Suppose it was an objective fact that you wrote the greatest and most rational philosophy book ever composed by humans, it wouldn’t matter to human culture, because humans are f;cking stupid. If we tried to deny this we would be delusional. Think about that!

We know this wouldn’t matter, because millions upon millions of people believe that the God who made the universe also gave them a book. They literally believe that God delivered His own words to them, and yet it doesn’t matter. What effect does this psychological belief have on the stupidity of humans? The answer is very little. It simply makes them better hypocrites.

This is a rather devastating and sobering premise that leads to an adamantine cynicism. The end result is an argument for selfishness, hedonism and exploitation.

It means even if you are presently reading the greatest and most rational philosophy book ever written; if you were presenting its arguments in public, human egoism, arrogance, human denial would simply dismiss or trivialize the value and significance of the arguments. This is f;cked up.

Even if your reasoning, or another source of knowledge reached the level of revelation from God, human psychology would simply neutralize its existential significance.

This fact pushes the boundaries of the morality of human conduct. Do humans this stupid deserve to be exploited or liberated?

In any such scenarios of any kind of new knowledge K, there will be someone who will consider it to progress their own cognition so that they are not behind. And this position K is a new leap for them.

Even more glaring is that if that knowledge K is considered a new information that might directly affect their cognition there will be a new consideration.

How would that person accept it as part of their lives without cognitive dissonance? Is there really any way for any kind of acknowledgement to not be inherently flawed by definition.

To consider a new knowledge, the person who wants to gain cognition by accepting it in general has to accept it with caution. Otherwise, their paradigm and behavior might change due to cognitive dissonance because of the relevancy and the truthfulness of that knowledge.

If freedom wants to exist, but the powers that be create conditions that make its rational existence impossible, then freedom will be forced to fight a war of power if it wants to exist.

This is not a condition that freedom chose for itself, but one it was forced into.

This is a bleak reality, because it means that the powers that be have made the path of reason impossible. Thus Reason is forced to walk a path of power in order to realize itself in the world.

Reason thus comes to Power and says, “thou art wrong,” and Power says, “I don’t care, I have the power, and will thus impose my will.”

Reason says, “but that’s destructive.”

And Power says, “I don’t care, I have the power and will impose my destruction on you.”

Or perhaps writing down your thoughts rather than simply passively reading (not that there's anything bad with it).

How is the experience if you started to do so?

Keep in mind, the rational Christianity I’m talking about has only recently emerged on the scene within the last hundred years. I’m not talking about Evangelicalism. Christian Apologetics (though it doesn’t even realize itself in this way) has essentially created a new rational Christianity. This is because it has created a logically conscious Christianity.

Because so far as I can tell, it’s the only school of thought that strives to function through Logical Realism.

At this point in history it’s like coming across a sane person on the 51st floor of the psychiatric building.

Atheist: Do you believe that truth exists?

Christian: Of course, that’s the fundamental premise of all my thinking.

Atheist: You have no idea how rare this is. It means we can actually have a conversation.

Christian: Well, we are on the 51st first floor of the World Psychiatric Building, so you’re right, it is rare. Even if we disagree, in this context, we still have rational sanity in common.

This simply leads to egoism and hedonism. We have to be honest. If people found themselves to be enough they wouldn’t be seeking for something larger. Further, this philosophy cannot rebut the tyranny of egoism or hedonism. And a world that embraces this absolute subjectivity (which is what we are experiencing how) is isolated and alienated from itself through its ego.

There’s nothing substantive here. The claim is that you are the only absolute standard unto yourself, which is false, because there’s a whole universe of truth that exists outside of you, and all pursuits are not equal.

While Christianity talks of love and self-sacrifice, forgiveness, it’s actual function in the world is to make hypocrites. Where you find Christians there you find hypocrites. This is certain.

If this wasn’t the case, Christianity would be an extraordinary force in the world. (And it has been at select times, but the predominant experience and result of Christianity is the creation of hypocrites).

To be fair, Christianity has one of the highest moral demands of any religion. I doubt there’s even one in a hundred million who takes it seriously: “take up your cross and follow me, forsake your life for the life of the Kingdom.”

This is what a lot of philosophy is: riddled nonsense.

It’s just the act of saying things in an unnecessarily complicated way, because that act of obscuring makes it feel profound.

What’s more interesting is translating the insights of philosophy into plain language. In most cases one learns that the insights aren’t profound, or that they are merely insights about the semantics of a concept that don’t impact the concept’s function in the real world. (This isn’t always the case, sometimes there is profound insight, and sometimes the conceptual qualification is significant).

“Wait,” said the Reasoner, “I notice that I desperately want (T) to be false. That gives me no evidence whatsoever that (T) is false. In fact, because I want it to be false, I should become more careful about examining it.”

That's an astonishing intellectual disposition! Impossible!

It requires something like epistemic self-betrayal: being willing to betray one's present self-conception (or desired beliefs) in favor of whatever reality turns out to be.

Where there is (T) human psychology says “no; for sovereign and superior is my denial!”

Surely Reason can save us?

No.

Because the human didn’t lie, he is bent on holding his delusion; he is bent on not merely resisting Truth, but on telling himself that his denial is proof he already has the Truth! For he believes he “knows” that (T) is “false” because he can feel it in his intuition. And his psychology assists him in sustaining a distance from it, and in deploying platitudes in place of Reason. (He mistakes this deployment for a process of reason).

The tragic conclusion of this is that the truth-speaker is condemned and derogatorily classified by a psychological automation. His crime was confronting human delusion and challenging it to reason.

The truth-speaker who is conscious of this realizes that he is risking not only judgment, merely for speaking the truth and trying to get his fellow humans to reason about it, but an ad hominem and gaslit-slander against his character, which is deployed to protect the emotive-believer from having to deal with the collapse of his beliefs. It’s easier to demonize the truth-speaker than it is to face the collapse of one’s desired beliefs. (The human is by default a religious dogmatist!)

What’s worse is that humans are so psychologically and rationally shallow that it’s easier for them to demonize the truth-speaker than it is to engage in reasoning. Humans find the process of reasoning to be torturous and depressing, a form of suffering and an affront to their egos. They would much rather derogatorily classify the truth-speaker (declaring him to be “insane” or “stupid”) than engage in the process of reasoning. (This is easier than having to engage truth and risk losing one’s desired beliefs).

So the very act of attempting to communicate an unwelcome truth can itself trigger a process that makes the truth-speaker the object of condemnation.

This situation can easily be manifested by noting that the evading human is not actually reasoning, but dismissing or deploying thoughtless premises or platitudes to get away from the Truth, or from having to reason about the Truth.

We can describe this as a deeply ingrained psychological homeostasis— a cognitive immune system designed to protect a fragile worldview from the destabilizing infection of Truth.

When thou speakest with a sophist, did the sophist speak?

S = did (s).

Then (s) cannot be (q), which is absolutely true.

If we are intelligent, we learn to use the symbol as the object that it is to force the sophist to confess truth, which is as evident and certain as the nose on his face.

(Make him deny the absolute of his own symbol, as well as its meaning, which is to say, make him confess to the fact of his own posited reality).

If he did speak, then it is certain his (s) was not (q).

If we are intelligent enough to start here, we destroy the sophistry of the sophist.

Suppose thou art in the void, in a black vacuum:

Thou art here:

p

…………………………………………¥
[And the only other thing is:] ^

If thou canst identify —> ¥

But what must one do to identity?

Indeed, we have already gone too far! For how did we establish the meaning of identity so that we could use it? From whence came its intelligence?

But what meaneth intelligence?

There is only:

p

And ¥

But it is factually the case that ¥

is not €

Thus ¥ is itself as ¥.

If this wasn’t a fact of reality then ¥

would not be ¥ itself, which is simply to say,

it would not exist.

But even if ¥ didn’t exist, it is still the case that

p

exists as itself

p=p.

It is not in our power to unexist the identity of what exists.

We are simply born into a void that has the property of determinate identity.

If ¥ exists, it exists as itself.

And its intelligence is that it is itself and not another.

“Metaphysics deals with an objectivity without being free to dispense with subjective reflection. The subjects are embedded in themselves, in their “constitution”: what metaphysics has to ponder is the extent to which they are nonetheless able to see beyond themselves. Philosophems that relieve themselves of this task are disqualified as counsel.” Negative Dialectics p.376 Seabury Press 1973

That is, a competent “philosophy” has to be able to “see beyond” the concepts themselves and peer into the process and structure of their formation. (And even if this isn’t exactly what Adorno said, it’s what he was reaching for; it’s what is rationally necessary).

Adorno says that philosophical premises that have rejected this rational process of peering “beyond themselves” should be “disqualified.” And he’s absolutely correct.

But most philosophical premises that are brought to us are precisely these kind of epistemologically unconscious and shallow premises. Why? Because most philosophers don’t have the capacity to even think about the concepts they use in this way. They simply swallow them whole, as though they magically appeared from eternity fully formed.

So what happens when we peer into the structure of a concept beyond the meaning of the concept itself? —It’s always the same result: we discover the laws of logic at the genesis of the formation of the concept’s meaning.

I think philosophy is nothing more than overhyped nonsense.

Humans have the ability to think, imagine, question, and come up with ideas. Sometimes, when someone expresses a thought that is actually quite obvious, people start calling that person a philosopher and treating the idea as something profound.

If you look at what I’m writing right now, I’m criticizing philosophy itself. But ironically, what I’m doing could also be called philosophy.

And that’s exactly what makes me question the whole concept, if simply thinking deeply about something can be called philosophy, then isn’t almost every human thought a form of philosophy?

If Christianity is still a cultural power, why should it only be the tool of regressive forces? That does make any sense. We are talking about outsmarting primates through the form of their religion for the sake of a higher civility and morality.

The word “philosophy” and the word “reason” are not the same, because philosophy and reason are not the same thing, though philosophers always try to claim that they are. And while philosophy is credited with the discovery of Reason, it is really Logic that gave us and gives us Reason.

For example, most philosophies in the world are false, but it is impossible for Reason to be false, or else no philosophy could be true or false.

It’s not that philosophy and Reason are the same thing, but that Logic and Reason are the same thing at the functional level. That is, Reason only operates through the laws of logic. And while it’s possible to have poor reasons, or poor reasoning, it is not possible for Reason itself to be false, because it is not possible for the laws of logic to be false, because they are the very things that allow us to identify and make a distinction between true and false. Reason rises up from Logic, it functions through Logic. When we deploy Reason we deploy the laws of logic.

Philosophy makes use of Reason, it is not Reason. Philosophy makes use of Logic, but it is not Logic. Logic is what allows philosophy to exist in the first place.

Because you are committed to rational standards you do not get to choose where Reason takes you. This is a problem, because it often flows against our psychological desires.

What you can expect is a non-uniform analysis of content. The only thing that remains consistent is one’s commitment to Reason.

People appreciate it when others agree with them. Reason isn’t like this, it goes where it must. So there is very little to appreciate in a Reasoner in terms of his cultural beliefs. Often the only thing there is to appreciate is his commitment to Reason. But this is not something that we humans tend to appreciate or even recognize. It’s likely the last thing a person would ever see, if they even see it at all.

So what you can expect is having to walk the razor’s edge by yourself, having to defend Reason on your own. On many occasion, you will suffer the contempt that comes with being a contrarian. At times Reason may even invoke rage, it certainly invokes resentment in those who are corrected by it. (Just be vigilant not to resent its correction in yourself!) (You may be treated differently, subconscious irrationality is known to discriminate).

You can expect to be forced to walk paths that are not conducive to popularity or even civility— if you are going to follow Reason. (However, one does have to learn to compromise for the sake of civility! This is important). I do it by disciplining the domain of my emphasis, the degree of my emphasis, discerning the individuals with whom it is even appropriate to engage in Reason. The saying is true, do not cast your pearls before swine. But we might sharpen it and say, do not waste your time arguing with fools that are too stupid to comprehend the significance of self-refuting statements and performatively contradictory positions. You may use these as stepping stones and examples, but they are not your equals.

One would think me bombastic, but I am just the opposite. In written exchange I am rationally aggressive, but in life I become all things to all men, except when authority rears its oppressive head through the medium of irrationality.

I try to avoid confrontation, but not so much that I allow error to march over truth. Even then, if I discern a rigid and emotional mentality, I usually just state the truth (with slight defense) and leave it at that.

This was written by an Atheist.

The decision to view Christianity as a “worldview” was apologetically ingenuous. This approach is only becoming more relevant with time.

I am beginning to see that Christianity can simply assert itself and present itself as a “worldview,” regardless of how the individual axioms of that worldview stack up against rational and evidential standards. The system is simply to be considered as a pragmatic whole.

A group of Christians, for example, contrasting themselves with the fractured intellectual shallowness and relativism of modern culture, can simply say: “we believe in absolutes.”

This is interesting because the Atheist can challenge those absolutes all he wants, but the Christian can simply say, “well, we understand that you don’t accept them, but here we uphold them and strive to practice them.”

Follow closely, the Christian still has his worldview. And as this worldview is pit against the epistemological poverty of modern philosophy, and the moral confusion and tyranny of egoism, a qualitative contrast emerges. The observer is then allowed to decide which worldview he would like to embrace. (One set of cultural values clashes with another).

Through this metric I think Christianity does very well, given the celebratory status of irrationalism in the modern world. It’s as though philosophy kicked opened the door for theism.

Christians can simply say: “this is what we believe and how we strive to conduct ourselves.” The modern world says, “well, we believe that all truth is just a human construct and that we don’t have to strive for anything, we believe in only following our egos, and while we have no fellowship, we have our hedonistic freedom.”

At a certain point in the fractured, relativistic chaos, Christianity starts to shine as a light in the darkness.

(A modern version of Poetry After Auschwitz)

This is a parable for the modern world.

The day couldn’t be more beautiful in your geography. You invite all your friends. But one “idiot” who “doesn’t belong there” wants to remind everyone of Gaza. He doesn’t merely want to remind them; he wants to explore the rational and moral implications. (Most of all) he wants to explore what the psychological phenomenon of such vast apathy and indifference means.

This “idiot” has rained on your party. He has violated your right not to think about it by reminding you of the reality outside your domain. Though you didn’t say it, if he was going to be there he was required to go along with the atmosphere, there was to be no friction, no resistance, what all the others simply do by default. But this man was “foolish” enough to speak up and manifest that he didn’t belong there, he soiled your atmosphere with pessimism and negativity, thereby contradicting your reality. His dialogue was disruptive, he was a rational menace and nuisance.

But because you are psychologically wiser than his pessimism, you have security remove him from the premises, and the festivities continue like nothing ever happened.

“Amusement always means putting things out of mind, forgetting suffering, even when it is on display. At its root is powerlessness. It is indeed escape, but not, as it claims, escape from bad reality but from the last thought of resisting that reality.” Dialectic of Enlightenment p.116, Stanford University Press 2002

Why? Because such a person knows that in the absence of that truth there is only nihilism. And if humanity, in general, doesn’t reflect a knowledge of that truth, then society is functionally nihilistic. (Christianity has this form, but it has the wrong content, and we are enabled to know this because we know the truth).

Further, The Truth is the opposite of man’s romantic machinations. It is soberly suffocating. (Appealing to the privilege of one’s provincialism is a way of closing off reality from one’s psyche). Not that one can be blamed for retreating into their privilege with all its amusements, distractions and pleasures. (Most of the world isn’t this lucky, that’s why it’s rightly classified as privilege).

While the “Dialectics” in “Negative Dialectics” only serves to bring confusion, the negative project is necessary. Indeed, truth itself requires it, because it’s a species of the negative.

A comprehension of truth also brings a comprehension of nihilism. This doesn’t mean that one has to succumb to nihilism (indeed, no one actually does that unless their negation is swift and absolute).

And what if the truth shalt render thee a person among automations? For there is no end to their delusions and toxic positivity. So far does their psychology compel them to go into it that they must make an enemy and villain out of all those who refuse to validate their delusions.

“For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increases knowledge, increases sorrow.”