Toxic Gender Philosophy

[promethean75]

"We are only forbidden to judge the value of persons (which would be ad hominem, anyway). We are positively commanded to judge issues and truth."

False. Judging the value of a person, alone, is not an ad hominem fallacy. But calling a person's claims and conclusions right or wrong becuz they are thought to be a great guy or a scoundrel, is to commit the ad hominem fallacy.

Thus, i call jesus on the ad hominem fallacy, which he is aksing his disciples to commit against themselves in this example:

"Do not judge by the outward appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”

To assume that one's judgement will be correct only if one is 'righteous' is to falsely attribute proper judgement only to those who can be righteous. Whereas if one were not righteous, jesus would call them incapable of proper judgement.

What we have here, gentlemen, in addition to the ad hominem, is an implicit argumentum ad verecundiam; the righteous are the authority in any judgement.

Thank u and good day.

[Immanuel Can]

Their discipline is corrupt. I never even remotely suggested that particular persons were corrupt.

In order for you to demonstrate that the discipline is corrupt — say by susceptibility to “propagandizing” and those “secular meta-narratives” and “imaginative narrative -making”, you would have had to encounter a corrupt anthropologist.

Not at all. One would merely have to read anthropological theory and research, and see that the methods they are using are inadequate to be genuinely "scientific," or find evidence of propagandized conclusions, rather than scientific ones, in the research. One might never meet a particular person.

Moreover, to cite any anthropologist's character is simply irrelevant. As Shakespeare put it, sometimes the Devil "speaks true." The allegedly corrupt anthropologist might well be totally correct in some research or argument he or she produced, and his or her regular character would be irrelevant to that.

It's illogical to mistake a personal attack for a dealing with a given argument. It's not merely childish (though it is that) but also, as you can see from abundant philosophical websites such as those I've cited, completely fallacious.

[Immanuel Can]

"We are only forbidden to judge the value of persons (which would be ad hominem, anyway). We are positively commanded to judge issues and truth."

Judging the value of a person, alone, is not an ad hominem fallacy. But calling a person's claims and conclusions right or wrong becuz they are thought to be a great guy or a scoundrel, is to commit the ad hominem fallacy.

You are correct. Thank you for that much. But you are also wrong.

You are correct to say that the ad hominem fallacy relates to using character assassination as if it were relevant to the dismissing of a particular argument. But you're wrong to assume that what judging the worth of a person is morally allowable. In fact, it's not even possible. For as Jesus says, "To his own master he stands or falls," referring to the "judging" of somebody who isn't your "servant."

Consequently, there are things that one is capable of judging, and indeed, commanded TO judge, and things one is forbidden to judge. One is commanded to judge truth: one is forbidden to assign the personal value of another -- and that, on multiple occasions.

However, the same does not apply to God. For whereas mankind is incapable of knowing the ultimate value of another human being, the same is not true of God. God is the "master" to whom every "servant" reports; and being omniscient, God always knows what the ultimate value of a given person is. That is why He is called "the Judge," and we are not.

And Jesus Christ is God. See John 5:22-23.

"For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son just as they honor the Father. The one who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him."

Hope this clears it up for you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

A couple of (potentially illuminating) thoughts on the topic of ad homimen

First, my larger and prevailing criticism of our own dear Immanuel, who really does serve an important role on this forum and has for a long time, is found in my designation of him as an Evangelical Christian fanatic. Naturally, he reacts when this term is used because it does imply defect. But if I come out with such an aggressive posture against the religiously-minded, and label the foundation of their religious belief as based in religious mythologies (which is what I truly and honestly do believe), I do not believe that I am engaged in a fallacious ideological enterprise.

It is a very curious and somewhat disturbing problem which I personally face and I will try to clarify what it is. Doing so, I hope, I will clarify my own position within these conversations, always contentious, always bordering on acrimony, that go on perpetually on this forum.

So let me say that I have an established ad hominem (against the man and against the men) position against nearly the entire enterprise of Evangelical Christianity in America today. American Christianity is a bizarre creature. In order to understand it one has to understand the two great American revival movements (the Great Awakenings) and also, and I think importantly, the religious foment that took place in the so-called Burned-Over District of western New York state in the 19th century.

The term "burned-over district" refers to the western and parts of the central regions of New York State in the early 19th century, where religious revivals and the formation of new religious movements of the Second Great Awakening took place, to such a great extent that spiritual fervor seemed to set the area on fire.

Just examine the strange religious neo- and post-Christian branches (or cults) that developed out of that cauldron! These amount to religious innovations as new and radical, and also powerful and influential, as so many American trends and traditions -- as for example in music. America is, in this sense, a cauldron of radical experimentation and innovation.

Now, I place all of this in the context of the present. Meaning, that what went on previously can be traced through the decades and directly into the present. The present state and condition of American Evangelical religion -- and here I do not hesitate to label it a psycho-social phenomena that borders into deeply psychological territory in which people *hallucinate* and *project* all manner of distorted and tendentious imagined material into the fabric of life-lived -- is a psycho-social engine driving people and groups into really weird territories. I label these *half-maddened* not because I desire to condemn any particular man, or Evangelical believer, but because it is a social, political and philosophical duty to do so. Is this ad hominem?

Well, yes and no.

Here of course I face a problem and it is one that I do not know how to surmount or to deal with fairly. I will try to explain. I spent a good number of years in a non-official study of European Christianity with a focus on Catholicism. One of my first influences was Christopher Dawson's The Historic Reality of Christian Culture: A Way to the Renewal of Human Life (1 January 1960). The gist of the book proposes pretty much what it states in the title. It makes a claim, and attempts to set out to demonstrate it, that a Christian philosophy and (perhaps I might say) the inner turning that this entails, will lead to the 'renewal' that he advocates for. His other titles of course (listed here) developed the perspective that he brings forward in the apologetic book I just referred to.

Let's say that I *drank deeply* from these ideas and perspectives and this impelled me to investigate the roots of the religion in Europe, It is a whole, wide and deeply interesting territory. Christianity and Christian values as defined and expressed by genuine practitioners is fundamental to Europe and European culture. You will never, ever be able to disassociate all of that from what Europe is, and thus what we are. If that is the object, it is a futile and also a negatively-geared one.

But the *problem* is still as real as ever: the insane domain of religious hallucination, and the projection of psychological material into and onto the world in our present. The chief example I refer to is that of American Christian Zionism. Now, if I express what I really think about this, will that also be labeled as ad hominem? Will the content of my view and observation be dismissed because it is *fallacious argumentation*? Come now! I mean really.

So it turns out that if I or if someone is capable of believing something really & truly absurd and impossible -- I use the example of the belief that God paddycaked man into existence in a primordial garden and that this is the genuine beginning-point of real history -- that one shows oneself capable of believing anything. But this stands in some contradiction to what Chesterton said: "The problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing. Alas, it is much worse. He ends up believing anything."

So how do you *believe in God* and thus avoid the condition that Chesterton warns about, without falling into the myriad traps of uncritical religious belief? Because let's face the facts: the way things work today is that when a given person is exposed to a critical perspective of Christian fundamentalism, and when they see the nutjobs who infect the religious cults and entrance the multitudes, they naturally veer away from religion generally. They move to a secular position. And here I refer to about 80% of Europe. And here, naturally, Immanuel Can will find those who are *corrupting* the Christian meta-narrative that he holds dear and regards as vital to the salvation of his soul and (according to him) all souls.

Once you have become (as I say) unmoored from a specific religious ideology, you must arrive at new sets of definitions about life, meaning, value and purpose, or -- and here I will riff off of Chesterton's assertion -- you will become captured and enthralled by other currents that seem not to be religious and yet also seem to involve similar currents of religiousness, except applied to other systems of belief.

Now, Immanuel Can will likely label what I have written here as *rambling* and *wrong* and Heaven knows what else --but why (I ask)?

So let me sum up here by saying, again, something about the use of acute criticism of men and how they think, and what they think, and what they do when they are (say) captured by negative currents or currents of mass-thought. I mean specifically attacks against the man. Direct criticism of how men are. How distorted they can become. How unregulated in their thinking. How prone to the *hallucinations* I refer to. How susceptible of manipulation.

What do you propose? That I *blame ideas* only?

My position is that a) one must become capable of enunciating ideas in a fair, direct, and coherent manner, and at the same time b) not hold back from a sharp and direct critical analysis of the failings of men both in men *out there* (people, society) and in one's own self! The real art (if I can state it like this) of the use of criticism of the man is that one does not keep oneself out of it.

Therefore, if I have referred to *religious fanaticism* and if I label it as a negative, it must also be stated that I, as all of us, are as susceptible to it, in some form or other, as those we find it so easy to label. This is a Jungian idea I think: it is easy to see the *shadow* in others and to react against it, but harder, and yet imperative, to see the same things we criticize as operating in ourselves.

[Immanuel Can]

So let me say that I have an established ad hominem (against the man and against the men) position against nearly the entire enterprise of Evangelical Christianity in America today.

Oh, the projection! The chief lover of the ad hominem thinks all his opponents use ad hominems to argue.

And once again, we have a long excursis coming from nothing and leading to nowhere.

You are a marvel, I must admit.

[Alexis Jacobi]

So let me say that I have an established ad hominem (against the man and against the men) position against nearly the entire enterprise of Evangelical Christianity in America today.

Oh, the projection! The chief lover of the ad hominem thinks all his opponents use ad hominems to argue.

And once again, we have a long excursis coming from nothing and leading to nowhere.

You are a marvel, I must admit.

Talk about that *projection*, Immanuel.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I have a feeling that the larger part of what I try to communicate simply flies over the head of our own dear Immanuel.

Nevertheless, I will try to indicate why I am concerned about the force and power of mass-movements, specifically in America in the present, and the dangers of where it can led. And indeed where it seems to be leading.

There are two very worthy articles by CG Jung; one he wrote before the outbreak of WWll, and another that he wrote afterwards. They can be found on-line and they are (I think) important.

My position is that we have an obligation to attempt to see, and to critique, what is going on in our present when dangerous social and religious currents propel people along. That this is happening in America today is I think beyond question.

000310 Wotan. In: Jung, C., Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 10. 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 1970. 609 p. (p. 179-193).

The National Socialist (Nazi) movement in Germany is explained in terms of the reawakening of the psychic forces symbolized by the ancient German god Wotan. Although it is admitted that political, economic, and psychological factors each explain certain facets of the movement quite well, it is maintained that the movement is best understood in terms of the repossession of the German soul by the archetype Wotan. This pre-Christian god of the German people was represented as a restless wanderer, an unleasher of passions and lust for battle, a magician’s vessel in the occult, a god of storm and frenzy. The effects of such an archetypal, autonomous factor are examined in the collective life of a people. Several fragments from Nietzsche’s writings are viewed as an anticipation of Wotan’s return. Extensive references to books by Martin Nick and Wilhelm Hauer, dealing respectively with the myth of Wotan and the German Faith Movement, are used to explicate Wotan’s origins and his impact on modem German religion. Members of the German Faith Movement were urged to recognize that Wotan, not Christ, is the true god of the German people. Hitler is seen as an agent of Wotan, as a possessed man who has infected a nation. Thus the German people are seen to be victims rather than active agents of evil. It is predicted that Wotan, in time, will show the other side of his nature — the ecstatic, mantic side — and that the National Socialist movement will not be the last word.

000311 After the catastrophe. In: Jung, C., Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 10. 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 1970. 609 p. (p. 194-217).

In an attempt to explain the psychological factors responsible for the horrors of Nazi Germany, it is argued that Europe produced Germany, that Germany was but the crystallizing point for social and spiritual upheavals permeating all of Europe, and that all of Europe shares Germany’s guilt. Certain social conditions, e.g. mass unemployment, urbanization, and dependence on the state, are seen to have exacerbated the German predisposition to feelings of inferiority. This inferiority complex was manifested in overcompensation and in a whole nexus of pathological features that were flagrantly displayed in the person of Adolf Hitler. Hitler is described as the incarnation of the average German. The German people saw in Hitler the reflected image of their collective hysteria. By hysteria is meant that the opposites, inherent in every psyche, are further apart than normal, resulting in a higher energic tension and a disposition towards inner disharmonies. Goethe’s Faust is cited as a perfect example of this side of the German nature. Germany’s pact with the devil is said to lie in her abandonment of the spiritual for the material. With Nietzsche’s proclamation that God is dead the projected psychic image of God returned to its origin and produced a feeling of “God almightiness” that led the German people to disaster. The moral problem facing Europe is defined as a need to discover new sanctions for goodness and justice now that they can no longer be found in the metaphysics of religion. It is concluded that Europe must understandand accept its collective guilt and learn to live with the dark shadow that has been uncovered in its collective psyche.

[Alexis Jacobi]

And once again, we have a long excursis coming from nothing and leading to nowhere.

Can you develop this idea further? What do you mean *coming from nothing*?

And what do you mean *leading to nowhere*?

What is the right starting-point, Immanuel? And where it the right point to which I should lead?

Talk about these things. Make them crystal clear here among your peers who seem concerned for the issues.

[Immanuel Can]

...your peers who seem concerned for the issues.

I'm not really interested. And I'm receiving no requests from this imaginary field of "peers" who are concerned for your "issues." Sorry.

[Alexis Jacobi]

...your peers who seem concerned for the issues.

I'm not really interested. And I'm receiving no requests from this imaginary field of "peers" who are concerned for your "issues."

Once again -- and I think this is the tenth time I have responded to the same thing (?) -- what I think, how I see, and what I am inclined to express does not take into account what *interests* you, what you believe is valid, and what leads to any point or conclusion that you hold in value.

Once again I will say that I regard you as a tremendous boon and someone that I choose to take advantage of. You represent, for me, a first and a sustained interaction with a truly committed religious zealot. My view is that through you one has a fantastic opportunity to see right into the heart of fanaticism.

So if you have no objection I will, as I have also said a dozen times, carry on in exactly the manner that I do.

Sorry.

There is no need to express sorrow!

[Immanuel Can]

Alas, no one whines louder than those who have become accustomed to an advantage, fearing losing that advantage.

I'm very amused. This is the story, the "patriarchy" narrative, that the Feminists sell to the naive. They actually want us to think that men who worked in mines, or felled trees and laid bricks, or went to war and died in a trench were more "privileged" than their womenfolk who stayed home and kept house, did teaching or nursing, or worked in a local factory making the bombs that would later be used to kill men.

Hogwash.

The truth is that throughtout history, life has been hard -- and differently hard -- for both sexes. There was no miraculous "patriarchy" period, in which men had only good things, and women only "oppression."

Back to this.

There's a point worth working out. Given that men have always, historically, born the brunt of the worst jobs, from bricklayer, to sanitation worker, to firefighter, to coal mine labourer, and given that they have been the vast majority of those killed in wars, the greatest number of people put in jail, the greatest proportion of suicides, the most likely to be murdered, the sex against which political discrimination is not only permitted by lauded, the less legally privileged in regard to child custody, and so on...and given that today, women are the majority of voters, the majority of college students, the fastest promoted until they are 30, the only sex that enjoys affirmative-action provisions, the sex whose wage equality is guaranteed by law in most Western democracies, the first off every sinking ship and the last to have to go to war, the favoured sex of the politically-correct, those with near-total control of reproduction...how good is the evidence there really was ever a "patriarchy," and how good is any evidence for one today?

[Alexis Jacobi]

…. and with all that very few make the effort to master the blow-job.

I say ::: sheesh ::: it just ain’t fair.

[Harbal]

There's a point worth working out. Given that men have always, historically, born the brunt of the worst jobs, from bricklayer, to sanitation worker, to firefighter, to coal mine labourer, and given that they have been the vast majority of those killed in wars, the greatest number of people put in jail, the greatest proportion of suicides, the most likely to be murdered, the sex against which political discrimination is not only permitted by lauded, the less legally privileged in regard to child custody, and so on...and given that today, women are the majority of voters, the majority of college students, the fastest promoted until they are 30, the only sex that enjoys affirmative-action provisions, the sex whose wage equality is guaranteed by law in most Western democracies, the first off every sinking ship and the last to have to go to war, the favoured sex of the politically-correct, those with near-total control of reproduction...how good is the evidence there really was ever a "patriarchy," and how good is any evidence for one today?

What you are complaining about is just the backlash from hundreds of years of female oppression, and if you think things are now going a little too far the other way, use that as an opportunity to appreciate, and get a small taste of, how women must have felt for all that time. Now stop moaning, and be a man about it.

[Immanuel Can]

There's a point worth working out. Given that men have always, historically, born the brunt of the worst jobs, from bricklayer, to sanitation worker, to firefighter, to coal mine labourer, and given that they have been the vast majority of those killed in wars, the greatest number of people put in jail, the greatest proportion of suicides, the most likely to be murdered, the sex against which political discrimination is not only permitted by lauded, the less legally privileged in regard to child custody, and so on...and given that today, women are the majority of voters, the majority of college students, the fastest promoted until they are 30, the only sex that enjoys affirmative-action provisions, the sex whose wage equality is guaranteed by law in most Western democracies, the first off every sinking ship and the last to have to go to war, the favoured sex of the politically-correct, those with near-total control of reproduction...how good is the evidence there really was ever a "patriarchy," and how good is any evidence for one today?

What you are complaining about...

Oh, you mistake me entirely.

I'm not "complaining." I'm just observing the facts. I have neither the desire to "complain," nor the illusion that people thoroughly indoctrinated in the "patriarchy" nonsense, or people "white-knighting" for them, would be inclined to be the least bit empathetic. Who would even want them to be?

No, I want to question the opposite: given that women today enjoy so many privileges, what entitles them to the status of special pleaders? Let's see if you, or they, can justify it.

is just the backlash from hundreds of years of female oppression,

Ah. You think you know how females are "oppressed"? And you think that for "hundreds of years" their lots have been worse than those of equivalent men?

Great. Explain how.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What you are complaining about is just the backlash from hundreds of years of female oppression, and if you think things are now going a little too far the other way, use that as an opportunity to appreciate, and get a small taste of, how women must have felt for all that time. Now stop moaning, and be a man about it.

See The Manipulated Man by Esther Vilar. It was also published in Spanish with he title El Hombre Domado (domado: domesticated, ruled, well- trained) which carries the sense of her thesis better, I think.

A woman looks at the issue through a contrary lens.