Category: philosophy

Power

On By CantelonIn philosophy, politicsLeave a comment

I am convinced that there is nothing that could be released in the Epstein files that would lead to Donald Trump being charged with any crime, let alone successfully impeached.

I mean on January 23, 2016, Donald Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

I believe he is absolutely correct. I don’t believe this is hyperbole or metaphorical. This is what power can do. There are enough people in the United States convinced that every negative thing said about Trump is a lie, combined with a whole host of other people in power who are simply terrified to make a move against this president to ensure his near invulnerability.

The consequences of this persistent demonstration of what power can do in the modern world are far reaching. People are watching. One imagines that Trump and his loyal followers in the Republican Party are working hard on strategies that would allow for a third Trump term (or at least a guaranteed continuation of a Republican presidency).

There are others waiting in the wings to fill the power gap in like fashion as well. Technogarchs whose wealth and control of public opinion through social media algorithms can literally shape the outcome of elections worldwide stand ready to support anyone whose efforts will strengthen their corporate grip on revenue and personal power.

How does one fight such evil?

The great Italian socialist leader Antonio Gramsci understood what was going on as fascism continued to tighten its grip on Italy despite every effort of the anti-fascist resistance. He knew that those in power were using more than just force to keep people in line. They manipulated media and discourse to gain the broad assent of most people…they developed and maintained what he called a cultural hegemony…that is solid and broad control of people’s opinions, wants and decisions through cultural means.

To tear down a hegemony is difficult work. Gramsci wrote in his prison letters “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” By which he meant that he could not see a rational socialist way to tear down the fascist hegemony, but he could not do anything but continue to try because of his sense of justice. This is a bleak place to be…like Sisyphus…the socialist anti-fascist efforts to destroy fascism were/are like pushing that boulder up a hill only to have it roll back over you before you reached the top and having to start all over again repeatedly without end.

I find there is much in Gramsci to inform our own age however what I do not find is hope. Ultimately fascism around the world was defeated in WW2 but not so much through the efforts of anti-fascist socialists as through the power of capitalist countries and leaders who saw an erosion of their own hegemony if Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Japan and others were allowed to continue on their path of conquest.

Now there is a different form of fascism to fight – capitalist fascism. Who comes to the rescue of the masses in this circumstance? Certainly not other capitalist power brokers who stand only to gain. Whose power and hegemony will be eroded by this new fascist uprising?

Of course, since fascism grows stronger as class inequality grows it becomes a perpetual motion machine over time. Ultimately this is why anti-fascist struggles have been so largely fruitless. What do you do when the most powerful nation on earth finds itself lurching into fascism? Unlike WW2 you cannot rely on them to come to the rescue. Only through its own inner conflicts and potential resolutions can there be hope.

The next presidential election is only two years away…there is no sense of a strong Democrat capable of facing the machine that Trump and his fascist Republican government has built.

Gramsci wrote that “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” He wrote this nearly 100 years ago and yet it remains as the primary truth of our era. The world is increasing ruled by monsters…monsters who recognize one-another and prop one-another up.

So, what do we do in the face of what feels insurmountable? Do we do nothing? Do we remain indifferent, or simply remain privately outraged and publicly silent (which has the same effect as indifference? I look to Gramsci here as well:

“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?

I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them.

I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan. That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.”

Moral Relativism and the Death of Philosophy

On By CantelonIn ethics, morality, philosophy, religion, science, theologyLeave a comment

Philosophy is dead, long live philosophy.

That is to say philosophy is dying, having been wandering haplessly between the fronts in the thought wars between science and religion and been shot by both sides it now lays unnoticed and bleeding to death.

I say philosophy is dead, long live philosophy because humans are, by their nature, first and foremost philosophers. We will continue to be so long after the disciplines of science and theology “move on” past what they perceive as the discipline’s dead corpse.

The battle between science and religion has become so contentious of late that one feels as if sides must be chosen (wrong). The language of a hot war like this becomes increasingly inflexible to the point that there is no subtlety or nuance to either discipline any more and you are left feeling as if you must chose between one or the other.

Now, as it happens, both science and theology are branches of the mother of all knowledge – philosophy (literally meaning Love of Words/Knowledge). As such and like any good parent philosophy often tries to intervene between its angry brat children Science and Theology as they attempt to poke each other’s eyes out in fits of increasing rage and, like so many parents have discovered, both children turn their anger on gentle mother and tear her to shreds in highly emotional, illogical tantrums before turning back to one another.

The consequences of this battle are only now being felt in culture but the long term implications are profound and frightening. There is a fantastic opinion piece exploring these implications in the New York Times here:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com//2015/03/02/why-our-children-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/

As science fixes its gaze on developing the “winning strategy” over theology it has begun to downplay and even discard anything that is (or even perceived as) relative in favour of the measurable and observable fact that is impossible to disprove. Truth is only what is measurable and observable. While the individual scientist may agree that there are true things out there science has not found – the culture of science in the ongoing thought wars leaves the audience feeling the former – that if it has not been observed and/or measured it does not exist.

Theology is relative according to this culture inasmuch as god is neither measurable or observable in a measurable way.

Unfortunately all sorts of other areas that philosophy once comfortably asserted as being reasonable but immeasurable absolute truths have also fallen into the pit of relativism – caught up in the gravitational pull of a demanding and inflexible argument.

Ethics and morality are now all relative and this has translated simplistically into – “I am the measure of what is good or bad, moral or immoral, ethical or unethical…and my power to assert my determination further determines my truth.”

When ethics and morality become relative there rises the need for people and people groups to accumulate power so as to implement and ensure the survival of their ethic. This leads to conflict. Conflict leads to war. War leads to death.

Is murder wrong? It depends. Is theft wrong? It depends? Is lying, cheating, raping, eugenics etc. wrong…it depends because there is no way according to the scientific method to determine and measure the ethic itself – only the consequences as they impact me.

On the flip side some theologians, or perhaps moreso – the average conservative person of faith, have become suspicious of the absolutism of science (which is ironic given their own absolute claims to the counter) and have begun to deny philosophy’s free thinking nature to investigate and ask dangerous questions.

“Do not ask questions…questions lead to answers and we already have answers, why do we need new answers?”

This leads to a head in the sand sort of posture that stagnates growth and in many instances leads to regression. The very attitude is counter to the great Protestant Reformer’s creed of “always reforming” – that is to say – we always rethink what we understand to be truth so that we might be open to truth we have yet to recognize.

I am not sure of the way back because unlike many of the generals dictating the strategy of this conflict philosophy is inherently non-aggressive in terms of asserting itself. We will see how things unfold but I for one hope for a truce and a reunion of science and theology under the guiding wisdom of philosophy.