The title is a variation of "Everything I say is a lie ..... I'm lying." Covered well on the old Star Trek.
I've attempted to write quite a few posts like this, and will no doubt attempt many more, since I believe that the biggest question of our age is "Truth, does it exist, and allowing that, what forms does it exist in and how are those to be perceived". My short answer would be yes, transcendent -- as in eternal, metaphysical, God, scientific -- as in the best current approximation of physical phenomenon, and emotional -- as in the feelings perceived by humans for each other, God, community, country, etc.
I find this paragraph critical to his thesis.
Today, outside science, there is only "doxa" (opinion), and each personal doxa is supposedly just as valid as anyone else's, but of course, there is the rub. POWER ... of media, of party, of public opinion, of money, etc is what REALLY makes some opinions to be "truth". If you fail to bow to them -- as in believe that men should stay in men's bathrooms even when wearing a dress, well then you have to be bludgeoned into agreeing with the POWERFUL opinions!
Perhaps the most evident sign of civilizational devolution is the inability or unwillingness to acknowledge reality, to come to terms with things as they are, and to oppose the suppression of objectivity and its substitution by fantasy, illusion and wish-fulfillment. The resonating dictum of the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides from his fragmentary poem On Nature—variously translated as what is, is, and what is not, is not!—sounds like an empty tautology. But it has relevance for our present historical moment, with respect to the cultural and lexical inversions of contemporary thought and discourse. Apart from its metaphysical implications, which we won’t go into here, the Parmenidean maxim expresses the criterion for survival, the need to separate truth (aletheia) from opinion (doxa) and to recognize things as they are if an individual, a culture, a people is to transact successfully with the existing world. But when thought and action come to be governed by the anarchic principle that what is, is not and what is not, is, a process of social, political and epistemological disintegration invariably sets in. This is the condition in which the West finds itself today.
It is all well worth the read, I've come to see our present crisis as completely obvious, but I realize that is a minority option -- us cranks enjoy seeing the occasional apparently sentient human in agreement! I'll close with this for those of you not up to reading it all.
When a civilization, or its cultural and intellectual curators who wield the instruments of power and authority, re-interprets reality as merely discretionary, decline and eventual extinction are guaranteed, and the Angel of History will preside over the ruins. When pretending becomes believing, and believing becomes mandatory, and calling out the naked emperor is punishable by law or fine or ostracism or loss of employment or worse, and when the scale of such abuses becomes effectively global, the “lifeworld,” or communal nature of daily life, as we have known it has ceased to exist.
'via Blog this'
No comments:
Post a Comment