LDD Sermon #4 Philosophy as subversion

[Cain]

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic
- John F Kennedy

It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.
-Noam Chomsky

Political philosophy is one of the most frustrating yet useful undertakings any person partake in.  Consider this: We are often led to believe that the great matters are set to rest, that the systems that have grown up through the historical processes are set in stone and it is merely a matter of picking and choosing between these, according to which ones we find most morally appealing or personally profitable.

Suckers.  As someone who has made it a hobby to learn about con tricks and how to manipulate others, I can tell you right away a massive con is being played here.  Its an old one, called ,Äúcontrolling the options,Äù.  Kissinger was a past master at it, using it to control Nixon's foreign policy to no small degree.  So long as you limit the choices, you have a degree of damage control, as it were, so long as all the choices you present have some commonalities between them.

,ÄúWhat is the common thread of all political philosophy,Äù I hear you ask.  I'll tell you, its very simple and astonishingly basic, given its development over 2400 years: the City must be defended from subversion.  In this context, ,Äúthe city,Äù refers to the independent political system, be it a state or  not.  Yeah, thats it.  Thats the basic axiom that underlies all philosophical thought about interaction in society, as it is currently understood and presented.  Pretty simple, huh?

The question is, of course, is the City worth defending?  Well, lets look at how this has traditionally been done, in the years gone by.  Lying and manipulation and deceit.  The state is built on lies of protection, of belonging and of external threats.  Myths of glory and power to give people purpose and external threats an enemy to focus on and imprint those past myths on.  An example would be how not wanting to go into Iraq in 2003 was presented as ,Äúappeasement,Äù by the right-wing British media.  After all, this is the Britain who would not appease Hitler, that is one of the central myths of the post-1945 world, that we do not kowtow to dictators of any stripe.  Its nonsense of course, in that we were willing to let democratic Czechoslovakia be subsumed without a fight, yet stood up for the militaristic and anti-semitic Polish government.  But its important in keeping the City together, so we can trot it out whenever we need some people killed somewhere.

Philosophy is one of the most important instruments in this.  Philosophers are so very useful when it comes to building narratives like this.  By informing people of the ideas of right and wrong, they inform how we view the world and the excuses we use to keep the City safe from internal breakdown.  Its no different if its the democratic myth that we choose our leaders or the aristocratic myth that our leaders are more able and worthy.

But that same philosophical input is a double-edged sword.  For some philosophers have dared to speak the truth in the past, to lay to rest the fanciful notions and lies that surround our societies.  Machiavelli, Stirner, Nietzsche and Morgenthau are a few examples of these sort of philosophers, who let the cat out of the bag.  How?  By telling the truth.  The truth is subversive in and of itself.  It invariably leads to nihilism, which undermines everything the state stands for, even in the passive Buddhist form but particularly in its powerful and transitory stage that Nietzsche talks of at length in his notes for The Will to Power.  By stripping away the lies and revealing the ultimate power mechanisms on which the state truly relies, these men lived up to the history of subversive philosophy.

Most people, even today, revile such thinkers.  They tend to have a blas?© attitude to morality that upsets our moral fixated culture, as well as a disconcerting ability to understand the underlying reasons behind the seemingly basic reasons we take for granted of social existence.  But, to paraphrase Orwell, ,ÄúIn times of philosophical deceit, telling the truth is a subversive act.,Äù In my opinion, the City is not worth saving.  Not for lies that crush the individual in the name of the masses, of society, of God or of popular consent.  The truth shall set ye free, as the saying goes.  Philosophy, in challenging how we think about basic assumptions, may be the start of all subversion and critical thinking from here on in.

[LHX]

unstoppable

[eighteen buddha strike]

Whenever I see that Cain has posted something, I make sure to read it.

[Cain]

Thanks.  I like to take the time to add some thinking to some of my posts.  I think thinking makes them better than my usual stream of consciousness posting.

[LMNO]

That was pretty damn cool.


But is it workable?

That is to say,

1.  What is truth? [/Pilate]
2.  Which truth will pull the lynchpin on the State?

(insert 3 other points for ZOMG23LOL)

[Cain]

To a degree, I think it is.  Leo Strauss, the NeoCon mastermind, claimed it was the most important thing in the state to keep nihilism at bay through the use of lies to give meaning.  However, Stirner removed meaning entirely.  Nietzsche removed meaning and replaced it with the will to power, being blind and amoral.  Morgenthau worked upon Nietzsche's ideas in the sphere of politics, about the amorality of power plays and the lies a state uses to make itself look like a moral agent, to stave off nihilism.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

BUT WITHOUT THE CITY WHO WILL PROTECT US FROM OURSELVES?
\