Cultural and Political Turmoil

How is it that the United States and the West have come to embrace so many views which would have been recognized by our ancestors as – individually and culturally- immoral, evil and suicidal?

Once upon a time – the Church was the agency from whence the culture garnered direction for organization; the Church produced both the worldview Christendom (i.e., a rational worldview whereby God Created and intelligently organized existence; conferring upon Man the capacity to understand God’s Creation) and the University; the University organically promulgated Christendom from the University’s inception through the mid-19^th Century. The University taught society’s agents-of-organization i.e., Kings, Clergy, Merchants, Law-makers, Jurists, as well as other sundry Academics and these educated – to include the Church – established the means and norms by which lives were organized… The University was a product of worldview of Christendom, and was – at one time – one of Christendom’s chief proponents in promulgating that view.

The Founding Fathers in drafting the Constitution of the United States of America presupposed an objective reality (to which an objective morality attends) a.k.a. Christendom, the still dominant University worldview – in 1789, the year the Constitution was ratified – although Kant’s 1^st Critique – the Critiques of Pure Reason – had been published, in 1781. Kant’s Critique did to Christendom – more or less – what Nietzsche claims to have done to Plato’s ordering of the “just-man’s” soul (‘I stand Plato on his head!’); Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” reversed the human consciousness’s dependence upon objective reality, making reality a contingency of subjective thought.

As the Kantian critiques was gradually – to varying degrees – assimilated and synthesized by University, its educators and students – objective reality and God were reduced to agnostic principles. Kant – a Presbyterian – happily understood and anticipated this (Note: what really drove the Protestant Revolution was the desire for the religious to separate Bible from what was viewed by the reformers as pagan Philosophy); Kant – like Luther – wanted things religious reduced to faith alone (Note: Problem: faith – separated from reason – tends toward irrationally; witness Islam). Eventually, by gradual intellectual synthesis, the University became an Institute of Ideology – rather than being the Citadel, promulgator and disseminator or universal truths. In a fashion, Kant’s Copernican Revolution was a repeal of the American Revolution, since – as previously mentioned – the Founder’s and the Founding documents of the USA take an intelligently ordered objective existence, and God for granted. By logical implication – from Kant’s epistemology, to which Kant reduces metaphysics, the natural law is rendered absurd; Kant posits the “Categorical Imperative” in (1785) his Foundations for the Metaphysics of Morals as a substitute.

Note: we will not – here – discuss the inherent problems with Kant’s 1^st Critique, but only provide this truncated double-ended (we left out Kant’s intellectual predecessors and intellectual progeny) quasi-historical/intellectual sketch so readers may grasp the insidious intellectual shifting-sand upon which modernity is constructed, and why it is accelerating towards collapse. Note further that an intellectual misstep is akin to misreading a map; if one confidently follows a map – having begun by thinking one’s position is other than what it actually is – one confidently ( and unconsciously) exacerbates ones condition of “being lost” with each additional step.

Now as we argue that the modern University is an Institution-of-Ideology we further note that: Ideology is systematized egoism; egoism – by definition – is what true selfishness is about, viz: “holding as true and good that which affirms self, and rejecting as evil that which is contrary to what one desires to be so.” Thus, the ideologue is at root irrational and thus prone to exemplify Nietzsche’s übermensch who is the antithesis of Plato’s “just-man” (Note: the soul of Plato’s man-of-justice is ordered essentially like that of Jesus Christ…); thus, the ideologue is fundamentally antichrist and possessed of the desire to be the Law-Giver i.e., God. For the ideologue God does not order reality, humans do. Thus, the University is churning out – and has been churning out for generations – soldiers-of-the-antichrist i.e., irrational ideological zealots (soldiers-of-the-irrational). Note that some people are much more susceptible to being seduced into the University worldview than others, but we all imbibe and are influenced – to varying degrees – the toxic ideas which are fomented therein. Many corollaries follow denying objective-reality, a non-exhaustive listing includes:

• Many University grads are – to the degree they imbibe the dominant University weltanschauung – rather schizophrenic…
• One may unquestionably accept, and fully embrace, the dominant University worldview without ever having attended the University; it has become ubiquitous – via technological/informational integration & social institutions.
• Acceptance and embrace that worldview is to become an ideologue; the ideologue is a believer; he/she enlists as a ‘soldier-of-irrationality.’
• The ideologue is necessarily unconscious that their view of the world is contradiction with reality, as it is, thus their view is rather insane.
• The only University discipline left unscathed (regarding objectivity) by the University’s inverted worldview is Mathematics; all others – particularly the social-science disciplines – are subject to ideological subversion. Aside: the Social-Sciences are principally inimical to human-relations and society!!!!
• The ideologue is a misologist i.e., they have an inveterate hatred of rational argument, thus it is nearly impossible to dissuade them from their belief that 2 + 2 ≠ 4. Attempts to demonstrate the obvious may result in their violence…
• Churches and clergy are not immune to siren’s song of the ideology and the ideologue; witness Pope Francis who seems willing to subordinate (conform) the teachings of the Lord and the Church to the world… As a Roman Catholic, this strikes me as apocalyptic…
• All Institutions dependent upon the University (where professionals are trained) – as they assimilate the University’s worldview, proliferate that view throughout society thereby making otherwise potentially rational beings into enemies of the U. S. Constitution, the rule-of-law, dispassionate reason, mankind, the law of Nature and Nature’s God.

 

As noted, the list of implications is non-exhaustive – many more follow logically! One major step which could go far in overcoming the monopoly the University possesses on worldview would be realized through the repeal of the 17^th Amendment, but that’s another – albeit related – subject addressed in a previous post…