In America, we are plagued by cognitive dissonance or “the discomfort a person feels when their behavior does not align with their values or beliefs. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a person holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time.” Now, in the 21st century the cracks of this break in cognition have yielded destructive results. Postmodernism “is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism towards elements of the Enlightenment worldview. It questions the "grand narratives" of modernity, rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power. Postmodernism embraces self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism. It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization. We will get into the ironic attack on the Enlightenment later in the article.
Its quite common for a persons value to be determined by what accidental characteristic they possess e.g., skin color, sex, genealogy etc. characteristics a person is born with and do not control. The problems and questions of law of identity and the law of non-contradiction have been a debate in philosophy since the Pre Socratics. Aristotle stated: “When A belongs to the whole of B and to C and is affirmed of nothing else, and B also belongs to all C, it is necessary that A and B should be convertible.” In layman’s terms: I’m a white man, the fact that I’m white does not negate the fact that I’m a man and the fact that I’m a man does not negate the fact that I’m white, these characteristics are harmonious with being.
But does a characteristic of a person have a higher value than another characteristic? Is the fact that I’m white more important or “better” than being a man? The objective answer is no, there is no epistemic justification or legitimate argumentation that could be given as to why one aspect or accidental characteristic is more valuable than another. A run of the mill liberal ideologue may say something to the effect of “inherent racism”, “white priveledge” or “social conditions” but they aren’t answering the question and they are trained by their college professors not to. Why in their worldview are certain characteristics, or anything for that matter more valuable or better than something else? How can people with these post modern and liberal worldviews justify their claims?
This topic has been supposedly examined on various Right Wing or “Conservative” media platforms. e.g. DailyWire, PragerU, Blaze etc. (Auron MacIntyre is a notable exception to the below) have made large sums of money and gained large audiences by producing content directed at making fun of the low hanging fruit that liberalism as a whole has produced. These “conservative” rackets have a nice little grift going by being slightly edgier than dying FoxNews, look up Overton Window if you don’t catch my drift. While tiny hat boy Zionist Ben Shapiro is right in his criticism of the idiotic purple haired lesbian dance theory major, he and his cohorts never touch on the heart of the matter: Where did this come from? How did this happen? If you’re a consumer of their content you may say “of course they do!” But sorry, hanging this on second wave 60’s woman’s liberation/feminism or “muh commie college professors” is not going to cut it because those are byproducts of the root problem.
So where do we begin? In the most unlikely of places, remember earlier I pointed out the irony of Post Modernism attacking the Enlightenment worldview. William of Ockham (1297-1347) was an English Franciscan Friar and considered one of the prominent Medieval Scholastics. Ockham is considered the originator of modern epistemology “justification for how you know what you know”, he is also credited with formalizing the theory of Nominalism, “a view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels.” To simplify, Nominalism posits there is no such thing as human nature or any universal concepts like numbers for example, Nominalism postulates that any abstraction or anything that cannot be apprehended with our five senses is not real. Universal concepts like numbers do not exist in this worldview, words are just names placed on something people ended up agreeing upon and these object have no real connection to one another. If a Nominalist were to describe what made a tree a tree, they would list off the secondary descriptors of an individual tree, (texture of the bark, the color, the height, the smell etc.) But none of these descriptors tell us why the tree or any trees exists in the first place or what ultimate purpose the tree has or what makes a tree a tree? Why is a tree not something else? The Nominalist cannot answer this.
Nominalism can also be termed “nameism” or placing names to things. There are basic logical fallacies that nominalism is based on, if nominalism is in fact the case that would mean reality itself or what is truth is determined by either someone in power that enforces what meaning is or a consensus or majority determining it (Look to the Rove quote at the top of the article as an example). This has profound consequences, this means that whoever is not in power and not in the majority consensus is at the whims and mercy of whoever is in regard to any idea or action. Furthermore, this makes truth and reality itself relative and subjective to this particular person or the group. When taking this train of thought to its logical conclusion, this one person or the majority has God like and omnipotent qualities. Add in some critical theory “power relations” to the mix and we can see the origins of “everything is a social construct”, “live your truth”, “I was born in the wrong body”, even the pothead favorite "we’re just in a simulation man” that we get in dumb down modern society.
The seeds of all variations of Liberal (empiricism, rationalism, materialism) thought were planted by the forerunners of the Enlightenment itself, notably: Medieval Catholic Scholastics who went wild once they rediscovered Aristotle and engaged in a project of system building. While attempting to prove the existence of God via sense perception and data; they encased the settled dogmas and philosophy of Orthodoxy articulated and affirmed by the Church Fathers in Pagan-Hellenic philosophy. The Triune Christian God was not the starting point for these Scholastics, their individual sense perceptions were. (Aquinas, Anselm etc.) Liberal thought in all its variations is nominalism’s logical conclusion. Ideas have consequences.
The implications of nominalist thought are immense, lets put this idea up to the Transcendental Argument, a very useful tool in any discussion or debate. The transcendental argument is “a form of argument that is supposed to proceed from a fact to the necessary conditions of its possibility. A transcendental argument is simply a form of deduction, with the typical pattern: q is true only if p is true; q is true; therefore, p is true.” Nominalism postulates: that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels.
What’s the problem? Nominalism uses names and labels to refute names and labels have meaning. Why or how should Nominalist names and labels be believed to have meaning when their very argument is that names and labels have no meaning?
Furthermore, in the Nominalist worldview there is no possible way to decipher what truth actually is or to know anything at all. We are just playing word games with each other, everything is subjective and/or relative. While millions in the west have this worldview no one actually lives this way, it wouldn’t be possible. Going back to the opening discussion on cognitive dissonance we have a society fundamentally enmeshed in contradictions. If you want to know how its possible to have faulty presuppositions but still get things right and speak truths, make scientific discoveries etc. research: Logos Spermatikos.
Nominalism can be seen as the forerunner to empiricism which grew out of the Enlightenment. Empiricism is “the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience. Stimulated by the rise of experimental science, it developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, expounded in particular by John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.” Hume is an important figure here as he takes the Enlightenment presuppositions to their logical and absurd conclusions in A Treatise of Human Nature. This work addresses obvious problems such as the empiricist lacking justifications for space and time, the self, morals and laws, identity over time and so on which cannot be proven based on empiricist or for that matter nominalist grounds. All empiricists would have to be nominalist by necessity.
To surmise the points here, most assume basic things such as the meaning of language, numbers, universals, identity etc. to be true while also believing these things don’t exist according to these same presuppositions. What’s the point of speaking or writing if words have no inherent meaning, furthermore why listen to what anyone else is saying or writing for the same reasons? Any action taken in this view is fundamentally meaningless and cannot be justified other than the persons subjective preference, which is not a justification. You cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”.
"Man descended from apes, therefore we must love one another." Vladimir Solovjev
Now that we have seen the fundamental beliefs of the west (the countries that came to espouse liberalism and monopoly capitalism) are built on sand where did philosophy take us from here? Let’s examine GWF Hegel and dialectics. Disclaimer: Hegel is almost impenetrable to modern man, there are PhD scholars in philosophy that admit they cannot make out what Hegel’s writing means most of the time. If you would like to go further in understanding Hegel, I have cited sources below. For the sake of argument, I am using what Hegel’s dialectical method has been manipulated into to get the point across. I’m also not claiming I have firm handle on Hegel myself.
There are two definitions of dialectic: 1. the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions. Which is very useful and necessary for debate and even getting through your everyday life. The next definition became more problematic 2. inquiry into metaphysical contradictions and their solutions. “Hegel identified dialectic as the tendency of a notion to pass over into its own negation as the result of conflict between its inherent contradictory aspects. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels adopted Hegel’s definition and applied it to social and economic processes. See also dialectical materialism.”
The concept of dialectics became a tool to be manipulated by those who hold power over the minds of the deracinated masses of modern culture. Let’s take an extreme example to get to the bottom of this. What if someone were arguing the merits of rape vs another person arguing the merits of consensual sex. Based on the dialectical framework in a Nominalist or empiricist sense; the “synthesis” or a meshing of these two views into one idea would result in the merits of something to the effect of groping someone’s genital’s. You maybe saying to yourself, “That is crazy. No one would suggest such a thing!” The problem is, in the Nominalist view and all the ideas it birthed; have no answer for why any action is right or wrong, good or bad. We begin to start seeing the major ethical issues here, if the Nominalist or empiricist implements the dialectical method it can lead to damaging outcomes if this person or people hold power. Why? Because the Nominalist and empiricist has no justification for how or why an objective ethical framework could or should be implemented. All they have is subjective taste preference.
Hegel’s dialectical method was based on social factors such as the family unit, community or nations history, traditions, folkways that formed a person within this certain time and experience. Thus, an individual or ego is really an abstraction because they are preceded and formed by what existed prior to them, there could be no single person without the family, community and nation that forms them. For instance, a person is forced to use language they did not create to even function within a culture, to know anything at all or convey meaning to others. The fullness of the culture is not the sum total of the persons, for each person possesses the same fullness of the culture. The dialectical method, in this framework is a process for someone to find objective truth within a certain place, people and time in history. Without the epistemic priors of Hegel’s particular dialectical method it becomes a tool of force and imposition for the Empiricist, Nominalist, Materialist and Atheist: as people with this view deny Hegel’s and the Traditional view totally. This is exactly what Marx did.
Edward Bernays manipulated the dialectic to devastating effect. Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and considered the father of PR advertisement and marketing. Let’s take a look at some quotes from Bernays book Propaganda: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society create an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” Here we enter the realm of psychological warfare, an area of ample authoritative evidence that is totally ignored by academia and the media at large as tin-foil hat conspiracy. But Bernays was not a conspiracy theorist by any means, lets look deeper into Bernays revelatory statements, “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.” A key way this manipulation occurs is via the dialectic being used in a Problem-Reaction-Solution framework. Let’s look at the previous taboo of women smoking cigarettes:
“In 1929, it was taboo for women to smoke in public and those who flouted convention were thought to be sexually permissive. Bernays' client was George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company, who envisioned breaking this taboo to broaden the market for his Lucky Strike brand. Bernays asked Hill for permission to consult with New York's leading psychoanalyst and Freud disciple, Dr. A.A. Brill, and was granted this unusual request.
This was the first but not the last time Bernays would consult with psychoanalysts to help shape his public relations campaigns. When asked what cigarettes symbolized to women, Brill's response was that cigarettes were symbolic of male power.
Equating smoking with challenging male power was the cornerstone of Lucky Strike's "Torches of Freedom" campaign, which debuted during New York's annual Easter Parade on April 1, 1929. Bernays had procured a list of debutantes from the editor of Vogue magazine and pitched the idea that they could contribute to the expansion of women's rights by lighting up cigarettes and smoking them in the most public of places—Fifth Avenue. The press was warned beforehand and couldn't resist the story. The "Torches of Freedom Parade" was covered not only by the local papers, but also by newspapers nationwide and internationally. Bernays was duly convinced that linking products to emotions could cause people to behave irrationally. In reality, of course, women were no freer for having taken up smoking, but linking smoking to women's rights fostered a feeling of independence.”
The above is one of thousands of examples of the dialectical method being foisted upon American culture in a vampiric way. You elicit a response by tying a product or idea (cigarettes) to a fundamental desire (freedom) which produces a desired reaction (women wanting cigarettes) yielding the solution (opening your product to a new market while the new market also thinks they’re liberating themselves). Take a look at a Sears catalog from the 1800’s to observe the sea change in advertising.
How you start impacts how you finish thus presuppositions are critical, every person has them whether they know what a presupposition is or not. Our beliefs govern how we act in the world and the decisions we make, we can also violate our assumptions when we don’t understand them. The ability to recognize false positions, contradictions and identify solutions is paramount in living a coherent, sane and healthy life. The Covid era is an obvious example of this, merely knowing a few logical fallacies could have made the difference in life or death for many. Rarely are major events, situations, problems black and white, there is most often grey area yet we are always told by those with power and influence that we have to pick a team or a side. The total lie has no purpose, even on low functioning people, the lie mixed with truth is what is devastating. Always ask if what you are being presented with are the only options, can elements of both sides presented have truth to them? Are our most fundamental beliefs built on sand?
Suggested Sources and Background:
(2) God, History, and Dialectic Volume 1: God, The Foundation of The First Europe by Joseph P. Farrell
(3) God, History, and Dialectic Volume 2: The Dialectical God of Augustinism by Farrell
(4) The Century of the Self -Adam Curtis
(5) The Ontology of Death: Patristic Philosophy against Nominalism by Matthew Raphael Johnson
(6) Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver
(7) Propaganda by Bernays
(8) Hegel - Matthew Raphael Johnson on the Antipodean Hour
(9) Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann
(10) https://jaysanalysis.com/2013/10/26/numbers-prove-god/
(11) Jordan Peterson Critiqued: Classical Liberal Incoherence-Jay Dyer
(12) One and the Many: Studies in Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy by RJ Rushdoony
(13) Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age by Father Seraphim Rose
(14) Jay Explains TAG to Atheist-Jay Dyer
Article Sources:
(1) https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326738
(2) http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/problem/postmodernism
(3)https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nominalism-metaphysics/
(4) https://www.britannica.com/topic/transcendental-argument
(6)https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/wilde1.htm
(7)https://www.patreon.com/posts/hegels-1807-of-76607458
(8)Propaganda by Bernays
(9) https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/12/consumer