Reason, Faith and Gnosticism as Epistemology

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

S,

Here in America, we just don't do things that way, but I bet some will try.

It's tempting...

 

But, that whole silly climate change scam will not prevail.

We have to be aware of what they are doing. Once the silent majority people realize the idiots are serious about taking their goodies away and killing off the population to a manageable number, they will throw the bums out. 

Michael

[Strictlylogical]

38 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

S,

Here in America, we just don't do things that way, but I bet some will try.

It's tempting...

 

But, that whole silly climate change scam will not prevail.

We have to be aware of what they are doing. Once the silent majority people realize the idiots are serious about taking their goodies away and killing off the population to a manageable number, they will throw the bums out. 

Michael

Of course!

America has no king and needs no king.

 

I find it utterly baffling though, that people can become so arrogant as to think they can act like rulers over others with no consequences... the lessons of history should not be forgotten, especially by would be utopians and aspiring tyrants alike.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

S,

You know... the more I think about these bums and the French Revolution...

 

 

This is only a tangent, but it came to mind.

Robert Heinlein wrote a story I read decades ago, but it stayed with me. It was about an educational system that produced all A+ students.

The penalty for a low grade was public hanging, the student would be hung by the neck until dead.

So everyone got great grades.

 

Michael

[tmj]

James Lindsay and Jordan Peterson , lots of biographical info on James

 

 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 6/18/2023 at 7:34 AM, tmj said:

... lots of biographical info on James

T,

Fantastic video.

Notice that James shrugged.

He got his degree in math and was all set to take an academic career, then evaluated at what he would be required to do and became a massage therapist instead because that, at least, was offering value to his customers.

 

As I do come from a Randian orientation, I don't like the word "sacrifice," but when people see this video, they should be aware that Jordan and James do not mean self-sacrifice in the sense Rand meant it when they discuss that topic (like when they talk about the story of Cain and Abel, where Cain's sacrifice to God was inferior to Abel's).

They were discussing something more like being all in on an idea, not half-assing it.

Taken to the develop a skill level, it means showing up and doing focused practice every day, not just going through the motions to check it off a todo list.

In James's new intellectual career, he went all in and even found his own way financially. They both called that "sacrifice," but sacrificing in the right way.

That's a totally different concept. It uses the same word, sacrifice, as the toxic version, but the concept involves growth and creation, not stagnation.

Michael

[tmj]

Cain vs Abel in an O'ist frame is also the hatred of the good for being good.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

T,

Look behind a lot of Rand sayings and you will see the Bible lurking...

 

Michael

[Strictlylogical]

Does anyone here have DailyWire+? 

Just wondering how much more of that video exists.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Holy crap.

This is one of James Lindsay's best.

This is not just about epistemology (although it is at root).

This is how to understand all of the different facets through Marxist politics.

In old times, the bourgeoisie and capitalists were not despised by the Marxists because they had stuff and others didn't. They were despised because they did not allow other classes to have stuff. They oppressed other classes. So initially, Marxism sought to eliminate the bourgeoisie entirely.

But when it got to the USA, other classes were allowed to get stuff and they were busy doing exactly that. So the Marxist thinkers did a conceptual shift like a card trick.

In modern times, this is whiteness. In the modern view, whiteness is the new bourgeoisie. It is the perceived oppressor. Without whiteness, the other classes will be able to have stuff. So the aim of woke culture is to get rid of whiteness as much as humanly possible.

It's not about racism. It's about a stand-in for an economic boogeyman.

 

There is more in this talk, too.

I love James Lindsay. I wish he had been around in my college years. His insights would have saved me a lot of grief. The young people today have no idea how privileged they are to have him.

Good for them...

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

James Lindsay just knocked my socks off. So much so, I posted on X.

I swear, I think James just described the majority of online arguments about Ayn Rand in O-Land.

 

 

But I am going to start taking his advice on dealing with communists and socialists. Except I will let them know that I know they they are saying I misuse words. Then I will bow out.

Note. This has to be accompanied by something positive for it to make a difference. You don't persuade anyone by leaving. 

In my case, I will describe my own thinking and observations about truth, meaning, importance, and so on, and why. But when that shit happens, I will identify what they are doing and clam up to them.

Has anyone noticed that arguing about who is misusing words was the main tactic deployed during all of the manmade climate change arguments here on OL? 

And so many other things...

Dayaamm!

 

Michael

[Marc]

And masks, "vacccines" and shut downs! 

 

[tmj]

Love that typo? See that didn't change the meaning of what a vaccine is , they came up with a whole new word , which roughly equates to "an injection that doesn't do much for a specific named purpose, but leaves open the possibility for other effects not named "

"Trust the triple c, it's science after all !"

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Politically, this is one of James Lindsay's best to date.

American Maoism.

 

I love the simplification he gives of dialecticism. He says it is a process of wedding a true idea and a false idea. People use it to gain power.

He gave as an example Hegel's notion of existence being met with nothingness and synthesized as becoming.

Existence is true. Nothingness is not true. As Rand herself said, nothing is not a state, but a lack of state. And becoming is change over time of something that exists (not of nothing).

 

For James, dialectic is an operating system just like logic or faith is. He said we all have Windows, or Linux or MacOS for computers. Dialectic is like that.

As for the different versions, classic Marxism, intersectionality, critical race theory, etc., he said these were all the same in the sense that an alley cat, a tiger, a bobcat and so on are all felines.

Dialectic works well as an operating system for gaining power over a large population. It works horribly for finding truth or promoting human flourishing. It's an elitist form of thinking that, when implemented, benefits the elites and degrades and kills everyone else.

 

I know this makes hash of Chris Sciabarra's idea that Rand was a dialectical thinker, but I can't get past history. Observation shows Lindsay's version is correct.

Rand said (through Toohey) don't bother to examine a folly. Ask only what it produces.

Well James not only looks at what dialectical thinking produces, he examines it. And takes it all the way back to its roots.

 

To be fair to Chris, he defines dialectical thinking as the art of context-keeping. I want to write about this later, so I don't want to get into it too deep right now.

However, I'll grant Chris that if the context is true and the idea being examined is true, I can see this system working as a great brainstorming tool. But it does not provide any way to find out if the context or the idea are true.

And when applied to Rand's form of reasoning (and I admit, it looks like she reasoned this way at times), it could explain some of her misfires. Even some of her deep insights. Let's say dialectical thinking provides a way of mixing things up so you can look at them from a fresh angle. Shaking the box so to speak. When all of it is true, this can be useful.

 

However, using the dialectical system (thesis-antithesis-synthesis is the common form) , it's easy to use a false idea or false context and come up with a justifiable different form of "reality" (one that is not real but can be argued that it is).

Thus men can be women using this system. Gaining profits can be divorced from business practice and turn into a principle for social organization. And so on.

 

This video is about two hours. I know, I know. Life is short and this shit is long. And boring.  

But it will be one of the best two hours you ever spent on an academic subject.

For me it was.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I don't know if James would agree, or even if he likes, Matthew Ehret and the Rising Tide Foundation people, but as a complement to his ideas on the gnositc form of revealed wisdom (meaning made up shit  ), kept alive through secret societies and secret rituals and so on, the following video is brilliant. It gives some history of what this looks like over human history when intelligence communities got ahold of it.

Matthew starts all the way back to the Oracle at Delphi, which was a hotbed of spies and intrigues back in those times, but sold to the public as revealed wisdom world leaders would go to for advice.

He also goes into one of the main founders of modern Free Masonry, a guy named Pike. This dude openly praised Lucifer above the Christian God in his writings. The way I see it, this is likely one source of why so many people today are Luciferians.

This history weds perfectly with the "great secret" of ancient gnosticism. And what is that secret? Easy. The One True God is not the Hebrew God. The One True God is Oneness, and He is waaaaaaaaaay above the Hebrew God, who, for them, is a botched inferior god so to speak. I read somewhere that these people believe Lucifer was an angel who opposed this impostor. This is why Lucifer is despised in Abrahamic religions and is a hero and worshipped by those who know the "real revealed wisdom." In their view, the Jews, Muslims and Christians all worship a flawed inferior god and are denied enlightenment by their mistake. And they keep their belief alive using secret processes they they share with each other, starting with their love of Lucifer.

 

One caveat for the video. Matthew is a huge fan of Lyndon LaRouche, who is mostly known these days as a guy who founded a cult of odd people. And, to be sure, there is this side to him. Small, but it is there.

In reality, LaRouche was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's government and a political activist for mostly good things. At least that is what I have seen so far. So you will see Matthew present Roosevelt as a good guy and not as a died-in-the-wool collectivist like we see him here on O-Land. This is Matthew's way of honoring his mentor, LaRouche.

As I said, I have looked into all this and, from my limited perspective, I have seen merit in Matthew's views. I like him and his people.

And like it or not, LaRouche has turned out to be a modern-day prophet who got a hell of a lot more right than he did wrong. Not only that, he was a great historian. In my world, it's OK to learn history from people I do not agree with when they are right. And like I implied, I believe there is more right than wrong with these people when I look at specific issues. Not with everything, but where they shine, boy do they shine.

This is why I set them right beside James Lindsay. And, from another angle, Ayn Rand.

 

Anyway, enjoy this video. It's only 30 minutes. I don't know about you, but it helped me connect some dots that, these days, is always a hard task amidst the constant yelling, propaganda and real threats engineered by the Predator Class. But it provides patterns that make a lot of sense. And once seen, they cannot be unseen as we look out onto what is happening in the world.

 

 

 

Michael