Self-destruction: An Overview

From The Atlantic.  This article appears in the July 2019 print edition with the headline “George Orwell’s Unheeded Warning.”

I hope people will find the bits I have quoted from this article sufficiently intriguing and provoking to go to the source and read it in its entirety.   It is well worth the time for both right and left wingers.   

Unlike the author of this article, I loved 1984 much more than Brave New World from the beginning.  I have always realized that the answer to the question, “How did he know?” lies in an error in the question itself. It’s not how did he know what would happen in politics, it’s how did he know the nature of human beings.   There is so much that is so very obvious if you step outside of your culture and your society for even a moment or two. But doing so is profoundly difficult for the vast majority of people.  >“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” Orwell wrote.<

Today it doesn’t take much to make either the right or the left surrender their freedom and even their intelligence.  Rationality is not a valued commodity under any circumstances and in today’s fetid atmosphere of passions it has almost entirely vanished from public discourse. >Unfreedom today is voluntary. It comes from the bottom up.<

>Orwell didn’t foresee “that the common man and woman would embrace doublethink as enthusiastically as the intellectuals and, without the need for terror or torture, would choose to believe that two plus two was whatever they wanted it to be.”<

While the right wing’s abandonment of sanity is based almost entirely on fear and the resultant rage and so is easy to understand, the left wing’s movement in this direction is rooted in the desire for a perfect utopian justice. >Progressive doublethink—which has grown worse in reaction to the right-wing kind—creates a more insidious unreality because it operates in the name of all that is good. Its key word is justice—a word no one should want to live without. But today the demand for justice forces you to accept contradictions that are the essence of doublethink.

For example, many on the left now share an unacknowledged but common assumption that a good work of art is made of good politics and that good politics is a matter of identity. The progressive view of a book or play depends on its political stance, and its stance—even its subject matter—is scrutinized in light of the group affiliation of the artist: Personal identity plus political position equals aesthetic value.<

The articles author points out that today >...intelligent people do the work of eliminating their own unorthodoxy without the Thought Police<

Finally,  I must agree with his conclusion that >Good art doesn’t come from wokeness, and social problems starved of debate can’t find real solutions. ...Orwell wrote in 1946. “What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.” Not much has changed since the 1940s. The will to power still passes through hatred on the right and virtue on the left.

Again, I suggest you read the original article, Conservative or Liberal, it is well worth your time.  As for me, to quote an old and rather silly parody song about the days of the Troubles in Ireland, “Me, being strictly neutral, I bashed everyone in sight.”

Note: my apologies for the poor proofreading. My health is really not good at the moment and I’m just not up to the effort.

Notes: On Victims And Self Victimization

https://quillette.com/2018/12/07/take-it-from-someone-who-has-suffered-real-physical-abuse-words-arent-violence/

While I do grow tired of Quillett's excessively repetitious nature, every now and then there's an article worth reading which is why I continue keeping an eye on the site.  This article is an excellent one. It points out that the difference between being a lifelong victim and being a person who was once victimized lies in the way you see yourself afterwards.  The victim is for ever being victimized and can never escape, while the individual who was once a victim takes responsibility for their own healing and adaptation.

> Self-pity is an addictive drug; and students who come to campus looking for ways to avoid stress, instead of deal with it, will find dealers in every office and classroom.  We can’t force students to fight their demons. But at the very least, we shouldn’t be encouraging a policy of immediate surrender. <

Notes: Extremism And the Left

Quillette Is doing well this week! Here's another article I found compelling and interesting. The first point of the article makes it I found most in need of sharing Is that the extreme left is growing and, unless it is reigned in, will become as extreme and anti-intellectual as the extreme right.

>Those on the right once were the main enemies of evolutionary theory, but today, as Colin Wright argues, those on the extreme left are the “new evolution deniers.”<

And in answer to all those extremist you choose to throw science into the garbage can:

 > But science should be in the business of advancing knowledge of the world and its inhabitants rather than advancing certain groups or sides over others. Like any discipline of science, evolutionary psychology has not been untouched by prejudice and ridiculous theories. But most of them were either unfalsifiable and thus unscientific or were falsifiable and subsequently refuted by experimental tests. <

Notes: The Rise And Fall Of Mary Magdalen

An interesting article covering the Journey of Mary Magdalene from eminent  apostle to repentant whore.  >But what most drove the anti-sexual sexualizing of Mary Magdalene was the male need to dominate women. <
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/#f70ziI9q5odmLQQ7.99
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Not Guilty! OK, Maybe Partly Guilty

https://quillette.com/2019/04/01/prescriptive-racialism-and-racial-exclusion

While this article makes an interesting point, It also makes a grievous intellectual error. I'm reposting this article because of the following comment:

> The Islamic philosopher Al Ghazali did the same when he railed against the Greek pagan influence during the Islamic Golden Age, and in doing so he extinguished the brilliant flame of scientific thought of his era. The Middle East has been dark ever since. <

In fairness to the author of this article, it has been a common belief, almost a universal belief, among philosophic scholars that her statement is accurate. But a look at Al Ghazal's actual philosophy and his statements indicate  a somewhat contrary reality.

While his positions are very complex, on the issue of scripture verses objective reality he clearly stated that there can be no such contradiction. Reality is reality whether observed through a religious or an empirical lens.  When a contradiction does appear, he insists that objective reality must be accepted as real and that religious scholars must then acknowledge that the Koran cannot be taken literally on that particular issue, but must instead be interpreted as symbolically true, not literally accurate.

This is the declaration of an individual who strongly supports science and its empirical, objective base. A  fair-minded person must acknowledge that Al Ghazali is not only innocent of the supposed offense but in fact is an exemplar of  the opposite position.  But equally in fairness, we can not ignore the fact that Al Ghazali was a religious extremist who also caused a great deal of harm to his culture and society.

In other words, he's not single-handedly guilty of destroying Islamic science but he did support and increase religious extremism. Which is to say he was a very mixed bag, like so many other human beings who tend to be regarded as exemplars of one particular trait but who are actually complex characters displaying both good and bad sides.

So who can be accused of single-handedly bringing down his own civilization? While it is very popular in the Middle East to blame the Crusades, there's no question it was an internal rot, a form of intellectual and spiritual cancer, which caused the destruction of the most highly advanced technological civilization on the planet, leaving it a desperately poor Third World entity to this day.

No one person was actually guilty of this offense, but one of the greatest contributors was Nizam al-Mulk. As visier, He established a highly influential set of madrasahs which firmly established the Islamic position of higher education as one of extreme religious fundamentalism.

These two highly influential men, living at the same time, did cause a great deal of harm and damage to their own society and civilization.  Still, I feel compelled to point out that Al Ghazali did not rail against science. Although he did contribute to the dominance of religious extremism and fundamentalism which led to the fall of the Islamic empire, he most certainly did not do it single-handedly nor did he do so by attacking science or objective reality. 

 Let me now note that I have previously stated over a period of decades that the anti-science movement founded in American religious fundamentalism constitutes an existential danger to our society. China was destroyed by turning inward into religious fundamentalism and away from science and objectivity, as was the great Islamic empire, as we will be if we do not reign in it's extremist excesses.

Courts and Crosses

In regard to the controversy regarding the maintenance of the Bladensberg World War One memorial cross on public land, I made the following post:

Quite an interesting problem. I’ve long taken the position that America, in order to be a just government, must be a secular government neutral towards religion. Having said that, while this cross was obviously erected as a Christian symbol and the court so ordering otherwise cannot change this hard-core reality, this particular symbol has become an historical monument. While I would oppose the direction of a new monument on public land of this type, the fact that this monument was constructed at a time when this was considered acceptable should be taken into consideration. I believe it should be allowed to stand. That is not to say we should not have appropriate symbology added which indicates that this represents the national attitude of a long gone time.

Some will say, ”Well then, this must justify Confederate statuary”. It does not. While putting up the cross was supporting Christianity as a state supported, if not actually state sponsored, religion; maintaining Confederate statuary is the equivalent of the Germans putting up monuments to such as Hitler, Borman, and other Nazi leaders. Tolerating a past that lived in error is not the same thing as glorifying those who supported a vile and despicable cause.

Of Cats And Men Part 2

Once again tiny steps forward contrasted with big slides back mark my relationship with the cat who came to dinner, but all in all our relationship has improved.

He got to the point where he would not run away when he saw me, especially if I had his dinner in my hands, but instead would hover quite close. He also was not above loud complaining if I was late with this food. Clearly he had come to have certain expectations for me and expected me to fulfill them dutifully.
As time went on, he would maintain closer and closer proximity as I fed him. I was surprised one night when he actually came forward to sniff my fingers (as cat lovers know that's quite a big step in becoming friends with an animal). A few days later he actually allowed me to scratch his ears.

Of course, then he went right back to refusing to let me touch him and insisting that I had to go in the house and close the door before he would begin to eat.

Two nights ago he really shocked me. He not only let me scratch his ears, he let me pet him for a time. Naturally, all the while I was petting him he was busy complaining because he was afraid to eat until I went, yes, you guessed it, back in the house and closed the door. It's also interesting to note that just a moment, literally one or two seconds before he allowed me to pet him, he was hissing at me because he was so terrified that he was within touching range, but even as he was hissing, he didn't run away and did follow it up by letting me pet him.
I always knew we was conflicted and didn't know wheher to trust me or not, but I've decided now that he is, in fact, a case of multiple personality disorder.

I used to have interesting debates with my best friend (who was also our district Attendance and Child Welfare Officer and a licensed child psychologist) about the existence of multiple personality disorders. It was in the DSM, so he accepted it as real. I pointed out that the vast majority of psychologists and psychiatrists never encounter even a single case whereas one or two encounter many cases. I contended then and I contend now that the whole thing is a delusion imposed by the therapist on his patients. At least it is in humans. Apparently, it's very real in cats.

Sidenote to my daughter Racquell: OK, so I guess it needs a name. Lately other cats have been coming around and taking part in the great free feast of cat food I put out for him. I found I resent it because I'm not paying money I can't really afford to feed cats who have a home. I find myself thinking that they're stealing my cat's food.
So, considering that I know he has a very thick coat from petting him and of course he does in this winter, also because he's the cat who came to dinner (Google the movie The Man Who Came to Dinner and you'll understand the reference), And since the star of the American movie version of the play was named Wolley, for now I'll just call him Wooly. Happy now?

Final note: In case you haven't guessed, since that one time he let me pet him he has again reverted to not coming closer to me than a good yard. Thus proving that the mouse in the Merry Melodies cartoon Scaredy-cat had it right when he declared, "Pussycats is the cwaziest peoples!"