Postcards from Podsville #29.8.

On philosophy.




"Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to
whatever is dictated to it."
- Thomas Paine.

“Regarding the Boy Scouts, I'm very suspicious of any organization that has a handbook”.
-George Carlin.

"At 1,368 pages, if any book could be used to knock someone flat, it'd be Atlas Shrugged".
-Me.


Ayep, at the end of that Ayn Rand rant, I said I was done with philosophies.
Well, I dunno about that, philosophy is such an all-encompassing topic, and it truly fascinates me, and guides my humor/creativity, but...I'm done, I think, with ideology.
Codified institutionalized ideology, anyway.

I've concluded, after much making my brain bleed these past 6-7 years, that ultimately, people mostly believe things simply because they want to, and that's that.

This is totally the case with religion.

The whole faith deal revolves around believing in the face of staggering amounts of evidence.

And I think I've done a fairly passable job at presenting that evidence.
And ultimately, I know it's not going to impress any believer.

But, though I enjoyed debating on the RD.net forums about this stuff, and testing my skills, after awhile, the same bullshit started repeating, and I got sick of repeating myself in return, especially at the very nasty underhanded attack arguments, so, I constructed the uber-linked argument-webs like "Dicky-pedia", to have push-button access to the refutations of the most tiresome, and tirelessly reiterated bullshit.

But, after that, I was fried.

I gained the insight, that most people would rather convince themselves that their chosen beliefs are right, rather than have right beliefs.

That's ultimately why we have partisan politics.

Both of these parties can be historically and empirically demonstrated to have taken turns falling completely on their asses, and having made a total mess of things in the process of doing so.
...and yet we continue to have a 2 party system.
*Shrugs, sighs*

And going back to that "science is a faith!", bullshit, well, yes and no.

A certain level of belief is involved.

That the world around us, is describable, and understandable.

But, guess what?
The scientific methods works.
It keeps producing evidence.
It keeps producing technologies that work based on that evidence.
Doesn't take much "faith", to believe in an evidence based world.

Hell, whether religionists want to acknowledge it or not, they believe in an evidence based world.

Every time they boot their computer, every time they get into their car, every time they fire up their MP3 players, and cellphones, every time they check the weather report, every time they take their prescriptions, every time they even simply rely on their senses to do all of the above.

So, empiricism has up on faith-based systems, the natural world, and the evidence-based technology of modern society.

It's one one-up, but it's a big one.

Now, where the religionist love to conflate, is where it progresses for some people into the belief that the whole universe is describable, and that technology ultimately leads to a better and more just world.

Well, yeah, it takes a bit more raw belief to believe that, and I admit I'd like to believe it, but ultimately, I don't know.

And whether you're a pragmatist, or a dreamer, good science admits it doesn't know.
That's why it searches in the first place.

I've struggled with, and continue to do so, on how people can have hope, in the face of the staggering amount of shit up against us.

I tried and tried to find an evidence and/or logic based way towards this, and it will not come.

I mean, sure, in my hope rant, I gave good historical evidence for hope, but ultimately, it's just something you want.

Lincoln was right "people are as happy or un-happy as they make up their minds to be".

But, realizing that set me free.

There's no evidence based trail for being right-leaning, left-leaning, this attitude, that attitude, if it's outside of hard empirical fact, it's all up to you.

Ayn Rand was a selfish alienating cunt, because she wanted to be a selfish alienating cunt.
That simple.
She wrote 1,368 pages to justify it, and that should tell you something.

Authoritarian people are authoritarian because they're control freaks.
That simple.
S'why I don't like 'em.

It's my experience, that no one really gets "argued over", to something.
Not if it's fundamentally against their core personality.
If someone tries to "argue you over", to torturing someone, and you let them, you're either a sadist, or a sheep.
If their arguments are really an excellent line of bullshit, and you just don't want to torture, your mind will find a way out of it.

Water finds it's level, and people gravitate to what they're wired for.

And, that's led me to the micro-philosophy of the 4 I's.
That's who I've always been, that's who I want to be, I'm tired of having regrets, I'm tired of trying to fit into society's molds, I've been a flop at it, if I really wanted to be some yuppie or plumber, I would have done it by now.
I haven't, I must not have wanted to.
So, why not be the real me to the hilt?

Fuck it.

S'why I started the war on bullshit.
These fucking neo-cons are nasty little imperialist criminal shits, because they want to be nasty imperialist criminal shits.
That they're "philosophers", is a bunch of bullshit.
It's justifying obscurantism.
That's their real skill.

That's what all "political philosophy", really is.

People justifying themselves.

Framing the debate.

So, I guess it's necessary from that angle.
People dismantling each other's bullshit, and seeing what ideas really hold up.

That's what the discourse really is, or ought to be.

It turned into a cynical game complete with cheating a long time ago.
At least in Washington.
And the partisan press.

But that just adds to the pile of "why? Why do you people live, how do you live, knowing it's this bad?".

I don't know.
I don't know why people keep going.

I really don't.
Stubbornness I guess.

Me, a lot of days, I'm just alive because I'm afraid to kill myself.

This is probably something I share with the walking dead.

I can't imagine them being too thrilled with their existence.

Whelp, that's why I started Podsville, and it's the culmination of all my previous rambling, and ruminating, but especially my trips last summer.

I don't want to have anything in common with the walking dead, I want to be alive because I wish to be, in a positive sense, not a negative one of being forced to be by biological impulse.

I want to be the guy represented by the crest, and I lean left because I want to, because I want to believe we can make progress as a species, because the alternative repulses me, and offers me absolutely nothing to make me happy.

That's it, really.

I can't frame it any better than that.

I don't think it should be framed better than that.

If Ayn Rand had just said "this is who I am, deal with it, or go fuck yourself!", I would've had way less of a problem.

But no, she wanted world economies run her way.

No thanks.
Didn't work so good.
And if Alan Greenspan wasn't a proper Randroid, who the fuck was?
Was anybody?

That's another trouble with codified political ideology, despite the codifying, everyone has their own mutated strain.
You see this in religion too.

The only ideology that can get everyone to agree is totalitarian shit.
And like I said in the individuality rant, I'm not into ant behavior.

And I admit I'm plain just not into it.
Some people seem to be dippy about it, or it wouldn't exist.

Science is objective, politics largely isn't.
Unless it can be shown with evidence when some fucker is lying.
Which is often.

And looping back to another old rant, this is what sickened me about "the irrational atheist".
Not what the fucker believed, which did make me grimace, but how shamelessly he was willing to lie to sell it.
Fine, believe progress is hopeless, fine, believe progress equals "progressive", equals "communist", equals Stalin, equals death and doom, fine, believe all belief reduces down to bullshit, and what separates beliefs is "utility", in making people happy, and that fairy tales "motivate", better, fine, believe all that evil garbage.

Hell, even believe that rationality is irrational because humans are fundamentally irrational, so it's hopeless to believe anyone can be rational.

But, ultimately, all that belief reduces down to what he wants to believe it.
He's a cynical motherfucker, because he wants to be a cynical motherfucker.

And cynical motherfuckers don't get to sell optimism with the next breath.
Even fairy-tale based optimism.
And especially bloody barbaric fairy tales that aren't at all optimistic about the human condition.

But, all that would just make him a hypocrite, which he is, and it would also make him an amoral fuck of the first water along with Leo Strauss.

What makes him a bald-faced fucking liar, is the chain that leads progress bad = atheists are commies = all belief is a murk of illusion = unless they give you hope = religion does this = THEREFORE IT"S REAL!!

Um, no, buddy.
Sorry.
But, that you're willing to lie so boldly shows that you are a Straussian.
And Straussians aren't libertarians by any stretch of the imagination, so there's another lie.

Like I said above, the political game has gotten pretty cynical.

Fat lot of good philosophy did to help with that.

But, was it ever supposed to?

Well, it laid out the formal fallacies, so, on some level, yeah.

But otherwise...people bought that awful book because they already believed in it.
It didn't persuade anyone.

Fodder for cynical hopeless people.

Is that what keeps them going in the face of it?
Hate?
Sad.

I hope that's not most people.

But, I admitted further up, hope is just something I want, isn't it?

Well, fuck it.
Like the 4 I's, fuck it.

That's my philosophy right up front, and I ain't gonna lie to ya.

As I just tirelessly laid out, you ain't gonna get a better deal than that many other places.

If some blog has a better deal than that, go there.