In that last blog I talked much about freedom and its decline and why it seemed nobody wanted freedom. The conclusion, I feared, was that the great majority of people do not want freedom –which I still feel is a radical thing to say.
This year I’ve had a great interest in the philosophical rambling and topics of reality, language, and logic of Robert Anton Wilson. Wilson is unlike any other thinker I have yet stumbled across. It is difficult to pin Wilson’s brilliance but I would describe his thinking as a cross between Nietzsche and Alan Watts. I don’t see it as a coincidence that I was discovering Wilson as I was discovering Buddhism, the Tao Te Ching, Austrian Economics, as well as diving deep into the lost cases of Clarence Darrow. I’ll be the first to admit that this is a strange combo of characters but all of them seem to have a common thread that if put to one word can only be described as agnostic.
What I’ve learned this year –I think- is that I am less certain about things that I was certain about. I don’t feel like I’m necessarily wrong about the things I’m vocal about but I feel the necessity to argue with other people about things unnecessary. Maybe this is all just a dream and I’m not really typing this- I have a deep suspicion this is not the case, but have left it within the realm of possibility. For example, my research on the State has given me special insight to how it is born, how it acts, what it will do, what it is, what it is not. I have given considerable time and suffered great pain by reading the major philosophical thought on the discussion of the State. I have thought about the subject passionately for almost every day for the last 5 years. I am to the point where I think I’ve heard every argument for and against the State. Yet, I am unwilling and uninterested in explaining to both minarchist, as well as many anarchists, the difference between the State and government as well as various other errors in their logic and naivety and lack of history they use to back their arguments. I will leave room for the possibility that I am wrong to think that a socialist monopoly limited by a piece of paper and the voting masses could direct order and foster peace and prosperity. I doubt this greatly, but I still offer it as a possibility. The State clearly does all of these things for the minarchist and does none of these things for the anarchist. The crux is how the minarchist and anarchist perceives their reality tunnel. However, I can’t help but think of Nock’s words when talking of how the best the State could do with Jesus and Socrates was to crucify the one and poison the other.
Wilson, Darrow,
Watts, Nietzsche, and the like are great rug pullers. I’ve gotten to points in thought where I
thought I had it all figured out and after reading their works or hearing their
words, the rug is pulled out from me and I’m only my ideological and
philosophical ass. But, that’s the point.
The point of an agnostic is to make you doubt, or at least less certain,
of what you believe to be true. The
exercises in Wilson’s book, “Prometheus Rises” have also proven invaluable to the
understanding that only lunatics and fools are certain of anything- a sentiment
I have found in Darrow and Nietzsche’s works, as well.
In my grown
weariness to explain my views to others, primarily on Facebook, I found little
or no use of basic logic and what little logic that was used was of the
Aristotelian either/or method. However,
there are more methods that make much more sense to me. Other methods include the true/false/maybe,
Rappoport’s four valued logic (true, false, indeterminate, meaningless),
Korzybski’s multi-valued degrees of probability, Buddhist logic (it “is” A. it
“is” not A, it “is” both A and not A, it “is” neither A nor A), and Wilson’s
own Maybe logic which may be the single most sane way to approach any reply to
any argument. As Wilson puts it, “Can
you imagine every tower in Islam resounding with ‘there is no God except maybe
Allah and maybe Mohammed is his prophet?”.
How completely sane would that be?
On top of all of
this, I’m really tired of peoples’ self victimization. I’m exhausted beyond belief with people
talking about equality. I think it is unfortunate for the Americans that
Jefferson used the phrase that all men are created equal. What exactly is equal? It’s like trying to
describe to someone what “normal” means.
In fact, I wish Jefferson would have just used “normal” in his
works. Imagine if Jefferson said, “We
hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created normal”. The notion of this would have been put out
of people’s minds at once and any unfortunate furthering of it in Lincoln and
Dr. King’s speeches wouldn’t have took place because the idea that everyone
should be normal is ridiculous. Yet, the
idea that everyone should be equal is somehow not. The words fair, natural, equal, and normal
are used by those who think that only their reality tunnel is the correct
reality tunnel and everyone else’s reality tunnel is incorrect. To them, this or that is normal, this or that
is natural, and things just need to be equally so for everyone. Everyone opposed to their reality tunnel is
fighting against equality, is behaving against nature, out of the norm, and
unfair. I have a great suspicion that all value is subjective and all abilities
distinctively unequal. Therefore, Jefferson would have done all Americans a
huge favor by instead of leading them to believe they were all born equal, he
exclaimed that everyone has different abilities, needs, wants, goals,
opportunities-which seems closer to the truth to me- and we should just make
the best of things. Don’t be a victim.
Speaking of not
being a victim, I will conclude with my thoughts on the future of freedom. The rise and acceleration of the State and
their faithful have us all outnumbered and severely outgunned. The display of
violence the State has shown every day in America is leading me to believe
things will not end peacefully. I think
we are beyond the point of educating people and in the spirit of not becoming
victims, should devise ways of getting out of the crossfire. On the bright
side, this current government has produced so many anarchists. Perhaps
the Nobel Peace Prize given to Obama is justified after all?
See you next year.
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