The Ominous Parallels - Tranche III
Posted by mshupe 6 months, 1 week ago to Philosophy
Chapter Two, Excerpt 1 of 2
The Totalitarian Universe
Three major philosophers are responsible for generating the disease of collectivism and transmitting it to the dictators of our century: Plato, Kant, Hegel. In Plato’s Republic and Laws one can read the details, which are the first blueprint of the totalitarian ideal. When men gather in society, the unit of reality and standard of value is the community. What follows is a life of self-sacrificial service. The supreme governing principle, the so-called Form of the Good, cannot be known by the use of reason.
The blueprint includes the view that the state should be ruled by a special elite. The great spokesman for man and this earth is Aristotle. Denying Plato’s World of Forms, Aristotle maintains there is only one reality. The primary significance of Aristotle does not lie in his politics. It lies in the fundamentals of metaphysics and epistemology. Sweeping away the dogmas and shackles of the past, the Aristotelianism of the Renaissance replaced faith, force, and poverty with reason, freedom, and production.
Kant’s attack on reason, this world, and man’s happiness was the decisive turning point. Not a full-fledged statist, it is Kant who made possible the sudden mushrooming of Platonic collectivism in the modern world. Hegel is a post-Kantian Platonist. Reality, declares Hegel, is inherently contradictory. Men owe their allegiance to the principle of the “identity of opposites,” a systematic progression of contradictions, that A is non-A. The state organism is no mere secular entity, it is creature of God.
The Totalitarian Universe
Three major philosophers are responsible for generating the disease of collectivism and transmitting it to the dictators of our century: Plato, Kant, Hegel. In Plato’s Republic and Laws one can read the details, which are the first blueprint of the totalitarian ideal. When men gather in society, the unit of reality and standard of value is the community. What follows is a life of self-sacrificial service. The supreme governing principle, the so-called Form of the Good, cannot be known by the use of reason.
The blueprint includes the view that the state should be ruled by a special elite. The great spokesman for man and this earth is Aristotle. Denying Plato’s World of Forms, Aristotle maintains there is only one reality. The primary significance of Aristotle does not lie in his politics. It lies in the fundamentals of metaphysics and epistemology. Sweeping away the dogmas and shackles of the past, the Aristotelianism of the Renaissance replaced faith, force, and poverty with reason, freedom, and production.
Kant’s attack on reason, this world, and man’s happiness was the decisive turning point. Not a full-fledged statist, it is Kant who made possible the sudden mushrooming of Platonic collectivism in the modern world. Hegel is a post-Kantian Platonist. Reality, declares Hegel, is inherently contradictory. Men owe their allegiance to the principle of the “identity of opposites,” a systematic progression of contradictions, that A is non-A. The state organism is no mere secular entity, it is creature of God.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kan...
I wrote here 8 months ago “Humans are capable of three things that no other mammal can do viz. Reason, Emotions, and Imagination. The tool of Reason is logic specifically Aristotle’s logic as found in his Organon. The tool of Emotions is Faith. The tool of Imagination is Creativity. Properly integrated, these three functions allow we humans to Think.”
Kant died in 1804. The DOI and the U S Constitution were the highest expression of Enlightenment ideals and they coincided with the birth of the age of unreason.
To deny the use of Reason in the affairs of men is to invite destruction and butchery as normal. As Ayn Rand observed, we are being dragged back toward not only pre-industrial society but toward pre-civilization.
I do not know what it will take to re-ignite a new age of Enlightenment short of violent upheaval.
"These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." Thomas Paine
Emotions and warped imaginations rule the culture of the Earth. Those who survive the coming collapse will live in caves, hunting to survive by killing animals, and wearing their skins for warmth. To quote A. Einstein " the fourth world war will be fought with sticks and stones."
Now we ask the obvious question: what will be our Reichstag Fire moment?
Another 9/11? Another weaponized virus? An Alien attack? No, not the 28 million Illegal Aliens that have already crossed our wide open border, I mean the other aliens, the little green men type.
Who knows, maybe the Crimaleins are the plan... As Colonel Douglas MacGregor (Retired) has repeatedly suggested 'If only 1% of these invaders are here to cause trouble. That could be up to 300,000 military-aged young men intent on causing mayhem'
The Israeli raid would look like a Sunday church bake sale.
To put that number in context, we have 1.2 million men/women currently in uniform.
The defense industry is having a field day. I hear all this talk of a three front war has their stock price booming, up 10% overnight. They must be partying it up in Vegas.
War will stop when, and only when, it is no longer profitable to wage war.
We haven't "won" a war since WWII.
If we were truly following the Constitution, our troops would be protecting our borders from the invasion occurring right now, instead we have some 800 bases all over the world and our country is all but unguarded.
I'm not just cynical about the current state of affairs, I'm down right pissed off.
I think its just that living through emotion is just too powerful a force. Today, woke is just the accepting of that issue- how a person feels is the most important determiner of how a person is to be treated by others.