What people take to be implications can become implications by their taking them as such. Consider Darwinism (or mere evolutionism): people have taken its implications to be irreligion and atheism, hence its implications have been irreligion and atheism. But it must be borne in mind that we are dealing here with two kinds of implication: logical and factual-effective. Darwinism does not logically imply irreligion or atheism, but people have taken it to do so, hence it has factually-effectively implied it. So to rephrase the opening sentence: what people take to be logical implications can become factual-effective implications by their taking them as such. The converse of course does not hold good.

Hyper-Stupidity through Ideology. — It is almost incredible that we have got to the stage at which a man can believe that he is more closely related to a stranger than to his own daughter: 

“There are no races. All men are more closely related to each other than they are to their mothers, sisters and daughters. I am more closely related to Obama than to my daughter and Obama is more closely related to me than he is to his daughters.” ¹ 

What is interesting about this is not the ignorance and low intelligence of the author. (He is, after all, just another buffoon on the internet.) What is interesting is that ignorance and low intelligence, albeit at a level at which one can still function as a human being, cannot on their own lead a man this far. It takes ideology to drive a man into such depths of garbled, reality-defying stupidity. If the author had relied on his native wit, little though it is, and not given himself over to some ideologically-inspired falsehood which he does not even half-understand² yet by which he reckons himself rational and intelligent, he would have thought more rationally and intelligently. That is what is interesting — and unsettling because of its commonness. 

. . .

1. DocMartyn, in the comments to Sarah AB, “The Far-Right in Europe: a Roundup”, Harry’s Place (weblog), 15th December 2012; re-paragraphed.

2. He unwittingly manages to compose a crude parody of already so crude a thing as Lewontin’s Fallacy.

The Part-Triumph of a Figment. — The mass-man is the closest approximation in reality to the individualist’s mental abstraction of the individual.

Self-Assured Slump. — Feeling is the pathway to the spirit, says the man sinking into the mire of the body.

Out of Self-Control and into Outer Control. — Self-control is the control and rightful-ordering of desires and passions by the rational self. Liberation, as promoted by liberals, socialists, and other libertarians, is the setting-free of desires and passions from the command of the rational self, the thraldom of the latter to the former, and the manipulation and control of the desires and passions by outer forces over the vanquished self. This is the “free man” which the libertarians promote: the man without self-control, not a master of his passions, but their thrall in “free expression” — and a thrall also to those who know how to manipulate and control the passions of others.

The Marcher-Lords of Mediocrity. — Mediocrity bestows the title of excellence upon those who secure its far-flung borders.

A Deadly Curse. — O, let our enemies grow strong in the habits of safety!

Sub Specie Modernitatis. — All that which our forebears thought to note as degeneracy: well, they must have been mistaken, for it led to us.

A Pretty Dichotomy and True. — “Equality is a pretty lie because it pretends to assert commensurability with respect to incommensurable things. When we give up on the idea of equality though it is tempting to replace it with the idea of inequality. This is a mistake. Like its yin equality, the yang inequality carries with it a connotation of commensurability: two things which are unequal are quantitatively comparable along some axis, and one is greater than the other along that axis. So to conclude that (in a comparison of incommensurables) inequality is the case from the fact that equality is false is to make the same mistake that got us here in the first place.” ¹

With due respect for the author, I must nonetheless disagree. No connotation of commensurability or quantifiability is carried within the concept of inequality per se. Whether or not two things are commensurable, they are unequal by dint of being in fact two things and not one and the same thing. (Incommensurability means we cannot tell of two things which is the better, the greater, etc, not that we do not know that they are unequal in some way.) “Incommensurable” is not a third option between “equal” and “unequal”. There is no third option. Either A or not-A, equal or unequal. Hence, giving up on the idea of the equality of things — i.e., regaining humble sanity — just means accepting their inequality, commensurable or not.  

. . .

1. Zippy Catholic, “All men are not created unequal”, Zippy Catholic (weblog), 14th November 2012.

Gripes and Bad Faith. — It is anti-democratic to complain about the result of a democratic election. Yet, weirdly, the democratic participant is wont to believe that only he is permitted to complain about it. Lending words to his incoherence, he tells the non-voter, who, unlike him, has not endorsed the election by his participation, that he, the non-voter, must not complain about it. Weird, yes, but not out of keeping with the democrat’s ever-present urge to invade the non-democrat’s territory and claim it as its own.

He who does not vote in an election has no right to complain about its result.

Naturally we dutiful non-voters strongly deny the truth of this and are not wholly disinclined from telling the little blighters who claim it to buzz off and die. But we may also say to them:

I. If you vote in an election, then you must endorse the legitimacy of the process including its result, or else be guilty of bad faith. (You agree in participation of the process to be bound by the rules thereof, which include the acceptance of the legitimacy of the result.) 

II. You voted in the election. 

Therefore,

III. You must endorse the legitimacy of the result, or else be guilty of bad faith. 

But (you complain): 

IV. The result is a disaster. 

Therefore,

V. You must endorse the legitimacy of a disaster about which you complain, or else be guilty of bad faith.

To that, we may kindly add: Can I get you another drink? You look as though you need one.