The Weakness of the Progressive Mind

[Nick_A]

Where the religious mind feels the importance of honoring eternal values, the progressive mind is only concerned with “enlightened expediency”

Religious values are only 'eternal' is as far as they are so vaguely formulated as to be meaningless.

When it comes to any practical application of these supposedly eternal values, it seems to be as much a matter of "enlightened expediency" for the religious as it is for everyone else.

True, but you are missing the point. Consider how it was expressed:

“One of the great weaknesses of the progressive, as distinct from the religious, mind, is that it has no awareness of truth as such; only of truth in terms of enlightened expediency.” ~ Malcolm Muggeridge Through the Microphone (1969)

I agree that this "awareness of truth" degenerates and becomes prostituted as the conscious essence of religion is consumed by society. However the progressive mind defends the loss. It has lost awareness of what the religious mind has often distorted and even prostituted. As the progressive mind descends into idealized fragmentation and specialized facts, it becomes more oblivious of the importance of objective values and their source for the health of human "being."

Those like Malcolm Muggeridge, Jacob Needleman, and Simone Weil, were all atheists at one time who gradually came to realize that their opposition to the religious mind was not a strength but a weakness since they didn't understand. They were opposing man made corruption before appreciating the human need the essence of religion served.

[Science Fan]

You are still claiming that progressives are members of the political left, when this is historically false. Progressives came from both the left and the right. Moreover, it's not even the left that believes truth does not exist. It is the extreme left that holds such a view, which is also held by members of the extreme right, including the bombs-and-Jesus crowd, i.e., the Christian right.

[Greta]

People can come to an agreement on scientific facts. Yet as Orwell points out we cannot agree on matters of philosophy, religion, ethics, or politics.

Good point.

There is no accepted emotional equivalent to the scientific method.

Incoherent. Nobody wants engineers making emotional decisions. If they get the work right, then that brings more happiness than if they decide to act on whim, impulse or influence (and build a malfunctioning bridge).

In short, the Great Beast creates “experts” in these fields and fight for superiority. We can have eternal scientific facts but the progressive mind closes to emotionally opening to objective conscience so as to experience objective values and their Source. Without “feeling” objective values, the acceptance of voluntary obligations necessary to sustain societal freedom must be sacrificed to “enlightened expediency.”

In short, as societies grow they become increasingly specialised, which reduces duplication and allows for greater skills development in specialised areas. Thus, some people have the role of leading or researching, exploring, helping, teaching, entertaining and so on.

If your nation does as you wish, and diminishes its science programs so as to allow for more theocratic and emotionally driven governance, then your nation will fail to compete with more externally focused nations. Sacrifices must be made for cultural survival; we cannot afford to "become like little children" because we have the responsibilities.

So dear reader let me ask you: do you believe there must be a conflict between objective facts and objective values ...

Please list these "objective values", if you believe they exist. I'm curious to know the others. Based on your posts I know that one of these so-called eternal values is patriarchy - your belief that men are the superior sex so women must be subservient to men.

I personally see your "eternal values" as standard conservative values. As usual, you posit your own beliefs as universals.

[commonsense]

Hi Commonsense

It is obvious, then, that we need both sides to provide some protection from crime. But there’s the rub—how to achieve an effective balance of these attitudes. How practical each is, how affordable each is and how effective each is; these are the chief factors involved in the decisions to be made.

What is your idea of the ideal society? Does its government serve its citizen’s need to become themselves as individuals or does the ideal society consist of citizens trained to serve the dictates of the government as a dependent collective? Once we decide this question, it is easier to decide if the progressive mind is a weakness or a strength.

An ideal society is one where its members are free to live ethically.

We should also consider whether the religious mind is a weakness or a strength. I have indicated that both the progressive and the religious minds are assets as well as deficits.

On further reflection, I’d say the religious mind is an oxymoron and should not have been considered a strength by any account.

The mind is of the cognitive realm. Religion is a matter of deep feeling, of faith, of the affective realm.

So, the progressive mind works from the relativist point of view. Thoughts and actions are expedient, efficacious, situational and contextual in nature, even fleeting.

On the other hand, religious values are to be viewed as absolute. They are not subject to the fleeting nature of time.

But time changes everything. The changeless, the constant, the absolute can only exist in a state without time. Since religious values transcend the uncertainties of earthly existence, they exist in a vacuum.

Flexibility is a sine qua non for societies that will flourish under the vicissitudes of human existence. By that claim, such is the case for a free society.

[Nick_A]

You are still claiming that progressives are members of the political left, when this is historically false. Progressives came from both the left and the right. Moreover, it's not even the left that believes truth does not exist. It is the extreme left that holds such a view, which is also held by members of the extreme right, including the bombs-and-Jesus crowd, i.e., the Christian right.

You are underestimating the topic. The concern is not providing labels but distinguishing between two opposing directions of thought. The progressive agenda, regardless of in what medium it is expressed believes that the world and society within it is the source of values. In contrast the religious mind has felt that higher human values like the love for life itself as opposed to selective animal love originates with a quality of conscious descending from above

Here is the essential question and I hope it inspires a student lurker to elaborate on it in a philosophical essay. Can a free society sustain itself by conditioned beliefs formed by secularism and all its hypocrisy or is freedom dependent upon human consciousness becoming connected with higher consciousness to experience the value of higher emotions?

These are the two essential attractions for the human psych. We can either follow society or what Plato called the Beast and blindly obey its dictates as supreme or strive to consciously awaken in order to feel eternal values as normal for higher consciousness. The inner pull to ascend vs the pull to descend.

[Nick_A]

Hi Commonsense

It is obvious, then, that we need both sides to provide some protection from crime. But there’s the rub—how to achieve an effective balance of these attitudes. How practical each is, how affordable each is and how effective each is; these are the chief factors involved in the decisions to be made.

What is your idea of the ideal society? Does its government serve its citizen’s need to become themselves as individuals or does the ideal society consist of citizens trained to serve the dictates of the government as a dependent collective? Once we decide this question, it is easier to decide if the progressive mind is a weakness or a strength.

An ideal society is one where its members are free to live ethically.

We should also consider whether the religious mind is a weakness or a strength. I have indicated that both the progressive and the religious minds are assets as well as deficits.

On further reflection, I’d say the religious mind is an oxymoron and should not have been considered a strength by any account.

The mind is of the cognitive realm. Religion is a matter of deep feeling, of faith, of the affective realm.

So, the progressive mind works from the relativist point of view. Thoughts and actions are expedient, efficacious, situational and contextual in nature, even fleeting.

On the other hand, religious values are to be viewed as absolute. They are not subject to the fleeting nature of time.

But time changes everything. The changeless, the constant, the absolute can only exist in a state without time. Since religious values transcend the uncertainties of earthly existence, they exist in a vacuum.

Flexibility is a sine qua non for societies that will flourish under the vicissitudes of human existence. By that claim, such is the case for a free society.

An ideal society is one where its members are free to live ethically.

But why live ethically? If you consider all the money being made through corruption, why live ethically? Might is right. If you cannot explain why people would live ethically then the rest of your post becomes meaningless.

[Nick_A]

Greta, for some reason you assume a conflict between facts and objective values which has no realistic basis. You have some strange notion about eternal values making it impossible for you to respect a human value rather than an indoctrinated secular value.

If your nation does as you wish, and diminishes its science programs so as to allow for more theocratic and emotionally driven governance, then your nation will fail to compete with more externally focused nations. Sacrifices must be made for cultural survival; we cannot afford to "become like little children" because we have the responsibilities.

You ask about objective values. You won’t understand but I’ll post some food for thought for all those open to the question. Read the first paragraph. You will side with the relativists while I side with Plato. I can’t explain what you are closed to. Yet as a society opens to the contemplation of objective values, it becomes less superficial and more meaningful. The question becomes how to do it in a collective atmosphere in which the ideal of fragmentation makes people hostile to depth.

https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201 ... alues.html

[Science Fan]

Nick A: Here is a partial list of my objective values: Freedom of speech. Freedom from religion. Equal treatment under the law.
Now, note that all of these values are anathema to religion, as religion charged people with blasphemy, even in the USA, and denied people freedom of religion and freedom from religion, and also denied equal treatment for those outside their religion.

[Nick_A]

Nick A: Here is a partial list of my objective values: Freedom of speech. Freedom from religion. Equal treatment under the law.
Now, note that all of these values are anathema to religion, as religion charged people with blasphemy, even in the USA, and denied people freedom of religion and freedom from religion, and also denied equal treatment for those outside their religion.

Those are not objective values as I understand them. They are subjective values. From the above link:

Plato argued powerfully in favor of the objectivity of values such as truth, good, and beauty. Objective values are those that lie outside of the individual and are not dependent upon her/his perception or belief.

The religious mind on this thread refers to the awareness of a quality of consciousness greater than our own which opens the human mind to objective values not originating from the man animal limited to interpretations of societal reasoning. I agree that you have posted worthwhile values but they are still subjective values. Objective values may or may not be the origin of subjective values

[Greta]

You ask about objective values. You won’t understand but I’ll post some food for thought for all those open to the question. Read the first paragraph. You will side with the relativists while I side with Plato. I can’t explain what you are closed to. Yet as a society opens to the contemplation of objective values, it becomes less superficial and more meaningful. The question becomes how to do it in a collective atmosphere in which the ideal of fragmentation makes people hostile to depth.

https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201 ... alues.html

Yes, Plato strikes me as correct in terms of the practical running of a society but largely wrong in terms of ontology.

What is beautiful to you is not to me, and vice versa. What is beautiful to humans might be terrifying for other species. The blue sky is beautiful to us. An orange, polluted sky is not, but if you ignore the dirt factor, a polluted sunset can be no less artistically sweet as a healthy blue sky.

Truth ... that depends on the definition and extent. I understand that there is even a relative element to mathematics due to the axioms on which maths is based, but that would be coming close to an objective truth.

"Good" is clearly subjective, depending n one's interests, and the intimate link between destruction and renewal muddies those waters further.

The weakness of the religious mind is the acceptance of preferred options without sufficient evidence to make such a decision, and thus no longer considering other options.

[Dubious]

Objective values whether Truth, Beauty, Justice, etc., are created by humans based on the subjectivities which underscore them. They become abstractions frozen into Objective values. None of these "qualities" exist within nature or acknowledged as Values, objective, subjective or otherwise. These only derive from us, through us and IN us regardless the degree of value one gives it or how they're qualified.

Plato has the tendency to create abstractions as external to that which actually created it, i.e., ascendant idealizations existing independently of us. But these impenetrable "objective values" operate more as allegory and metaphor than any uncompromising monothematic objectivity. That is its lesson. It's also massively dangerous to succumb to such inflexibility in our behavior using these abstractions to aggregate their own power.

Plato is brilliant but his dialogues invariably float in a sea of premises meant to confirm its conclusions...Plato's conclusions. Who knows what Socrates would have concluded. There are other philosophers as great who conclude otherwise; Aristotle was one in spite of being a pupil.

[Dontaskme]

Objective values whether Truth, Beauty, Justice, etc., are created by humans based on the subjectivities which underscore them. They become abstractions frozen into Objective values. None of these "qualities" exist within nature or acknowledged as Values, objective, subjective or otherwise. These only derive from us, through us and IN us regardless the degree of value one gives it or how they're qualified.

No, everything is created by no thing aka conscious knowledge known only by consciousness itself, which is eternal since there is no opposite to infinity for eternity...so nothingness is not the opposite to everything, it is the same no thing...aka everything.

Everything is infinity for eternity...knowledge popped aware.

Aka no thing aware of itself..

The one looking at an image is emptiness...inseparable from the image...that should tell you everything you need to know about images.

In that all images, all knowledge has no copyright.

This is ultimate freedom to be, it is a strength beyond belief, and all we do is piss it away by arguing who has qualified authorship over knowledge in general.

.

[Nick_A]

Dubious wrote

Objective values whether Truth, Beauty, Justice, etc., are created by humans based on the subjectivities which underscore them. They become abstractions frozen into Objective values. None of these "qualities" exist within nature or acknowledged as Values, objective, subjective or otherwise. These only derive from us, through us and IN us regardless the degree of value one gives it or how they're qualified.

Greta wrote:

What is beautiful to you is not to me, and vice versa. What is beautiful to humans might be terrifying for other species. The blue sky is beautiful to us. An orange, polluted sky is not, but if you ignore the dirt factor, a polluted sunset can be no less artistically sweet as a healthy blue sky.

Both Greta and dubious do not appear to distinguish between subjective values created by man and objective values which are realities or ideas existing within the Source or what Plato called the Good.

The progressive mind expressed by Dubious and Greta is limited to arguing interpretations of subjective values. The religious mind is drawn to the source of objective values. The religious mind becomes secularized over time and loses the idea of objective values in favor of subjective values. Both the progressive and religious minds will be then drawn to subjective values furthering their beliefs. The religious mind remaining true to its attraction to objective values and the ineffable source they exist within will be open to contemplate that which is greater than themselves and in the process grow closer to the ineffable Source and objective values which are an essential part of our great universe.

[Atla]

distinguish between subjective values created by man and objective values which are realities or ideas existing within the Source or what Plato called the Good.

How exactly do you know that you aren't just making up all this Source/Good/objective value business?

[Science Fan]

Nick A: Sorry, there Nick, but if you are going to arbitrarily state that any values you do not like, or that religion has a long sordid history standing against, are subjective, while values you arbitrarily support are objective, then the discussion is over, because it is entirely pointless. It's also question begging.