I've never understood how the Religious Right manages it. How can followers of the "Prince of Peace" support the cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians in a war of naked aggression? Did Christ not say "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God"? Did Christ not say "...turn the other cheek"? And of the merciful, did he not say that they, in turn, obtain mercy? Is the Bible not true? If not, then why do these people insist upon being seen going to church? What is gained by maintaining frauds and pretenses?How can "Christians" insist upon believing lies when their Savior was said to have told Pontius Pilate: "I am the truth"? With his statement to Pilate, Christ implied that truth itself was the source of all that is good and absent in all that is bad. You don't have to be a Christian to believe that. Jacob Bronowski whose critique of the "logical positivist" position in his Science and Human Values pointed out an underlying, unproved social injunction implied in A. J. Ayer's analytical methods. That implied imperative is:
Ironically, Bronouski's critique may have saved logical positivism from its own inflexible consistency, placing its edifice not upon an unassailable axiom but rather upon an affirmation of values which will not admit of proof. What true and lasting ethic could not be based upon the pure pursuit of truth?
I would like to create a database of the various, multitudinous right wing/GOP myths, propaganda, claptrap and urban legends cooked up by the right wing, disseminated by a dutiful mainstream media, swallowed eagerly by a flock of faithful who never question it. But, that's more work than I am willing to spend with an entire class of deluded losers. But —the denial of global climate change is among the more pernicious and immediately harmful right wing lies.
George Orwell's 1984 predicted a totalitarian society in which lies were truth and war was peace:Hawking: Global warming to make Earth like Venus
By ASSOCIATED PRESS, BEIJINGStephen Hawking provoked a group of Chinese students on Wednesday saying he was "very worried about global warming." He said he was afraid that Earth "might end up like Venus, at 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulfuric acid."The comment is a pointed one for China, which is the second largest emitter of the greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming, after the United States. ...
When the right wing is confronted by truth, it tries to shut up the source of it. Lately, Thom Friedman has taken a different tack. He discounts the very concept of "truth" itself. What does being right have to do with anything? he asked recently.When “Lies are Truth” “War is Peace”
Well, for one thing: being right has survival value. Those who disagree will not refute that proposition; they will merely label it: Darwinism!
Even so, we will never know what claptrap might have been believed by Cro Magnons. They're all dead. The right wing only recognizes "survival value" in the exercise of raw power just as the US has tried to silence its critics abroad:
Listen up, MSM: There was NO "Bush Bounce".Ron Suskind: US deliberately bombed Al-Jazeera
Ron Suskind appeared on "The Situation Room" today to talk about his new book "One Percent Solution," and said that the US took out Al-Jazeera office in Kabul purposefully.Ron talked about Cheney's almost "Presidential-Vice Presidency" and claimed that the CIA determined the Bin Laden tape released the weekend before the '04 election helped Bush and that Osama wanted him re-elected. ...
But Thom Friedman asks: "What does being right have to do with it?" Clearly —a question that only a loser would ask. [Haloscan]Eric Boehlert: The Press Plays Dumb About the Bush Bounce
Eric Boehlert Tue Jun 20, 12:24 PM ETThe mainstream media's incessant, excited chatter about a looming Bush Bounce represented just the latest embarrassment in an endless parade of journalism missteps during the Bush years. The depressing puppet show--senior White House aides announce things are great, conservative 'news' outlets echo the spin and then MSM journalists gamely play along--has become annoying, tiresome and transparent. Yet the MSM won't stop embarrassing themselves....
Friedman is a Dodo to wit:
"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."Friedman is not only often wrong, he's repetitive. Perhaps, he thinks that if he repeats a spin often enough, then one day it will be true. Keep on doing whatever it is that's making you sick. Search for your lost keys under the street lamp; light is better there. Beat your head against a wall; one day, when you're dead, the headache will stop.—(New York Times, 11/30/03)
"What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war."
—(CBS's Face the Nation, 10/3/04)
"I think we're in the end game now…. I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that's my own feeling— let alone the presidential one."
—(NBC's Meet the Press, 9/25/05)
"The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it—and the next six months will tell us a lot. I remain guardedly hopeful."
—(New York Times, 12/21/05)
"I think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We've got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution."
—(CBS, 1/31/06)
"I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq."
—(NBC's Today, 3/2/06)
"Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out."
—(MSNBC's Hardball, 5/11/06)
Additional resources:
- When “Lies are Truth” “War is Peace”
- War Crimes and World Domination
- Bolder rhetoric from the European camp
- PBS' Frontline looks at Darth Cheney and his role in the war on terror
- Salon.com Exclusive: AT&T may be hiding a second NSA spy facility
Iraq
Right Wing Lies
Democrats
27 comments:
Len --
I've always known that, when someone gets around to writing a novel to parallel Lederer & Burdick's "Ugly American" -- this one about American incompetence, arrogance, and corruption in the Middle East -- Thom Friedman would be the model for the iconic American journalist pounding out the shallow, ignorant, off-the-mark propaganda for American govt.
Pre-Vietnam war quagmire paralleled with pre-Gulf-II quagmire. Whadda opportunity for a rich blend of fact and fiction cum the 1958 original.
But I hadn't noticed Friedman's re-pounding of the 6-month gibberish across the years.
Nice catch.
As a philosophical empiricist, I have always had an interest in the original Gnostic brand of Christianity held by Jesus' disciples and their followers before being replaced by the Pauline doctrine favoured by the Roman Empire. In the suppressed Gospel of Thomas, we find the following;
"Jesus said:
Know what is in front of your face,
and what is hidden will be revealed to you;
for there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."
With this statement, Christ not only implied that truth itself was the source of all that is good and absent in all that is bad. He stated it boldly. The early Gnostic Christians actually worshipped truth itself, and insisted that the truth rest on the observation of the physical world, literally 'what is in front of your face.' This led to an insistence that truth versus falseness needed to determined before one could even begin to discuss good versus evil. I consider this particular ordering of priorities to be the beginning of wisdom.
Millenia of history show us that religious fanatics following the opposite doctrine have deluded themselves into the belief that they knew a priori what was good vs. evil, and launched disastrously brutal wars to fight the perceived evil of their neighbours. The current regime in Washington are such a group, warring both internationally and domestically against those they see as different from themselves.
(For a demonstration that St. Paul was in diametric opposition to the Gnostic point of view, read II Corinthians, ch. 4, v. 18. As to his opposition to the Gnostic movement, read the epistle to the Galatians.)
daniel, I am pretty tired of a long day with two kids in NO summer camp..refresh my memory please and tell me what empiricism is again?
Ohter than that, I should come back to re-read 'ya'lls' comments (wow, three years in texas and I start talkin' like one, ha), since it's pretty intense and I am waay too tired..glad to see some very intelligent discussions going on though..beats potty training!
Ingrid
daniel, you wrote:
As a philosophical empiricist, I have always had an interest in the original Gnostic brand of Christianity held by Jesus' disciples and their followers before being replaced by the Pauline doctrine favoured by the Roman Empire.
I share that interest. In my remarks, I was trying to hold "Christians" to what is most surely taught in US churches, namely, the King James Version. Not only is the King James version a relatively recent vintage, there is no way to know how many "Gnostic" texts were suppressed or destroyed. For a period of some 600 years the Roman Catholic Church suppressed vernacular translations of "Scripture" and tried to keep them out of the hands of the "laity", the common folk. In 1229, the Council of Toulouse, banned publication of both Old and New Testaments in "...in the vulgar tongue." And, in 1546, The Council of Trent, required that "laity" be licensed in order to possess a bible. Those defying the order faced the inquisition.
In the suppressed Gospel of Thomas, we find the following;
"Jesus said:
Know what is in front of your face,
and what is hidden will be revealed to you;
for there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."
With this statement, Christ not only implied that truth itself was the source of all that is good and absent in all that is bad. He stated it boldly.
That's a significant point. Modern Christians have merely substituted one "authority" for another —the Vatican for the new Mega-Church, for example. Seems that there is nothing new in someone trying to set themselves up as an authority and most often for monetary gain. It was Pope Leo (the Medici Pope) who, having run out of money, restored the Vatican fortune by selling indulgences.
The early Gnostic Christians actually worshipped truth itself, and insisted that the truth rest on the observation of the physical world, literally 'what is in front of your face.'
It is not surprising that the Gospel of Thomas was suppressed. "Establishments" of religion are always threatened by empiricism, but need not be. Brounski, for example, leaves room for ethical choice while Sartre emphasizes the fact that humankind literally defines itself. My favorite Sartre quote —man is nothing but what he makes of himself —is very similar to Voltaire who told bullying aristocrats: "I have no name but the name that I have made for myself."
It is also significant that it was the Catholic Church which burnt Giordano Bruno and imprisoned Galileo for life. Galileo, especially, epitomizes "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden will be revealed to you..." Lately, it has been learned that Newton, likewise, found in truth itself an object of "worship", if you will. There is a mystical, alchemical side to Newton that while entirely compatible with empiricism still seeks that which is "hidden". His "fluxions" are still "mysterious" to many who have not studied calculus; many are still puzzled to learn that the moon is literally "falling around" the earth, that the trajectory of the moon around the earth is calculated in the same way that one calculates the path of a cannon ball. These are surely universal truths; as Klaatu told Professor Barnhart in "The Day the Earth Stood Still": "... it works well enough to get me from one planet to another." [See: Mathmatical Fiction; also The Man Who Changed the Universe]
This led to an insistence that truth versus falseness needed to determined before one could even begin to discuss good versus evil. I consider this particular ordering of priorities to be the beginning of wisdom.
Or to put a fine point on it, it is not so much the final determination but the pursuit which implies an ethic. That remark may put me at odds with Ayer, but that, after all was the crux of Bronouski's critique. He found an assumption in a "system" which eschewed all assumption. That's why I embrace both Ayer and Sartre. To me, they are the two sides of one coin.
Millenia of history show us that religious fanatics following the opposite doctrine have deluded themselves into the belief that they knew a priori what was good vs. evil, and launched disastrously brutal wars to fight the perceived evil of their neighbours.
Indeed! Fanaticism of any sort has everything in common with every other fanaticism. Wars are begun upon certitude and dogma. How convenient! Every atrocity is defended with an absurdity. In fact, Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
The current regime in Washington are such a group, warring both internationally and domestically against those they see as different from themselves.
At some point —global nuclear war or unchecked global warming —humankind will not survive the atrocity which follows inexorably from willfull ignorance, dogma, or the planned and coordinated lies that have characterized the Bush administration.
Thanks, Stephen. I just couldn't let Friedman get away with it. If you get a chance, click the Haloscan link (in the article); my retort with regard to Friedman came up on a generic google search. I felt somewhat vindicated LOL.
ingrid, "empircism" is the philosophical claim that all knowledge, or, in "logical positivism", that all meaningful discourse about the world is ultimately related to our sensory experiences, our direct observations. There were "empiricists" before him, of course, but John Locke is often credited with having makde of empircism a philosophical system in opposition to idealism, mysticism, etc. Most empircists, including Bertrand Russell, Ayer et al, recognize, however, that some mathmatical truths are known a priori. Even so —conclusions from axioms in a formal system, for example, cannot be said to be known in the same way that it can on be known from sense experience that "oranges are round".
It's quite a leap from "oranges" to the declaration that all Ontological arguments for the existence of God are, therefore, fallacious. But that is, indeed, one of the more important implications of empiricism. God cannot be defined into existence. Existence precedes essense.
daniel -- wOw -- Wisdom begins with the gnostic priority of truth vs. falsehood preceeding the analysis of good vs. evil? Bushco invaded Iraq because they see evil in Saddam? And then seeing evil morphs into war based on the enemy being different than Bushco, internationally and domestically?
Wooof. Those are some gigantic leaps. And you think that those leaps are, what?, truths become manifest through gnostic perception?
You're creeping me out, daniel.
Wisdom is not a function of gnostic theology. It does not have its beginning in Christ or any interpretaional gnosticism. Wisdom is a mental function. Its beginnings undoubtedly pre-date our species.
Bushco did not invade Iraq because they saw evil. They did not invade Iraq because they saw people different from themselves. The motives of empire and war profiteering are at root, and are much more complex than fighting evil or different-than.
Making war domestically? Not. They've simply curtailing as many rights as possible to open new opportunities for corporate profits and their own political power.
You're creeping me out, daniel. I've been a student of philosophy for for nearly four decades. Empiricism is not a badge you flash to justify unreasonable and illogical thinking. Empircism is primarily a laundry list of untenable denials pertaining to the sources of knowledge. Those denials back empiricism's practioneers into woefully unreasonable positions such as you are taking on Bushco's activities.
There's no mystical covering on truth, penetrated only by visionaries, esoterically washed in the ways of empiricism and gnosticism.
There is no bold statement in your quote of Christ, pertaining to truth as the source of all good and as being absent from all evil. His statement is about perception, not good and evil. Reading-in good and evil is simply an extended interpretation.
Truth and falsehood is not only in physical-world fact, to be observed in the physical world only. Intellectual honesty, e.g., knowing that I do not know and admitting it, at least to myself, is just one very important truth that has nothing to do with observed fact in the physical world.
I strongly suggest that you get back into the history of ideas and begin an extensive evaluation of empiricism's critics and their thinking. IMO, you are in need of vast amounts of remedial reading.
I am whelmed by the depth of the response to my comment, but hopefully not quite overwhelmed. I alluded to a passage of St. Paul's, which I shall now quote. IICor, 4,18: "We do not fix our gaze on what is seen, but what is unseen. What is seen is transitory: what is unseen lasts forever." If one compares this with the Thomasine quote from my first post, you can perhaps see why I prefer Jesus' words to Paul's. The latter approach leads into absurdity. Look how many Christians and adherants of other faiths have committed the most egregious crimes based on the certainty of eternal salvation in an unseen and unproven paradise. Fly this plane into this building and get 72 virgins, for example.
Stephen, you seem to have a well formed idea of what gnosticism is, and I'm afraid I do not share your model. I do not see gnosticism as 'theology', nor as 'mysticism' for instance. For that matter, I do not believe that a good historical case could be made for gnosticism originating in Jesus' time, and I see it as being A LOT earlier than that. Most literature about gnosticism comes from the Christian era, and was written by people who attacked gnosticism, not its adherents. A truly gnostic writing I could cite from the Nag Hammadi Library would be the work entitled Eugnostos the Blessed, which probably pre-dates Jesus by centuries. That piece on the surface appears to be a complicated polytheistic hagiography, but is in fact, IMO, an encoded textbook on the subject of geometry. Its objective was to teach the enlightened student how to divide a circle into 360 equal parts using only a compass and a straightedge. It was meant to be concealed knowledge, and required a key for interpretation of its true meaning. Here's the key: begin by drawing a circle. Inscribe the Star of David within the circle. If you get stuck, Euclid has some clues for you. It would be good to know about the relationship between the Golden Mean and the Pentagram. 360=2X2X2X3X3X5
I agree wholeheartedly that Bush invaded Iraq for economic reasons. You should go to Google video and view Robert Newman's The History of Oil, as I suggested in a previous post. But Bush's justification of his actions rests in the fear-mongering against the scary 'not us' that has always been history's boogeyman. That would certainly be the perception among his poorly-educated followers on the religious right.
I also agree with you that empiricism is not the be-all and end all of knowledge. Einstein did most of his work with pure theory and thought experiment, but Einstein surpassed most of us in mathematical talent. And I have long observed that intelligent people share the characteristic of being aware of the limitations of their own knowledge, and the ability to admit when they don't know something.
I stand by my statement that BushCo™ are at war domestically, against the rule of law, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and against the American middle class. I resent the accusation that I was flashing the badge of empiricism to justify unreasonable and illogical thinking. I don't know where you got that in my brief three paragraphs. You seem to have created a straw-man version of me, based on WAY too little information, just for the joy of being able to attack my misperceived position. I imagine you see yourself as the proponent of a certain type of intellectual rigor. Jumping to conclusions ill behooves such a person.
As to a course of remedial reading in the history of ideas, I think I'll take a pass. I read Hume, Kant, St. Anselm, Spinoza, and Sartre over 30 years ago. I found them to be pretentious, pedantic and prolix, not to mention turgid, soporific and irrelevant. I'm long past the point of contemplating any university philosophy courses, so if I sometimes wrongly equate rational empiricism with say, dialectic materialism, I can live with that.
Bushco did not invade Iraq because they saw evil.
We an only guess at what Bush really saw, Stephen. Bush, indeed, sold his entire "war on terrorism" to the nation as a war against evil. That was his over arching justification for invading Afghanistan and, later, Iraq —which he included in the "Axis of Evil". Now —whether or not Bush was correct or not is another issue.
They did not invade Iraq because they saw people different from themselves.
That might not have been a primary motive but it's a factor. Bushies are so ignorant as to believe Iraqis are of a different race. Even during Persian Gulf I, Iraqis were commonly referred to as "ragheads", "camel jockeys", just as in Viet Nam, not just the enemy but the civilian population were called "gooks". Even earlier —US troops in the Phillipines thought killing Filipinos more fun than killing "niggers" back home, presumably down south. It is either "racism" or "jingoism" but if you are the victim of it, what does it matter?
The motives of empire and war profiteering are at root, and are much more complex than fighting evil or different-than.
Indeed! But Bush's motives are most certainly hidden because they are heinous and perverted. Better to fool the public by telling them it's WMD, or terrorism, or that Saddam was a bad man. To attribute racism, perversion, and the obvious and blatant disregard of truth as evinced in recent statements to Bush and his gang is most certainly not unreasonable.
Making war domestically? Not. They've simply curtailing as many rights as possible to open new opportunities for corporate profits and their own political power.
If Bush can use the rhetoric of war to obscure his genuine motives and his real agenda, then why can't we use the rhetoric of war in defense of what's good and what's right? I feel as if the entire GOP had made war against me and I have felt that way since the ascension of Ronald Reagan; more so since his apotheosis.
Empiricism is primarily a laundry list of untenable denials pertaining to the sources of knowledge.
Empiricism is a simple recognition of a "real" world, or, more precisely, that the real world is capable of human perception; that we are able to make meaningful verifiable statements about that "real" world. It must be remembered that Descarte entertained serious doubts about a "real" world. He later resolved those doubts but his method was hardly "empirical". In fact, his name is given to his method. Earlier —Plato described a world of "ideals" and the word "Platonic" is still attached in everyday language to those things just beyond our grasp and understanding. But today, even if we should raise a logical doubt that human beings may accurately experience a "real" world, our sense experience seems accurate enough to get us out of bed and to work each day, just as Klaatu said that his equation was good enough to get him from planet to planet.
Those denials back empiricism's practicioners into woefully unreasonable positions such as you are taking on Bushco's activities.
I interpreted Daniel's remarks to mean that Bush deliberately lied! I would go further: Bushco has not only lied, the NEOCON/Cheney crowd around him have actually denied the value of truth itself. I give you Thom Friedman. Earlier, it was a Neocon, I believe, who said that "they" [the NEOCONS] literally "created reality". This is hardly empirical. There was a monarch who, likewise, believed such nonsense; he said "L'etat c'est moi!"
There's no mystical covering on truth, penetrated only by visionaries, esoterically washed in the ways of empiricism and gnosticism.
I rather think the point was that the Gnostics were rather less "mystical" than we've been led to believe. Logical positivism, for example, defines "truth" but does so in simple, non-mystical terms. If Gnostics merely advocated a pursuit of truth, there is no reason to believe that they had confined that pursuit to "revealed mystical truths". Rather, truth itself. There are, of course, logical problems with revealed knowledge, not the least of which is how are one's sources qualified, evaluated, confirmed. Alas, I trust my senses. If what I see as "blue" is not what you see as "blue", it doesn't matter since you and I will always react predictably. The proposition that what you see is not what I saw is unproveable and meaningless. However, I do not trust the voices that might speak to me in times of High Anxiety. (apologies to Mel Brooks).
There is no bold statement in your quote of Christ, pertaining to truth as the source of all good and as being absent from all evil.
I am the one who had made that statement with regard to "truth" itself. And that was, in fact, my point. Daniel, as I understood him, attributed that position also to the Gnostics. My position is that of Jacob Bronowski (Bronouski, if you prefer): We ought to behave in such a way that what is true can be verified to be so. Remember, that the upshot of modern empiricism was that all sentences containing the word "ought" had been completely unverifiable and, by Ayer's reckoning, meaningless. Ayer called it the "Verifiability Criterion of Meaning" [Language, Truth & Logic, A.J. Ayer]
Truth and falsehood is not only in physical-world fact, to be observed in the physical world only. Intellectual honesty, e.g., knowing that I do not know and admitting it, at least to myself, is just one very important truth that has nothing to do with observed fact in the physical world.
But "empirical" truth is precisely that; it is observed, verifiable meaningful fact fully expressable in language. Before Bronowski, statements containing the word "ought" were meaningless unless certain ethical judgements could be shown to have a pragmatic or survival value. I like to think that Bronowski saved logical positivism with his critique of it. That even logical positivism was found to have been based on an unproven assumption is as revelatory as Godel's incompleteness theorem; there are NO airtight systems. Just as Ayer's logical positivism was found to have been premised upon an unproven assumption, the "Universal Truth Machine" described by Godel was found not to be capable of issuing EVERY true theorem from the finite set of axioms. There would always be one true theorem utterly beyond the ability of the machine to deduce. Godel proved his theorem beyond any doubt. [See Godel, Escher & Bach; also: Infinity and the Mind, Rudy Rucker, MIT; Also: COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE, Alan Turing] And, the truth of it may one day save the human race from being enslaved by super intelligent machines.
Now, having written all that, Rudy Rucker, who knew Godel personally and who has written lucidly on the subjects of logic and infinity, offers the following sentence in support of the proposition that "truth" may never be fully defined. The sentence is: "This is sentence is not true". Let's call that sentence 'X'. If X is not true then X IS true, but if X is true, then X is NOT true. It's an infinite regress that reminds one that when Jesus was brought before Pilate and told Pilate that "I am the truth", Pilate asked Jesus "What is truth?" As I recall, Jesus had no answer, possibly because any answer he might have given would have led to the same logical difficulties.
Len, my apologies for having responded so expansively to Stephen while ignoring your comment, but I scarcely feel any need to explain myself to someone who 'gets me' so completely. Galileo may well be my greatest hero, for having defied authority in favour of his own sensory apparatus. And your mention of Locke reminds me of the intimate connection between a concrete worldview and true compassionate morality. He was of course one of the greatest proponents of freedom, and an inspiration for the American Revolution.
Conflate the St. Paul quote from my comment above with the following,
"Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell
The danger of fixing our gaze on what is unseen was obviously quite clear to Orwell.
I seem to have triggered you into channeling Goethe as well,
“There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"—humankind will not survive the atrocity which follows inexorably from willfull ignorance, dogma, or the planned and coordinated lies that have characterized the Bush administration." Taking into account the translation from German, I'd say the terminology is equivalent.
All in all, Len, this thread has been of the highest quality, and thoroughly enjoyable. As I composed this, I see you have added another comment, this time referencing Godel, Escher, Bach. I was going to mention that in MY reply to Stephen, but felt it would be a little heavy handed. I was thinking of his demonstration that there are NO airtight systems when I referred to his quest for intellectual rigor.
I'll dip once more into my quote bag to sign off, from another great proponent of freedom,
"Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils,
were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that
of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man." -- Thomas Paine, referring to King George
He could well have been referring to another worthless, brutish man named George.
Hey guys! Just a quick line for now (I will be back online later day. But for now —this thread has been awesome and an ego trip for this ol' Cowboy. Clearly —this blog gets the most intelligent and articulate comments. And then, again, I'm also humbled by it all. Keep it up, guys. "This time I know our side will win!"
daniel wrote --
Stephen, you seem to have a well formed idea of what gnosticism is, and I'm afraid I do not share your model
You have no clue as to the range of my thinking on gnosticism. You do, however, use the ad hominen very deftly.
The early Gnostic Christians actually worshipped truth itself, and insisted that the truth rest on the observation of the physical world, literally 'what is in front of your face.' This led to an insistence that truth versus falseness needed to determined before one could even begin to discuss good versus evil. I consider this particular ordering of priorities to be the beginning of wisdom.
It makes no difference to me, daniel, how you bounce the "particular ordering of priorities" from time slot to time slot. Gnosis is knowledge pursuit beginning BCE and Jewish gnostics pre-dated Christian gnostics. But when you specified that "early Gnostic Christians" are responsible for the particular ordering of priorities that is the beginning of wisdom, you sort of nail it down, don't you? Your myopic claim that wisdom begins with the philosophical notions of "early Christian Gnostics" sort of cuts you off from any earlier occurences of wisdom, doesn't it? Aristotle, Hammurabi's Code amalgamating many tribes' laws into a societial law -- no wisdom there, right? By your super-limiting definition, you cut wisdom out of anything before Christian gnosticism.
As I said, empiricism is primarily a laundry list of knowledge-source denials. By your denial of wisdom before Christian gnostics you deny way too many sources of knowledge in one fell swoop. And no amount of position sliding gets you off that hook.
Millenia of history show us that religious fanatics following the opposite doctrine have deluded themselves into the belief that they knew a priori what was good vs. evil, and launched disastrously brutal wars to fight the perceived evil of their neighbours. The current regime in Washington are such a group, warring both internationally and domestically against those they see as different from themselves.
You seem to me to be assigning Bushco the status of religious fanatics, and the causes of the Iraq invasion the fighting of evil held by different-than.
I don't give a damn how many lies were told by Bushco about Saddam's evil, or how many times Bush himself shrieked "CRUSADE". Anyone who aligns the Iraq invasion with Bushco lies and propaganda that evil and different-than needed to be warred against in Iraq is being nonsensical.
I agree wholeheartedly that Bush invaded Iraq for economic reasons. ... But Bush's justification of his actions rests in the fear-mongering against the scary 'not us' that has always been history's boogeyman. That would certainly be the perception among his poorly-educated followers on the religious right.
You insult my intelligence when you slide your positions around to win the argument. Your agreement that Bush's war rests on economic propellers is no part of your earlier assertions that it rests on fighting the evil of different-than.
Who gives a damn about Bush's justification for anything? His justifications have been nothing but lies. Who gives a damn about the perceptions of his "poorly-educated followers on the religious right"? Their perceptions deny the same truth, daniel, that you make the be-all and end-all of knowlegde and wisdom. And they might very well force a bloody civil war onto us.
A mutural-admiration society and a counter-argument thinker go into a bar....
Stephen, I don't recall slipping a burr under your saddle, so what's going on here? This morning I composed a blog entry regarding last night's discussion, where I actually THANKED you for your participation in the liveliest discussion I've taken part in in some time. Then I went to your blog to try to get a sense of you, and I was very impressed by your position and your efforts to pull your country out of the hellhole BushCo™ are trying to pull it into. I left a long comment praising you, APOLOGIZING for having 'creeped you out', and being generally reconciliatory. Then I come back here to see your latest diatribe, not against me, but against the misperception of my position you've constructed for the sole position of attacking said position. And whether you believe it or not, I am not trying to win an argument with you, nor am I sliding my position around to do so.
Truth be told, it took me several years to reach the position I have on the gnostic movement, because as I said before most of the information one finds in books on the subject is claptrap, and deliberately designed to misinform. I have approached the subject independently, and as a lone wolf. Many of my ideas are therefore unique and radical, but none have been made up of whole cloth. I don't doubt that it would take several weeks, if not months, of exchanges like this before you began to know what my beliefs are. You are certainly not going to find out anything by constantly attacking me. While I appreciate a lively discussion, I will quickly stop responding to arguments you make up against an artificial position you think I hold.
Wow! Who would have thought that my college philosophy and art classes would come in handy today! I want to say that I was very fortunate that I was a one year art major before I took my gen ed philosophy class, and I learned more about life and philosophy through art than from some professor spouting about the ideals of Kant and Rand.
I admit that when I first heard the prof mention Ayn Rand, I thought Ayn was a woman. I even imagined Rand in a dignified 1920s styled no-frills dress with an A-line skirt and jacket, and her hair in a bun, like Susan B. Anthony.
As Len mentioned, the blue I see may not be the blue you see. As I learned in 2-D concepts, everything affects everything else, from the shadows they cast, to the colors that reflect and change the way we see colors on another object. And from drawing classes and art history, the artist's perspective, both visually and mentally, greatly influences his view and ultimately his final art piece.
Let's take, for example, the works of Monet and Munch. Monet's Water Lily Pond, 1889, lies in direct contrast to Munch's The Scream, 1893. Both are popular impressionist works done about the same time, and both feature some great interpretations of landscape with a water feature. However, their impression of the truth right in front of their faces are completely different. Even if Monet and Munch were to paint the same landscape in the same location, and even the same time of day with the same weather conditions, each would have a completely different painting. There is truth in each painting, tempered with each painter's mental ability to interpret what they see.
I think Stephen Colbert's word "truthiness" fits our society well. We don't have solid truths, in as much as we have our perceptions of truth. A "truthiness" in a way.
Truth seems to either be clouded or cleared by our senses. Wisdom can sometimes be best discerned when our senses are heighted, and we are aware sensually of what's in front of our faces. It is the examination of those senses that help us see truth (okay, now I'm remembering Earth Science class): see the rock (note colors, striations), touch the rock (textures, does it crumble?), hear the rock (is it solid or hollow?), smell the rock (is it pungent?), and taste the rock (does it taste salty?). All the senses help to determine the truth (the essence) of the rock (existence of that mineral).
Then, there are some that have impaired senses who cannot, on their own, figure out anything because they are sensually challenged. I'm thinking that this might be an issue for some in BushCo. Lack of senses.
Even mathematics and algebra, communication and writing, and even computer programming, helps us to logically think about and assemble our views in a coherent manner to decipher and understand truth. Remember all those theorems, if, then statements, and x=whatever number?
Thanks for reminding me, Len, on all those fun college classes. Now, I don't feel so bad about that framed piece of paper on my office wall, they call a degree, being so expensive.
Ok, I just Wikipedia'd Ayn Rand, she was a woman! ROFLMAO!! My philosophy prof always referred to Ayn with male pronouns (like "he, him"). The prof referred to every philosopher as "him," anyway.
Ayn looked pretty close to how I imagined her to be, except no hair in a bun.
It was Ayn Rand's view of altruism that I particularly remember from that class. I could relate to that, as a Christian I have learned that the more we honestly give of ourselves to help others, the return, even if not immediate, is enormous.
“There is truth in each painting, tempered with each painter's mental ability to interpret what they see.”
Jen nailed it on the head. “Truth” is a word I learn to hate with a passion lately.
Have anyone tried to replace the word “truth” with “cosmography” ?
Try it at home: it works like magic.
And to cut in between the raging debate between Daniel and Stephen about truth and Gnosticism, what about Stonehenge? Does this amazing piece of human work and intelligence, according to the technological level of the Neolithic, implies that the human spirit already expressed, yet 3000 years before the Greeks, the acknowledgment and amazement about its surrounding world (or what you guys persevere to call “truth”), by wanting to measure it, or (yet already) tame it?
The folks who call their own cosmography, “the Truth”, betray only their inability to grasp their respective illusion of control. When one is in full control of his or her life, that one is usually not subjected to force on others the same interpretation of the world as they have. See, since one exists only by being acknowledged, strangely, for those who lack self-confidence, the need to get other folks to embrace their view of the world gives the first ones confidence that they belong with those other folks.
This is a strange phenomenon indeed: If A convinces B that the world runs according to A, A feels now accepted by the world of B; thus A feels less alone in the world, boosting gene satisfaction, intellectual acknowledgment and immune system.
Conscience, cosmography and truth: these are three words to define the very same concept in order to describe a living form that is awake, that feels and furthermore, that knows quite well its place between the chain of food, or more simply, its address within the bio-sphere. Even plants have a superb grasp of their surrounding and an amazing control over their environment that goes well beyond the illusion: don’t plants adapt their sexual organs according to the particular species roaming around; like, for instance, this famous giant flower from that remote pacific Island that chose to stink like manures because flies are the only bugs around?
Take the dolphins with their elaborate language. Oceanographers have even discovered recently that they call each other by name. And their family structure can school any religious conservatives. Meanwhile, ants have such an elaborated hierarchic system that scientists have discovered accountants and book-keepers within their colonies. When soldiers ants bring goods for the queen, these special secretaries stand at the fork of a tunnel and decide in which direction these goods are going to be stored according to –yep- their values! Some of these goods will be shared with common ants. Others are just for the eyes and belly of the queen only. Just like in the human world, right?
Science is amazing in discovering other “truth” and showing other ways to see the world, that religions, and most especially philosophical ideas based on a religious views of the world will never grasp, because of all religions’ axiom based on the singularity of the human being, and the notion of its “unique place” in the universe.
The illusion of control, “the syndrome of the belly-button”, as I chose to call it, our prejudices and intolerance, and indeed, the ultra-partisanship regarding our views of the world is a staunch remainder that Earth is not ready to inoculate the universe with this strange dysfunctional seed of hers; she is not ready to put all her eggs into the hand of a species with such baggage.
Very interesting comments here, guys. I was just going to mention that I blogrolled this thread.
"The truth is out there."
Maybe that famous line from the old X-Files television series is more than just about the possibility of aliens. And maybe that statement is the truth about truth.
The truth is OUT THERE. It doesn't lie solely in one's own mind, but it is a search. An outward search, or quest to find that elusive truth.
Life is a journey and a quest for courageous and valiant truth-knights like us, who seek the light of truth out of the darkness of lies. It will be a never-ending quest, and the truth will always be shaped by our individual perspective of the truth.
This is the true mystery of faith and hope in our lives.
"the truth about truth"
A classic title for a non-fiction book!
The "truth about truth" is an intriguing phrase. Some random observations: it does not follow that because "truth" cannot be defined that "truth" does not exist. Secondly, "truth" about "truth" implies that truth exists. I would deny that meaningful, verifiable statements can made about things that do no exist. For a start, "non-existent" things can be defined any way you want. It cannot even be said —meaningfully —that a non existent thing does or does not exist. The statement "truth does not exist", therefore is neither true nor false, but, rather nonsense.
Even Godel's "incompleteness" theorem does not discount "truth", as a concept. It merely proves that no finite set of axioms can generate every true theorem. I would be interested in seeing a proof that an "infinite" set of axioms could generate every derivable theorem.
Georg Cantor's contribution to mathmatics was his heirarchy of infinities. If an "infinite set" of axioms is conceivable, where would it ranked among infinities of different "ranks" and how could it be demonstrated within a finite lifetime that such a infinite set could generate every conceivable theorem? It's a mystery.
I've read Godel's original proof. I won't go into it here save to say that it is valid. "Truth about truth" also implies an infinite regress. An example: "This sentence is not true" implies a statement about the sentence: "'This sentence is not true' is not true" —and that, in turn, implies another: ["'This sentence is not true' is not true" is not true] etc etc ad infinitum.
There is a valid way out of the infinite regress that even Rucker and Godel may have overlooked. I may have to start a new blog.
Thanks to "The Boy" for blogrolling us. There is a link to Good Nonsense on the Cowboy's blogroll. I recommend it and am please to have "Good nonsense" represented in the nav bar.
I ask nasty questions of the right wing:
Jesus said to love our enemies, did he not?
(answer is usually yes)
So, I have a question: How can we love our enemies when we're shooting at them?
I haven't found anyone yet able to answer that question meaningfully.
anonymous, good point.
As so many have failed to learn, the US lost the war against "evil" by ceasing to be "good".
Jen nailed it on the head. “Truth” is a word I learn to hate with a passion lately. -dante lee
Jen, don't let dante convince you that you've 'nailed it.' Interpretive art is interpretive art. Objective truth is objective truth. And never the twain shall meet. I will continue in the belief that some ideas can be proven by reference to verifiable facts regardless of the nebulous critiques of Stephen and his ilk. While parallax has the effect of causing two observers to have different perceptions of the same object, this doesn't alter the fact that the object is after all the same. Indeed, with a knowledge of geometry one can use the differences in the observers frame of reference to triangulate, thus fixing the object's position in space.
"I think Stephen Colbert's word "truthiness" fits our society well. We don't have solid truths, in as much as we have our perceptions of truth. A "truthiness" in a way."
This kind of thinking enables Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, et al. Remember that Colbert's 'truthiness' is from the heart of a satire. I thought it was hilarious that Colbert was invited to the White House because the neocons didn't understand that he was being satirical. Don't succumb to the same error. When Tony Snow says that 2,500 dead soldiers is just a number, do you really believe that his saying it makes it so?
A nation is in serious trouble when evolution is considered to be 'merely' a theory, and the Resurrection of Christ an incontrovertable fact. It amazes me that a country can put a man on the moon in the same century that one of its states (I think it was Kansas) outrageously voted to make the value of pi equal to 3.00 as a matter of convenience.
Stephen, I would submit that particular outrage underlines the limitations of your pet issue, Direct Democracy. Your Constitution and Bill of Rights were specifically written in such a way as to prevent a tyranny of the majority. The emancipation of the slaves and women's sufferage could not have been achieved by direct democracy.
Frankly, Stephen it pissed me off when I visited your blog earlier today to see if you had responded to the comment I left there, only to see that you had deleted it. From the beginning of your response to my first posting you have been making clumsy swipes at me, while leaving the impression of some haughty superiority and condescension. And you have the stones to accuse me of making ad hominem attacks? I have been studiously avoiding your impolite polemical style to this point. I'm beginning to wonder why. Your pomposity precludes any real dialogue.
Len, it is a balm to come back to the world of the clearheaded. My only exposure to the ideas of Godel were from Hofstader's Pulitzer-winning Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid which I read over a quarter of a century ago. I do recall that he had to invent a system of notation just to make his point. It was mostly over my head, but I was intrigued by one thing that stuck with me. That was this:
Given that a set of postulates exists that are unproven, mathematical techniques also exist that can divide this set into subsets such that;
One subset can be shown, though unproven, to be provable.
Another subset can be shown to be unprovable.
A third subset can be shown to be indeterminate as to provability.
That's not apropos of anything, just that I found it to be intriguing enough that it stuck with me. (:p
POSITIVISM
Positivism, a philosophy propounded by Comte and others is apparently Centrist, pretending to be objective, non-partisan, value-free and above class interests. In fact, it tries to preserve the status quo by protecting the ruling class and metaphysically denying the evolution of history. (There can only be isolated changes while the system remains intact.) Positivists believe that there are certain natural laws that cannot be discovered by science. This thinking establishes limits to human knowledge. Speculation, scientific abstraction, and theories of knowledge are considered unnecessary "frills". American high schools do not teach philosophy or politics, and tolerate music only because the band brings in money at the football games.
There may be no visual metaphor for phenomena that can be explained by mathematical equation, but to a positivist the objective world exists only insofar as humans can experience it directly. Positivists are unable to grasp the interrelatedness of all things, but remain mired in mechanics, compartmentalizing and isolating phenomena.
Positivists deny chaos or class antagonisms. Social life must be balanced, and there is harmony between classes. Positivists focus on the individual, and not on class interest (which they call national interest), as the perpetrator of conflict. To a positivist, the problem is with one's attitude. Hostile individuals must be rehabilitated through conflict resolution, feel-good values clarification, "saying no to drugs", improving their self-esteem, talk show psychobabble, the Hollywood happy ending, and not through analyzing their role in a society that has an economic, political and ideological agenda. Other examples of positivism are betrayed by inspirational sayings to be used in business offices; to wit, "There comes a moment when you begin to realize that virtually anything is possible,""Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by. "To tend, unfailingly, unflinchingly, toward a goal, is the secret of success." "I believe I can fly." Another example is the unfailingly cheerful Disney iconography.
To a positivist, the world is made up of ideas which can only be expressed through language. Conflict is due only to misunderstanding and the improper use of language. By talking things out (politely), positivists think that antagonisms can be resolved and material causes can be obscured (by bringing up every possible irrelevancy) or ignored (by maintaining total silence regarding unpleasant truths). U.S. Americans, for example refuse to even mention the word "class". When talk fails, as it must, positivists in power start blaming the individual (I made it, why can't you?) (You'll succeed if you want to badly enough), punishing him, putting him in jail, and even killing him, thus exposing the essence of a philosophy that at first glance appears to be a rosy, optimistic one.
Historically, positivism has been used as a pseudo-science that tried to analyze and classify every aspect of society and the individual supposedly scientifically, but in reality was simply an apologia for religious ideas clothed in modern garb. Positivism is an ideological strategy that tries to show the inferiority of marginalized groups in order to justify further their oppression.
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Footnote: Barbara Held has had just about enough of accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative. She does not want to cheer up, look on the bright side or let a smile be her umbrella. And she is not planning to put a smiley face sticker on her car bumper any time soon. In fact, Dr. Held views such activities as rather worrisome. She is one of a band of psychologists who believe their profession -- and indeed America as a whole -- has succumbed to an ethos of unrelenting positivity. This "tyranny of the positive attitude," as Dr. Held sees it, prescribes cheerfulness and optimism as a formula for success, resilience and good health, and equates negativity with failure, vulnerability and general unhealthiness. Positive thinking is a staple of self-help books, popular music and Sunday sermons. And in recent years, it has also found a home in the positive psychology movement, which was founded to correct what its leaders, including Dr. Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a former president of the American Psychological Association, saw as the field's overly narrow focus on mental illness and human failing. But Dr. Held and like-minded colleagues, who gathered last week at the psychological association's annual meetings in Washington for a symposium titled "The (Overlooked) Virtues of Negativity," feel that bliss can be taken too far. While positive thinking has its advantages, they argue, a little whining now and then is not such a bad thing. Pessimism, in some circumstances, may have its place. And the unrelieved pressure to be upbeat, they assert, may gloss over individual needs and differences, and may make some people feel worse instead of better. "I'm worried that we're not making space for people to feel bad," said Dr. Held, a clinical psychologist at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me., and the author of "Stop Smiling Start Kvetching." "Life is very hard," Dr. Held said. "If you're having a hard time with something, it can make it harder to cope if you feel pressure to act O.K. when you're not."
Daniel, not to be a fly in the ointment, but Direct Democracy works very well in Switzerland, and has not devolved into a tyrrany of the majority at all, seeing that the country is not divided into two conflicting parties and that the several parties in government will form alliances and coalitions on issues and not on people. Its Constitution is also a model of the kind. The result is quite remarkable - I know, I live there.
There may be no visual metaphor for phenomena that can be explained by mathematical equation, but to a positivist the objective world exists only insofar as humans can experience it directly.
That may or may not have been a "fair and balanced" statement about "positivism" at one time. But "positivism" does not begin and end with Comte. Check my links and references or google "Ayer", "logical positvism", "Wittgenstein".
At some point, mathmatical concepts may not admit of any kind of proof, hence the "positivist" criticism of "string theory". But, for all we know, "strings" —which may not be seen or even fully imagined —may be proven tomorrow by a new Newton or a new Einstein. Truth is where you find it.
Vierotchka, I support the ideals of DD and, having visited Switzerland, I applaud that nurturing home to Jean-Jacque Rousseau. But having survived Bush thus far, I support the practicality of an enforceable "Bill of Rights" —even to the extent of prescribing criminal penalties for politicians, like Bush, who have literally thumbed their noses at freedom of speech, privacy, and the right of peaceful assembly.
Vierotchka: My nuanced opinion on DD is more ambivalent than my brief mention of it makes apparent. The idealist in me is for it, providing a well-educated and well-informed electorate. I suspect that Switzerland may be ahead of the US and Canada in that regard. I even advocated for some time the idea of a legislative body (the House of Commons in Canada, roughly equivalent to the US congress) that would be determined by LOTTERY from all eligible voters. But my pragmatic side recognizes that government, whether it be direct or representative should have some enduring limitations, ie. a constitution.
Antonio, I am so glad I have not identified myself in any way with positivism, it sounds horrid. Your definition does not mesh with what I found when I wiki-ed the term, the latter being to my mind very much like empiricism, which I do identify with. I suspect American high schools do a poor job of teaching for the same reason that psychiatric hospitals fill their patients with hypnotics. It makes it easier for the staff to push them around. Making a statement like that last one tells me I'm having an extra-cynical day.
BTW: in previous post, I meant suffrage, not sufferage. Don't go jumping on me for wanting women to suffer. It was just a typo.
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