BiO Spiritualism - Body, Mind and Spirit: Man’s Means, Nature’s Ends.
Body: The Industrial Revolution—a lever for man’s muscles. (1740 to 1970)
Mind: The Information Age – a lever for man’s mind. (1970 to 2023)
Spirit: The Age of Selfishness – a lever for man’s spirit. (2023 to infinity)
If the political expression of Altruism is Collectivism and the political expression of Selfishness is Capitalism does this mean you cannot have either a Selfish Collectivism or an Altruistic Capitalism?
Yes.
You can’t, because each would be a contradiction and since contradictions do not exist, voila!
That is, you do the math.
What math?
The math that says, “Capitalists” who refuse to promote selfishness as a virtue and promote instead the idea that altruism is the virtue and selfishness the vice, rather than the other way around—Selfishness is a virtue, Altruism is a vice—are the cowards who are going to be responsible for the DIM Hypothesis becoming inevitable.
Oh, that math. Or did you mean, it should be arithmetic. The one that says 2 follows 1.
Two: Since I—qua aspiring selfish person back in my earlier days—said ok to same sex marriage—even though I thought it should be called narriage (an unpublished sentiment of mine at the time, what time? see link)—I did so under the assumption that we were talking about adults and their individual rights.
There were those back then who argued against us liberal, rights-advocating-heterosexuals that if you “allowed” the homosexuals to gain a legitimized footing in the culture-at-large that they would eventually work to pied-piper our children away from their natural, heterosexual self’s and so hurt our children and ourselves in the process. Which is to say, the anti-individual rights heterosexuals of the time tried to argue against same sex marriage on slippery slope grounds.
At the time, I was a younger Objectivist sympathizer and not that far away from struggling with the Objectivist idea that sex was primarily for pleasure not reproduction.
WTF. Are you kidding me—that is, the good residual Christian me at the time knew as did every good Christian—sex is dirty, and its only purpose is to procreate—it’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it.
Also, at the time, I did believe that the slippery slope argument was an argument from “homophobes” and so didn’t listen to it or chalked it up to people—adult people—afraid of their own homosexual feelings and afraid they would not be able to not act on them if it were a more socially acceptable thing to do. (That is, some people do not have or have not yet fully developed their own moral center—even as adults—so they have to rely on culture to tell them how to act. The tragic thing—not to mention the unbelievability of the degree of arrogance—is these people seem to think it is easier for them to change an entire culture of 300+ million people than it is to change one, single, solitary thing called—their self. Well, given their self-imposed belief system, they now have no choice but to think this way—again, it’s simply tragic.)
But, by the by I went along and even enjoyed being an adult who practiced what he preached: live and let live.
Now of course—especially here in Minnesota (AOS2/FS6)—I’m questioning that decades old choice.
But only to a point: it is still true, adults—all adults—have individual rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness and that protecting these—for every adult (that’s right, kids don’t yet have the full-blown list of adult rights because, they are … kids)—is the only moral justification for a government to exist. (For example, Governments do not exist to protect the pseudo self-esteem of any given individual or individuals even if such individuals belong to some self-defined subgroup of individuals within the larger culture. We won’t even discuss the obvious conclusion that no Government has the right or obligation to protect—read institutionalize—the pseudo self-esteem of an entire culture; that is, how do you spell Social Metaphysics?)
Governments exist to protect adults’ individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness and also the children’s-not-yet-adults right to life so that they can grow and develop and make it to the adult level.
Adults—that is those having reached the age of majority (18 years old in most states)—who want to be transgender in any of the non-heterosexual meanings of the term, have—qua individual adult human beings—the right to be. As long as they don’t violate any of my adult individual rights. (Notice the obvious, adult individual rights subsumes children’s individual right. It is not the other way around.)
My adult rights include my rights—along with my responsibilities—as the moral-legal parent-guardian of my children to raise them to the age of majority as I see fit—of course while not violating their individual right to life. Since I established in an earlier letter (AOS2/FS6) that I as parent have first right to influence the moral and physical development of my children, with qualifications as previously stated, and that the Government does not have this right. In fact, Governments don’t have any rights, just obligations. The Government does have the obligation to protect a child’s right to life—the starting right for all newborn babies as they are delivered into the world of actual living people to develop and grow to full adulthood where they then gain the protection due ALL adults by a moral Government.
If it turns out to be the case that kids at 16 years old are morally capable of making a gender identity decision that is obviously counter to their born natures and want to voluntarily sign up to partake of gender-affirming-surgery—including or I should say especially when it involves surgically altering their physical sex organs—then as the kind of a life altering decision that this is it should also mark the age of majority. That is, change the laws about the age of majority to 16, but until and unless this is done it’s up to the parents to … be parents.
More on this at some later date and time and with a CAUTIONARY TALE:
Power hungry BM’s (those with a Bureaucratic Mentality) are very capable of deceiving adults into believing that they—the BM’s—have the children’s best interest at heart and not their BM power lust. This is being demonstrated today here in the State of Minnesota by the Progressive Democrats—who temporarily (I hope) are in 100% control of our political lives and who—continue to burn the midnight oil on their push to define the age of majority to be 0. At which point they will gladly step in and take over. Which has been their goal all along. A goal which is in perfect alignment—i.e., no dysphoria here—with their Plato-Kant-Hegel-Skinner line of philosophy. (Though technically speaking, without Skinner in the mix, it is philosophy, but with Skinner and his contemporary one ‘h psychology (kws: one h) added in, it should be, […] line of psycho-epistemology.)
Does the 100% control—via controlling all branches of State Government—mean total. That is, total as in total-a-tarian control?
Isn’t that their goal?
That is, you do the arithmetic.
Three: ChatGPT—the BN’s—Brainiac-Nerds bless their little hearts (kws: brainiac)—latest and continuing attempt to take over the entire culture so as to project their erroneous worldview that Scientism (kws: “Man’s free will”) is the only true philosophy. That is, “they” have upped the ante with ChatGPT (mine I’ve temporarily named Zleg)—ChatGPT qua proxy for all the—so named by the BN’s—AI machines—so named that is, with their couched, Cheshire cat grin that someday these AI’s will rival and even outdo us Human Intelligent (HI) biological beings.
We (adult) HI biologics know this will never happen and generally are amused by the BN’s antics. (But, once again, because of the children who are bemused by the BN’s antics simply because they—the children—are not yet adults with all the fully developed HI capacities and capabilities of adults. The children need to be guided along the bemused-to-amused track least another pied-piper steals them away.)
Of course, when said children do become adults, they can follow any Pied Piper they want. (Except Naziism.)
Since “Scientism” is just radical determinism—a view that has been thoroughly debunked—we as surviving and trying to thrive individual human beings have to do two things: give credit where credit is due and give blame where blame is due.
Now, I know that psychologically (that is, let me be clear, Nathaniel Branden’s Biocentric Psychologically speaking) when we are thinking about ourselves, and our pasts influence on our present that blaming is a dead-end pathway. That is, if you understand this and see the sign at the beginning of this pathway that says, NO OUTLET but you want to go down it anyway, then so be it. It’s your 10 seconds or 10 years not mine.
But know this.
Know what?
Just know that it’s almost the reverse for our thinking about the Culture-at-large and its influence on our thinking—whether or not this influence determines our thinking methods is up to us as individuals. The thinking that we do or don’t do that determines our feelings—the feelings that determine our emotions—the emotions that determine our actions (unless we intervene with our human power of volition to stop the sequence). So that the concept of blaming in this context does have an outlet at the end of the cultural warpath: your sanity.
So let me start with giving credit where credit is due.
Any philosophy (modern or primitive) that lets you know explicitly where it is coming from—e.g., Objectivism and Christianity—is good for you because you don’t have to spend tons of time figuring out said philosophy’s basic premises.
E.g.: Christianity’s are: I live in a haunted house universe, with a mind that is best ruled by faith, not reason and I should act by sacrificing my self to all non-self things—including but not limited to, dirt.
E.g.: Objectivism’s are: I live in a rational-knowable universe, with a mind that is best ruled by reason not faith and consequently can know said universe and that I should act selfishly.
By the same token any philosophy (primitive or modern) that burns the midnight oil to hide its premises from you—Kant and Postmodernism—is bad for you because: thinking takes time—that is, life—and ferreting out basic premises is especially time consuming.
E.g.: Kantianism’s are: I don’t know where in the universe I live because I do so with a mind that can’t know because it is a knowing device and I should sacrifice myself as an end in itself—that is, I don’t even get a pat on the back for being the world’s best sacrificer.
E.g.: Postmodernism’s are: I know nothing and—unlike Kantians—I’m proud of it.
And, if you are not like I am—i.e., I Gary Dean Deering, HI biologic who, qua Objectivist super sympathizer loves ferreting out such premises—then one of the first dangers you face is: de-motivation.
Especially if you have been educated in the United States of America’s Public School System—and especially including its Public Universities—since the 1970’s that is. (I graduated from High School in 1963 and with my first college degree in 1967 so I escaped—sort of, but that’s a different roadway to follow that’s not pertinent here.)
So, in conclusion let me repeat myself: Save yourself brother. I had to and so do you.
© April 27, 2023, Gary Dean Deering
Minnesota, USA