Modern Society: In the Grip of Bad Philosophy
The intractable nature of our political problems is in direct proportion to the philosophical ignorance of the populace.Many easily recognize corrupt police action for what it is; fewer recognize corrupt political, judicial and legislative actions; even fewer recognize the corrupt doctrines in these domains which indeed govern these actions; fewer still recognize the corrupt philosophy that incubates these doctrines; but the fewest of all are those who fully recognize that corrupt philosophy is the ultimate source of all the corruption.
As it has been throughout most of human history, the politics of our era is not ruled by a good faith allegiance to rational discourse, but by a cynical Machiavellian manipulation that extends virtually everywhere: The Whitehouse; Congress; The Courthouse; academia; political movements of all kinds; business; church; and even among family and friends. Rational philosophy is likewise virtually banned from these institutions and made to appear arbitrary, arcane, irrelevant, or even evil -- not because a proper philosophy actually is any of these things -- but to insure that power, not reason, prevails. This keeps everyone, whether they be in low or high positions of political power, in their place, with the exception of those who are most deft at Machiavellianism, who tend to rise in power.[1]If we are given any philosophy at all, we are given pseudo-philosophies such as that:
- People should concern themselves with justice in the afterlife, not justice in this life ("Submit to and give unto Caesar what is allegedly his, in spite of the rampant criminality he is responsible for; it's none of your concern.");
- Philosophy is irrelevant or evil and in any case, not your concern ("Nothing to see here workman, you just move along and do your best to make our economy strong.");
- A wise man knows that he knows nothing ("It would be foolish of you to think you know anything about how things should be any different from how they are now. Keep your head down, hands busy, and mouth shut.").
These doctrines are not designed from a massive conspiracy of philosophers, but from the individual response to external motives stemming from checks and balances that our culture, comprised of individuals acting mostly independently, has instituted. As each member of our society progresses through the various cultural institutions (importantly, the educational apparatus), he is steadily shorn of, or intimidated into concealing, "radical" thoughts, i.e. sweeping philosophical thoughts that contradict the status quo pseudo-philosophical doctrines.
"Generally, the dividing and breaking of all factions and combinations that are adverse to the state, and setting them at distance, or at least distrust, amongst themselves, is not one of the worst remedies. For it is a desperate case, if those that hold with the proceeding of the state be full of discord and faction, and those that are against it be entire and united." -- Francis Bacon
Those who dictate and institute pseudo-philosophies may be depraved, but they are not stupid. They have taken messages like Bacon's very much to heart, and they know that the ultimate lever of division is philosophy: create a cacophony of philosophic views while condemning attempts to resolve the cacophony, and social chaos will readily follow, which thereby weakens any attempt to resolve fundamental social problems. People become fixated on the many petty issues created by the chaos, and therefore find it difficult to discern their fundamental causes.Don't be inspired by a philosophy that merely purports to resolve philosophic problems -- there are many insincere philosophies that do this. One can readily detect them as being insincere by considering how open they are to squarely answering rational criticism. If they engage at all, they will usually only engage while rigging the terms of discourse such that their deepest philosophic sins stay hidden. The most common method of rigging the discourse is to demand that one be "polite", i.e. that one not actually identify and evaluate the most reprehensible aspects of the philosophy.There is no grand conspiracy in any of this; only a bunch of petty conspiracies by those who understand their own interests and would preserve their positions at the expense of the truth. Thus, a small time preacher will conceal his own hypocrisy from his congregation; a popular philosopher will, in the face of a criticism that hits the mark, blithely pretend that it does not; a leader of a movement will act to preserve his position of power by employing intimidation, harassment, manipulation, lying and so on. As individuals, nefarious actors pull whatever levers they have access to, whether these levers be gossip or bureaucratic boards or charitable donations or congressional committees, and when the raindrops that are their individually motivated actions are unconsciously summed through their effects on society, they create a tidal wave of scheming oppression.Many leaders carry out their subversion of the truth only semi-consciously, considering themselves sincere and their practices as constituting the height of civility. Such fools are perchance reformable, if their followers would dare to push back on their counter-productive beliefs and habits.Among the most venal are those leaders who most fervently advocate that significant intellectual contradiction is something to be ignored in the alleged interest of "unity", all while pretending not to see the irony in prophesying that unity will follow from repressed contradiction. They may castigate as cultish the very idea of consistency (as if sincerity and logic is some kind of a sin). But where there is contradiction, there can be no true unity, especially not the wider unity of a culture -- there can only be faction. The alternative here is not pure consistency of movement, but pure sincerity at striving for consistency and institutional openness to critical challenge and change.How did humanity get into this state?Plato was one of the first known to explicitly advocate targeting the masses with insincerity and myth as a means of controlling them. Plato aimed at power for the sake of furthering "The Good", but then came Machiavelli, who dispensed with The Good, laying out schemes by which Princes could gain and hold power for power's sake[2]. And there have of course been a host of advocates of insincere methods of controlling people since ancient times and into our own times; indeed, a typical modern politician is almost defining of insincerity. Everyone understands this. What few understand is that, like a backward civilization with too many people and no sewer system, modern society at all levels is drenched in the raw sewage of insincerity.During The Enlightenment we saw a reversal of this ancient and barbaric trend, where thinkers began to hold that only through a well-educated populace -- one whose beliefs are rooted in truth, not myth -- will humanity create a just society. Unfortunately, The Enlightenment failed to complete its case for reason as an ethical guide, and was then preempted by a resurgence of irrational doctrines. What we are left with is a reversion to these barbaric, insincere ways of controlling people.To rekindle the spirit of The Enlightenment and resume its social progress, we must once again embrace its basic standards: a firm belief in 1) The power of reason; 2) The ideal of sincere appeals to reason as the only viable way for reason to prevail; and 3) The ideal that there should be no sundering of sincere philosophy and politics, for the degree to which dissimulation is a condition of engaging in politics is the degree to which evil will be done, and the degree to which the virtues of rationality and sincerity are applauded in politics is the degree to which politics will bring about positive social change.
[1] I would not be so dismal as to testify that there were no exceptions to the foregoing, but this is the rule. If it were not, there would be no way for plainly ridiculous things like Alcohol Prohibition or The War on Drugs to happen, let alone the host of other ridiculous and destructive political policies.[2] Good arguments have been made that Machiavelli himself was merely satirizing the tactics he is so famous for and didn't actually believe in them himself. Of course, these are beside my point here. Copyright(c) 2014 Shayne Wissler. Originally published at Shayne Wissler’s website, For Individual Rights; visit this link for the latest revisions. Republished at Lions of Liberty with permission.Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!
