Apropos of the Social Body. — It is not the surgeon we should fear; it is the anaesthetist.

Food for Unthought. — Appeal to reason through rational argumentation does not work well today because the mindset of secular leftism is irrationalistic. That mindset is also disjointed, incoherent, and given to distraction. Hence, one moment a man is claiming that rational argumentation is “mere word-games”, “fiddling with language”, etc, and the next, he is claiming something on its basis.

  The secular leftist accepts no greater authority than his own desires. Reason cannot lead him. (Nevertheless, to a promissory idol of those desires, he may give the honourable name of reason.) As long as rational argumentation remains the slave of those desires, he can praise it, but otherwise he scorns it as unconnected with reality, which for him is merely the occasion for his desires. (His inheritance from romanticism.)

  Since he will go only where his desires lead him, regardless of whether those desires are rationally ordered, rational argumentation has little force against him. Indeed, he even draws strength from the rational argumentation made against him. For argumentation suggests to him a matter open to question, and anything that is open to question, but which is not in accord with his desires, he finds easy to dismiss.

  Secular leftism, like all evil, is parasitic upon good. Rational argumentation is food for secular leftism as blood is food for leeches.

. . .

Adapted from a comment made to Bruce G. Charlton, “The Counter-Productiveness of Arguments for the Reactionary”, Bruce Charlton's Miscellany (weblog), 24th October 2012.

Mass-Media in a Nutshell. — “Typical of adolescents the mass media display impulsivity and unstable moods; alternation between hedonism and blaming; between aggression and cowardice; sarcasm and sentimentality; impossible idealism and indignant charges of hypocrisy; wild recklessness and paralyzing guilt; snide arrogance and hero-worship — is obsessed with novelties, fashion and peer approval; is extravert (needing continual external stimulation); and is emotionally cold, selfish and manipulative while burning with resentments, bursting with personal entitlements, prone to self-pity, and zealous for abstract ‘justice’ which other people fail to live up to.”

Bruce G. Charlton, “The Adolescent Society – Uganda to the UK”, Bruce Charlton's Miscellany (weblog), 10th October 2012.

Fine Persecution. — Every society has before it an ideal of the kind of society it ought to be, and every society, in order to uphold that ideal, needs to persecute those within it who are at odds with that ideal. Once again, however, the deep mendacity of liberalistic society manifests itself in that it denies the persecution which it carries out against its hated enemies, namely, those at odds with its ideal. This denial of the persecuted status of its enemies — along with the ridicule of them when they claim it — are additional elements for the intensifying of their persecution.

Mark of the Animal. — It is an odd prejudice which holds that it is not a limitation of science that it does not answer the most basic metaphysical questions, but rather a failure of metaphysics that it asks them. Consider the weirdness of this train of thought: a rational-empirical method of ours, which has the scope to answer questions a, b, and c, does not answer questions x, y, and z, therefore, questions x, y, and z are illegitimate as rational questions in general. This has more the character of animal territoriality than of rationality.

A Refutation of the New (i.e., Individualistic not Socialistic) Libertarianism, Effected in Much Fewer Words than this Title, by Means of a Simple and Glaring Fact which at Least the Old (i.e., Socialistic not Individualistic) Libertarianism (e.g., Marxism) Recognised. — Man is a social animal.

Humans and Triangles. — That human nature is unchangeable and everywhere the same does not mean that all humans are always and everywhere the same. Likewise, that the nature of triangularity is unchangeable and everywhere the same does not mean that all triangles are always and everywhere the same: there are equilateral, scalene, and isosceles triangles, big triangles, little triangles, more perfect ones, less perfect ones, red ones, green ones, iron-wrought ones, and so on. Humanity and triangularity are the bare determinations or essences by which something counts respectively as a human or a triangle in the first place rather than as a salmon or a square.

The change from a culture of honour to a culture of dignity was accompanied of course by a great loss of dignity.

Modern life draws deep from the surface of things.

The expectation that someone will turn up and do the logically impossible is the reverence that misology pays to inventive genius.

Let niceness be reckoned amongst the most powerful forces of the underworld. Once the Devil is unchained, niceness invites him to tea.

With every step of the social and political movement for emancipation, there arises the kind of man who is more in need of repression than the one before, and so advances the movement for enslavement.

Art and religion are always a danger to the mechanical regime. They threaten the restoration of humanity.

Stereotypes possess high-predictive value. It is odd that so many self-declared friends of science reject them.

A Celebrity Speaks. — “At least 260 species of animal have been noted exhibiting homosexual behaviour but only one species of animal ever, so far as we know, has exhibited homophobic behaviour — and that’s the human being. So ask which is really natural.” ¹

  Countless species of animal have been noted exhibiting coprophagy, some species are even able to fly, but only one species of animal, ever, so far as we know, has exhibited rational and moral behaviour, albeit sometimes boasting the ability to make glaringly-bad arguments — and that’s the human being. So ask which is really natural. 

. . .

1. Stephen Fry, quoted by Richard Alleyne, “Stephen Fry: 260 animals have gay tendencies but only humans are homophobic”, telegraph.co.uk, 5th October 2012.