Either Black Or White

 Tomght I seem entranced by definitions of the principle of moral and/or ontological moderation, as a fundamental law ruling the universe.

Here goes: it would seem that the willingness or inescapable penchant some people work under,  to divide the world and situations into neat, binding black-and-white categories, is typically now how things are. Things are often more nuanced than purely black or white, shades of gray being common and pervasive.

The, even where clear-cut circumstances do divide people, the world or ethical decisions into black and white categores, the corresponding action selected must be implemented with caution, mercy, prudence and reasonableness, in most instances.

The Rule About Rules

 Dennis Prager, the other day, referred to some binding rule that had a legitimate exception, as all rules have. That seems right to me, and perhaps this is not a bad definition of ontological moderation.

It just might explain how reality operates, though such inconsistency and paradoxical coexistences raise hell for applying the rule of noncontradiction.

Compartmentalized

 It is well-documented that Nazi officers could run a concentration camp during working hours, and commit the most heinous crimes against humanity imaginable, and then go home and serve as loving, sweet, moral, decent husbands and fathers to their wives and family members. How is it, it is asked, that we can compartmentalize the evil that we do, from the good that we do, all in the same person?

It seems that we have an amazing ability so live with varying levels of cognitive dissonance, the syndrome of existing with wildly conflicting mental outlooks, all within a functioning personality.

It could be that moral growth for a morally ambitious striver would be the ever-expanding capacity to see oneself as one is, to ever narrow the gap between how one acts and how one sins less and less so that one’s self-conception of oneself as a praiseworthy individual is a self-appraisal that is deserved and not a lie. This decomparmentalization of how one sees oneself in line with how one is becoming overall more loving, holy, and blameless may be an accurate measure of personal moral growth.

If the wild inconsistency (how people wall off the evil they do from their positive self-conception) is shared with most people, they are horrified at the prospect, and regard it as a rare and exceptional state of existing. 

I do not find compartmentalizing the good we do from the evil that we do, in our personal lives, at all unusual. In fact, it is universal and common, though not to such wild extremes as evinced by a German concentration camp administrator.

To minimize the comparmentaliztion of our personal good, bracketed off from the evil that we do, we must accept that we are all born sinners, and that any of us and most of us would operate successfully and willingly, with minimum guilt felt, as a Nazi concentration camp administrator, and this is Jordan Peterson's take on such things, and he is both wise, truthful and accurate here.

If we refuse to lie to ourselves, and love the truth, and God, then we will be much more self-aware, and much less likely to compartmentalize the evil we do, bracketed off from the good that we do, and the good that we do is how we see ourselves as existing and being.

By being brutally honest with ourselves, it is much easier to decompartmentalize the evil we do from the good we do, and we will do much less evil over time.

Let me offer several moral axioms that further our explanation as to why all we naturally cruel humans so easily comparmentalize the good that we do from the evil that weare and commit.

First, Ayn Rand is correct: generally: selfishness is virtue, and selflessness is evil.

Second, to be moderate is to be and do good, and to be extreme is to be and do evil.

Humans, as individuals and individuators, are self-interested, but not much inclined to seek to control or attack others. Such control and campaigns of assault, systemic prejudice, even institutionalized genocide against minorities and outgroups are altruistic, selfless, collective activities.

We are naturally pro our ingroup and tribe, and we are just accepting that we insiders are without flaw or sin, and if there is ever a conflict, the fault belongs with the outgroups or rival tribes. They are without honor, worth, dignity or rights.

We will comparmentalize and treat ingroup members according to our cultural and religious ethos, but outliers are subhuman, not people like ingroup folk, we can justify setting morality aside, and hurting, raping, attacking, even killing those monsters as they deserve to be maltreated. This ingroup kindness versus outgroup cruelty makes compartmentalizing the good that we do, separated from the bad that we do and repress--it makes it all something that we can engage in and justify to our neighbors and ourselves.

Where we are immoderate, extreme, violent, enraged and completely frenzied, intolerant true believers in defense of expanding our cause, we can justify doing whatever to any infidel in any outgroup out there that we can think of doing.

Extremism and lying, groupism and viciousness all go together, so we are able to lie to ourselves and to each other so that the whole society is a web of lies and mass deception--at that point it is easy and convenient to compartmentalize the good that we do to ingroup people while hurting savagely outgroup victims, and proudly claiming the right to so act.

So Blessed

 To live in America for most people is to lead a privileged, blessed, free and prosperous existence. So why are so many, perhaps most Americans so unhappy most of the time, feeling victimized by life, hopeless, unlucky, and oppressed?

It would seem that things are better here for most Americans in terms of good health, level of income, freedom, opportunity and affluence, almost unequaled any place else in human history for so many people?

Why are Americans not more optimistic, grateful, upbeat, and thankful than they are? There are likely many reasons. First, of all, we are all so ingrown and subjective in our world view, that it is near impossible to realize what is the objective truth about how unusually blessed we really are here. We cannot transcend our personal level of suffering, and so we generalize that that is how it is everywhere, even if our level of suffering is relatively painless.

Second, many Americans do not  realize how fortunate they are.

Third, the woke Left lies and has lied for decades against the prevailing narrative and reality that America is really a wonderful place to live and to have been born. Many, perhaps a majority of Americans, no longer accept that narrative.

Fourth, people suffer from depression naturally, because they suffer from low self-esteem and this make them pessimistic, when, they have in pretty good here.

Fifth, here in America, there is enough residual groupism and hierarchical existing at work, the church, the family, the school, and the college and in one's various associations that the vicious, debilitating pecking order is inflicted upon everyone and causes needless suffering for all.

When one suffers this affliction at work, it can color negatively one's feeling of how fortunate one is to be well-paid, affluent, healthy, and employed.

Many millions of unhappy, oppressed, abused employees working under corrupt tyrants and exploiters and bosses at work does color people's outlook on their workplace, about America and on their lives. They may well conclude that America truly is rotten to the core, and is without redemption, which is not true, but they come to believe due to the level of suffering still suffered at work and in other hierarchies here.

If we learn to follow the Mavellonialist way, with individual-living and anarchist-individuator supercitizens in the workplace, then much of the tyranny there will be gone, and empowered employees will be happy, powerful, compensated, and treated with respect and dignity. That will go a long way to ending criticism about how bad America is.

Mavellonialists will confront abusive, tyrannical, mean bosses and much of the S & M suffering in hierarchies will disappear.

They will more likely see America as good, because she will be much improved beyond where she was in 2010. She will not be perfect and never will be, but she will be a fine place to live, work and raise a family

The Absolutist Craving

 

 On Page 84 of his seminal book, Explaining Postmodernism, Stephen Hicks lays bare the contradiction, if not the outright hypocrisy, practiced and preached by postmodernists today, espousing their disbelief in metanarratives, their radical skepticism, their ontological anti-realism--while, at the same time championing pure Leftism as their totalistic political cause.

If one is a dogmatist, totalistic, either as a communist or fascist, then one is immoderate, evil, out of balance.  Max Stirner and the postmodernists correctly object to pure objectivism in epistemology and ontology.

Equally correct are rationalists like Hicks who regard as extreme and out of balance is the postmodernist,  overwrought penchant for approaching pure skepticism, love of irrationalism, their subjectivity, their relativism and their complete rejection of universals.

I argue that the postmodernist metanarrative that the ontological substrata of life is raw power of group against group, that contradiction and struggle are all there is at the bottom of things.

Hicks accuses them of being cunning and hypocritical--they pretend to be relativistic, but that is a ruse to manipulate people as they push their Communist agenda to take over the world.

I think people, like evil Nazis at work and that could go home and be gentle with their children, compartmentalize their kind, sane and normal lives from their vicious, crazy, and abnormal work at work. 

People are hypocrites and relativists and yet they are at the same time, absolutists.

There is an innate craving, shared by all humans, to adopt an objective metanarrative to live by so that they can make life meaningful and filled with purpose.

If the cultural cause and metanarrative is too absolutist, then the people, when they back it, become extreme, radicalized and an actual or potential mass movement. They can be rightists or leftists but all are fascist at heart. That society devolves into absolutism, totalitarianism, mass movements, evil and radicalism.

Where the postmodernists seek to overthrow society, with no values and no shared norms--this too leads to absolutism, totalitarianism, mass movements and so on.

We need God, Mavellonialism, the America economic and political system, our capitalism and moderate individualism, we need political moderation: Political diversity of thought without majority persecution of political minorities is necessary.

We need a general, public outlook of moderate epistemology that is more rational than irrational, and an ontology that is more realist than anti-realist, but this combined, complementary if contradictory metanarrative of moderation will keep at bay undesirable absolutism of any kind.

People turn fanatical, cruel, hate-filled, bitter, nihilistic, and angry without a God-based metanarrative, a story of culturally intertwined set of values that provide meaning in their lives, a template for knowing how to live, a standard to live up to and by. 

The law of moderation governs this critical, communal, and personal, human requirement that each nation's citizens must have a metanarrative to live by, and it must be rather true and ennobling, to challenge the citizens to muster self-discipline so that they can be virtuous citizens.

What this application of the law of moderation towards the establishing and sustaining a people's metanarrative and cultural ethos entails is that metanarrative is crushed, corrupted or hopelessly distorted in two ways. 

Either the people radicalize their support of their traditional story, and fetishize it, converting it into a horrible spook or ism, as Stirner warns against. Now it is an absolutist cause, and that is the path to hell for people, and totalitarianism, mass movements, lawlessness, disorder and crime are the fruits that any ism, especially government-controlled and directed.

With no story, no traditional metanarrative any longer accepted and practiced by a people, then meaninglessness, nihilism and chaos permeated all lives as the young are not brought up right, without values, purpose, love, and structure.

They, lacking a benevolent deity to worship, and no wholesome metanarrative to grow up by, will not tolerate a vacuum in their lives. They will find some absolutist, totalistic, false, and wicked metanarrative to worship and fill the void. 

Therein, crowdism, collectivism, totalitarian government, poverty, and maximized suffering is what the citizens will experience and inflict upon one another and themselves. Hell on earth will have arrived, and once such a sick society is corrupted, distorted and ruined, it is very difficult, perhaps impossible to extract a people from this quagmire.

A good, free, ennobled citizenry require God, a wholesome but alive (willing to incorporate reasonable and enlightening new ideas that do not seek to overthrow the sensible, inspiring, existing cultural system of values) metanarrative to live by. 

These citizens should be brought up to maverize as individuating/anarchist supercitizens in a constitutional republic with a capitalist economy. That is how I envision the arrival of high civilization for humanity.

 

 

 

The Will To Live

 May 19, 2022: I have been a passionate afficionado of flower gardening for  30 years or more.

The greens this spring seem especially, wondrously lush, appealing, warn and vital. My enjoyment and enthusiasm. I do not know when I have enjoyed as much I am right now--observing, participating with, and interacting with nature.

The spring migration is in full swing. It occurred to me that the flora and fauna all around me love life as much or more than I do and they relish living and flourishing. They are expressing that love of life by existing.

Plants and animals want to live, to work, and procreate, perpetuating their species. They enjoy themselves and enjoy living without hesitancy, self-doubt or second-guessing as to whether rushing about executing the business of living is worth all this fuss. Their actions fervently seem to be how they say yes without doubt, without pondering.

Life and death are inextricably interwoven in nature, as one creature lives by killing another creature. On the natural stage are a whirlwind of little plays running at the same time, where revealed are acts that are kind, merciless, brutal, murderous, horrible, and fascinating as one intertwined complexity.

Animals enjoy their guiding instincts: they love life and enjoy it as it is and that it is. Perhaps Ayn Rand, for humans, was recommending a similar pure, love of life and living, and that there is something ennobling and virtuous about leading a full, happy, and purposeful life. 

Many, maybe most humans do not love life. Why? Humans lack the instinct to love life unconditionally as do flora and fauna.

People are evil, godless, lazy, misdirected, lack free will and group-live, and all these cumulative downer-forces suppress the healthy human will to live, do well and make something of one's life, enjoying life to the fullest. 

These somnolent, self-loathing, sluggish nonindividuators have lost their frail, passing, childhood child-like zest for life. 

Lacking the animals’ instincts for enjoying life, without introduction to the psychology of Mavellonialism, people do not know how to live, and have never been artificially taught a culturally provided set of childhood "good instincts" to love life always and to know how to live well.

Each generation prefers actual death or living death to anticipating the leading a long life to live life to the fullest as an accomplished maverizer.

Rule II For Jordan Peterson

 On Page 51 of his book, Beyond ORDER  12 MORE RULES FOR LIFE, Jordan lays out Rule II: "Imagine who you could be, and then aim single mindedly at that."

This rule sounds like it is setting up the life of maverization for each individual young person. He reminds young people to assess who they are and who they could be. Great advice.

Then the eloquent Peterson continues with these fine words: "After all you are complex beyond your own understand; more complex than anything else that exists, excepting other people. . . . You are not only something that is. You are something that is becoming--and the potential extent of that becoming also transcends your understanding."

Jordan here seems to be alluding to the existential fact that the awakened maverizer is in direct contact with what is universal and divine.

Virtue Is More Than Just Knowing

 Virtue is more than must knowing what the right way is to act. It is one thing to know what to do, but it is quite another matter altogether to summon the grit or will to do what is right, consistently, though it may cost one friendship and esteem from among the children of darkness.

Some know the wrong thing to do is morally repulsive but are militant about sinning because they enjoy acting that way. Others are weak and vacillating but know right from wrong, and still sin or at least refrain from doing what is correct and proper.

The good person wills himself to do what is right most of the time because he has a strong will and has disciplined himself to live in accordance with good habits. He consistently acts out what he knows is the right way to behave and proceed.  He practices his accepted virtue, not just preach what he knows is the right action to engage in.

Hamlet No More

 It is one thing to face a dilemma, being unsure how to proceed. It is quite enough to conclude the best way to move forward, but then one fails to summon the will or nerves to implement the discovered solution.

It seems that it ordinarily causes less suffering to bite the bullet and do the right thing, and make the tough choice a reality, though some might find the adjustment very painful or overwhelming.

To remain a Hamlet, unable to go forward, or be content with remaining stagnant, in the long run, this increasing suffering for all, more often than not.

Alienated

 When one lives in sin and ignorance, when one talks not to God, nor knows love, individuation or individual-living, then it is understandable and predictable that one should feel alienated, fragmented, free-floating, meaningless, confused and lost.

The alienated person is alienated from herself. She is not congruent with the essence of reality and the situation in which she is  absorbing, assessing and concluding.

She will shed alienation for centeredness with life lived along the highway of Being with Yin one one side and Yang on the other.Her life of  balance will bring her great satisfaction.