Objective Ethics

On Page 15 of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand criticizes those that worship God or society as their deities and doing so under the umbrella of altruistic ethics. I am for worshiping God, not society, and I do not favor altruist ethics. Rand criticizes those that settle for life lived in the shadow of an abstraction or deity, or based on altruistic values: "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--instincts--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 have disagreed about, today's moralists agree that ethics is a subjective issue and that the three things barred from its field are: reason--mind--reality." My response: If reason is something that ethics are outside of, then the epistemology of ethics is subjective, irrational, instinctive, whimsical, couched in anti-realistic ontology. An ethics that is objective, logical, epistemic and reality-based is epistemologically bankrupt and empty. Obviously, neither Rand nor I accept this, but we will need to read more.

The 2017 Peterson Clip

Today I listened to a 4 minute, 25 second excerpt of a lecture given by Jordan Peterson on March 16, 2017; it was a YouTube, Bite-sized Philosophy clip, entitled: There is nothing to do without value structures. Below I will write out my notes on this mini lecture of what Peterson said, with my comments on it. I wish to preface my notes and responses, by acknowledging that Dennis Prager has long taught that with proper Judeo-Christian values--and Greek, classical values I would add--one can build a moral, solid personal life, and a healthy vibrant society. With no values, poor values or evil values, then all goes to hell according to Prager. Below, Jordan Peterson is reaching much the same conclusion. Jordan Peterson (J): The postmodernists are the logical conclusion of the Nietzchean dilemma: God is dead, so the value structure has collapsed. The specter rises of all value structures collapsing. The postmodernist dogma is that all value structures have collapsed. My response: Western value structures are greatly collapsed, but they could make a comeback if we traditionalists unite and fight back hard against the Leftist nihilists working assiduously to tear down Western society. God is not dead, and the values that the Divine Couple share with us, and from all other benevolent deities like Christ, will sustain and fulfill us again if we return to the God-centered fold. J: These value structures were only there for purposes of exclusion. My response: Jordan is describing the postmodernist claim that value structures, science, logic, individualism, capitalism, liberty and classical human rights are all social constructs or lies that the corrupt capitalist, sexist, racist white patriarchy taught to American citizens to keep them down, exploited and oppressed. The victims and the oppressed were excluded from power, freedom, wealth, control and equal outcomes. No, there is right and wrong built into the ontological fabric of reality, and values are our conceptual descriptions of the attitudes, behaviors, actions and speech that can be analyzed and assigned moral descriptors like good or evil, or praiseworthy or blameworthy. Humans serve God or Satan, so moral and spiritual alignment with either of these selected deities is unavoidable for each agent to choose, and thus said choice makes the world a better place or a worse place, and value structures are biological and cultural concepts that aid humans in knowing how to live successful and happy lives. J: Value structures have no intrinsic value, and this is a very powerful argument. That is why it dominates universities. And it allows people to dispense with their moral responsibilities. My response: What Jordan lectured right above is his characterization of postmodernist view that value structures are worthless, and that this outlook is much favored by professors and administrators in Academia, because demolishing existent value structures is key to replacing the old, traditional value structures with postmodernist, collectivist, secular, nihilistic value structures of chaos and conflict. Note that Jordan rebukes postmodernists for belittling the importance of value structures as an aid to assisting people in avoiding their moral responsibilities. If moral codes do not exist or apply to this generation, then there is no exhortation announced to push people to behave in a humane, civil, kind manner. J: That people avoid working to meet their moral responsibilities is not something that postmodernists talk about but give the Devil his due. What is the problem with postmodernism? If all value systems have collapse, there is nothing to do. My response: It seems to me that Peterson is operating on several unstated presuppositions here. First, humans must have values to live by, and a purpose for getting out of bed each morning. That is, they need a challenge, a teleological mark to work towards. That is, they need something to do. Second, with a wholesome set of values and religious doctrines available to citizen believers, that country[s value structure or value structures provides those citizens with rich opportunities to have plenty to do, and that satisfies their basic and deepest needs, at least for those that are ambitious or care. J: In order to do something, one thing has to be better than another or why do it? My response: here Jordan is suggesting that value ideation is the pressing upon each experience or action, a valuational status, ranked in comparison to other higher or lower ranked values, a hierarchy of worth from more to less. If one cannot know that the goal of an action is to become or capture what is more beautiful, desirable, smarter or better, than one is disincentivized in trying to do anything. J: People ensconced in the postmodernist philosophy are undermined by their own tradition. They can deconstruct their own deconstruction so they might as well just sit and do nothing--which is actually would be preferable to what they are doing now. My response: Jordan like Hicks and others all point out the glaring paradox at the heart of postmodernist philosophy: for ideologues that deny grand narratives of any kind, and yet believe, and practice that Marxist theory and values about power and conflict serving as the ontological substrata of all reality, and serving as our motive to live, move and plan. Either they are willfully blind, liars, fanatics unfazed by this self-contradictory juxtaposition, or cynics that are Communism true believers at the bottom, playing Sophist word games to gain advantage and advance their cherished cause. I suspect all these motives are at work. Since they claim to believe in nothing, they might just as well do nothing, but they have their Maoist cause, so they do have something to do, bringing totalitarianism, collectivism, war and genocide to the West, and seeking world domination. The great-grandchildren of Stalin are on the march once again. As Jordan wryly suggests, it would be much better if they did do nothing, rather than spread misery, nihilism and suffering all across the globe. J: So how do they extract themselves from that dilemma? They do it illogically. But they do not care because, first of all, they do not believe in logic. That is a reflection of the Logos that they have dispensed with. Dialogue that they do not believe in--that is a reflection of the Logos so that they have dispensed with. Logic and dialogue are irrelevant. My response: Jordan is pointing out that the Western tradition champions that application of knowledge, reason, experimentation, logic and dialogue so that we cooperate and compete peacefully in liberty and harmony, wrangling and seeking to advance our knowledge and our culture. Since the individual is the sovereign, core Western idea, and the Divine Couple are Great Individualists, then Logos, or the power of Reasoning, is a necessary tool for humans to function, be creative, moral, and survive. As we reason, think and speak out our thoughts, our ideas are dialogued in the public arena of ideas, and this free and open exchange of speech and views elevates all individuals and benefits the entire community. Logos is God's principle, or God Deself, at work through the universe, and reason and logic are our parallel if more modest rational efforts within the human arena. Logos and logic are fundamental and critically relevant, not irrelevant, and mere weapons fielded by the corrupt white patriarchy to keep of the victim groups oppressed and exploited. J: That brings up the problem of what to do. The postmodernists finesse that by reverting to the Marxist doctrine from which postmodernism emerged. You do not get direction from postmodernism but we do not worry about such things. We will just use sleight of hand to push forward the communitarian doctrine from which our original hypothesis emerged. We will turn a blind eye to the paradox because we need something to do. And to the degree that we are communitarian we can take out our nihilistic resentment and arrogance and ingratitude on every single person that we deem to have more than we have. My response: Communitarian control of everything, gained under the guise of using power, war, revolution and conflict to fight for the rights of the poor, women, blacks, LGBT, etc. is the power drive that animates these true believers. Their rage, their violent lust to get revenge upon being itself for bringing them into the world, revenge gained by burning up the whole world, and killing all humans, that is their aim as their fury, revenge-craving, their arrogance, their ingratitude and their jealousy towards the successful and self-made people are all meant to justify their attack upon first whites and the West, and then burning down the entire world. J: So, if you are wondering why certain values can exist in the absence of any values you have to look no farther than to understand people that are desperate and chaotic will still be angry and destructive, and they can manifest that perfectly with the moral mask that says I am not after you because you have a little more than me. I am attacking you on behalf of those that have less than me. My response: These postmodernists thugs-turned-revolutionaries are able to justify anything act of murder or theft that they wish to justify. They are to be opposed. J: This is absolute nonsense. It is funny to watch Yale students complain about the privileged elite and rich, when they are among the most wealthy and privileged people that have ever lived. They are dominant patriarchs in training. They are baby representatives of the patriarchy. All they do is complain about a small sliver of people that have more than they have right now. It is appalling and their idiot professors pat them on the back and send them out to protest instead of teaching them how to live. They damage their mental health. They hurt their society. They are bringing things down. And is what they are aiming at. My response: Talk about a hard-hitting and accurate portrait of pampered, spoiled, indoctrinated, misguided Yale elite students not knowing what they are doing or why. Their nihilist professors are using them as useful idiot to help foment that revolution to finally take out the West. That is the scary end game. J: The postmodernists manage to be nihilistic and totalitarian at the same time. And that is something that not even Nietzsche dreamed about, and Nietzsche perhaps was the greatest imagination ever for pathology that ever existed. They, the postmodernists, combine nihilism and totalitarianism with the worst aspects of dogmatic religion. because what they have essentially established is a cult which children that attend university are now indoctrinated into. And at great cost with very little practical outcome. My response: Jordan has asked elsewhere what motivates the sheer persistence and endless striving by Leftists and postmodernists to spread their power everywhere, taking over America lock, stock and barrel, and eventually, the entire world. I have warned for a couple of years now--no one reads me anyway, let alone pays attention to my opinion--that Leftism is now a religion and Big Government is their God. Leftism is a mass movement and these baby zealots on campus are the newest recruits of true believers. They believer absurd and outrageous things, but no one should underestimate their will to power and their unwavering devotion to spreading Communism everywhere as soon as possible, by any means, fair or foul. As Jordan notes their nihilism and totalitarianism now united with dogmatic religious fervor, that is about as close to being the definition of a mass movement as I can conjure up, but I am not sure Peterson is at all familiar with Eric Hoffer.

Genesis 12: 1-3

These verses are from The New American Bible: "The Lord said to Abram: 'Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those that bless you and curse those that curse you . . .'" My response: God selected Abram or Abraham to be the Father of the Hebrew people, and the ancestor of Jesus. Note that the Lord talk to Abram directly. It is rare today that the Lord talks directly, conversationally, to a favorite human being, so that tells us that we are not very removed from godly ways, or the Lord will walk among us openly, and the receptive among us would enjoy direct interaction with God. Note too that God blesses those that bless Abram and curses those that curse Abram. The enemies to the children of light do not prosper in the long run. Abram will obey God and leave his ancestral home. Let me quote these same verses from the Holy Bible: "Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee: And I will make thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." My response: What makes a religious leader like Abram desirable in the eyes of God? My guess is that he was devout, obedient, a loving divine servant that readily humbled himself before God. All peoples that bless and honor Abram will be blessed by God. Abram was special, so much so, that he would be the Founding Father of three great religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Genesis 11: 5-9

This passage from Genesis about the Tower of Babel seems strange, fascinating and disconnected, somehow. I believe that the Divine Couple are Creators, Artists, Mechanics and Individuators. They are not anti-technology and heaven would be more like a small city with lots of greenery and parks, than a raw desert or rain forest. The Divine Couple would not punish humans for building a city and tower to reach heaven. Rather, they would punish humans for not even trying to build a Tower of Babel. Still, the Bible is filled with God's thoughts, wisdom and wishes, despite incongruous stories like the Tower of Babel. I cannot explain its inconsistencies and contradictions away, but just accept it on faith that the Bible is one of the greatest holy books ever, written or inspired by the Almighty. Notice in the passage quoted below by me from The New American Bible that the Lord came down to earth to see the city of Babel and the tower that men had built. Obviously, the earth was once so God-friendly that God would walk among humans, even when upset with them. If the religion of Mavellonialism catches on, and millions become living angels, perhaps the Mother and the Father once again will walk among us, like in the olden days: "The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that men had built. Then the Lord said: 'If now while they are one people, all speaking the same language, they had started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do. Let us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says. Thus, the Lord scattered them from there all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because the Lord confused the speech of all the world. It was from that place that he scattered them all over the world. " My response: According to the pastoral prophet that wrote this piece, people working together to build cites, towers, and a secular culture were vying dangerously with God, and such evil must be prevented, and its adherents slapped down fully and immediately. By eliminating their single language, their speaking many tongues forced them to disperse and settle away from each other all over the globe. Thus, God's power and authority were save, and God could not be overthrown by humans on the make, getting beyond where they should have been. It is the followers of Satan and Lera that lives in villages and in nature, that do not individuate and self-realize and individual-live in cities and suburbs, building a powerful, rich, free industrial culture and civilization. This is a strange story. Here is the same passage from the Holy Bible (KJV): "And the Lord came down to see the city and tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they all have one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confuse the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." My response: it occurred to me that implicitly this make the connection between understanding--especially mutual understanding between disparate people--and clear, communicable language shared by all interested parties. For where language and communication are not shared, there can be no clarity, no understanding, no human progress. Without common langauge humans cannot organize, work together and do great things, all goals which the Divine Couple are in favor of and cherish. The divine objective is not to hold people down and back, but to instill in them the skills, coopartive training and confidence to build that city and that tower all the way to heaven, not to chalenge and war with God, but to extend the heavenly kingdome all over the earth and up into the statosphere to connect with the palace of the pleased Divinities.

Genesis 11:1-4

In the New American Bible, it is written about the Tower of Babel: "The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words. While men were migrating in the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, 'Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire.' They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, 'Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered all over the earth.' Mu response: As a child, I was taught that these rebellious, profane secular humanists were competing with God and seeking to overthrow God, so God smote them down to humble these sinners and rebels for their effrontery and disrespect. Now, it may be useful that the whole world speaks one language, let us say English so that shared language could serve as a jumping off point for people to increase mutual understanding, cooperation and mutual appreciation. I now equate the city, the tower and the artificial world of urban living as signs of God's presence, not Satan's lair. For Satan is strongest in the country, in nature, in the natural world. How could the Bible be so wrong, concerning this myth of the power and Tower of Babel. I have no answer for their mistaken symbolism and misinterpretation of where and how people are good or not. There are times when the Christian and Hebraic Bible share stories that do not parallel what is good, godly or correct. It is obvious that humans should not vie with God or work to overthrow God --it would not succeed anyway but would bring horrible divine wrath down upon our heads, but God approves of our developing our urban and human world, and indeed commands us to proceed to flourish that way, indeed upon pain of being punished for not building our literal and cultural Towers of Babel. Now let me quote the same verses from the Holy Bible (KJV): "And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said to one another, God to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." My response: The KJV reveals more clearly that, by building their tower to reach unto heaven, and by making a name for themselves, it could be construed that they exalted themselves at Yahweh's expense, so he punished and humbled them in revenge.

Mystics In Rand

On Page 15 of her book, The Virtue of Ethics, Ayn Rand writes of the religious and secular mystics that offer a supreme deity to provide all the answers for humans: "The avowed mystics held the arbitrary, unaccountable 'will of God' as the standard of the good and as the validation of their ethics. The neomystics replaced it with 'the good of society' . . ." My response: Ayn Rand like Max Stirner notes that the supreme deity for Christians is God, and the supreme deity for secular atheists is society, but both sets of adherents worship some deity. She is advising that the individual rationally invent his own values, and does not sacrifice his reason, his life and his worth to service of some altruistic demand from some abstract deity, existent or not, secularly or sacredly sourced.

Alienation

Alienation is a technical term utilized in Marxism to refer to existential angst experienced by the proletariat worker, or in existentialism, how the individual feels alienated in a strange, absurd, unsympathetic, cold universe. I have elsewhere defined alienation as alienated from one's authentic self, while the state of mind accompanying that authentic selfhood, is belonging with comfort and happiness with full awareness accompanying the (the found, not lost soul) found worshiper of the Divine Couple, exhibiting his real self as he maverizes. I was rereading John Macquarrie's seminal book, Existentialism, this morning. On Page 136 he follows the thinking of N Berdyaev, who denounced the rise of the objective, rational conscious state of man as equivalent to our fall from grace in the garden of Eden: "The awakening and development of the conscious state of mind was accompanied by division and alienation." Berdyaev deconstructs the conscious, reasoning mind as apart from God, alienated from Being, and from God. Adam and Eve were unconscious, happy, content, blissful children in the Garden of Eden, innocent. Once they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and became awake, worldly, powerful, potentially very evil and knowing about reality as a place where good and evil are ever contesting for control and victory, they were alienated from being absorbed back into nature and Being, back to sleep, like instinctive animals now fully regulated once more by the laws of nature. In that non-alienated state of being, there is no separation of subject and object. To be alive, from my point of view is to be alienated from nature and Being. Only as rational subject, apart from the objects, nature and Being, do humans come alive, with the potential to love, create, to serve the Divine couple as living, maverized angels. Without coming awake or coming alive, as now alienated egos, separated from Being as atomistic, conscious observers and actors in the world, only then are humans potentially full human, not just another beast, asleep and content but unfulfilled, wandering the meadows and forests on the natural world. As conscious subject, apart from and ruling and recreating nature, maverized humans can still harmonize the objective and subjective world in a way that alienates from God, completion, love and satisfaction for all.

My Theological Stance

I am a Rationalist/Theist, and Emotive/Deist and moderate and conservative Unitarian/Universalist.

Be Smart

Is it more advantageous to be smart or be social? It is better to be smart from individuating than a popular, social nonindividuator, but all aspects of existence must be sought after to be a balanced person.

The Stephen Hicks Interview

Interviewer John Anderson in Australia, on June 18, 2020, interviewed Stephen Hicks for 58:13 minutes, and the conversation is labeled, Stephen Hicks: Postmodernism Abd Nazis. I took notes on the conversation and then respond to these remarks, below. John Anderson (J): Welcome to Australia. Today we would like you to explain postmodernism and free speech. We both come from British Commonwealth nations and are the lucky recipients of a lot of good ideas producing free societies. Do we now understand that history well enough to preserve it? (My addition: this classical British political and cultural tradition) Stephen Hicks (S): We live in great times and if problems arise, we can solve them, but we have fallen down by not providing historical lessons and training for the next generation. My response: Each generation needs to learn its people's tradition and culture lest they lose the level of civilization transmitted through education and upbringing, passed on from generation to generation. Our professors, progressives, elitists and intellectuals have so devalued the concepts of the advantages to studying history, that the young are now ignorant of important lessons already learned in the near-term past. S: The conservatives, the liberals and the libertarians were complacent in the 90s when they won the Cold War. We have won and democracy and our way of life is now safe, but they mistakenly underestimated the craftiness of the Left, that in the 90s and early 2000s worked hard to restrategize, got out their cultural and political message so well that they are now taking over the West. The conservatives are not fighting back. My response: the rest of us were caught off guard. Perhaps Peterson, Hicks, Prager and Levin can lead a united conservative counter-revolution to save America and the West. J: Why is this cultural battle raging so feverishly especially in the English-speaking world? S: The West is rich, and can afford the best minds, so they congregate here. The disasters of Communism and National Socialism were European happening, so the fallout from that is still being argued over. And the English tolerate eccentrics and encourage the exchange of free ideas and public debate. J: Then why is it that free speech is now suppressed at universities so monochrome in their views? Why are only support for postmodernism and identity politics tolerated in the universities? S: During the Enlightenment supporters of democratic republicanism held forth that they could solve problems. They were confident about reason, judgment and objectivity. But skepticism and pessimism slowly gained a foothold during the modern age, and by the 1950s, philosophers were very skeptical and pessimistic. We cannot observe the world and get it correctly. We are trapped in a subjective reality. Our ideas, concepts and theories are arbitrary, socially subjective constructs. Professors argued that reason is not capable, so what we must do to formulate our beliefs and values, we must go for irrational sources. Now, free speech is the theory that individuals need it to think for themselves and have space to work it out for themselves. If we do not value individuals (as postmodernists do not--Ed adds), then society will not train them to think. No time is given to new dialogue and the exchange of ideas between different people, Free speech facilitates dialogue, contesting and coopering by the process of exchanging points of view. The postmodernist deny that people are individuals, seeking personal truth and values. People are just things molded in the social process. They are just vehicles for competing social forces contesting against each other. My response: Hicks is spot on in insisting that there is no individuality without free speech, free thought and personal agency. There is no democracy without smart, individuated voters, thinking for themselves. This reveals how sinister and totalitarian the postmodernist Left actually is. Postmodernists and Marxist regard humans as just herd creatures, other-determined by the genetic and social forces that construct them. Their reason and their will is weak, or so deficient as to be almost without impact or depth. S: In the Enlightenment, it was believed that, under, democratic-republicanism, citizens could solve most problems. With reason, objectivity and judgment, when applied, worked. What is now prevalent in university grew out of skeptical, pessimistic outlooks that built slowly during the age of modernism, until by the 1950s, thinkers were in a very skeptical, very pessimistic frame of mind: we can't observe the world and get it correctly. We are trapped in subjective reality. Our ideas, concepts and theories are arbitrary, subjective social constructs. J: Is this why Jonathan Haidt asserts that we are categorizing people as the good people versus the bad people. S: That is the values aspect of a wider war in the culture. It is occurring in religious, scientific and political arenas too, cultural quarreling. The social constructionists see no hope for peaceful, dialogued, resolution of contesting rival groups. J: American history depicts its political system set up to advocate freedom, yet Hamilton worried about saving the dignity of the individual while constraining mob rule and chaos. My response: the points made here by Hicks and Anderson both seem reasonable. S: Social psychology shows that rational, decent, commonsensical persons can lose it in a mob. People are not rational and moral when hooked up with mob rule. This is horizontal conformity, and people engage in vertical conformity by ceding self-rule to government hierarchies and government authority figures. My response: this point was new for me. Hicks identifies that people can conform horizontally in the herd, as well as vertically as cogs in hierarchies, such as government institutions. Great insight. J: The postmodernist victim groups are not part of a classical socialist universalism. The ideas was to lift all up but under this new regime of group identity politics, a new aristocracy is arising based on victimhood. The older Left was universalistic. S: This universalist outlook was abandoned in the 1960s. People used to believe in a single human nature. Now the Marxists and postmodernists believe in human natures, plural and multiple. My response: It occurred to me that Hicks, though he does not directly connect the two in this interview, is arguing that, under the ideal of the sovereign individual, a citizen in a democratic/republican polity, is a a universalist claim about human nature, and the human condition. It is a grand narrative. If one is modernist, and rational and Western, one believes in individualism and the ideas of one common human nature shared by all humans for all time. There can be no championing individualism without belief in an accompanying shared human nature. The postmodernists believe in multiple human natures so that people is utterly socially constructed, without will or agency, and their plural human natures render them easily and endlessly malleable, to be reprogrammed and socially constructed into whatever persons that the elite of the polity that they reside in, deem to be their nature. There is no free will, and all is determined by the social order. All live in groups, and their group will dictate what they feel and believe. The role and persona assumed are provided by the determinists ruling the nation and community. Because people are the willess products of their social and political upbringing, they are different from people in other historical epochs. We cannot learn from history because nothing in human nature is. constant over time. Sadly, because postmodernists do not recognize what others went through in the past, it is wrongly concluded that we cannot learn from history and the experiences of our ancestors, lest we commit the same foolish errors generation after generation. S: Leftist-driven resentment and revenge-seeking leads them to tear down the rich and the powerful. Where Leftists are sensible and reasonable, they admit that socialism fails always, and reposition themselves becoming market liberals. With these Leftists abandoning the Marxist cause, that leaves only the resenters who seek to tear down society. These resenters aim to tear down society and use the dispossessed as pawns. People that are failures end up being resentful and envying the successful. My response: I am convinced that none are born inferior to others, and none are doomed to fail. All differ in their level of ability and intelligence, but the will to win, advance and self-realize trumps natural talent every time if the individual but believes in herself, and gets after victory and achievement. She is expected to fail, perhaps several times, but her will to overcome must drive her to keep trying, until she masters her faults and shortcomings. There is no room for resentment, envy, and revenge for her because the powerful and successful are who she will be joining. She would never stoop to finding refuge in resentment politics. S: Resenters are clever at rationalizing their bad ideology. The Left did not abandon disproven, discredited Marxism, but doubled-down renaming it the Frankfurt School, deconstructionism, postmodernism. My response: the Marxists were never discredited to the degree that the Nazis were, and that was a dangerous, grave mistake. J: The Leftist did not learn from history. S: History is irrelevant claim the dismissive skeptics and relativists: we cannot learn from history, for this generation is unique. But postmodernists will use history tactically to their advantage. Conservatives refute such dismissiveness, for history and experience matter today. Nietzsche influenced the Nazis and he was the most important philosopher in the 20th century. Educated Nazis loved Nietzsche. Nietzsche's conflict model, his irrationalist understanding of human beings deeply appealed to the Nazis. We become our best not by thinking or objectively reasoning (reasoning is a weak capacity). Instead, humans are deeply instinctive, and our job is to channel our instincts and drives for the best, creative outcome comes from that. Master races prey on others that are weak prey and slaves to be conquered and used. My response: Hicks and Jordan Peterson disagree as to how culpable is Nietzsche for his popularity among the Nazis. Is he guilty and Hicks believes, or is Peterson correct in complaining that the misinterpreting of Nietzsche's works by his Nazi sister converted Nietzsche's philosophy into something monstrous and unrecognizable, but strongly favored by the Nazis. I do not know, but it might be a bit of both. S: Predator races are to war constantly to get strong. What philosophers write does impact the world. Nietzsche influenced practical politics 20 years after his death. The Alt-right and the Left are in conflict; both are irrationalist, but both are opposed by Classical Liberalism. These liberals urge people to be rational, decent, trade peacefully and practice tolerance. This three-way cultural battle is raging today. My response: Amen. J: We Australians are the repository of classical liberalism and conservativism. We knew that human nature was both good and evil, so we played to our better angels. Still, we are now so government-dependent. We must deal with our human nature, and what we seek to change or how makes us strong or weak. S: Do individuals ha e a powerful capacity for agency (Hicks believes they do.). They run their own lives. People as individualists have this agency capacity so there are moral consequences for their actions, then they are morally responsible, and the leads the need for only small government. Some form of existent democracy is necessary, and it needs individuals to run it. My response: Sound good. S: Postmodernists deny that humans enjoy agency: their illusion of free will is built into them instead by social forces, working on them. There is a linguistic version of this, and each group enjoys a unique grammar, with unique assumptions about how the world works, and groups with competing languages do not understand each other's perspectives, so they compete and clash and was ensues. Or they come from different economic circumstances, so class warfare arrives on the scene because they cannot understand each other, or as rival ethnic groups, tribal warring is their preferred national pastime. They refute the idea of the individual exercising volition, for under Modernism, the individual is morally responsible for his acts. He is self-controlling, but under Marxism, the individual is environmentally determined. This is reinforced in the Sapir-Whorf linguistic hypothesis and under John Dewey's pragmatism. Freud's psychology offered that we are ruled by instincts, that moral reason exists only on the surface. My response: Humans do enjoy free agency. As groupists and group-living, our grammar is comprised mostly of the groups that we hail from. As we maverize, and individual-live, if we do so, then our grammar becomes more our own, unique, eloquent, insightful. Under Modernism, and in reality, humans are morally responsible for their acts, and are increasingly self-controlling as they assert their independence and claim and wield the powers to run their own lives and make their own decisions. The individual is not a blank slate, to be written on, and determined by his group affiliations, his social reality, his biological traits and his family's values. These things do influence him, but, as an individuator, he will meld all this input to serve his will, his purpose, to achieve his vision of the world and his place in it. J: Backers of identity politics deny that we can celebrate in freedom while helping the poor. Victim discrimination and competing rights has become a nightmare. S: in the 60s rights definitions changed. We were granted liberty, life and opportunity to act to do our own thing. Charity for the poor then became what they were entitled to, so it was their right to receive a piece of the social pie. Now we have competing rights between the haves and the have-nots. Young people used to go to college as enthusiastic idealists, vigorous and filled with life drive. But students were introduced to bad philosophy that ruined them. Healthy students are attracted to good philosophy. 1st rate professors did not watch things, and 3rd rate careerists, postmodernists, took over the universities. J: Identity politics is the claim that we cannot celebrate.

Truth

Dennis Prager wrote on Facebook that, in the end, truth always wins. He is correct as usual. One day, I will not be languishing in obscurity as Mavellonialism begins to take hold.

Great Randian Points

On Pages 16 ane 17 of her book, The Virtues of Selfishness, Ayn Rand writes of how she regards humans as possessing free agency, to be expressed as they establish and pursue goals to maintain their existence: "Only a living entity can have goals or can originate them. And it is only a living organism that has a capacity for self-generated, goal-directed action. On the physical level, the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex, from the nutritive function in the single cell of an amoeba to the blood circulation in the body of a man--are actions generated by the organism itself and directed to a single goal: the maintenance of the organism's life." My response: Life is a supreme good for Rand, and so be it as far as she goes. There is no god, no afterlife, as she would refute my addition that the love of life is to live the good life, the noble and holy life, in this world and the next. Still, she is right as far as she goes. Value and life-affirmation should be tightly linked and she has made this connection eloguently.

Randian Concept Of Value

On Page 16 of her ethics book, The Virtues of Selfishness, Ayn Rand offers that the only fundamental alternative in the universe is existence or nonexistence. Rand the atheist and materialistic monist offers that matter alone exists permanently, while flora and fauna live and then die, a more active form of temporary existence and nonexistence. Rand, the grand secular humanist, is going to tie her definition of value to human existence, and I like her take on things: "It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil." My response: plants, animals, rocks, dirt and water likely possess little or no free agency, so their actions are not praiseworthy or blameworthy. Only conscious, free-willing humans can make choices, only their actions can be valued as good or evil, as praiseworthy or blameworthy.

Rand On Saving Civilzation

On Page 16 of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand raises the issue that her revolutionary code of egoist ethics is not only brand new, but also critically necessary to see adopted so humankind will have a future: "If you want to save civilization it is this premise of modern ethics--and all of ethical history--that you must challenge. To challenge the basic premise of any discipline, one must begin at the beginning. In ethics one must begin by asking: What are values? Why does man need them?" My response: In the Mavellonialist culture for high civilization and a society of individuator-anarchist supercitizens, only egoist ethics is complex enough, noble enough, and God-backed to provide people with the ethical code to guide them successfully into the merging future. Values for me can be defined as moral descriptions for motives, actions, attitudes and patterns of behavior, omitted and committed. God made the world, and it is part good and part evil. The human agent is to define, describe what is good, and then dedicate her life to expanding good, and decreasing the realm of evil. That is her job, as given her by God. This is why man needs values.

The Paraphrase

Jordan Peterson lectures that people require values and meaning in their lives, a reason to live by, with goals to meet and exceed. If wholesome religion, God or ethose are not available in our lives, we will fill that void with something much less savory, be it a totalistic ideology or satanic cult. The void will be filled. Humans must have values to live by, to fill that metaphysical void gnawing in their souls. If worship of God does not fill people's hearts and minds, then the veneration of Lucifer will fill in quickly and completely.