What Is More to Blame (Looking Back)

[GloryofGreece]

It absolutely would nowadays, but I think it was due to a lack of urban population and the fact that most Americans were still recent colonists who were looking to build a new life rather than just looking for da gibs

From what I've read about the American Revolution a lot of historians/"experts" suggest that about 1/3rd of the population was loyal to the crown, a 3rd was neutral, and only a 3rd was actually for it. That's also surprising. Again making me wonder why there wasn't a lot of killing in back alleys or retribution after independence was won. I guess there are examples of revolutions that were totally violent like the Glorious Revolution but still.

I don't think there was as much bitterness and resentment on the part of most Americans compared to rabble in most of France.

There was retribution, those revolutionary fucks tarred and feathered many a loyalist, remember?

O I remember but it was few and far between compared with the death toll of the Reign of Terror, the proscription lists in around 1793-94 and after, the tens of thousands of informants France had at the time, much less the death toll of the Russian Revolution/Russian Civil War.

[StCapps]

O I remember but it was few and far between compared with the death toll of the Reign of Terror, the proscription lists in around 1793-94 and after, the tens of thousands of informants France had at the time, much less the death toll of the Russian Revolution/Russian Civil War.

Indeed. Like I say, The American Revolution went far better than most revolutions throughout history in the bloodshed department, consider yourselves lucky, not as lucky as the British during The Glorious Revolution, but lucky nonetheless.

[Speaker to Animals]

It occurred to me after watching a related video to something Carlus posted, that the easiest way to connect the Reformation to the Enlightenment and then to the degeneracy we see today has to do with truth and authority.

(1) The counter-civilization rejects the idea that truth exists. They see only a collectively agreed-upon "narrative", and therefore no such thing as an objective truth, at least in the sense that humans can all use to guide their actions and beliefs.

(2) The counter-civilization is fundamentally lawless and destructive. They commit acts of violence and destruction nationwide, and they will not be able to actually consciously recognize their own violence. They only see violence perpetrated against themselves, and anything they do which is violent or destructive has to be ignored or explained away because it does not fit the "narrative", which remember is their version of objective truth. Thus, to say that the left is fundamentally violent is basically the equivalent of a logical contradiction to rational people.

(3) Lawlessness is justifiable because there exists no objective truth and no legitimate authority except themselves. Everything is emotionally driven and the arbiter of right and wrong is the narrative (and only the narrative).

How did it get like this?

Consider that everything that occurred since the Reformation has involved incremental steps away from the idea that there exists an objective truth and towards the idea of rejecting the authority underlying the civilization itself. Initially, it began with the rejection of moral authority in the Church. By the Enlightenment, people were rejecting the moral authority of the aristocracy. It keeps driving down increasingly further to the individual. Once the individual is the arbiter of all things moral, obeying a law comes down to his personal choice, based on his subjective views of the world. Sometimes laws were unjust, so no laws should be applied without the consent of the individual. That's where we were possibly in the 1980s until very recently.

But now the narrative is the authority because they have to question even their own authority. You, after all, have your white privilege blinding you, or the sexism that is built-in to your nature on account of having a penis. You have to question your motives at every step (check your privilege). Only the narrative can guide you to the truth now.

I don't really know where this ends. I guess the next step is in questioning the narrative (or any narrative), and then becoming something like a nihilist or solipsist? In any case, one can see how all of this has had one unifying effect: the gradual dismantling of western civilization.


And before anybody quips with "what about reason and the enlightenment putting science and rationality at the helm??" No. That's a myth too, really. That's just the narrative. I posted before what the cause actually thinks of scientists when they executed one of the greatest chemists to ever live for not supporting the cause. Furthermore, even at a philosophical level, the Enlightenment ushered in all forms of idealism which reject any notion that humans can perceive or interact with objective truth in any way. The contemporary philosopher John Searle demolishes idealism in a few books. He discusses it a little in some lectures you can find on YouTube as well. Everything that has occurred since the Reformation has represented a gradual decoupling of your mind with the objective world. This had profound consequences on our civilization. It's not sufficient to fixate on things like the religion or the politics. Those may or may not have been legitimate issues we should have addressed, but the motivating force and the guiding ideologies driven by that force has always been counter-civilizational in our case. It's not the Reformation itself, or the Enlightenment itself that was the problem but the underlying ideologies and motivations to dismantle our civilization rather than actually reform or progress it.

[SuburbanFarmer]

That's because there is no "objective world". Claiming any sort of 'absolute truth' outside of natural law is the height of arrogance.

The process you're describing is, indeed, a fundamental shift in human society. It's the natural progression that was held back several millenia by an age of superstition and ignorance. All of our institutions and systems were built on these fundamentals, and now the fundamentals are shifting.

It's not a process of collapse, imo. It's simply the Next Age coming into being. Now, that may, and probably will, include violent upheavals and uncertainty, but Change is always thus.

[Speaker to Animals]

Q.E.D.

[Fife]

Marxism is ebola. So is Nietzsche.

[Speaker to Animals]

It's actually common now for people to truly believe that you cannot experience the external world. They think they are in some kind of movie theater of the mind in which the mind translates sense data into the perceptions they experience.

This stuff began in the Enlightenment. Enlightenment epistemology goes out of its way to decouple you from the objective world. It's a totally false assumption. The good news is that the best philosophers in our time have challenged it and are working to undo the damage.

It's going to take people in ALL fields and in all aspects of western civilization to push back against this trend towards dissolution and decay.


John Searle discusses the "big mistake" in the first twenty minutes or so of this lecture:

[GloryofGreece]

It occurred to me after watching a related video to something Carlus posted, that the easiest way to connect the Reformation to the Enlightenment and then to the degeneracy we see today has to do with truth and authority.

(1) The counter-civilization rejects the idea that truth exists. They see only a collectively agreed-upon "narrative", and therefore no such thing as an objective truth, at least in the sense that humans can all use to guide their actions and beliefs.

(2) The counter-civilization is fundamentally lawless and destructive. They commit acts of violence and destruction nationwide, and they will not be able to actually consciously recognize their own violence. They only see violence perpetrated against themselves, and anything they do which is violent or destructive has to be ignored or explained away because it does not fit the "narrative", which remember is their version of objective truth. Thus, to say that the left is fundamentally violent is basically the equivalent of a logical contradiction to rational people.

(3) Lawlessness is justifiable because there exists no objective truth and no legitimate authority except themselves. Everything is emotionally driven and the arbiter of right and wrong is the narrative (and only the narrative).

How did it get like this?

Consider that everything that occurred since the Reformation has involved incremental steps away from the idea that there exists an objective truth and towards the idea of rejecting the authority underlying the civilization itself. Initially, it began with the rejection of moral authority in the Church. By the Enlightenment, people were rejecting the moral authority of the aristocracy. It keeps driving down increasingly further to the individual. Once the individual is the arbiter of all things moral, obeying a law comes down to his personal choice, based on his subjective views of the world. Sometimes laws were unjust, so no laws should be applied without the consent of the individual. That's where we were possibly in the 1980s until very recently.

But now the narrative is the authority because they have to question even their own authority. You, after all, have your white privilege blinding you, or the sexism that is built-in to your nature on account of having a penis. You have to question your motives at every step (check your privilege). Only the narrative can guide you to the truth now.

I don't really know where this ends. I guess the next step is in questioning the narrative (or any narrative), and then becoming something like a nihilist or solipsist? In any case, one can see how all of this has had one unifying effect: the gradual dismantling of western civilization.


And before anybody quips with "what about reason and the enlightenment putting science and rationality at the helm??" No. That's a myth too, really. That's just the narrative. I posted before what the cause actually thinks of scientists when they executed one of the greatest chemists to ever live for not supporting the cause. Furthermore, even at a philosophical level, the Enlightenment ushered in all forms of idealism which reject any notion that humans can perceive or interact with objective truth in any way. The contemporary philosopher John Searle demolishes idealism in a few books. He discusses it a little in some lectures you can find on YouTube as well. Everything that has occurred since the Reformation has represented a gradual decoupling of your mind with the objective world. This had profound consequences on our civilization. It's not sufficient to fixate on things like the religion or the politics. Those may or may not have been legitimate issues we should have addressed, but the motivating force and the guiding ideologies driven by that force has always been counter-civilizational in our case. It's not the Reformation itself, or the Enlightenment itself that was the problem but the underlying ideologies and motivations to dismantle our civilization rather than actually reform or progress it.

So would it be fair to say from your point of view that the root motivation of this counter-civilization is basically selfishness and nihilism essentially?

[GloryofGreece]

Great lecture by Victor Hanson which is tangentially related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cGnzUfgfsc&t=2223s

[Speaker to Animals]

It occurred to me after watching a related video to something Carlus posted, that the easiest way to connect the Reformation to the Enlightenment and then to the degeneracy we see today has to do with truth and authority.

(1) The counter-civilization rejects the idea that truth exists. They see only a collectively agreed-upon "narrative", and therefore no such thing as an objective truth, at least in the sense that humans can all use to guide their actions and beliefs.

(2) The counter-civilization is fundamentally lawless and destructive. They commit acts of violence and destruction nationwide, and they will not be able to actually consciously recognize their own violence. They only see violence perpetrated against themselves, and anything they do which is violent or destructive has to be ignored or explained away because it does not fit the "narrative", which remember is their version of objective truth. Thus, to say that the left is fundamentally violent is basically the equivalent of a logical contradiction to rational people.

(3) Lawlessness is justifiable because there exists no objective truth and no legitimate authority except themselves. Everything is emotionally driven and the arbiter of right and wrong is the narrative (and only the narrative).

How did it get like this?

Consider that everything that occurred since the Reformation has involved incremental steps away from the idea that there exists an objective truth and towards the idea of rejecting the authority underlying the civilization itself. Initially, it began with the rejection of moral authority in the Church. By the Enlightenment, people were rejecting the moral authority of the aristocracy. It keeps driving down increasingly further to the individual. Once the individual is the arbiter of all things moral, obeying a law comes down to his personal choice, based on his subjective views of the world. Sometimes laws were unjust, so no laws should be applied without the consent of the individual. That's where we were possibly in the 1980s until very recently.

But now the narrative is the authority because they have to question even their own authority. You, after all, have your white privilege blinding you, or the sexism that is built-in to your nature on account of having a penis. You have to question your motives at every step (check your privilege). Only the narrative can guide you to the truth now.

I don't really know where this ends. I guess the next step is in questioning the narrative (or any narrative), and then becoming something like a nihilist or solipsist? In any case, one can see how all of this has had one unifying effect: the gradual dismantling of western civilization.


And before anybody quips with "what about reason and the enlightenment putting science and rationality at the helm??" No. That's a myth too, really. That's just the narrative. I posted before what the cause actually thinks of scientists when they executed one of the greatest chemists to ever live for not supporting the cause. Furthermore, even at a philosophical level, the Enlightenment ushered in all forms of idealism which reject any notion that humans can perceive or interact with objective truth in any way. The contemporary philosopher John Searle demolishes idealism in a few books. He discusses it a little in some lectures you can find on YouTube as well. Everything that has occurred since the Reformation has represented a gradual decoupling of your mind with the objective world. This had profound consequences on our civilization. It's not sufficient to fixate on things like the religion or the politics. Those may or may not have been legitimate issues we should have addressed, but the motivating force and the guiding ideologies driven by that force has always been counter-civilizational in our case. It's not the Reformation itself, or the Enlightenment itself that was the problem but the underlying ideologies and motivations to dismantle our civilization rather than actually reform or progress it.

So would it be fair to say from your point of view that the root motivation of this counter-civilization is basically selfishness and nihilism essentially?

I really don't know that there exists some unifying intellectual reason behind all of this, and I doubt there does exist something like that to be honest.

In a biblical perspective, this is just our propensity towards degeneracy that results from our fallen state. If I look at it scientifically, I suspect there are genetic causes for it; i.e. dense urbanization results in certain kinds of alleles resulting in specific genetic behaviors that confer sociability and the ability to coexist with so many different kinds of people to be selected, but those genetic behaviors have a negative side as well, which is what we have seen happen in urban settings throughout recorded history from time-to-time. But in the end, civilization is a balancing act between reason and our animal nature. We have seen a decided push away from reason in this period. If the Enlightenment were a product, they'd advertise it as uber-reason, but once you opened it up, it's dripping with pathos and the animalistic drive to pursue licentiousness. When we place the individual above everything, we are effectively saying that civilization is a problem for the individual, and the consequences of that shift are playing out today.