view (and, subsequently, the conclusions reached via that conception).  On the surface it appears that as one elevates individual freedom, relativism will become more and more the appropriate position (e.g. one ‘discovers’ what is good for him), but things may run deeper.

          I find a tension between an anathema to dictated good and individual discovery.  Is your position that there is absolute truth (or objective truth in your words) and that the crux of the matter is how the individual arrives at that truth?  A characteristic of spiritual tyranny as you describe it is monopolization on the perception of truth.  So perhaps, absolute truth exists, but that the method of discovery is what is important.

Historically, people assume that truth and absolutes are the same but actually these are two separate concepts.  I submit that Truth  does not equal Absolutes.  I further submit that Truth is really best understood as the axiom of any given.  An axiom is the most basic irreducible form of any concept.  No matter how far one presses the principle, the root always remains true.

Additionally, Truth is not a separate, independent metaphysical “other” standing in its own vacuum.  Truth is the prevailing axiom of all knowledge in ongoing dynamic tension.  Truth is only absolute in that it is irreducible.  Truth is expandable because it lives in dynamic tension with existence.

Mathematical Theorems are an easy example.

Notice:  Zero is an essential mathematical concept that is TRUE.  It is irreducible.

Now consider the mathematical principle of the Ones place that is TRUE. This concept is also irreducible. Whole numbers starting with the value 1 proceeds to a value of 9.

Now notice that by combining the concept of zero and the concept of the Ones place, man derives the next Whole number: 10. By reiterating these two irreducible concepts, man is able to conceptualize limitless values.  So the irreducible is expandable.  This iterative process of identifying the irreducible, the axiom of any concept, and combining it with others axioms is how all subsequent knowledge is derived.

Now notice the relationship between the irreducible and the subsequent measure of Value.  Notice that Truth of the Ones place is an expression of relative value: 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 are expressed as 2, 3, and 4.

Now notice that Truth is expressed in a relational Value. Remember what I said above? Truth is that which gives everything value.   Now notice that each irreducible truth is held in dynamic tension to each axiom.

Philosophically, the issue remains the same:  Truth and Value are relationally linked. The challenge of all philosophical inquiry is to identify the axioms of human existence, then use those axioms to expand knowledge.  The Truth lives in dynamic tension to all Value, and the highest expression of this relationship is GOOD.

With me so far?

Now let us tackle the concept of ABSOLUTE.

When people discuss Truth, they are usually talking about finding an ABSOLUTE.  They are seeking to identify something that is immutable—a reality or a substance or a place that is eternally indestructible.  The assumption underneath this pursuit is that if man can identify that … thing, man will finally hold the incontrovertible.  And somehow this un-expanding, unmoving, motionless, lifeless, undeniable Whatz-It will anchor man’s existence.

I submit that the source of this preoccupation is found in this John Immel assertion: Man abhors chaos like nature abhors a vacuum.  He spends enormous energy looking for a place of utter security from chaos.  The whole of man’s life is spent seeking relief or explanation for the ambiguities of life. Our coping mechanisms span the gamut from human decadence to human nobility.  Try as he might, Man cannot seem to shake this nemesis that fills him with so much dread and consternation. For a while, we thought we had Chaos licked when Newton advanced his laws of motion and galvanized a world of mechanical absolutes.  But then a funny thing happened.  The more men looked into the building blocks of reality—atoms—the more they realized that the absolutes of the material world were really more like vague approximations.  The glaring reality of Quantum Mechanics was that our reality seemed to be made of … nothing …  that could be molded into … everything.   So disturbing were the discoveries that in disgust, Einstein was compelled to say: “God does not play dice with the universe …” and set out to disprove the conclusions. It didn’t happen.

I contend that Man is stuck; Chaos is implicit to human existence.

The discussion of Chaos and its implications for Human existence is a conversation that I will have to tackle some other time. In the meantime, I will give you a taste: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Planck’s Constant (seen below) give exciting insights to the nature of nature. To my current understanding these two equations represent the very dynamic tension of values that I was proposing above, expressed at the subatomic level.  This tension gives reality its stability without determinism (AKA Predestination) and an ongoing challenge of flexibility for Man to test his ability to rule and subdue.

It has been about six years since I last waded through piles of books to grasp these concepts, and my notes are yellow from disuse, so don’t beat me up here too much. And it is entirely possible that many advances to these concepts have been made since, but I don’t think the principles have been abandoned.

I leave you one final thought on the subject of absolutes.  It is curious that this point must be made.  For all our determination to find an absolute, we look right past the most glaring.  The absolute of human existence is human EXISTENCE.

****

Ben, now let me more directly address the two paragraphs above. It took me a bit to get to the nub of your question. However, I think I’m close.  You are trying to reconcile this implied conundrum: if INDIVIDUALITY is sovereign, what prevents endless philosophical chaos?   Or maybe better said, what you are really asking is: “What compels a man to any given end?”  If men are free to believe ANYTHING, what holds anyone accountable to standards?

The answer is actually simple: reality.

What is the measure of freedom in human existence? The answer: total.  Whatever he can conceive, he is free to act on. Man is free in the fullest sense to think or not think, fabricate, or validate.

Here is what trips people up.  The response to this assertion is some variation of “Man did not choose to whom he would be born; therefore, he is not really free.”  Or “Man is not free because he cannot fly.”  Because man is not specifically empowered at all points to exercise his will, he must necessarily be in bondage. I may address this in more depth later. For now I will focus on this part of the equation: man’s freedom does not address the qualitative substance of his action.  His freedom to act towards what he can conceive does not presume that his ideas or actions are moral, ethical, or rationally effective.

Man can choose to create fairy tales and abandon his reality testers in service to the myth, but he cannot sustain life by such abandonment.   The farther down the path of insane, (incompetent with the rational tools of his own cognition) the closer to death he gets.

I directed you to the post Consciousness.  The thing that separates Man from the rest of creation is his ability to CHOOSE his thoughts. Indeed, he must choose to CHOOSE.  Man is the only creature that must WILL the fundamental part of his nature.  Every other creature acts in accord with its existence in context to its environment.  Conversely, Man must organize his environment to live.  I contend that the drive to organize the chaos of his environment is built into our very DNA.   Failure to act in accord with this reality brings man to death.

Reality is the ultimate vindicator of Truth.  You are free to go play in the street and insist that cars can be dispelled with pixie dust, but when then forces of Newtonian physics takes its course and the metal hits the meat, reality is enforced.  I contend this is why “God is not mocked, what a man sows he will reap.”  Like all crops, it takes time for the cause and effect of action to work itself out, but when harvest comes, there is no escaping the fruit.

*****

          Ben also added these thoughts:

          But there is still a tension. A faith is required to accept absolutes. One must accept that there is a source, outside the human sphere, that can produce something objective.  At least, faith must accept one truth–that there is a source–but presumably one will next try to draw out more specifics.

I’ve already addressed the idea that truth must necessarily originate outside human existence. But this paragraph is actually a fair summary of the very problem that “Revelation” as truth presents.  The historic argument is that one must have “faith” to obtain the Revelation.

What is Faith?  The historic assumption is that Faith is a deliberate choice of irrationality.

Ben, in the paragraph above, you see the implicit problem of starting with Faith and the implied power to judge right and wrong: it ultimately reduces to subjective assertion.  And the only way to enforce a subjective assertion is force.

Ben Said: “How then does one not exact some level of spiritual tyranny on the world?”

I think I understand what you are asking.  You are speculating that once man has determined that truth exists and successfully define right and wrong, is he acting tyrannically by making the judgment of other people’s actions?

          Ben Said: Come up with any specifics that you might, and there is immediately a problem.  That is, one now owns the philosophical ability to judge right from wrong, good from bad.  How then does one not exact some level of spiritual tyranny on the world?  Perhaps on a spectrum, some level of ‘tyranny’ is seen as conducive to freedom, while another is oppressive to it.  A social contract, devised to protect certain rights, might be based on an absolute having to do with being ‘endowed by the Creator’.  This may be pragmatic for the organization of peoples (and I’m thankful I live under one) but when it comes down to it, this is a forced imposition of truth.

Let me summarize what I think you are asking: Because man does not live in a vacuum, how does the social contract play into he acquisition/enforcement of truth?

If one is happy under this collectivism, then what is the distinction against ‘kissing dating goodbye’ or some such thing?  In other words, if one supports the merits of some imposition of absolute truth, then one has accepted the merit and is left with scale.

You are now trying to make the specific point that men can choose to subordinate some part of their individuality to embrace the collective standards of social action. Right?

If I have understood these successive questions correctly, here is my response.  Tyranny is not moral or ethical advocacy.  IF a man wants an ethical vacuum, he can go live in a cave somewhere and enjoy his utter judgment-free action.  Ethical action is necessarily important in the realm of social action.  Tyranny is not pointing out the insanity of your neighbor’s action.  Men are free to advocate truth.  Just because men are cognitively responsible to GET truth, they are not guaranteed accuracy.  Man is not omniscient and this is not a failing, a sin of his existence. That fact that Man is born naive does not mean he is born without the capacity to learn, nor does misapprehension mean that his nature condemns him to a depraved inability to learn.  It only means he is incompetent in will, action, or technical mastery.

Man learns moral and ethical knowledge the same way he obtains all knowledge: by observing the causal relationships between his ideas, actions, and outcomes.  So, when my neighbor sins against me, it is not tyranny to advocate a higher moral action.  In as much as he is willing to sustain the interaction, we are both free to beat each other in the head with ideas, until we both identify the axioms of our interaction and Value to the nature of our exchange.  If we identify that that value is zero, we are free to go our separate ways.

The tyranny manifests when those who do not want to be neighbors are compelled compliance to a social contract they did not sign, by a monopoly of force they do not accept, that does not reside in protecting the value of sovereign individual life over the collective will.  The spiritual tyranny is progresses from the “revelation” of GOOD administered by a select few who sustain their monopoly on truth by authority.  I addressed the nature of this phenomenon in Namaste Nemesis; force and authority is really the same thing.  All subsequent conversations are about how MUCH force authority has the right to use to compel their dating policy.  If I want to Kiss and Kiss and Kiss on every date, then those who French kiss dating Good-bye have no business COMPELLING me to their collectivist outcomes.

The only time force is justified in this dynamic is if I want to Kiss and they don’t want to kiss me back.  This would be the effective use of the monopoly of force.

>snicker<

Just kidding.

Here is the dynamic tension: Men are free to pursue their life at the expense of themselves and those who willingly participate in their mutual social contract. Men are not free to pursue their life at the expenses of others.  The dividing line of this encroachment can be haggled over in the Arena of Ideas as the axioms of the relationship defining and value exchanged.  Therefore, to resolve human conflict, the just and peaceable means is through rationality.  The moment that rationality breaks down, the only thing left to compel an outcome is force.

The easiest measure of a culture’s values is apparent in that culture’s content to the use of force—compulsion.  I specifically mean the use of psychological or physical violence to compel compliance with any given end.  When the people let their children be sacrificed to Molech for the preservation of the collective, we know exactly how that culture measures LIFE.  When a culture refuses to use force against an ideology that will drive planes into buildings in the name of their god, we know exactly how that culture measures it own LIFE.   When a culture compels people to embrace the ideology of its leadership without question, without rational exchange, enforced by social compulsion, shunning, and eternal condemnation we know how that culture measures LIFE.  (Trust me …  this culture is a step away from a bonfire from ushering people to that eternal condemnation.)

This is why I have said in a number of articles—Reform or Not to Reform et al.—that government structure does matter. Governing philosophy determines everything.

****

And here is Ben’s last comment that I will address:

A world of relativism is wretched.  I won’t follow that logic. But absolutes create their own problems, and perhaps ones more destructive than the former.  Well, my absolute says private property and individual liberty.  Yes, well mine says ankle-length skirts and hair buns.  Yes, but mine says death to all redheads.  It seems that both, relativism and absolutism, reduce themselves in the real world to might makes right.

Will to Power!  All hail Nietzsche.  Hahaha …  it isn’t the MIGHT that is important.  It is the philosophical premise that justifies force that matters.  We can all have our moral absolute of miniskirts and purple hair, but Spiritual Tyranny occurs when a Demagogue of Dictated Good decides that God commands that EVERYONE should be compelled to wear tiny kilts with purple hair.

The dividing line of human freedom is at the point of social interaction: specifically at the moment of his encroachment on another man’s life. You can fabricate a world of Giants and tilt at them like Don Quixote if you choose, but the moment the Windmill is MY windmill you have transgressed the Values boundary.

I contend this is what God was driving at in the Ten Commands.  In the most rudimentary way, Yahweh was defining the sum of man’s life–wife, substance and desire–as universally sacrosanct.  My windmill is mine, because it is the product of my rational organization of Chaos, and I am to benefit from the substance of my work; and everyone else is morally condemned when they ride their horse to poke my windmill with sticks.

Actually, I submit that man is morally condemned to even render the windmill as a giant. God demands that Man render reality accurately with the declaration “Thou Shalt not bear False Witness.”   Man sustains moral liability for lying against reality.  Man is free to lie, but he cannot prosper. He cannot LIVE by sustaining a lie.  The descent of human existence into the morass of destruction is his endless determination to BE insane, to deliberately choose hostility to truth, and abandon his will to consciousness. This is the progression of Romans 1.

OK … that is enough fun for a bit. Thanks, Ben, for being engaged.



Lives, Fortunes, and Sacred Honor

Saturday July 17, 2010 • Leave a Comment 

By John Immel 

(Click Here for Mp3 audio)

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. 

Declaration of Independence 1776

Freedom is a given in American experience: her people insulated from the tides of religious and secular despotism that dominates the whole of world history. Roughly five generations have been born into the independence that is America, and as always happens, the heirs of fortune never grasp what their great, great, great, great, great grandfathers worked to achieve. Liberty secured for posterity is not a divine right, but an encompassing stewardship. Failing to sustain the mental and physical rigor that created the wealth results in the inevitable generational erosion as the fortune slowly washes away into the abyss of irresponsibility, sloth, and entitlement. The symptoms of our cultural bankruptcy are expressed in a tide of intellectual evasion, soul-crushing guilt and social turmoil. America is reaping what she has sown. What she has sown is the abandonment of effective moral philosophy.

Of course when I say morality, people immediately think about what someone does with body parts. If the starting point is Epicurus, the inevitable moral philosophy is hedonism. If the starting point is Stoicism merged with Neo Gnosticism, the outcome is Victorian England. To put this contrast in American parlance would be the spectrum of sexual moral philosophy between the stoned Hippies frolicking at Woodstock versus the teetotaling Puritans with scarlet letters.

Sensuality—its presence or absence—as a moral starting place has been offered since the beginning of man’s quest for meaning, and is an utter failure in giving guidance.

Man has spent the ages alternately groping his body for a culminating sensation, denying his body in the name of enlightenment, or erecting stone statues in homage to an Other-Worldly realm. Each perspective was an effort to find a cohesive world view that made man’s life and existence make sense. In all instances he found little more than tyranny, destruction, and suffering.

Occasionally, the clouds of oppression would part, fleeting rays of light would strike man’s mind and he would realize that pursuing truth was in his best interest. The result was consistent: life sprang up, suffering subsided, and prosperity emerged. It would make sense that he should persist in the cause and effect of this action, expanding and growing as far as his understanding would carry him. But no, with striking regularity, Man would declare war against the truth and exchange it for a lie. In short order the hard-won life and blessing and freedom would shrink back to the primordial haze of collective tribal degradation. 

What was the lie that man exchanged for truth? 

The answer is: man must pay to appease the gods in their endless hostility or purchase grudging benevolence of a demonic benefactor. This was how man believed he fended off life’s pain and suffering. The ultimate sick joke of human existence is man bowing before an image chipped out of stone, believing that somehow it might provide a way to think about life. Curiously enough, the goat, or bird, or snake, or calf inevitably demands that someONE must be sacrificed … for the benefit of others. The bloodshed ran thick and deep, yet in spite of the endless propitiation, the hurt, and subjugation endured. Instead of stopping, Man continued with the doctrines of Molech, Kali, Esus and myriad of other mini-gods and deities that demanded destroying individuals for the wellbeing of the tribe. 

But stone and wood does not speak: only the vain fantasies of men’s minds, in solidarity with death, can conceive such injustice as good. The oldest manmade idea, the idolatry that has dominated the ages, the leading human philosophy, is the demand of individual destruction for the greater good. This evil theme dominates the whole of Man’s savage history. 

Historically, in times of peace and the inevitable prosperity that accompanies, when he wasn’t in the midst of sacrificing by war a distant tribe for his clan’s wellbeing, Man realized that something was wrong. But he could not find the solution to the problem: his mind was dark, his actions unruly, and his soul despaired that he was created for no other reason but to suffer. Man’s greatest psychic pain is his inability to integrate ethical knowledge with physical action. The disharmony between Will and Action places man in an endless destructive cycle of guilt, shame, and dis-integration. This state secures man’s death. 

Millennia ago, Yahweh, an obscure deity in a pantheon of deities, approached an even more obscure man in the city of Ur—a man fully indoctrinated in the idolatry of sacrifice—and told him to take a walk. By ever increasing measures, this obscure god, revealed himself in name and deed. With each name Yahweh separated this desert wanderer from death and sacrifice, insisting that He was the source of Life and Blessing and man was the recipient. This man left the land of the Chaldeans and emerged from the Middle Eastern wastes an individual with a great name: Abraham. With this event, the ego was born; the moment in time when man first encountered progress, improvement, blessing, and a world view that affirmed his INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

Thousands of years would pass before the plan to liberate man from his solidarity with death was complete. In the fullness of time, the greatest ambush in all of eternity, this obscure Yahweh, who made cameo appearances through human history, suckered his adversary with the doctrine of sacrifice to take back a monopoly on death. Had the principalities and powers known, they would never have crucified the body of truth. With that culminating action, Death’s power over Man was destroyed so that light could spring forth, eternal, liberating the totality of human existence. This event ended the dis-integration of man’s body from his mind and spirit. This event started the return of man to one harmonious self: a unity of intention and action. 

“Peace on Earth Good will toward Men,” rings forever after signaling the end of hostilities from God to man. For those who would but ask, Man is born from death to life ending the hostility of man’s mind to truth. However, for those who would not ask, the hostility persists in a one-sided war where man deliberately, intentionally exchanges truth for a lie. This is why the state of human affairs is NO ACCIDENT. 

It is no accident that a mere 500 years after man’s liberation, Plato’s collectivist, sacrifice-driven, deconstructing, dis-assembling ideology found new life in Plotinus and was integrated into Christianity via Augustine. 

It is no accident that these doctrines subordinate man’s mind to a Dictated Good that inevitably elevates an oligarchy over the many. 

It is no accident that through the dark ages Death was raised to an ethical ideal as men were venerated for their martyrdom. 

It is no accident that doctrines of guilt, for any pleasure or happiness, beat man into submission to fulfill his predestined place as serf in the Three Estates. 

It is no accident that war washed across the face of collectivist Europe in the name of God, heralded as divine calling or the manifestation of divine judgment. Religious leaders once again told man that the state of the world was God’s manifest will or the product of Man’s great sinfulness … or both. In all instances the lesson of existence: man is born to suffer. 

It is no accident that man crawled out of the murk of the Dark Ages by inches against the tide of the Divine Right of Despotism’s justified tyranny. 

It is no accident that Man became sickened by all things Christian as ‘conservative’ ideologies maintained their traditions of Predestination that enslaved generations of serfs in squalor to maintain the noble class in their endless idle sport of conquest. 

It is no accident that Man revolted against governments bearing God’s name and rejected his existence as the source of the oppression. 

It is no accident that self-ascribed atheists co-opted the Church’s doctrine of depravity, decadence, guilt, and suffering; replacing the name of God with the Greater Good as justification for the enforced march back to serfdom. 

It is no accident that George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel equated human happiness with absolute rule: a founding idea that justifies the unlimited authoritarian state in the name of the People. His ideas are the source of the assertion: man’s ideal state is in submission authority. 

It is no accident that Karl Marx developed a moral philosophy that excuses sacrificing everyone to everyone else by force. His ideas are the source of the assertion that ability is the moral justification for slavery. 

It is no accident that the Puritan Immanuel Kant separated man from his mind and his mind from reality. His ideas are the source of the assertion: “No one can be sure of anything,” which means the facts of reality are merely subjective; there is no right or wrong and no foundation to judge because man’s mind is incapable. 

It is no accident that Auguste Comte formalized the ethical ideal of altruism, which says that actions done for self-interest are immoral. His ideas are the source of the assumption that there is no acceptable self-defense against any assault, tyranny, or destruction. To be moral, man must sacrifice himself. 

It is no accident that the Social Justice has been made to look like Christian ideas, and proponents hijack bible verses with impunity to seduce people into their collectivist ends.

It is no accident that Christianity can offer little more than brotherly love and some anti-rational superstitious pixy dust piously called faith as defense against the rise of the Marxist/Socialist slaughter houses that emerge across the face of the globe: Germany, Russia, Italy, Cuba, Cambodia, North Korea, China, Brazil, and the list goes on and on. 

It is no accident that the cult of death that has become the cross is rising in the United States, concurrent with the tide of European collectivist religion in American pulpits, justifying the way of the world with the handwringing moral relativism of “we’re all just sinners.” 

It is no accident that we fail to defend against the tide of destruction because we concede the moral premise: man is a morally, intellectually, incompetent sacrificial animal. The only thing left to argue about is: “By what means will man be sacrificed?” 

Just over 230 years ago men gathered in Philadelphia and for the first time in human history, consolidated a moral argument that rejected the core of man’s idolatrous past. They penned the following words, and the full light-of-day sprang bright and clear from the murk of collectivist tyranny that spanned the whole of human history: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

 For the first time men formally said: Man lives for his OWN sake. They built a political system designed specifically to prevent the sacrifice of the one to the many, or the many to the one. This beacon of light shown across the whole world, and wherever men embrace that truth, life springs forth, suffering subsides, peace establishes, and prosperity accompanies. The superior moral argument of the American Revolution is the foundation of the greatest manifestation of peace and accompanying prosperity the world has ever seen. 

But we are on the verge of losing liberty because we have lost the moral clarity of our superior ideas. Indeed, some of you squirm at the assertion that there are good and bad ideas. Some of you are indignant at my failed “humility” to consider all viewpoints as equally valid. Still more of you are incensed by the temerity that I am openly advocating “selfish” doctrines. 

That cannot be helped. 

So embedded are the idolatrous doctrines of collectivist sacrifice and death that to unravel them for all satisfaction before sounding the warning will be far, far too late. 

Our modern day leaders have abandoned us to the intellectual tsunami. Some retreat from the realm of ideas into a vague “there were two trees in the Garden” anti-rational superstition, looking for signs and visions and begging for the Rapture. Others are diving madly back into the historic interpretive methods that extol depravity, selfishness, and sacrifice as sound “biblical” doctrine in a specific effort to create the Peoples State of Heaven on earth with them as the appropriate administrators. The first group has abandoned the field. The second group is a competitor in tyranny. The outcome is the same: they offer no defense against the ravenous wolves. 

In my never to be Kantian disinterest, I contend that this state of affairs is unacceptable.  Whatever ignominy or fortune may come, silence is not an option, neither is passivity, nor compromise. 

My moral clarity is resolved. I reject the collectivist redefinition of freedom. I reject the idea that freedom means abandoning responsibility of life’s rigor, or a fabricated utopian fairytale, or the ability to saddle others with the “despotism of physical want,” or the equation of liberty with hedonism. 

My moral clarity is resolved. I advocate the true definition of Freedom. I assert that all men are free of coercion, arbitrary power, and the extortionate orders of men in pursuit of life. The sum of a man’s life, wife, children and work-created substance are his sovereign domain:  man suffers no moral recrimination. No matter the measure of his abundance, prosperity, or wealth, thou shalt not covet! 

One command remains supreme: that we love one another. But the love commanded is not a moral blank check against the endless tide of indulgent actions, blind to the cause and effect of reality, or the hard-hearted plunder that leads to injustice and servitude. 

America, here is what we have shirked: in this life, in this time, in this earth, man is charged with the responsibility of his own life through rational, creative work. In this life, in this time, in this earth, man is charged with the defense of his neighbor against all encroachments by enforcing proportional justice. 

America, here is what we have forgotten: there is an inseparable link between thinking, freedom, life, and prosperity. Take any one of those four away and soon you will have the advance of slavery, corruption, and death. 

America, here is what we have abandoned: the moral clarity America offered the world in 1776 was a superior moral creed. Our greatest exported commodity was the specific wisdom and the hard-earned understanding written in the blood of the Revolutionary War. 

America, here is what we have evaded: we will accept every explanation for human poverty and suffering except one: that our altruistic ideas, energized by the force of human violence, are a catastrophic failure. The lesson of prosperity’s source is written for all to see, but like the sluggard who refuses to consider his field, men impressed with their own philanthropy use the monopoly of Government force to thieve humanity into wealth and pretend that their efforts are not responsible for the imposed misery. 

America, here is what we must discover: the true moral foundations of liberty. If we are to call ourselves heirs of the Constitution, we must commit to our founding fathers moral philosophy without hesitation. Truly, if Christians are to ever be salt and light in the world—not a mocking byword of irrationality and poster children of oppressive sanctimony—we must champion that Man is not a sacrificial animal to any dictated, collective, or greater good. 

America here is what we must reject: ecclesiastical establishments during more than eighteen centuries have been on trial, and their fruits have been, more or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, and in both: superstition, bigotry and persecution. To achieve a different outcome, we must have an argument that rejects the premise. All doctrine at the core of the manifest historic fruit is what imperils our future. These ideas must be vigorously repelled till vain superstitions, bigotry, and persecution fade from our ranks forever. 

America here is what we must know: this is the last the last place on earth. If liberty falls here, to the doctrinal justification of Marx’s economic thuggery or Mystic Despotism’s totalitarian state, there is nowhere else to go. 

The moral assault appears great, but man must stand resolute in the source of his success, ability, work, and wealth. He must stand firm in the moral superiority of the Founding Fathers’ declaration. Bowing to guilt or seeking to buy off the moral recrimination of greed always fails to achieve peace. This course of action is a slow bleed towards death: today it is a finger, then a hand, then an arm, until the despots say they own your body and put a bullet in your head because you have no value to the greater good. 

Our Founding Fathers understood this. They knew there was no reconciliation between freedom and tyranny, so they pledged the whole of themselves while they had the chance to act. 

The choice has always been between life and death, blessing or curse. There is no tomorrow for freedom. You owe no man a penny, a drop of sweat, or a drop of blood to justify your existence. The ransom on your life was paid in full by the one person who had coin of the realm to spend. You are created an end in yourself and are endowed by your creator with natural rights—life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. 

Today is the day to defend this God-given right. Therefore, choose… 

As for me and my house: I pledge my Life, Fortune, and Sacred Honor.



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