This post was inspired by a number of recent comments and threads from both scorpion and Samseau, and I felt it merited its own more explicitly philosophical thread. While it is structured as a response to scorpion, the point that is made here has, in my opinion, a much wider application.
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scorpion,
There is an irony in your posts on this thread and elsewhere that I don't think you recognize. The deep convictions that drive you to espouse your kind of apocalyptic religiosity are no different, in essence, from the convictions that underlie the progressive ideology that you so passionately decry. Indeed, these two seemingly contradictory visions are really just two sides of the same coin, and the mythologies of decline that both sides are so irresistibly drawn to spring from the same grim and unfortunate source.
You are right about one thing: the progressive ideology in its current form has its roots in the loss of traditional religious faith among intelligent men at the turn of the last century, and the universal adoption by them of a metaphysics of nihilism, most clearly enunciated in the writings of Nietzsche. The conviction that has become universal among intelligent men since that time is that because there is no God, life and the entire universe are therefore necessarily "meaningless" and this realization of "meaninglessness" is somehow the one thing that is given once and for all, known all the way down the line. This taken-for-granted and universally shared idea, and the fear and panic that it engenders in men, is what really explains the structure both of progressive ideology, and of traditionalist ideologies that stand in seeming contradiction to it.
It is not true, however, to say that progressives have replaced religion with the "worship of man" -- far from it. The progressive obsession with "equality" and with the protection of "the weak" and various "victim groups" stems from the feeling that in a world known to be "meaningless" all the way down the line, the pain and suffering experienced by the weak is adding insult to injury -- and that makes it the one thing that cannot be tolerated. Therefore, there is a sacred status accorded to groups in proportion to how far they are removed and shielded from the knowledge of "meaninglessness": thus the obsession with more primitive and "other" cultures that have not yet attained this terrible knowledge; the sacralization of women, children and animals, that are seen as always molested and tortured; and the most logical conclusion of all, the worship of Gaia and the "environment", of things that are entirely inanimate. And therefore too, the special hatred reserved for the white man as the creature that has become aware of "meaninglessness" yet continues to forge ahead with its unseemly and obscene "greed" and hunger for "growth", always adding insult to injury with its relentless forward drive even when it has been "understood" that it can have no possible point -- that all we can do in a "meaningless" world is to protect the "weak" from "torture" and give them the "justice" that is to be our sole consolation.
While the kind of traditionalist religiosity that you advocate stands in superficial contradiction to some of the literal tenets of progressivist ideology, it is in fact animated by the same shared conviction of "meaninglessness" and is just a differently processed reaction to it. It attempts to simply deny the deeply felt certainty of "meaninglessness" by affecting a return to a state that preceded it; yet this is belied by the same emotional undertone of fear and panic and the same conviction of inexorable decline that is shared by nilihist ideologies of all stripes. It is telling that both progressive environmentalists and would-be traditionalists are so drawn to the metaphor of a "virus", of a "disease" that has taken hold of mankind and that is already in "terminal" stages and cannot be cured unless the most radical measures are taken -- and maybe even then. For progressive environmentalists, the "disease" is the human being itself and what it has done to the "planet"; for the apocalyptic traditionalists, it is the "culture" and what we have done to each other. Either way, the punishment is sure to come, and collapse is imminent -- and the fantasy, acknowledged or not, is that this dreaded but also wished for fire will somehow burn away the unbearable knowledge of "meaninglessness", and somehow -- some way -- wipe the slate clean.
This is what leads otherwise intelligent and thoughtful men to indulge in dark dreams and dystopian visions that are so completely divorced from any reasonable apprehension of reality. Even as scorpion writes a post on this forum which proclaims the certainty of the collapse of all western civilization in short order, and the impending triumph of Islam everywhere, an equally intelligent white man of the same age writes a post on Grist or the Daily Kos saying it might be already "too late" -- that even with the best efforts of the EPA and others, we have simply emitted too much carbon dioxide, and the coming calamities of "climate change" have already been set in motion, and will destroy civilization as we know it. Two superficially different stories -- but with the exact same conclusion.
This is something that should fascinate everyone: scorpion is no fool, and neither is the progressive who posts on Daily Kos. How is it that these otherwise intelligent men are drawn to nightmarish and apocalyptic visions of collapse and decline that are, literally, lunatic -- that rely on extrapolations, leaps of faith, and short-circuited thinking that an intelligent adolescent could see through? How is it that an otherwise smart guy like Samseau expresses the fantastical and demented belief that rural roads in the US will be impassable in 20 years? How can the thinking of otherwise intelligent men become so tight, overdetermined, and short-circuited that they always reach one and the same conclusion -- catastrophe! -- from any and all premises? The answer is that their minds are clouded and controlled by the same shared conviction; and they embody this conviction even as they attempt, in different ways, to escape it.
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scorpion,
There is an irony in your posts on this thread and elsewhere that I don't think you recognize. The deep convictions that drive you to espouse your kind of apocalyptic religiosity are no different, in essence, from the convictions that underlie the progressive ideology that you so passionately decry. Indeed, these two seemingly contradictory visions are really just two sides of the same coin, and the mythologies of decline that both sides are so irresistibly drawn to spring from the same grim and unfortunate source.
You are right about one thing: the progressive ideology in its current form has its roots in the loss of traditional religious faith among intelligent men at the turn of the last century, and the universal adoption by them of a metaphysics of nihilism, most clearly enunciated in the writings of Nietzsche. The conviction that has become universal among intelligent men since that time is that because there is no God, life and the entire universe are therefore necessarily "meaningless" and this realization of "meaninglessness" is somehow the one thing that is given once and for all, known all the way down the line. This taken-for-granted and universally shared idea, and the fear and panic that it engenders in men, is what really explains the structure both of progressive ideology, and of traditionalist ideologies that stand in seeming contradiction to it.
It is not true, however, to say that progressives have replaced religion with the "worship of man" -- far from it. The progressive obsession with "equality" and with the protection of "the weak" and various "victim groups" stems from the feeling that in a world known to be "meaningless" all the way down the line, the pain and suffering experienced by the weak is adding insult to injury -- and that makes it the one thing that cannot be tolerated. Therefore, there is a sacred status accorded to groups in proportion to how far they are removed and shielded from the knowledge of "meaninglessness": thus the obsession with more primitive and "other" cultures that have not yet attained this terrible knowledge; the sacralization of women, children and animals, that are seen as always molested and tortured; and the most logical conclusion of all, the worship of Gaia and the "environment", of things that are entirely inanimate. And therefore too, the special hatred reserved for the white man as the creature that has become aware of "meaninglessness" yet continues to forge ahead with its unseemly and obscene "greed" and hunger for "growth", always adding insult to injury with its relentless forward drive even when it has been "understood" that it can have no possible point -- that all we can do in a "meaningless" world is to protect the "weak" from "torture" and give them the "justice" that is to be our sole consolation.
While the kind of traditionalist religiosity that you advocate stands in superficial contradiction to some of the literal tenets of progressivist ideology, it is in fact animated by the same shared conviction of "meaninglessness" and is just a differently processed reaction to it. It attempts to simply deny the deeply felt certainty of "meaninglessness" by affecting a return to a state that preceded it; yet this is belied by the same emotional undertone of fear and panic and the same conviction of inexorable decline that is shared by nilihist ideologies of all stripes. It is telling that both progressive environmentalists and would-be traditionalists are so drawn to the metaphor of a "virus", of a "disease" that has taken hold of mankind and that is already in "terminal" stages and cannot be cured unless the most radical measures are taken -- and maybe even then. For progressive environmentalists, the "disease" is the human being itself and what it has done to the "planet"; for the apocalyptic traditionalists, it is the "culture" and what we have done to each other. Either way, the punishment is sure to come, and collapse is imminent -- and the fantasy, acknowledged or not, is that this dreaded but also wished for fire will somehow burn away the unbearable knowledge of "meaninglessness", and somehow -- some way -- wipe the slate clean.
This is what leads otherwise intelligent and thoughtful men to indulge in dark dreams and dystopian visions that are so completely divorced from any reasonable apprehension of reality. Even as scorpion writes a post on this forum which proclaims the certainty of the collapse of all western civilization in short order, and the impending triumph of Islam everywhere, an equally intelligent white man of the same age writes a post on Grist or the Daily Kos saying it might be already "too late" -- that even with the best efforts of the EPA and others, we have simply emitted too much carbon dioxide, and the coming calamities of "climate change" have already been set in motion, and will destroy civilization as we know it. Two superficially different stories -- but with the exact same conclusion.
This is something that should fascinate everyone: scorpion is no fool, and neither is the progressive who posts on Daily Kos. How is it that these otherwise intelligent men are drawn to nightmarish and apocalyptic visions of collapse and decline that are, literally, lunatic -- that rely on extrapolations, leaps of faith, and short-circuited thinking that an intelligent adolescent could see through? How is it that an otherwise smart guy like Samseau expresses the fantastical and demented belief that rural roads in the US will be impassable in 20 years? How can the thinking of otherwise intelligent men become so tight, overdetermined, and short-circuited that they always reach one and the same conclusion -- catastrophe! -- from any and all premises? The answer is that their minds are clouded and controlled by the same shared conviction; and they embody this conviction even as they attempt, in different ways, to escape it.
same old shit, sixes and sevens Shaft...