The Excerpt

Dennis Prager, in an excerpt from his Fireside Chat Episode 203, characterizes people as denying evil. If you acknowledge the existence of evil, you must fight it. If you do not admit that it exists, then you do not have to stand up and stand out and risk opposing it. People are not brave, and that is the human condition. Dennis is correct as usual: the lion of God admits that he is evil, that people are born evil, and that his job on earth is to sustain good and battle evil. That is why we are put here.

Philosophers Beware

If the ideology is a grisly mass movement, or evil, violent, revolutionary ism, then his ideas will lead to murder, death, war, totalitarianism and untold human suffering. He should be able to think, expand and speak about any idea or concept that beguiles him. How do we protect the public in the future? First, we must confess that there is never a guarantee that future followers of our ideology may not turn evil, cruel and violent, but there are steps that we can take to ameliorate such potential horrors. First, if we advise future adults to maverize, as individuating anarchist, they will not be much susceptible to the cooing and mesmerizing from blathering demagogues or gurus. Maverizers think for themselves and are innately skeptical of commands and pronouncements from authority figures. Maverizers think for themselves and will countenance no bully or elite to dictate to them, and that skepticism and independent mindedness should stop mass movements in their tracks. Second, the sovereign individual is the core ideal of the Western value system. If the sovereign individual maverizes, and thinks for himself, he, by definition, seeks to influence all other individuals by persuasion not by coercion. It is the collectivists that are fanatical, violent, and authoritarian, enforcing mandates and threats of federal violence against foes. Where citizens are individuators, they no longer allow that it is morally acceptable to force others to conform to one's ideology, and this popular reluctance would do much to undercut the danger of mass movement up ticking. Third, one can only promote liberty if one practices tolerance, real tolerance for those supporting competing ideologies. Fourth, bad means lead to a bad end. Bad means are using violence, war and intimidation to advance one’s ideology by any means. Bad means corrupts all ends, even good ends. There are no shortcuts. To invite people to come over to your noble ideology, you must rely on gentle proselytizing, persuasion and the power of advertising and example. If they join your cause, great. If they do not, too bad. If these four means of keeping ideas from going vicious and totalitarian in the future, are known and practiced, they will go a long way towards mitigating any harm growing out of a thinkers ideas.

The Atheists

Atheists like Sam Harris and Stephen Hicks may advocate that facts and reason are enough to sustain people, but they are gravely mistaken. People require an mythology, a system of values, a religious metanarrtive to believe in and live for. If the people do not have God in their lives, they will join terrible mass movements and cruel ideologies to seek to find something to hold onto, and that is not good.

Self-Deception

We all depend on the lies that we tell ourselves, others and each other, deceptions that help us make it through each day of suffering, strife, misery, meaninglessness, cruelty, madness and malevolence. To refute this sorry existence, to lead an authentic, noble, life, then, is to slowly, gently increase one's capacity for encountering reality as it is without subjective bias, without any more denial or justification of one's sinning. One starts to clean up, an honest, alethic affirmation of what is good, true and right, and then working to further such presences in the world and in one's life. One no longer needs to ignore, misinterpret or misread what reality is bombarding you with.

Principled

You are born in sin, and run in packs. Without principles of behavior, indivdual-living, self-discipline and the will to maverize, you will amount to very little.

Get Organized

If you get organized, and use your time wisely, later you will be impressed by how much that you were able to get done.

Huge Ego

A maverizer should enjoy a huge ego, but this has nothing to do with bragging, showing off, acting suprerior and actually believing that one is superior. If one loves oneself to the extent that one has elected to maverize, then one will think well of oneself, as worthy of God's attention and appreciation, based upon merited performance and consistent dedication to maverization. This solid, realistic self-appraisal has nothing to do with showing off, or communicating one's enhanced status to others. Rather, it is about quteily but firmly doing God's work, and that will suffice.

Lapsing

We do fall down, and descend to previous, lower levels of performance, in spite of our best intentions. All, we can do is forgive ourselves, get up, dust ourselves off and try to do better again and again. That is a worthy life well lived.

God Is Goodness

God is goodness. God is the god of love and moral and spiritual goodness. Lucifer is the god of hate and moral and spiritual wickedness. Such spiritual entities are real, and a full, rich and meaningful life lived is to be good, do good, love God and all others, and make the world a little better place. That is how heaven is reached.

Not Lasting

I am endlessly enthusiastic about the amazing things that we can accomplish as maverizers. Yet, a paradox is metaphysically central to every human existence, whether we answer God's call to illuminate that divine spark within us, or not. God, more or less, is immortal, unlimited and infinitely creative. Our best efforts are bounded by our human limits: mortal, exhaustive, circumscribed and modestly able. We should not worry about this paradox: to decide still to answer God's call to us to become living angels, in light of our limitations, is still our duty. We can still achieve amazing results, relative to God's immensity that is.

There Are Not Words

We encounter mysteries, puzzles and dilemmas that we are unable to describe, characterize or pin down. There is something indeterminate about these conundrums that renders them indefinable. They may be that way temporarily, or more permanently but the more we do know, that we learn and are able to articulate, the more likely we will be eventually to find the words that capture the gist of what we have been stymied by.

God's Law

The reason that I am convinced that we Americans, henceforth will thrive and flourish as individuator-anarchist supercitizens is that we will be primarily a nation of believers that have etched' God's law upon our hearts. As virtuous, law-abiding--while being law-devising citizens--members of our communities, we will lead moral, legal, orderly, cooperative lives; thus, few police are required to keep the peace and maintain law and order.

To Love Your Neighbor

You should love your neighbor, and treat them with respect, kindness and square-dealing. But, the best way to love your neighbor is to love yourself more and first. If all Americans tend to their own affairs first, and do a bang-up job of it, then few indeed will be a burden to their neighbors or the community, and that is real generosity.

To Be A Moral Person

To be a good person, try to live up to a worthy moral set of rules, and then model this to your community and offspring.

Is It Time?

I saw a freeway billboard today for a university arguing that now was the time for big ideas. Actually, universities are now ideological, cramped places run by elitist professors (not all of them) and woke snowfalke postmodernist students. I am never against people displaying intelectual curiosity, and chasing after the big ideas, but likely as maverizers they will most likely succeed at this.

Randian Objective Ethics

On Page 15 of her book of ethics, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand begins to lay out her argument for rational code of ethics: "This could hardly be called rational, yet most philosophers have now decided to declare that reason has failed, that ethics is outside the power of reason, that no rational ethics can ever be defined, and that in the field of ethics--in the choice of his values, of his actions, of his pursuits, of his life's goals--man must be guided by something other than reason. By what? Faith--instinct--intuition--revelation--feeling--taste--urge--wish-whim. Today, as in the past, most philosophers agree that the ultimate standard of ethics is whim (they call it 'arbitrary postulate' or 'subjective choice' or 'emotional commitment')--and the battle is only over the question of whose whim: one's own or society's or the dictator's or God's. Whatever else they may disagree about, today's moralists agree that ethics is a subjective issue and that three things barred from its field are: reason--mind--reality. If you wonder why the world is now collapsing to a lower and lower fun of hell, this is the reason." My response: Rand clear denounces previous ethical codes as bringing hell to earth, as backward, evil, shortsighted, irrational, groupist and stultifying for the individual agent. She is more right here than she is incorrect, but the philosophy of moderation cautions me to recognize that a holistic ethical standard requires emotion, subjectivity, religious sourcing and concern for the collective good, although as the minority emphasis. Can values be objective and rationally argued. Let us allow her to unfold her argument to the affirmative for these two concerns, and then let me decide if she is successful in her endeavors.

Rand And Mystical, Traditional Ethics And Modern Neomystical Ethics

On Page 15 of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand writes traditional ethics are the will either of God, or God's secular replacement, nonexistent abstraction, society: "The avowed mystics held the arbitrary, unaccountable 'will of God' as the standard of good and as the validation of their ethics. The neomystics replaced it with 'the good of society,' thus collapsing into the circularity of a definition such as 'the standard of the good is that which is good for society.' This meant, in logic--and, today in worldwide practice--that 'society' stand above any principles of ethics, since it is the source, standard and criterion of ethics, since 'the good' is whatever it wills, whatever it happens to assert as its own welfare and pleasure. This meant that 'society' may do anything it please, since 'the good' is whatever it chooses to do because it chooses to do it. And-since there is no entity as 'society,' since society is only a number of individual men--this meant that some men (the majority of any gang that claims to be its spokesman) are ethically entitled to pursue any whims (or any atrocities) they desire to pursue, while other men are ethically obliged to spend their lives in service of that gang's desires." My response: Rand is conflating mystical, irrational sources of ethical standard, arbitrary, personal and subjective with traditional, barbaric even wicked codes of ethics, of divine origin, supposedly revealed by its Author, the Divinity, or represented as shared, via circular reasoning, as a cultural construct of the secular deity, society. Do I agree with this conflation. Well, if Logos or God is the rational principle that created, made and operates the chaotic world as a cosmos, it would be reasonable to assume that the ethical will of God presented to humans as a standard of behavior would parallel and be analogous with natural law controlling God's cosmos. Traditional morality can be mystically and irrationally derived and that may be more barbaric than enlightened, but such sources of value are ancient and viable but not to be dismissed so offhand as Rand does. The altruistic claim by the secular neomystics that the will of the majority or elite that run society is the ethical standard to be obeyed by all the citizens in a community or polity is untenable. I admire Rand for bring forth a rational, secular, humanistic, egoistic code, but it needs blending with traditional morality, although I am not yet able to master or explain how the blending and integration is to proceed. Both theistic and society-based moral codes preach the top billing for the collective good at the expense of individual members of society, and that is morally wrong and wasteful of human potential and their happiness.

Rand And Traditional View Of Ethics

On Page 14 and Page 15 of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, Rand notes that typical ethicists in history were unconcerned with the metaphysical cause or objective validation: "Most philosophers took the existence of ethics for granted, as the given, as a historical fact, and were not concerned with discovering a metaphysical cause or objective validation. Many of them attempted to break the traditional monopoly of mysticism in the field of ethics and allegedly, to define a rational, scientific, nonreligious morality. But their attempts consisted of trying to justify them on social grounds, merely substituting society for God." My response: Is there a metaphysical cause or objective validation that underlies ethical codes, and, if the former exist, should be they be identified. God is Creator of the universe, and De divided it into good and evil, and that is metaphysical cause enough for me. God enjoins us to love not hate, to do good not evil, and to love truth, not falsehoods. This divine command theory may well be mystical, but that is the nature of the world Can an ethical code be rational and scientific? Probably and ethical objectivism would be such an offering. Could there be a nonreligious ethical code for atheists. Probably, but that is not what I seek. Max Stirner, an atheist, and severe nominalist, noted that Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, the German materialist, atheist and critic of Christianity, decreed that God was dead, but then worshiped society as an abstraction, the new god replacing the Christian God. It fascinates me that Rand would reach this same true conclusion about atheist intellectuals in the 19th century offering government, society, etc. as the new deity to be worshiped.

Ayn Rand On Why Moral Values

On Page 14 od her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand asks why humans need a code of ethics: "No philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values. So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, objective code of ethics could be discovered or defined. The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system of observations on what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the question of: why they chose to do it and why he evaluated them as noble and wise." My response: Probably no ethicist in philosophical history ever provided their version of what a rational, objective, scientific looked like. Some theorists offered their version of objectivist ethics, but likely nothing as sweeping as Rand's account to follow. Most ethicists would define ethics as normative or subjectively in nature. It is more an ought than an is. My ethics would be moderate, more objective than subjective but both. Why do we need a code of ethics? We are an intelligent species born with free will and alert consciousness. God, Dennis Prager reminds us, is a just God and wants us to be good people, being good as part of the Children of Light, not evil and fallen like the bad people, the Children of Darkness. Animals possess moral instincts that control their behavior, but humans, minus such guiding, curbing instincts, require a code of ethics to know how to live, how to be good, thus pleasing to God, their creator.

Genesis 9:8-12

These verses from the New American Bible lay out how Yahweh set up his covenant with Noah and his children: "'See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants and with every living creature that was with you . . . I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood . . .'" God the Almighty thought enough of lowly humans to set up a compact, a binding compact on both parties. Humans, limited and mortal, were teleological partners with the Master of the Universe--what a heady compact, a real compliment to be able to be deemed able to partner with the Almighty! God is teaching humans here to be honest, to make and faithfully abide by uttered, permanent oaths that bind generations going forward forever to a certain commitment to their Creator, to be smart enough and free-willing enough to be regarded as mature enough and responsible enough to make and keep such an agreement, to be moral and abide by God's covenant. God gives a lot to humans, regards humans as his contractual equals, expects much from them, and they will be punished if they do not honor and live by this covenant, which applies for thousands of years going forward. God gives his word and never goes back on it, and he expects us to not lie, to make and keep promises, honoring our commitments and obligations. This is a high ethical bar for humans to reach and live in accordance with. Here are these verses from the Holy Bible (KJV): "And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; And with every living creature that is with you . . . And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood . . ." God does not sign contracts or agreements that are transitory, flighty or passing. These covenants are forever, never lightly entered into, nor lightly or easily set aside. God, for De's part means to honor the covenant forever, and expects the same from fickle, backsliding humans. We will betray God innumerable times. We fail to honor the commitments that our foreparents binded us to by their voiced assent and consent thousands of years ago. Though we reject God, refute all obligations, and even forget that the abandoned covenants were ever forged between God and humans, it matters not in the eyes of God. We are never released from meeting these obligations, and we will be punished for failing to hold up our end of the bargains. Forever means forever. Humans will not prosper and cease to know much suffering on earth or in heaven until they remember the existence and influence that these divine contracts hold over human destiny, and then we offer sacrifices anew, recommitting ourselves to honor our contracts with God to the best of our individual and collective abilities. As an aside I wonder if Yahweh's promise never again to wipe out or nearly wipe out humanity is an ongoing promise that weapons of mass destruction will not end our race, or that some of us will survive nuclear Armageddon. Who knows? Is our race meant to live forever on earth, in on some planet somewhere as living animals? Again, who knows.

Genesis 9:7

Yahweh gave humans the earth to steward, rule and make a living off of, Here is that verse from my New American Bible: "Be fertile, then, and multiply, abound on earth and subdue it." This short but powerful exhortation is rich with implications. Humans are valuable to God, so they are worthy of being fertile and expanding across the globe. That view is humanistic and supra-humanistic, highlighting human worth and value. It gives men and women the right to rule the earth, but, as Jordan Peterson is wont to remind us, with rights go great responsibility. To rape, pillage, pollute, cause extinction to thousands of plants and animals, to be cruel to any living creature, none of these behaviors are consistent with a firm but loving steward authorized by Yahweh to run this world. Run it yes, but gut, annihilate and waste are not moral behaviors, because God does not comport Deself this way. Because the Mother and Father are ethical beings, they demand ethical behavior from human beings. To subdue the earth is not to wipe out ecosystems, but to build our urban wonderland without eradicating or invading all ecosystems. There must be a balance, and I think that God would have meant for us to understand the need to restrict our aggression towards the natural world, or be punished by God for immoral invasion, exploitation, violence and rapacity against the natural world and all of its life forms. Here is that verse from my Holy Bible (KJV): "And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein." Yahweh would protest and decry against the ecoterrorist, anti-humanist meme that humans are a curse plague upon this earth, better to have never been born, or at least few in number and impact upon Gaia.

Life Is A Sacred--Genesis 9:6

From early on, Yahweh wants us to realize that each human life is sacred, because each person is imbued with a soul, that divine spark shared by Yahweh and the other good deities. For this reason, we must maverize, and be all that we can be, to be worthy of the honor of being born, selected by Yahweh to live and make a name for ourselves, and make a difference in this world. Here is the verse from my New American Bible: If anyone shed the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; For in the image of God has man been made." Justice was an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life. Justice in heaven and through the legal system on earth was to be meted out. Being that humans are made in God's image, if we are heterosexual and marry to procreate, could it be that the Father is married to the Mother, and that they are heterosexual and procreate, bringing little angels into the world? Who knows? Here is the verse from my Holy Bible (KJV): "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."

The Covenant Maker

I love Stephen Hicks but I do not buy all that he sells. He denies that Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro et al are correct in pointing to Judeo-Christian roots of Western emphasis on reason, individualism, justice and progress. He is correct in highlighting where Christian--especially Roman--theocracy literally or symbolically crucified such brilliant scientists as Galileo. Still, the roots of our modern, wonderful Western point of view with its emphases on liberty, reason, free speech, capitalism and the sovereign individual owe as much to its Judeo-Christian roots as it does to its secular Greek origin. For example, the book of Genesis was written by Moses about 550 BC. In there, he pens how Yahweh offered a covenant with Noah and his children, after the flood that wiped out humanity and most living creatures. A covenant is a compact or binding agreement between two parties, in this case, one Divine and the other party, millions of human beings, or God's spiritual children. Now, such an agreement or treaty is legally binding on both parties, so the social and theological concept of law was deeply ingrained in Hebraic thinking and religion 500 years before the birth of Christ. It is not too much of a stretch to regard Yahweh, the Creator deity, the law maker, and establisher and giver of natural law to raw world to convert chaos into order and cosmos, as a logical and rational supernatural thinker. God's power or energy is the Logos or principle coursing through the veins of the universe, energizing and empowering natural laws that guide all life and natural patterns at work over the thousands of years. That Law-giver, that is Logos personified, or at least as a power-wielder, is a rational being, a super-super individualist that offered humankind this covenant. Humans cannot eat animals with blood in them, and humans are not to murder one another. Right there, God is offering humans a moral code and a system of justice to run their societies on. Over the millennia, it is not impossible to imagine that the Western ideals and actualities of the sovereign individual, reason as paramount in human investigation, pondering and decision-making, justice, progress, free speech, free agency, capitalism and progress do naturally and logically flow out of the Logos-guided gifts of covenant proffered by the great Law-Giver.

Genesis 9:1-5

From my New American Bible, I quote these amazing, impactful lines from Yahweh to Noah and his sons: "God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: 'Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth. Dread fear of you shall come upon all animals of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon all the creatures that move about on the ground and all the fishes of the sea; into your power they are delivered. Every creature that is alive shall be yours to eat; I give them all to you as I did the green plants. Only flesh with its lifeblood still in it you shall not eat. For your lifeblood, too, I will demand an accounting: from every animal I will demand it, and from man in regard to his fellow man I will demand an accounting for human life." These passages are so symbolically rich with implications, that I do not know where to start. First, take not the Yahweh cursed wicked humanity and destroyed them for their sins and rebellion, and saved and blessed Noah and his family for their rectitude, their piety, their obedience and goodness as they obeyed God's laws. Yahweh is sending a message to the rest of us for all of human history that the faithful and obedient shall be blessed and saved in this world or in the next, and that the faithless and rebellious shall be cursed and damned in this world or at least in the afterlife. These are iron laws of human destiny that none can ignore with imperiling their chances of going to heaven and avoiding needless suffering. Yahweh is not asking humans to be nice, faithful, loving and loyal; he is demanding and commanding it, lest malefactors and the impious be destroyed by Yahweh for noncompliance. Yahweh is a creator deity, so he is above and apart from nature, though in some paradoxical way he is also immanent in nature, evinced as natural law running the world and the lives of its creatures and flora. As animals would fear unnatural Yahweh, they will dread and avoid humans, that strange self-contradictory creatures that is half-divine creator or angel, and half-beast, of nature and in nature. There is enough of the unnatural divine spark in humans that animals instinctively flee us for they recognize that we are meta-natural, at least in part, although an occasion the puma, Komodo dragon, shark, bear, lion, tiger and python will detect that we are of flesh and blood and will taste good. Flies and mosquitoes like attacking us too, as we are natural prey for them. As Yahweh's representatives here on earth, all creatures and the earth itself and its powers are delivered into service for human use, utilization and consumption. These environmental extremists do not like to hear this, but that is how it is from ancient days, and within reason we are to use the earth, its creatures and plant-life and minerals for our gain. Humans did not eat animals before the Fall, and now they do, but the carcasses must be bled of the lifeblood representing the soul-force of the creatures slain. We could eat their flesh but not consume their souls. So even creatures slain to be eaten had souls, not be devoured, and this ancient reference to individual value, to be honored and not transgressed is one of the earlies Western sources of the power of the individual soul, and thus Stephen Hicks is incorrect in denying Hebraic influence on rise of that blessed, core values of the west, the sovereignty of the individual, influenced from Judeo-Christian sources, not just Roman or especially Greek origins. It seems that the Hebrews sacrificed animals and somehow their sacrifice were blood offerings to Yahweh to win Yahweh's favor and to signal human deference, obedience and supplication for divine presence, blessings and protection. Yahweh wants us to account for the lifeblood of every animal and every human, and this implies the worth and dignity of each individual creature and person is sacred and special, and God will demand an accounting for each time that lifeblood is spilled. Animal life is sacred and special, but human life too, so logically decent treatment, kindness and justice towards the earth, the creatures we steward and eat, and towards our fellow humans could all be seen to grow out of these mythological Hebrew verses. Now let me quote these same verses from the Holy Bible (KJV): "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hands they are delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast I will require it, and at the hand of man of every man's brother will I require the life of the man."

The Secret Writing Of Adapa

Louis Lamour was an extensive reader and researcher. In one of his western novels, he makes a veiled, brief and passing reference to the secret writing of Adapa. I have no clue what that refers to, but it seems as if this ancient Mesopotamian, of legendary wisdom and knowledge, knew much of the secrets of the God, and apparently wrote them down in texts, some of which allegedly did survive and even today are studied by a small cult of Adapa followers. Who knows if this was ever more than legend and myth, but, if it is not literally true, it could be. Deities are more powerful because their knowledge and technology and magic are much more advanced and potent than our own is as humans, a primitive but intelligent species. We need not read these ancient texts of Adapa to begint to know what the gods know; all we need to do is maverize and our study of ourselves, nature, God, the universe and each other will grant us much new and almost miraculous knowledge going forward into the future. May we serve the Divine Couple with humility and reverence and morality and love, so that such natural law revelations will be used for good ends and not evil purposes.

When To Obey

It is honorable to obey and comply with just, reasonable laws, fairly administered in a free society with the voluntary consent of the governed. When ruling elites corrupt that constitutional republic, and this tyranny becomes Ameritopia, as is now occurring under Biden, then the governed are obliged to resist, disobey and refuse to go along with open borders, lockdowns and involuntary mandates imposing vaccinations and mask wearing upon the masses. At this point the people may be forced to rebel and take up arms. We hope that point does not comem but the communists running our government are edging towards totalitarian reality, and that will trigger violent uprising, and it must and should.

Rand On Rational Ethics

Ayn Rand, on Page 14 of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, poses the question about ethical code to be irrational or rational: "Is ethics the province of whims: of personal emotions, social edicts and mystic revelations--or is it the province of reason?" My response: Obviously, the good person is rational more than emotional, and logical more than whimsical, but sentiment and mystical revelations are not to be bracketed off, excluded from the ethical conversation. Rand continues: "In the sorry history of mankind's ethics--with a few rare, and unsuccessful, exceptions--moralists have regarded ethics as the province of whims, that is: of the irrational. Some of them did so explicitly, by intention--others implicitly, by default. A 'whim' is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause." My response: people are complex, and truth, even moral truth, is multifaceted and moderate. Therefore irrationalism, which is most of the human psyche, must have a place at the table of ethical discussion. Our reason should guide or whims, feelings, desire and passions, but they can be moral and worthy, not just dangerous, hateful and extremist. Rand is mostly right, as usual, but her all-or-none totalistic characterization of things is overstated.

Critically Necessary, Ms. Rand

Almost any moral code is better than no moral code at all. Without God in our lives, and without moral training to civilize the savage hearts of all our young people, hell on earth will surely befall us. I would offer some sort of virtue ethics, moderate and gentle, that is egoist more than altruistic. That should do the job. You know my answer to the following question, Page 14, from her book, The Virtue Of Selfishness: "Is ethics a subjective luxury--or an objective necessity?" Ethics is an objective necessity, but subjective, irrational inputs cannot be discounted. Jordan Peterson is correct in defining humans as deeply irrational, not logical and rational, though we have those weak, rational capacities to be strengthened and changed.

Secured

Once you dedicate your life wholeheartedly to the Divine Couple, or some other benevolent deity, your future is secured.

Afraid No More

With God at your side and in your heart, you need fear no more.

The Benefits Of Belief

If you accept God, Jesus or some other benevolent deity, your belief will reap you rich rewardss here and in the after life. God will take care of you. Enjoy the relationship, the love, the benefits of divine presence in your life.

Divine Warrior

We are all called to serve in God's army, so this is one reason why I insist the the right to bear arms is an unalienable natural right. God will always fight for us, but we will please God immensely if we are willig to do battle for God's cause in return.

To Soliloquize

You should be your own best friend. You should talk to yourself often and repeatedly, not as a narcissistic exercise, but to become more aware and more articulate to discover that you can think, question, ponder and mull over before doing what you decide to do.

Ayn Rand Asks

Ayn Rand asks if the moral concepts of good and evil are artificial, arbitrary, mere social constructs, or are they metaphysical reality, biologically driven moral concepts that supplement human instincts so that reasoning, high consciousness humans can take advantage of these concepts to guide their daily lives and activities. I believe these concepts run deep and make civilized life possible. here is how Rand broached the question of Page 14 of her book, The Virtue Of Selfishness: "Is the concept of value, of 'good or evil' an arbitrary human invention, unrelated to, underived from and unsupported by any facts of reality, or is it based on a metaphysical fact, an unalterable condition of man's existence?"

Ayn Rand Has A Point

Ayn Rand, in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, insists we must decide why humans needs a code of ethics before we select and craft that code of ethics. I agree. Here is what she writes on Page 14: "Let me stress this. The first question is not: What particular code of values should man accept? The first question is: Does man need values at all--and why.". I have my own suggestions. First, good and evil are moral qualities metaphysically baked into all human activity. As a smart species, we have free will, so a moral code of rights and wrongs, and dos and don'ts, will aid us in staying on the right track. Also, God made us, and for us to be happy, loved, loving and fulfilled, we need to become morally and spiritually good or we will be filled with sadness, despair and a bottomless self-loathing, from which there is no escape. As an atheist, materialist and egoist, I assumed Rand is a believer in good human nature, or neutrality of nature, and she will reject out of hand any suggestion of divine command ethics with rewards and punishments meted out by God in this world and the next.

The 7th Day

Yahweh created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. We should work more than rest, be productive more than engaging in leisure and play, but we need all of these life-enhancing activities, and God commands that we rest a bit, on that 7th day.

Stunned and Perplexed

In their latest podcast interview, this month, September 2021, Adam Carolla, Dennis Prager and Jordan Peterson talk about the power and madness of postmodernist collectivism as it invades all aspects of our culture. Jordan wondered aloud as stunned and perplexed at the steadfast, unrelenting, ferocity of the postmodernist attack, and what motivates it. Neither Prager nor Carolla responded but I believe I have the answer. I have been writing for two years that the staying power, the enthusiasm, the savage lust for revenge, revolution and destruction that drives Progressives now on the march to remake America. They are succeeding and they are dead serious. These are true believers and Progressivism/Postmodernism is their religion and Big Government or Satan (The latter by default for most of the Progressives would not openly support Sa, if they knew they were his most effective weapon, doing his direct bidding.) These are religious zealots. They do not stop, they do not hesitate, they do not tire, they cannot be distracted nor diverted from their cause, to overthrow the American Way. That religious fervor is real and is unstoppable, and that it was Jordan senses and rightly is afraid of and worries about. We must not be frightened but must fight back hard, to stop these Communist attackers in their tracks.

Stunning Anti-Truths

Jordan Peterson has labeled Big Lies--which he refers to as anti-truths--that are cruel, destructive and believed by all in a society, indoctrinated to its veracity and applicability. There are many of them, but I can think of two that have no end of trouble for the Children of Light in every generation. First individuals and egoist ethics are besmirched as evil and joiners with their altruist ethics are identified and celebrated as good and desirable. Satan and Lera have deceived and tricked the masses into blacklisting and rejecting individualism and egoism and wicked. In this way, the masses run in packs, and their selfless behavior keeps them undeveloped, selfish, cruel, mendacious, dishonest. Through this mass hypnosis, people remain cruel and vicious, and the Dark Couple continue to rule this world. The Light Couple are individualists and the Dark Couple are joiners, leaders and gurus of their mass movements. Second, extremism is virtue and moderation is simply opportunistic positioning to gain wealth, rank or to secure one survival. To love is to be moderate, balancing yin and yang. Moderation is using gentle means to achieve one's noble end, never using violence, threats or terror to coerce unwilling converts to join one's holy cause. Moderation is asserting one's God-given right to wield legitimate personal power, but never allowing oneself to be enslaved and oppressed by a neighbor or exhibiting a willingness to oppress and enslave any neighbor, not celebrating his independence and self-sufficiency as he wields power given to him by God. Another anti-truth is that nature is benevolent and the human/artificial/unnatural/industrial/urban world is cruel and where Satan originates. The opposite is true. The Pilgrims saw the primal and primeval forests of the Northeast as wicked, sinister places, filled with spooks and monsters, while the simple hamlets on the coast were bastions of virtue, goodness, light, godliness, love and hope. They had it right. The city is where liberation and goodness occur, and Hoffer well knew this. Another anti-truth is that human nature is neutral or basically good. We are born depraved, and we cannot become kind, noble, holy and loving until we realize and accepts that we are natural beasts that must build up our virtuous characters so that our weak angelic sides can become who are are and this achieved good nature will then show itself and avail itself to imprvong our lot and the lot of the entire world. Here is an anti-truth: Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager have a joint video in which they refer to the tragi sense of life (We are born into this world with its suffering and malevolence, and we are born ignorant, irrational, weak, selfish and cowardly. We are born evil, and run in packs which are evil, and run and ruined by the Dark Couple and then our hierarchical institutions too often are built on corruption and power, not honesty, egailatarianism, competence, merit and liberty. Prager notes that the tragic view of life hardens the young person so that they can face the world and the truth about it and themselves. Once they know the truth, the suffering and the senseless cruelty, waste, nihilism and brutalitty that peopple endure and inflict upon themselves and others, then the awakedened person can be hopeful and strive to maverize, love and individuate, and thus meaning, God's presence and hope will fill his soul, ad he will be happy like none other.

Ethics Defined By Ayn Rand

On Page 13 of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand defines morality: "What is morality or ethics? It is a code of values to guide man choices and actions--the choices and actions that determine the purpose and course of his life. Ethics, as a science, deals with discovering and defining such a code." My response: Humans are a smart species, which indicates that they exercise free will, and thereby are conscious deliberators selecting among right or wrong actions, to meet their wants and needs. Animals exercise little free will and not much rational power. Their instincts guide them as to how to act or not act. Humans mostly lack guiding instincts to control and direct our moral choices in action. To compensate, they require a moral code of basic dos and don'ts to renderit fairly clear and simple as how we are to act and proceed in the world. Armed with a socially derived ethical code, which each person personalizes to some degree, each person has a practical, clear, simple, strong code of behavior to aid him in making good rather than poor choices, to be done in an efficient, cool, calm mode of tranquility.

Ayn Rand States Her Case

On Page xi of her book, The Virtue Of Selfishness, Rand states her case for Objectivist ethics: "Since selfishness is 'concern with one's own interests.' the Objectivist ethics uses that concept in its exact and purest sense. It is not a concept that one can surrender to man's enemies, nor to the unthinking misconceptions, distortions, prejudices and fears of the ignorant and irrational. The attack on 'selfishness' is an attack on man's self-esteem; to surrender one is to surrender the other." My response: Of course I am an egoist ethicist too but I refer to self-interest rather than selfishness. It has been my observation that it is collectivists that are selfish, far more than individualists. We cannot rear up a generation of individuators that are deprived of self-esteem, rationality, self-realization and clear thinking, all supported and made clear by the application of Objectivist ethics.

The Proclamation By Ayn Rand

On Pag xi, of her book, The Virtue Of Selfishness, Ayn Rand defines her Objectivist ethics: "Just as man cannot survive by any random means, but must discover and practice the principles which his survival requires, so man's self-interest cannot be determined by blind desires or random whims, but must be discovered and achieved by the guidance of rational principles. This is why the Objectivist ethics is a morality of rational self-interest or of rational selfishness." My response: As always, I am sympathetic with her announcement that the Objectivist ethics is a model of rational self-interest or of rational selfishness. The best way to serve God, ourselves and others is to chase after and fulfill our enlightened self-interest. To be selfish is irrational and is a groupist motivation. Also, not all irrational motivators can or should be dismissed as irrational blind desires or random whims. How we feel can inform our moral choice. Humans are complex character with passion and reason often pitted against each other, but we must reason our way to conclusions most of the time.

2017 Video Between Jordan Peterson and Stepen Hicks

I took extensive notes this week on a 4-year-old video, and interview of Stephen Hicks by Jordan Peterson. The one hour and 27-minute interview occurred on August 17, 2017, and Peterson entitled it: Postmodernism: History And Analysis. Hicks wrote a book in 1999-2000 (It is "Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.") that warned Americans and the world about the rise and spread of postmodernism throughout Academia and not across our whole society. Stephen: I went to graduate school and got my doctorate in philosophy of mind, epistemology, logic and philosophy of science, so I was well-grounded in the very philosophies from which postmodernism originated. He started to hear about postmodernists like Derrida and Foucault, and by the end of the 1990s this postmodernism was gaining ground. They made a dramatic claim that the end of modernism had occurred as it reached its nadir. We need to recognize that modernism has ended, and postmodernism will replace it. My response: Stephen is an especially pronounced modernist as a Randian objectivist, so he would detect readily when its influence was waning, and under attack. Jordan: Perhaps you could define modernism and postmodernism for the listeners. Stephen: Modernism grew out of medievalism or pre-modernism; we were then naturalistic, not supernaturalist, post-medievally. We studied and believed in cause and effect, not magic or miracles, and the natural world was no longer regarded as derivative from a higher world. Under modernism, experience is taken seriously, studied logically and rationally by application of the scientific method. We can know the world and ourselves, so both are knowable. Pre-modern world accepted the authority of the church and scripture. Non-rational epistemologies swept away. Shared traditions were neither skeptical, nor based on faith and mysticism, but the natural world was studied critically. My response: Stephen has the transition well-described, but I wonder if medieval pietism among the masses was not deeper, wider and slower to adjust than he describes it. Still, with the Renaissance and the rise of classical humanism in Italy, the modern world slowly begins to emerge. Stephen: The individual begins to read and write and study the Bible in his native tongue, so he begins to argue, think and think independently, so he is inadvertently elevated--he can think and can think for himself. My response: this change is remarkable and critically vital, the rise of the sovereign individual thinking for himself. Stephen: With Modernism arriving, new wealth, science, knowledge, liberty and technologies vastly increased and spread in influence. Postmodernists object to metaphysical naturalism and the elevation of critical empiricism belief via science as humans came to understand and have knowledge about powerful general principles. Both attacks by postmodernists severely doubt modernist epistemology where it is stated that our senses provide us with sense data put into language as abstractions, so we then form propositions about the world, collated and generalized into hypothetical networks called theories about reality. My response: Stephen seems accurate here to me, but I would make note of his metaphysical naturalism, that there is no supernatural world, but that is how a Randian does metaphysics, not me. Stephen: Stephen describes perception as the modernist epistemology, the first point of contact with the natural world, and it provides us with sense data, and under the epistemology of naive realism, perception gives us valid information or knowledge of the world by the application of the scientific method. Still, the rise of skepticism occurs as questions of illusions, varying sense interpretation of the world by different perceivers, and the questions about hallucinations arise. Jordan: Kant will object that sense data presupposition, that sense data enters your cognitive apparatus of understanding without passing through apriori cognitive structures, is impossible. Postmodernists here attack modernists: your complex perceptual structures gained via biological evolution. It is not pure information from the external world but is filtered or subject to interpretation as sense data passes through that apriori structure. Are we able to get directly to objective reality as perceivers? No. My response: I agree with Jordan that something like apriori structures do filter incoming sense data, but some of it might be direct information right from objects in the external world, and we are able to naively perceive them as pure knowledge. Still, indirect realism seems to be our natural epistemology. Stephen: Both Kant and the postmodernists use two anti-modernist epistemological strategies, skepticism about both empirical and rational modernist claims to have knowledge of the external world. Probabilistic, faulty perception, as our intellectual apparatus, cannot answer skeptical attacks. Empiricists cannot answer skeptical objections. Rationalists recommend that we not seek for knowledge by starting with empirical data but use our innate apriori mental structures, provided by God or that arise naturally. These structures filter incoming empirical data, run through these in-built cognitive structures. But how do I know that those in-built structures match the world out there? You are not able to escape this subjective process and get outside your head to see the world out there. You are stuck in subjective processing. Rationalism not working to find knowledge. Kant accepts that the skeptics are right: we cannot find external, objective reality: we are stuck in some kind of subjectivism. Both rationalism and empiricism failed. My response: Kant denies that we can gain knowledge of noumena, the external world, or objects in that external world, and we fail at trying empirically and rationally. My response: Kant denies that reason or empirically derived inductive reasoning can give us knowledge of the world of noumena. Rand accused Kant of being an irrationalist that killed her beloved Modern Age of Reason with his skepticism, and she may be correct that he is a brilliant Irrationalist. Below, Jordan offers pragmatism, a more fallibilist, moderate attempt to gain probable knowledge about the external world, to refute the skeptics and postmodernists. Jordan: American pragmatism is what Jordan offers and Hicks agrees that Rorty and the postmodernists are neo-pragmatists. Jordan continues: To defend postmodernism, we have instantiated within us an apriori perceptual structure, biologically developed over millions of years and it has emerged in tandem with continual correction of its presuppositions by the selection process in evolution. But it is still subject to error because we have a very limited view as specific individuals. And we make moral errors that cloud our limited viewpoint and judgment. To expand our purview and correct these errors we do two things: 1. We test our hypotheses against the world. We act them out, and if they are sufficiently correct, we get what we want. It is not absolute proof but is sufficient proof. 2. Piaget teaches us that we further constrain our presuppositions about reality with the necessity of constructing theories acceptable to people around us. These theories are integratable within the existing social contract and they must be functionally appropriate in the external world. These two constraints answer objections to rational and knowledge limits claimed about the scientific method by postmodernists. My response: Jordan is an epistemological moderate, a fallibilist scientist, accepting that probable knowledge is the only truth that will carry weight against current postmodernists and skeptics. He is likely correct for there is much scientific evidence to support that we have actual probably certain knowledge about the world. Stephen: I have a 5-point response, a postmodernist criticism of Jordan's assertions that undercut Jordan's account of evolutionary epistemology about in-built apriori structures as they allegedly worked through out human history, to serve as a reliable cognitive role in accurately representing how the world works. But that stance just begs the question: evolutionary epistemology will not defeat skeptical criticisms. That account is defeated because its adherents accept without merit certain presuppositions/premises that are taken for granted: 1. There is an external world. 2. That we are biological creatures. 3. That we have in-built cognitive structures. 4. That those structures are evolutionary, responsive and condtioned by changing forces. These assumptions are assumed to be true so we can conclude the intellect produces knowledge about the objective world from our cognitive processes, and they are reliable. But skeptics deny these premises. The idea is that we have constraints on our own theories when tested out there against competing theories held by our neighbors, so all can decide what works and what is a valid result. If my theory works, then it is reliable and true epistemologically. My response: I like Jordan's evolutionary epistemology, and he may beg the question, but his presuppositions seem to be how the world functions. I cannot prove it for sure or know it for sure, but the knowledge so generated seems probably true. Both Jordan and I are epistemological moderates or fallibilists, but Stephen, the Randian, likely is an epistemological dogmatist. Jordan: He believes in an independent, objective world as a metaphysical presupposition--the world exists. Is the objective world, the world in which other truths are nested--that is the claim of Sam Harris and the atheists. Stephen jumps in and says let us not get sidetracked discussing Sam Harris's metaphysics. My response: Sam Harris is a metaphysical naturalist like Stephen Hicks is so both would accept that the world exists, and that all lesser, subjective truths would be embedded and be derivative from objective truth, that is real and knowable through human reasoning and human experience and by application of the scientific method. Jordan: Method of proof: my theory is correct enough if I got what I want but that is not the same as my theory is true because it is in accordance with the objective world. Both cannot happen at the same time. My response: one's theory of action in the world need not be true if one gets what one wants, for one might have accidentally stumble into success or by accident. I believe what Jordan is driving at is if a theory of action works and is repetitively successful, it is more inclined to be correspondent to what is going on out there in the world. Jordan: Human knowledge is biological; its functionality is sufficiently accurate, if it is corroborated by success, and that is the best that you can hope for considering your fundamental ignorance, if when implemented, the results are reliable if these results are consistent with your continued existence, able to survive, even thrive, perhaps perpetuate the species. Jordan is a Darwinian pragmatist, and he is like American pragmatists touting our ignorance and inability to be certain of the nature of reality around us. My response: I agree with this fallibilist stance. Stephen: William James and John Dewey, 100 years after Kant and after Hegelianism, objected that we are intellectualizing too much about cognition. We are not just disembodied minds contemplating abstract ideas in another world. We need to understand the mind as a natural process, not come up with beautiful museum pieces to admire. The purpose of knowledge is functional to guide action. Like Bacon earlier, they thought knowledge is not an end but is for power-wielding and is judged by its fruits. The test of truth is not purely intellectual, matching the standards and focus of math and logic. The test of truth is practical and pragmatic. Knowledge is functional to act upon to get results, for what I want and what we want; we operate despite our ignorance. 1. Knowledge is functional, pragmatic, and to be put to the test. 2. Knowledge is put to the test. My response: In a world where skeptical objections hold sway, the pragmatic assertions of probable truth as about all that we can glean, and that it must be continually tested and verified is appealing and useful. I would not like to dismiss pure speculation, the impractical speculation over abstract ideas. As a an epistemological moderate, I claim that all queries may bear fruit, so I am reluctant to bracket off armchair speculating about idealistic fancies. Jordan: Thomas Kuhn with his book about scientific revolutions declares that these are a sequence of discontinuous revolutions, each epoch has its unique presuppositions, that cannot be compared to epochs at other times; we cannot mediate between them. Kuhn argued that there was no necessary progress from one epoch to the next, but under pragmatism your conceptions of the world are more tool-like than a claim about objective truth, though these conceptions may be objectively true. Pragmatism posits a hierarchy of truths headed towards objective truth or absolute truth, and yet the conceiver and experimenter can admit one's absolute ignorance, not beating the drum too hard about the eternal accuracy of your objective presuppositions. My response: If our conceptions that we live by are provisional and we keep an open mind about their being certainly true, we can grow knowledge, live, prosper and gain ground, despite all the doubters doubting the Western canon. This is Jordan's solution--positing biological pragmatism as probable truth--and I buy it. Jordan's fallibilism will allow us to keep our Western ethos and continue to progress in accordance with its mores. Stephen: Postmodernist objection to pragmatism's hypothesis that our cognitive results succeed in terms of their workability or utility. How do we judge that something works? What is a want? Why should we accept wants, desires, and where do they come from? Why should we accept these goals as the bottom line? My response: there is likely no perfect, unassailable apriori or empirical theory of truth that cannot be found without flaws, contradictions, counterexamples, etc. We must go with pragmatism for people must have meaning in their lives, something to do and something to believe in. My solution is not perfect, but no solution as proposed by skeptics, postmodernists and nihilistic naysayers will destroy our civilization. Jordan: We start to question the framework with which we construct the answer. Stephen: Yes, and we are now leaving epistemology and entering the realm of normative issues about our goals and means of acting in the world. Why do your mere wants deserve high status and where do wants come from? These anti-pragmatist questions are denying that science provides us with general or universal truths. Jordan: Once wants are a mere social construct, regarded as a truth, all we have left are subjective, competing truths. Unfair power relations grow out of power which are the only truths available, and these truths or wants are subjective desires only. Postmodernists are anti-objective truth, and anti-grand narrative but the ontological substrata is raw power, then it is introduced as neo-Marxist claims about unfair power struggles as the one whole truth, a contradiction. (Ed adds: postmodernists are against grand narratives, and yet as fanatical Marxist, raw power struggle is their ideological grand narrative.) These postmodernist critics of Western thinking--theirs is a social critique, steeped in political revolutionizing and class-based theory, all dressed up as scientific and philosophical, when it is but an updated push for class struggle, tribe against tribe. My response: Neo-Marxists utilize postmodernist skepticism to undermine even what objective truth was available for Westerners to hold onto and live by, the possibility of probable truths. Once the Leftists eliminate citizen belief in probable confidence in truth about Western ideals, the people are adrift without meaning or values, ripe for bringing in Marxist ideology to convert by force the masses to these cruel, false, unworkable, new grand narrative, never abandoned only hidden during the time of defeating residual Western values. Stephen: 1. Pragmatists like James favored individual pragmatism but we want not pragmatism focus to be too atomistic, there needs to be a collectivizing corrective on individual emphasis here. 2. Dewey provides this corrective: social groups have competing wants so seek uber-group that has the superior, best goals to chase after, but these could lead to cultural imperialism. Jordan: the postmodernists have now arrived fully with their political revolution against the West. Stephen: After classical pragmatism, this 2nd generation pragmatism emerges as postmodernism. We relativize to various types of relativism. Each group sticks to itself--all groups are equal in terms of formulation of the truth. And yet postmodernists contradict themselves with their universal moral claim, their superior moral claim, of Marxism. This paradox, this ethical objective claim of power for the have-nots in the name of justice and mora superiority, is an unvarnished meta-narrative. Both Marx and Nietzsche avow that there is no objective truth, only relative truth. All that exists are conflicting groups with conflicting values. There is constant war and struggle, no peace, no reconciliation, only endless class warfare. Some groups have more power. Marx favors the oppressed with less power, and Nietzsche favors the oppressors with more power. Those that are stronger and fitter and healthier will use weaker, lessers for their own ends to evolve towards some evolutionary goal. All live in a world without objective truth, without objective morality. These 20th century false alternatives: Marxist or Nietzschean. My response: Both Hicks and Peterson have done humankind a great service in calling out how dangerous is this postmodernist attack on Western values and democracy, and how they seem benign and relativistic but totalitarian ideology and totalistic power-grabs are their only aim. This most wicked attack on all that is dear and good in the West must be thwarted at all costs. Jordan: Their apriori position s that power determines things because there are only competing groups and their competing truths. Jordan contrasts this cynical, corrupt power grabbing with socially beneficial power of legitimate authority and competence. The nihilists want to use force to get their wants met. Theirs is a hierarchy of interpretation based on tyranny and corruption. The West is based on hierarchies of interpretation based on merit, competence and authority and value from mutual consent. Jordan accuses the postmodernists of willful blindness--society is not always set up for oppressors--at least not in Western democracies, not set up this way. In the West the social contract prevails, and yet it is subordinate to the sovereign individual. The West is not set up to serve the oppressor or any collective. Yes, we are all limited by the social contract, but that is subordinate to the sovereignty of individuals. Logocentrism was criticized by Derrida, but Piaget emphasized intrinsic constraints on the social contract to address the insufficiency of wants to justify your claim to truth. Piaget offered the concept of the equilibrated state, that you put your wants and needs over time out there in society--as do all others--and it sort of works itself out cooperatively as a playable game. My response: Jordan likes Piaget as an evolutionary psychologist, and I do not quite understand it, but these psychologists are balancing the needs and wants of atomistic clashing individuals in ways iterated over time that meet individual needs while maintaining the social contract. Hierarchical relations and power-allocations are negotiated and opposing truth claims are mediate peacefully. Stephen: He refers to Piaget as an example of Enlightenment Humanism, the state has power, but its power is seriously constrained to protect the individuals yet enable them to make beneficial social networks over time. Power is just the ability to get work done; it is neutral, but we must evaluate power by the ends, normatively evaluated. There are many kinds of power: muscular, social, military, political, etc. Do not judge power but judge the ends of power-wielders. My response: Stephen and Jordan seem to be differing over power, but they really saying the same thing in different ways proposing that normatively evaluating power as good when it allows for freedom and individual agency within a social contract, and it is bad power when tyrannically wielded in corrupt hierarchies as power struggling of haves against groups of have-nots. Jordan: Nietzscheans and Marxists see all kinds of power under one master power type, but these secondary powers compete against each other. Stephen: Nietzscheans and Marxists make the mistake of seeing unitary power interpretation but the sovereign individual must be respected. (Ed Adds: which they do not do as collectivists.) In the Enlightenment the individual devolution of social power to the individual as each individual respects each other's power and domains. Jordan: Postmodernists are wrong here. Freedom of the individual is not just about rights but must also be responsible and wield power, acting as a locus of power in the world. Each individual is not powerless, and he is not just an avatar of a social group. The radical Left is profoundly anti-individualist; they do not possess trait conscientiousness, a deep flaw. My response: Jordan is right: the individual is sovereign and must enjoy his rights, his power and his responsibility to stand up straight and make his mark and contribution in the world. As an individuating anarchist supercitizen, his contribution and powerful gifts back to society will be culturally, intellectually and spiritually revolutionary. Stephen: Both Marxists and Nazis are deeply hostile to individuals and individual responsibility, denying the individual is the loci of responsibility. Jordan: Yes, ideologies disallow for individual power. Stephen: There is no individual loci of power for both the Extreme Left and the Extreme Right believe that the individual is a mere conduit for historical trends and forces--this is a strongly deterministic view of people. My response: Both thinkers are correct. Jordan: That cynical disregard for people is a perverse consequence of the scientific revolution. Modern scientists cite causal forces that regulate human behavior. These two sources are nature/biology versus culture But humans are not just crudely determined by nature or nurture for there is a missing third element: the active force of individual consciousness is not accounted for. People are self-empowering, not just puppets. Stephen: Individualism arising under humanism: individuality must be respected im moral terms and in political theory and in social relationships. My response: the statements by both are articulate, accurate and uplifting. Stephen: as modernism grew out of medievalism, two things happened. 1. The elaboration of a conceptual frame that enabled us to work with the external world. 2. The elevation of the individual as valid critic because the individual is worthy to be a critic. The problem is the elaboration of objective, scientific work led to view people either as nature or nurture, as the source of human mode of power. Yet, there was talk of individual power, an independent social critic with a soul to justify everything. Science was in its infancy, early crude versions of cause and effect, how it operates as nature or nurture. How does the world work as volitional consciousness for the individual as self-power. My response: the Western ideal of the sovereign individual grew out of these baby steps culturally. Jordan: I find meaning in Jungian myths. Take for example the story of Pinocchio. Geppetto is the classical, mythological tyrant of society. The Blue Fairy represents nature. Geppetto created Pinocchio but wants him to be free of culture. The Blue Fairy wants him to be a real free boy too, but it is not enough for cultural influences and natural inputs to push for Pinocchio to be free: he has to do it for himself, self-liberating so to speak. (Ed Says: Mythical genius is at work here; profound truth thus revealed.) Pinocchio has the autonomous ability to begin to come alive. Only he can create himself. Scientists deny this third element. Stephen: The scientific account of human consciousness is an impoverished account. Jordan: Scientists believe only nature and nurture make people what they are. They are materialist determinists. There is no added 3rd element of individual consciousness, yet when scientists are off duty existing in society, they like all other humans, act, interact and react with others as all were free, responsible individuals. Stephen: These scientific skeptics in theory, but in life live like none are determined. Jordan: We naturally assume conscious free will in human interactions, and this is evidence for consciousness. We act like people are free, not biologically determined. My response: This could be biological and sociological and psychological evidence hinting that something like the soul, elan vital, is behind biological and cerebral, individual consciousness. It could even be further extended to hint that there is an immaterial world and a deity funding individual consciousness. Stephen: Truth, goals (ethics), power are the big three--we need to integrate these theories. Knowledge is good power if used good, then it is proper power. If knowledge or truth is bad power, then it is an illegitimate use of power. Power led to truth, and if we act ethically, people will be treated as individual agents My response: Amen. Jordan We cannot let the Enlightenment be overthrown. My response: Right on. Stephen: By the time of Marx and Nietzsche, people no longer believed in knowledge, due to the power of skeptical epistemology. People no longer believed in objectively standard morals. Power is all that is left. My response: I reject the postmodernist assertion that power is all that is left: we can achieve probably certain truth, knowledge and objective morality near enough to absolute certainty that we can maintain our Western way of life. Jordan: A psychoanalytic critique of postmodernist objections to the Enlightenment must be unfurled, for we cannot accept that now you can do whatever you want--rank moral nihilism. Postmodernism is not always believed by its adherents, but it is a useful ideological weapon to get more power or advance their cause. Jordan asks Stephen what motivated him to warn against postmodernism. Stephen: I enjoyed uncovering the intellectual history behind the rise of postmodernism. Postmodernists deny that facts are believable, and logic is not believable. The power of postmodernism comes from its multi-dimensional attacking on many fronts: metaphysical, normative, political and epistemological critiques. So, the counterattack to defend modernism must be integrated and multi-dimensional. My response: the attack from those of us that are traditionalists and lovers of the West is to remember that our counterattack must be integrated, multi-dimensional and activated right now before the West in lost forever--it is in grave peril at this moment.

To Love Others

You cannot love God unless you love others, but it is even more true that you cannot love God unless you love yourself even more, first and foremostly.

Loyal

To sin is to betray God's love. Try sin less, betray God less, and try to be 1/10th as loyal as God and the Good Spirits are to you.

Cut It Out

If you lie to yourself, then you are lying to God and the Good Spirits. When you tell yourself the truth, you are speaking, thinking, praying, acting and existing as a genuine person, sharing your concepts of the truth with God and the Good Sprits. We all lie all the times too varying degrees, for none of us are totally authentic (always telling the truth). To be inauthentic is to lie consistently 51% or more each time we speak. To be authentic is to tell the truth 51% of the time or more. You must recognize that God and the Good Spirits enjoy mental telepathy, as well as other keen perceptive powers, like expert body language assessment, and reading the aura surrounding each person. It is fruitless and dangerous to lie to them, so do not even try. They likely anticipate accurately the lie that you are about to speak or live two days before you lie, but honor your free will, so you are left alone to lie as you will. Now that you know the truth, it is time to cut it out, and seek truth and authenticity, lying as little as possible to God, the Good Spirits and yourself.

No Thanks

No, Big Brother/Nanny State: I do not require you to take away my freedoms to keep me safe. I will keep my freedoms and make it on my own as best I can, by my own lights. Keeping my freedoms will keep me safe from your fascist, grabby tentacles. Better a free, hungry wolf than a well-fed kennel dog.

The Divine Couple

Are the Mother and Father your spiritual Father and Mother? Perhaps. They certainly are our Queen and King, if we fight for love and the cause of good.

Witnessing

God is your best friend, and your main champion and protector. Do not betray your most loyal ally, but witness to the world that you enjoy God's blessing and presence, and you are unapologetically assent to that beneficial relationship, anywhere, at anytime.

Human Insight

We do the best we can with we know, have learned, and can think up. Our view is not omniscient like God, but we must work with what we have. Stephen Hicks refers to us as a smart species. I am not sure about that, but we are smart enough to do very well, if we use the brainpower and capacities that we naturally enjoy.

MGR Again

MGR carried another thrilling, inspiration meme from IowaGunowners.Org: "You can't vote away my rights. I will own any type of firearm I choose. I will not sit down. I will not shut up. I will not comply. I am an American citizen." Imagine if 80% of American citizens, the adults, were anarchist-individuators and militant and irreverent towards politicians and their cant, as displayed above?

MGR

I love these guys. IowasGunOwners.Org: posted the following meme in MGR's Facebook site: "I have a right to protect myself. I have a right to protect my family. I have a duty to protect my freedom." We constitutional conservatives believe in objective truth, objective reality and a Creator that holds it all together. That Supreme Rationalist, or Logos, applied divine logic to the rules to be devised by De to govern and regulate nature, and all its beings, including human beings. Humans were granted unalienable rights by God, including the right to be armed, be a soldier, violent if necessary, with rights to protect oneself and one's family, and one's country. Jordan Peterson the sage warns us that asserting our rights is fine, but more significant and lasting is when we accept that we have ontologically and divinely based duties to fulfill, and among those duties is to protect our freedom.

Faith

Your faith in God's protection, presence, love and guidance are what will see you through difficult mornings.

Incoming

God is sending you messages and communications constantly, if you are attuned to receiving them, welcoming them, understanding them, and then living in accordance with the world from on High.

Good News

Good News is a famous phrase, conveying to the world the good news about Jesus. Let me adopt this phrase as to working for any good deity as the good news shared with others, and the entire world.