The Magical Mystery Lure; Liberals, Magic, and the Fundamental Differences between Left and Right

Timothy Birdnow In a recent brilliant piece Daren Jonescu observed that "some guy who lives in my neighborhood", Barack Obama's friend William Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground and now champion of Indoctrination, er, education, sounds an awful lot like Mr. Obama himself, strangely changing his personal story to fit a given narrative. http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/the_unknown_ayers_and_obama_convergence This sparked an interesting discussion which I want to share with our readers. This from me: "I've always said that one of the key differences between Conservatives and Liberals is that the liberal does not believe in a concrete reality, but thinks that the real world is subject to manipulation by his or her thoughts and emotions, and Ayers (who sounds just like Obama in the quotes you supplied) clearly does likewise. To many on the Left reality is a show, a play that is acted out by characters and not a real thing with real people responding. They think that if they can get enough people to buy into their narrative it will make it real. "visualize world peace" for example. It's part of why they are so dilligent (and so good) and propoganda and media manipulation. I suspect Ayers is doing precisely that with his smug, third person narrative about his own life." End To which Daren replied: "I think your analysis of leftists is quite right. I can't think of a precise Greek word for that psychological state at the moment. However, the modern left has been heavily influenced in its post-Marxist outlook by existentialism and phenomenology. The German phenomenologists, beginning with Heidegger's teacher, Edmund Husserl, used the Greek word "epoche", bracketing, to describe the need to detach considerations of external reality from philosophy proper, which would henceforth be focused strictly on "the phenomena," i.e. the world as constructed through experience and perception. (We "bracket" material reality off, as a way of dispensing with it for theoretical purposes.) Though phenomenology was an attempt to revitalize philosophy as the study of the human world, rather than of mere logical constructs, it has had the effect of engendering multiple generations of "intellectuals" who think that the only "world" that matters is a product of our way of perceiving it, and hence that it is fundamentally malleable. (Husserl didn't believe this, but ideas always devolve through generations of lesser students trying to carve out their own "new" twist on the original idea.) I believe that phenomenology is a major contributor to today's leftist psychology. We are not "experiencers," we are "creators," so, to some degree, even our own personal history is a "narrative" (a now-popular expression that comes directly out of phenomenology) that is subject to tweaking and adjusting as we go along. After all, "What really happened?" is a false question, as it presumes the objective existence of a "past." The past itself is a product of creative perception, like everything else. So in describing their pasts, the human products of this theory feel that they are free to re-imagine the events as they go along, as there is no stable "truth" about themselves anyway". end Daren And my reply: "It's unfortunate that the German philosophers should come around just before the discoveries of Relativity and Quantum Physics because both buttressed their arguments quite well; the observer is very important to the nature of reality in both. Einstein showed that time is dependent on the viewpoint of the observer, and the Heidelberg interpretation of quantum physics says that the observer is critical in the collapse of the particle wave-front, meaning that a particle is only in a certain place and time because it is observed. These two theories had much to do with the rise of modern relativism in liberal thought, I am certain." End Liberals must be understood to be defeated, much like an exterminator learns about the pests he fights so he can better eliminate them. How many homeowners have tried to get rid of an infestation of roaches, or ants, or wasps, and had no luck? They fail because they do not understand the enemy. Too often that is the case, and we often fail to understand the roots of Progressivism, the thinking that makes the Left operate in the fashion they do. Liberalism is the triumph of wishful thinking over reality. It's one of the oldest impulses of Mankind, and can be seen going back into the mists of time. Magic we call it today; the idea that Man can manipulate his reality by some sort of proper incantation or through some sort of mental repitition (often in the form of prayer to some artificial deity he fashioned out of stone or wood). And, of course, if Man can practice magic, can change reality by wishful thinking, then he himself is God. That is why the Israelites were given the First Commandment "I the Lord am your God, you shall not have other gods before Me." This was given as the very first order from Yahweh because it is perhaps the most damaging human failing. Oddly enough we see it today not in the worship of Baal or Horace or Zeus but in a strange kind of nature worship involving science and the powers of rational thought. This is strange because it is an attack on rational thought in the name of rational thought, and a corruption of science in the name of science. The end is to deify Man and to empower Man with the divine ability to shape his reality as he sees fit i.e. to replace the God who created the Universe with the will of Man. It's the same tired magic in a new pacikage, and this package actually works because it uses some scientific principles to manipulate the natural world. Many fall into the trap, bedazzled by the success of modern science and believing that this success is solely to the greater glory of Man and that nothing is beyond human reach. But anybody who thinks about it knows there is PLENTY beyond human reach, and the Liberal is no different. He chooses instead to believe that he can wish things to go his way. That is not to say that he takes no concrete steps; the Left is better at organizing and campaigning than the Right precisely because they are materialists and do not believe that there is someone above us with His hand on events. But that materialism justifies the belief in the godlike nature of Man in the Liberal mind, and sets up a strange dichotomy whereby the Liberal bot rejects the supernatural and yet makes it the core of his belief system. In short, there is a huge hole in the liberal where God should be. Nature abhores a vacuum, and that hole is filled with all manner of things conflated in the liberal mind. It's why they seem so incapable of accepting the truth and so very capable of exaggeration and establishing fanciful narratives. Or, as Pontius Pilate put it at the trial of Jesus "what is Truth?" Pilate was the first Liberal, or an early one at any rate. It's why we have the entire Global Warming scare; the narrative suggests Man is a worthless slug, a malignant tumor that should be removed from the organism of Gaia and at the same time has this Godlike power to destroy the planet. We are both worthless and divine. Much "science" goes toward establishing this narrative, and much of this science is purest rubbish, cargo cult science, the purpose of which is to advance the narrative even when the evidence does not fit with reality. It is goal oriented science, intended to advance a worldview and a political purpose rather than advance Man's knowledge of the Universe. Therefore it is acceptable to cherry pick data, to suppress data, to hide your methodology, to strongarm editors into spiking papers that disagree with you, to boycotting publications that allow those who disagree a forum, to launch personal attacks on skeptical scientists, and to generally trash the scientific method. This is science because the collective I.E. the Liberal says it's science, and his will be done! It's about creating a narrative, and by creating that narrative recreating reality. It's about empowering Man as god, and by Man we necessarily mean the State which is the collective will of Man. In the end it is a form of magic, an attempt to bend reality to your wishes by chanting incantations. It can be argued that no man knows anything except for photons. We do not actually perceive reality but merely an image of reality produced by photons striking our bodies in some fashion: receptor cones in the eyes, the eardrum being struck by molecules vibrating from photons, ditto the skin, which gives us touch, and taste and smell are related phonomena. So what is real? Is there something outside of us that exists independent from our inner existence or not? In the end, the differences between the Left and Right go back to the simplest of beliefs; is there a concrete reality or is reality a function of how we perceive the Universe. Conservatives believe the former, that reality exists whether we believe in it or not (Phillip K. Dick's definition of reality http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick) or is it something subject to our whims and beliefs. Conservatives take it as it is, Liberals demand that it be what they want it to be. God lies at the intersection of these two viewpoints; is there an independent entity that establishes what is real, or are we the ones who do that. While there are liberals who believe in God, their view of God is ultimately dependent on their subjective vision. Liberals simply refuse to believe they aren't the ones in the driver's seat.