TRUMP AHEAD?

[Immanuel Can]

I'm not a Christian, so I have to make my own arrangements.

I know. But what is obvious is that for Subjectivists, the word "morality" cannot possibly have any content. It just means, "whatever I feel." And that is not morally commendable: neither others, nor even you can say that makes you objectively "moral." All it means is that you do whatever you feel. And nobody has written anywhere that's a noble thing to do.

That's the problem with Subjectivism -- its utter moral and conceptual bankruptcy. It isn't informative of anything to anybody. And it lacks all those features we've pointed out as essential to "morality." Subjectivism cannot promise any sense of duty or compulsion, is not at all sacrificial, has no principles, and has no concern for any others. As a conception of morality goes, it's a eunuch.

[Harbal]

I'm not a Christian, so I have to make my own arrangements.

I know. But what is obvious is that for Subjectivists, the word "morality" cannot possibly have any content. It just means, "whatever I feel." And that is not morally commendable: neither others, nor even you can say that makes you objectively "moral." All it means is that you do whatever you feel. And nobody has written anywhere that's a noble thing to do.

That's the problem with Subjectivism -- its utter moral and conceptual bankruptcy. It isn't informative of anything to anybody. And it lacks all those features we've pointed out as essential to "morality." Subjectivism cannot promise any sense of duty or compulsion, is not at all sacrificial, has no principles, and has no concern for any others. As a conception of morality goes, it's a eunuch.

You are very determined to drive this message home, aren't you?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm not a Christian, so I have to make my own arrangements.

I know. But what is obvious is that for Subjectivists, the word "morality" cannot possibly have any content. It just means, "whatever I feel." And that is not morally commendable: neither others, nor even you can say that makes you objectively "moral." All it means is that you do whatever you feel. And nobody has written anywhere that's a noble thing to do.

That's the problem with Subjectivism -- its utter moral and conceptual bankruptcy. It isn't informative of anything to anybody. And it lacks all those features we've pointed out as essential to "morality." Subjectivism cannot promise any sense of duty or compulsion, is not at all sacrificial, has no principles, and has no concern for any others. As a conception of morality goes, it's a eunuch.

You are very determined to drive this message home, aren't you?

It is true that Harbal is very much a subjectivist as IC says. He (Harbal) explains this very clearly and honestly. It is also true that the subjectivist position, and one that cannot arrive at objective values (thinking of Iambiguous who is also very clear about his own position), that they have a limited platform from which they define values. A great deal would depend on their social milieu, the particular time they grew up in, the influences that came to bear on them indirectly such as the music and literature they were exposed to, and also what they would have absorbed through television and, today, through the news feeds on their telephones.

What is lacking -- and again I point out that Harbal is a wonderful example of this -- is a specific, thorough and detailed educational formation within those areas we refer to as the Occidental Liberal Arts. That program was, for the longest time in Europe, the basis of education. What has happened, and there are numerous reasons and causes, is that education is no longer what it once was.

I would turn C's comment into a question: What is it that produces moral and conceptual bankruptcy? The way I see things is that when huge blocks of people, masses of people, no longer have a substantial educational foundation in the classics of our own culture, they cannot any longer think rationally. Other influences, coming at them from all sides, overpower their perception, and a great deal of this material coming at them is not intellectually or rationally grounded but appeals to the sentiments. And when a person becomes a sentimental instrument, and not a rational instrument, that person can easily be swayed by emoted messages.

My perception is that this analysis largely explains our present time. I mean, if we are looking for a key to grasp why everything seems so confused and why different factions, self-empowered, draw around them followers fired up with a distorted enthusiasm. My references would be to Q-anon like thinking and also those of a radical Left persuasion. There is so much emotional passion and so little careful, rational thinking.

It should be obvious that this cannot produce *good* and will not end well.

Subjectivism cannot promise any sense of duty or compulsion, is not at all sacrificial, has no principles, and has no concern for any others.

The way I see this problem can be illustrated through a picture. If we imagine a body of water we understand that near the surface the water is clear and one sees through it. But the farther down one goes things get murky. Finally, at the bottom, one can hardly see more than a few feet. Similarly, the intellect of many people is contaminated by a great deal of content that has little conceptual separation. Emotions, ideas, perceptions, images from the media-system, all blend together and the individual cannot think clearly, cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, and in the worst case scenario easily becomes a victim of those powers that can organize perceptions, through propaganda and public relations, to pull these people where they desire to take them.

It is a pretty basic analytical picture that I am sure most who write here would agree with.

The problem, and it is a huge problem -- I refer to America through I think Australia seems also to have it -- is that Evangelical Christianity is peopled by masses of individuals who on the one hand did not have a solid education of the sort I mentioned, and whose religious zealousness, and those fantasies and hallucinations with which religious zealotry deals, overpowers their rational, grounded capabilities and they become susceptible to demagogy of the worst sort.

If you sit down to talk with them what they do is (to use a common term) to *spew* the undifferentiated content of their perceptions. And it is this content that rules them. And when masses of people like this gain access to the means of communication -- the digital world has opened it all up to them -- all sorts of crazy ideas, mixed with genuinely important ideas, all get blended together into a confused mass.

Harbal: You are very determined to drive this message home, aren't you?

It is a message that makes very good sense when your core position, such as it is, is examined and thought about. But I think we can refer to the condition in which you are in, and which you seem *invested in*, in more general terms in order to see it as a social and cultural -- indeed a civilizational -- problem. I have referred numerous times to Ortega y Gasset's Revolt of the Masses and not one person among the loons who write on this forum had any basis to appreciate what are his concerns about these immense shifts that have taken place in the post-Sixties.

It is like there is *no one home* who can reason. You knock on the door and a strange, distorted ogre appears covered in his own vomit and cackling like a crazy person.

There is beyond all doubt (my doubt in any case) an extremely clear water that can be accessed when the genuine doctrines and ideas of Christianity are accessed. Simply put these ideas, these values, are central to our civilization and to the very formation of our selves. But when the water is murky and polluted, it is all contaminated by dank poisons.

[Sculptor]

I know. But what is obvious is that for Subjectivists, the word "morality" cannot possibly have any content. It just means, "whatever I feel." And that is not morally commendable: neither others, nor even you can say that makes you objectively "moral." All it means is that you do whatever you feel. And nobody has written anywhere that's a noble thing to do.

That's the problem with Subjectivism -- its utter moral and conceptual bankruptcy. It isn't informative of anything to anybody. And it lacks all those features we've pointed out as essential to "morality." Subjectivism cannot promise any sense of duty or compulsion, is not at all sacrificial, has no principles, and has no concern for any others. As a conception of morality goes, it's a eunuch.

You are very determined to drive this message home, aren't you?

It is true that Harbal is very much a subjectivist as IC says. He (Harbal) explains this very clearly and honestly. It is also true that the subjectivist position, and one that cannot arrive at objective values (thinking of Iambiguous who is also very clear about his own position), that they have a limited platform from which they define values. A great deal would depend on their social milieu, the particular time they grew up in, the influences that came to bear on them indirectly such as the music and literature they were exposed to, and also what they would have absorbed through television and, today, through the news feeds on their telephones.

What is lacking -- and again I point out that Harbal is a wonderful example of this -- is a specific, thorough and detailed educational formation within those areas we refer to as the Occidental Liberal Arts. That program was, for the longest time in Europe, the basis of education. What has happened, and there are numerous reasons and causes, is that education is no longer what it once was.

I would turn C's comment into a question: What is it that produces moral and conceptual bankruptcy? The way I see things is that when huge blocks of people, masses of people, no longer have a substantial educational foundation in the classics of our own culture, they cannot any longer think rationally. Other influences, coming at them from all sides, overpower their perception, and a great deal of this material coming at them is not intellectually or rationally grounded but appeals to the sentiments. And when a person becomes a sentimental instrument, and not a rational instrument, that person can easily be swayed by emoted messages.

My perception is that this analysis largely explains our present time. I mean, if we are looking for a key to grasp why everything seems so confused and why different factions, self-empowered, draw around them followers fired up with a distorted enthusiasm. My references would be to Q-anon like thinking and also those of a radical Left persuasion. There is so much emotional passion and so little careful, rational thinking.

It should be obvious that this cannot produce *good* and will not end well.

Subjectivism cannot promise any sense of duty or compulsion, is not at all sacrificial, has no principles, and has no concern for any others.

The way I see this problem can be illustrated through a picture. If we imagine a body of water we understand that near the surface the water is clear and one sees through it. But the farther down one goes things get murky. Finally, at the bottom, one can hardly see more than a few feet. Similarly, the intellect of many people is contaminated by a great deal of content that has little conceptual separation. Emotions, ideas, perceptions, images from the media-system, all blend together and the individual cannot think clearly, cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, and in the worst case scenario easily becomes a victim of those powers that can organize perceptions, through propaganda and public relations, to pull these people where they desire to take them.

It is a pretty basic analytical picture that I am sure most who write here would agree with.

The problem, and it is a huge problem -- I refer to America through I think Australia seems also to have it -- is that Evangelical Christianity is peopled by masses of individuals who on the one hand did not have a solid education of the sort I mentioned, and whose religious zealousness, and those fantasies and hallucinations with which religious zealotry deals, overpowers their rational, grounded capabilities and they become susceptible to demagogy of the worst sort.

If you sit down to talk with them what they do is (to use a common term) to *spew* the undifferentiated content of their perceptions. And it is this content that rules them. And when masses of people like this gain access to the means of communication -- the digital world has opened it all up to them -- all sorts of crazy ideas, mixed with genuinely important ideas, all get blended together into a confused mass.

Harbal: You are very determined to drive this message home, aren't you?

It is a message that makes very good sense when your core position, such as it is, is examined and thought about. But I think we can refer to the condition in which you are in, and which you seem *invested in*, in more general terms in order to see it as a social and cultural -- indeed a civilizational -- problem. I have referred numerous times to Ortega y Gasset's Revolt of the Masses and not one person among the loons who write on this forum had any basis to appreciate what are his concerns about these immense shifts that have taken place in the post-Sixties.

It is like there is *no one home* who can reason. You knock on the door and a strange, distorted ogre appears covered in his own vomit and cackling like a crazy person.

There is beyond all doubt (my doubt in any case) an extremely clear water that can be accessed when the genuine doctrines and ideas of Christianity are accessed. Simply put these ideas, these values, are central to our civilization and to the very formation of our selves. But when the water is murky and polluted, it is all contaminated by dank poisons.

The only people with a limited platform is those that pretend to espouse morally objecrive ideas.
They tend to form themselves into tiny cabals of like minded fools who think that their personal ideas of morality are objective, absolute and universal.
But this is just delusion. When they come across other groups who similarly pretend Objective moral ideas they are affronted and demand that the other group is relativist and subjective.
ANd here then we have the root cause of major moral conflicts. Protestant and Catholic, Sunni and Shite. Hindu and Buddhist.
The only place where objectivity really thrives is withint science. But science is not usally stupid enought to espouse moral view points. Where it does, it too fails.
Science can make comment on morals and statistically make suggestions. It can also demonstrate that behaviour is the basis for morality, but The "IS" of behaviouralism does not translate to the "ought" of moral laws.
For example science has identified that survival depends on promoting ones genes.
But why does a dog suckle lion cubs? WHy would a cat suckle a piglet?
Moral behaviours do not have to obey the necessities of evolution.
When objectivity meets the real world the rules are out

[Alexis Jacobi]

IC: Well, first of all, I'm not "overlooking" anything. I have no particular affinity or concern with Trump. He's a candidate in a country I don't live in, for an election I can't vote in. Why should I care who he is?

Harbal: You seem to care enough to keep coming to his defense.

Harbal's reactive statements are typical on this forum and in our present. They say *Trump is a scumbag!* and demand that you agree with that assertion which is, for them, the basis of their emoted hatred of the man. It is the emotional content that you have to pay attention to. Trump Derangement Syndrome is an emoted complex.

To cease to attack a man, to refrain from such attacks on any particular political figure in such irrational, pathological, emoted terms, is I think what I desire to achieve, so that my perception of the man, within a political context, is well grounded and, let's say, useful to the sort of analysis and discussion a citizen should have of a political figure.

Any statements made about Trump and his advent on the scene of American politics (with a resonance in many other countries) that is not specifically an attack (on the *scumbag*) is taken as defense of the man when, in truth, it is not that necessarily.

I honestly do not think there is even one person writing on this forum who actually desires to gain a clear picture of what is going on in our present! Notice how it is 98% partisan bickering.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I edited the format so that what you wrote is clearer. I think you have brought up some valid points.

The only people with a limited platform is those that pretend to espouse morally objecrive ideas.

They tend to form themselves into tiny cabals of like minded fools who think that their personal ideas of morality are objective, absolute and universal.

But this is just delusion. When they come across other groups who similarly pretend Objective moral ideas they are affronted and demand that the other group is relativist and subjective.

ANd here then we have the root cause of major moral conflicts. Protestant and Catholic, Sunni and Shite. Hindu and Buddhist.
The only place where objectivity really thrives is withint science. But science is not usally stupid enought to espouse moral view points. Where it does, it too fails.

Science can make comment on morals and statistically make suggestions. It can also demonstrate that behaviour is the basis for morality, but The "IS" of behaviouralism does not translate to the "ought" of moral laws.

For example science has identified that survival depends on promoting ones genes.

But why does a dog suckle lion cubs? WHy would a cat suckle a piglet?

Moral behaviours do not have to obey the necessities of evolution.

When objectivity meets the real world the rules are out.

[Alexis Jacobi]

They tend to form themselves into tiny cabals of like minded fools who think that their personal ideas of morality are objective, absolute and universal.

But this is just delusion. When they come across other groups who similarly pretend Objective moral ideas they are affronted and demand that the other group is relativist and subjective.

Allow this fool to offer a few occasional thoughts ...

The way I look upon this issue -- in respect of course to Christian culture and to our civilization -- is that the Christian doctrines are ideals toward which to strive. It is not possible to say that Objective Morality exists in the world as it is, it obviously does not because no one can agree what these are or should be. But that does not mean that such Objective Morals do not exist and are not *real things*.

So if you consider, for example, a person undergoing a Christian conversion, that person comes to the endeavor confused, conflicted, disordered, and unclear, but through exposure to the ordering possibility, not to mention what is understood in Christian doctrine to be the ordering power of a spiritual force (both internally active and externally active), that person is transformed. Or purified. Or re-grounded.

The concept behind Christian objectivism can be understood if philosophical objectivism is allowed. It resolves into Aristotelian notions, doesn't it? We conceive of an objective morality, and we define it and defend it abstractly, but it is in the implimentation of it that we run into tremendous problems.

And that is because such idea-constructs must necessarily operate in our chaotic, disordered world, as impositions.

No matter what universe we live in we will always deal with the issue of impositions. It is really a question of what of those we agree to give our assent.

[Harbal]

I know. But what is obvious is that for Subjectivists, the word "morality" cannot possibly have any content. It just means, "whatever I feel." And that is not morally commendable: neither others, nor even you can say that makes you objectively "moral." All it means is that you do whatever you feel. And nobody has written anywhere that's a noble thing to do.

That's the problem with Subjectivism -- its utter moral and conceptual bankruptcy. It isn't informative of anything to anybody. And it lacks all those features we've pointed out as essential to "morality." Subjectivism cannot promise any sense of duty or compulsion, is not at all sacrificial, has no principles, and has no concern for any others. As a conception of morality goes, it's a eunuch.

You are very determined to drive this message home, aren't you?

It is true that Harbal is very much a subjectivist as IC says. He (Harbal) explains this very clearly and honestly. It is also true that the subjectivist position, and one that cannot arrive at objective values (thinking of Iambiguous who is also very clear about his own position), that they have a limited platform from which they define values. A great deal would depend on their social milieu, the particular time they grew up in, the influences that came to bear on them indirectly such as the music and literature they were exposed to, and also what they would have absorbed through television and, today, through the news feeds on their telephones.

What is lacking -- and again I point out that Harbal is a wonderful example of this -- is a specific, thorough and detailed educational formation within those areas we refer to as the Occidental Liberal Arts. That program was, for the longest time in Europe, the basis of education. What has happened, and there are numerous reasons and causes, is that education is no longer what it once was.

I would turn C's comment into a question: What is it that produces moral and conceptual bankruptcy? The way I see things is that when huge blocks of people, masses of people, no longer have a substantial educational foundation in the classics of our own culture, they cannot any longer think rationally. Other influences, coming at them from all sides, overpower their perception, and a great deal of this material coming at them is not intellectually or rationally grounded but appeals to the sentiments. And when a person becomes a sentimental instrument, and not a rational instrument, that person can easily be swayed by emoted messages.

My perception is that this analysis largely explains our present time. I mean, if we are looking for a key to grasp why everything seems so confused and why different factions, self-empowered, draw around them followers fired up with a distorted enthusiasm. My references would be to Q-anon like thinking and also those of a radical Left persuasion. There is so much emotional passion and so little careful, rational thinking.

It should be obvious that this cannot produce *good* and will not end well.

Subjectivism cannot promise any sense of duty or compulsion, is not at all sacrificial, has no principles, and has no concern for any others.

The way I see this problem can be illustrated through a picture. If we imagine a body of water we understand that near the surface the water is clear and one sees through it. But the farther down one goes things get murky. Finally, at the bottom, one can hardly see more than a few feet. Similarly, the intellect of many people is contaminated by a great deal of content that has little conceptual separation. Emotions, ideas, perceptions, images from the media-system, all blend together and the individual cannot think clearly, cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, and in the worst case scenario easily becomes a victim of those powers that can organize perceptions, through propaganda and public relations, to pull these people where they desire to take them.

It is a pretty basic analytical picture that I am sure most who write here would agree with.

The problem, and it is a huge problem -- I refer to America through I think Australia seems also to have it -- is that Evangelical Christianity is peopled by masses of individuals who on the one hand did not have a solid education of the sort I mentioned, and whose religious zealousness, and those fantasies and hallucinations with which religious zealotry deals, overpowers their rational, grounded capabilities and they become susceptible to demagogy of the worst sort.

If you sit down to talk with them what they do is (to use a common term) to *spew* the undifferentiated content of their perceptions. And it is this content that rules them. And when masses of people like this gain access to the means of communication -- the digital world has opened it all up to them -- all sorts of crazy ideas, mixed with genuinely important ideas, all get blended together into a confused mass.

Harbal: You are very determined to drive this message home, aren't you?

It is a message that makes very good sense when your core position, such as it is, is examined and thought about. But I think we can refer to the condition in which you are in, and which you seem *invested in*, in more general terms in order to see it as a social and cultural -- indeed a civilizational -- problem. I have referred numerous times to Ortega y Gasset's Revolt of the Masses and not one person among the loons who write on this forum had any basis to appreciate what are his concerns about these immense shifts that have taken place in the post-Sixties.

It is like there is *no one home* who can reason. You knock on the door and a strange, distorted ogre appears covered in his own vomit and cackling like a crazy person.

There is beyond all doubt (my doubt in any case) an extremely clear water that can be accessed when the genuine doctrines and ideas of Christianity are accessed. Simply put these ideas, these values, are central to our civilization and to the very formation of our selves. But when the water is murky and polluted, it is all contaminated by dank poisons.

I'm flattered by the significance you seem to attach to me. Alexis.

I never seem to be far from your thoughts.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I work with what is close at hand.

[Harbal]

I work with what is close at hand.

I also sense a closeness between us.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm not a Christian, so I have to make my own arrangements.

I know. But what is obvious is that for Subjectivists, the word "morality" cannot possibly have any content. It just means, "whatever I feel." And that is not morally commendable: neither others, nor even you can say that makes you objectively "moral." All it means is that you do whatever you feel. And nobody has written anywhere that's a noble thing to do.

That's the problem with Subjectivism -- its utter moral and conceptual bankruptcy. It isn't informative of anything to anybody. And it lacks all those features we've pointed out as essential to "morality." Subjectivism cannot promise any sense of duty or compulsion, is not at all sacrificial, has no principles, and has no concern for any others. As a conception of morality goes, it's a eunuch.

You are very determined to drive this message home, aren't you?

I think it's a public service to point it out. After all, if somebody is trying to live in a shack that's on fire, wouldn't you want to at least tell them they'd better leave it? Seems fair.

[Sculptor]

They tend to form themselves into tiny cabals of like minded fools who think that their personal ideas of morality are objective, absolute and universal.

But this is just delusion. When they come across other groups who similarly pretend Objective moral ideas they are affronted and demand that the other group is relativist and subjective.

Allow this fool to offer a few occasional thoughts ...

The way I look upon this issue -- in respect of course to Christian culture and to our civilization -- is that the Christian doctrines are ideals toward which to strive.

WHich ones? Protestant, Catholic, Rastafarian, Orthodox, Moron?? WHich ?
The last census finds that Atheists are now the majority group is Scotland.
This is progress.

It is not possible to say that Objective Morality exists in the world as it is, it obviously does not because no one can agree what these are or should be. But that does not mean that such Objective Morals do not exist and are not *real things*.

So if you consider, for example, a person undergoing a Christian conversion, that person comes to the endeavor confused, conflicted, disordered, and unclear, but through exposure to the ordering possibility, not to mention what is understood in Christian doctrine to be the ordering power of a spiritual force (both internally active and externally active), that person is transformed. Or purified. Or re-grounded.

The concept behind Christian objectivism can be understood if philosophical objectivism is allowed. It resolves into Aristotelian notions, doesn't it? We conceive of an objective morality, and we define it and defend it abstractly, but it is in the implimentation of it that we run into tremendous problems.

And that is because such idea-constructs must necessarily operate in our chaotic, disordered world, as impositions.

No matter what universe we live in we will always deal with the issue of impositions. It is really a question of what of those we agree to give our assent.

You seem to be dancing around a point.

[Sculptor]

I know. But what is obvious is that for Subjectivists, the word "morality" cannot possibly have any content. It just means, "whatever I feel." And that is not morally commendable: neither others, nor even you can say that makes you objectively "moral." All it means is that you do whatever you feel. And nobody has written anywhere that's a noble thing to do.

That's the problem with Subjectivism -- its utter moral and conceptual bankruptcy. It isn't informative of anything to anybody. And it lacks all those features we've pointed out as essential to "morality." Subjectivism cannot promise any sense of duty or compulsion, is not at all sacrificial, has no principles, and has no concern for any others. As a conception of morality goes, it's a eunuch.

You are very determined to drive this message home, aren't you?

I think it's a public service to point it out. After all, if somebody is trying to live in a shack that's on fire, wouldn't you want to at least tell them they'd better leave it? Seems fair.

No shack is on fire, except in your imagination.
People dont need telling. And are not likely to listen to you given your track record

[Alexis Jacobi]

Which ones? Protestant, Catholic, Rastafarian, Orthodox, Mormon?? Which ?

The last census finds that Atheists are now the majority group is Scotland.

This is progress.

Catholic theology — the chief Encyclicals and Catholic social doctrine — and certainly a social focus oriented to the supernaturalism I often focus on (I used the term metaphysics but have now replaced it) based in Greco-Christian philosophy is what I would emphasize.

Protestantism, unfortunately , is contaminated at the most basic level.

Mormonism is an absurd, hallucinated, American phantasy of the first order.

Rastafarianism is more or less a liberation theology, isn’t it?

I see the modern atheism as somewhat comprehensible given the murkiness of the waters (if you accept my recent metaphor). I recommend clarifying water . It exists.

I do not wish to disrespect your view that social atheism is a good thing. I do not agree, naturally, but I can see and understand why people feel it right to take that route.

[Alexis Jacobi]

No shack is on fire, except in your imagination.

People dont need telling. And are not likely to listen to you given your track record.

If you succumb to IC’s “preaching” — he is an absolutely bad apologist for Christianity and also despises Catholicism — you will commit an intellectual error: mistaking a bad representative for what is essential in a supernaturalist philosophical religion.

I assume it is convenient for you and others to see IC as •representative• and to hold him and Christian doctrine in contempt. But it would be unfortunate were you (and others) to do so.

IC represents a severe misinterpretation of Christian doctrines. And one stark example of this is seen in his Christian Zionism — a genuine evil strongly operative right now in our present. We are now seeing the fruits of this evil tree (to employ a Christian metaphor!)