“An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church.     

An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said.

An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.

He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated”

 

 .— Madalyn Murray O'Hair
 

 

 

Not even good nonsense

religion is antirational and miserable

 

 

“Faith means not wanting to know what is true.”  — Friedrich Nietzsche

 

“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.”  — Gerry Spence

“They are always saying God loves us. If that’s love I’d rather have a bit of kindness.”   — Graham Greene

“It is natural to believe in God when you're alone-- quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.”  ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

 

 

The faithful endorse their religious beliefs because they think they are true, and theological justifications of religious doctrines entail demonstrating their truth. Yet, Professor Jacobs correctly observes that there are often compelling psychological and sociological reasons why individuals become or remain members of a religious community. People do want their lives to be meaningful and they do crave intimate fellowship with others. Religions offer both.  [...] Since success is impossible for most people in [our current] social climate, individuals experience a lowering of self-esteem. This creates a need to recover a sense of one's own worth, a need to find a 'system of meaning' which will.

 

SOCIAL FAILURE AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. A NOTE ON ANTONK. JACOBS' 'IDEOLOGY, SELF-ESTEEM, AND RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE: TOWARD A SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE POPULARITY OF EVANGELICALISM IN MODERN, CAPITALIST AMERICA  (URAM 13:122-133)
 

David Crossley, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Sask., Canada

In 'Mere Christianity' C.S. Lewis asserts: “And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” But all good things and social progress, historically, including: commerce, affluence, ambition, peace, free love, equality, democracy, freedom, art and science, also express the striving of humanity for worldly happiness, do they not? For that matter, indeed how often are the former, the very ills catalogued by C.S. Lewis, any less than the latter, the presented counter examples, much alike advanced expressly in order to please God? C.S. Lewis himself only follows in a long history of the extol of the embrace of the abstract and fantastical in rejection, condemnation and abandon of reality and action, or at least such alone, as hopeless and futile. Christians in particular, as we all know, are enjoined to hate this world and this life. Still, perhaps best to be wary of regarding religious culture and Endotheology as monolithic and invariant. Religion, the good with the bad, tolerance and intolerance, compassion on the one hand and Moralistic xenophobia on the other, is all product of terror management in the face of mortality. Religion like ideology can be whatever you want it to be, except actually true when it is not. -In case any of that even matters in the recommendation of pleasing, beneficial and even effective dispositions, basic trust or attitudinal faith, much less of doctrines and beliefs of doctrinal faith, particularly in priority over the quest for truth, let alone from any striving at improving conditions in life and the world.

Religion and Theism are antirational. And as shall be demonstrated, Theism stands long discredited. Nevertheless, the efficacy of religious practice, remains a separate though perhaps related question. First of all, then, what is religion? Religion, prayer and rituals, are a magical practice, as such the efficacy whereof remaining dubious. Moreover, the Epistemological Methodology of Magic, of signs, portents and especially of faith, all embraced as "evidence of things unseen" is also inherently magical. Heteronomy to God as provided by religion often entails indoctrination. Behavior Modification, brainwash, and every attendant evil, therefore most anciently takes root in religion. Indeed, one consistent aspect of religion is the exhortation to open-endedly redoubled effort at faith, which is self-dishonest and therefore engenders the ever mounting dystress of cognitive dissonance. Such is the inevitable crisis of faith, never accepted as refutation, but merely as demonstration that faith must be redoubled all the more! Moralism is also endemic to the consistent failure of religion, to improve humanity. Indeed, there is also all the strife and intolerance that results from terror management. Indeed, any self deception may result in even life endangering poor decision making. Indeed as Voltaire points out, belief in absurdities engenders the commission of atrocities. Of course, religions inevitably do become more Liberal, tolerant and therefore less destructive. Also, matters of faith are compartmentalized in order to evade conflict with reason and reality. And believers still find whatever comfort. Such much. And institutions, religious and secular alike, must be assessed upon the merits of their works, indeed their motivation, for good or evil. 

If any scripture is truly vested with exclusive authority, infallibility, clarity, self-sufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meaning, comprehensive and universal applicability, then how can there be such vast variety of interpretive differences even amongst those who embrace literal scriptural authority in just such a manner? To begin with, such claims violate the Incompleteness Theorem. Only a vast and even infinitely long text could ever specify everything so completely as to remove every possible ambiguity in linguistic logic. There is no escaping the need for context of background information and bias that inevitably differs. After all, any successful scripture actually endures by ongoing distillation, actually becoming so wondrously stripped of original historical context, becoming a veritable Rorschach mirror for projection of inner reflection, therefore so powerfully relatable to all.

Atheism defends the sagacity and poetry of scripture from the violence of literally minded knaves and fools. In the words of Patti Smith: "The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the Bible, and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realize, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan." What seemingly monumental hubris then, howsoever to contest scriptural veracity and authority! And yet, in truth, they miss the point, those ardent cretins who take scripture for science or literal history. In the words of Clint Smith: "One does not read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks with hopes that it will grant him a career in engineering; he does so because poetry helps him see something in the world that he might not have seen before."  For "the language of theology is grounded largely in peripheral vision [and escapes direct gaze]. It is not poetry exactly, but it’s more like poetry than anything else. It can’t be forced, it can’t be manipulated, and it’s anything but explicit" as writes Paul Wallace. Indeed, such may be appreciated as inspired discipline of  fuzzy thinking and another way understanding, that of broadest verisimilitude and polysemy, that scarcely touches upon, much less contradicts, the entire scope of sweet reason and assertions that in order to be true to singular reality, must first be clear and precise.

Scripture is living idea of poetical literature and drama, hence, ultimately, in whatever comfort and sagacity, the wisdom of crowds and the folly too, in truth the resonating voice of scripture remains one's own. And so thus it comes to pass, that no two cultures, indeed no two individuals, can ever truly hold in their hands the same scripture, despite that every printed word be the same, any more than wading through the same flowing and changing river twice. Flowing through the minds of countless anonymous scribes over an ocean of time before any canonization, scripture is washed cleanly out of historical context, taking then renewed relevance and currency in every reading, day by day in every time. Scripture is the Rorschach mirror. And thus transfixed, we shall never set it down.

Indeed, hypothetically, whatever God might conceivably intend to express, however unambiguous given God's own inerrant and comprehensive context of complete background information and the totality of being, would nevertheless remain doomed to ambiguity before mere fallible human understanding. Fallible humanity is always doomed to whatever degree of bypassing, exchange which is not genuine communication because it lacks sufficient intersubjectivity and does not carry at all the same meanings or even purpose, intention or point at all between the participants, and that would apply no less in relationship to God than among any others. Only ever an angel, could ever hope always to understand the mind of God perfectly!

That is precisely why so many devoutly religious people in supplement to the study and scrutiny of whichever scripture, also seek for God's representative on Earth, whatever true prophet of guru, or else, scorning the proverbial Buddha on the road, instead to search within, strive so mightily to transcend mortal fallibility by achieving oneness with God. The problem remains however, that at any moment, anyone can falsely believe oneself to abide in such grace and exaltation, and realize otherwise only afterwards, taking solace in learning humility. Hence, only God can know who is indeed in a state of grace and clarity at any given moment. Furthermore, is it even conceivable that an infallible God would never have considered all the above conundrums, when instead of stopping with His perfect Angels, instead He made humanity fallible? What then, could a personal God have ever intended for Humanity, except Faliblism? And beyond utter despair, what faith, except that attitude or disposition imbued by any experience of good fortune and kindness at all whatsoever, the entirely irrational and optimistic hope distinguished by Martin Buber as Psychology of optimistic hope and basic trust, that simply does not make assertions or even actually claim knowledge as such or proffer specific predictions, much less with any certainty, as does it's poor counterfeit, mere beliefs and opinions? In the words of Alexander Lowen MD: "Conviction lies not in the ego." Or to quote Joseph Fort Newton: "Belief is a truth held in the mind. Faith is a fire in the heart."  And the world turns without waiting upon certitude.

"Faith is the evidence of things unseen" the Good Book tells us. But as it turns out, the test of faith, is not a means of testing reality at all, even by whatever Epistemological Methodology somehow howsoever at all dubiously employing faith. Rather, the test of faith is indeed exactly as it is so named, the test of resolve in faith itself, demonstrating no more than that. Typically, religious or ideological apologetics collates even the weakest corroboration while ignoring even the strongest refutation. Such dishonest lowering of all rational, systematic, scientific and journalistic standards of evidence is nothing but bad faith, deadly hypocrisy, and the reason why doctrinal faith meant to shore up attitudinal faith, optimism, courage, hope and trust, can so frequently be observed to bring exactly the opposite effects of depression and timidity. In the alternative, scientific rationalism and systematic doubt, rejecting doctrine, is readily seen as entailing attitudinal faith, not only in the intelligibility of the universe, but any human capacity of solution finding. All rejecting demands of infallibility, in favor of ongoing error detection, course correction and learning, ever less wrong rather than any purported foundation of ultimate truth. - Rejecting thus, also, the perfectionism of religion and ideology, in favor of the responsibility towards progress by ongoing improvement.

Science strives to explain the unknown in terms of the known, while religion contrives to explain the known in the terms of the unknown.  

Any serious project then, of reconciliation between science and religion will be challenging indeed, given such manifest contradiction between rational inquiry and Empirical investigation of science under systematic doubt, versus the willfully wishful thinking of religion and ideology. Scientific evidence of the existence of God, or in corroboration of whatever other ideological tenet, would only remove the requirement of doctrinal faith, while doctrinal faith, even the doctrinal faith in the process or results of science itself, remains shabby and unscientific. Science is faliblist, while religion and ideology are infaliblist. How can faliblism and infaliblism ever be reconciled  as in reconciliation of science and religion, being indeed the stated endeavor of the John Templeton  Foundation? Religion and ideology reject reason. Apologetics may deflect and evade reason deviously, or even castigate reason vehemently and venomously, demanding renewed tireless indoctrination by any means necessary.

“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”  ― Martin Luther

Epistemologically, autonomously, in science as in day to day functionality, getting by without certainty remains entirely feasible and routine, by living in reasonable doubt which is only healthy and responsible. The autonomy of Falibilism, is simply embrace of Socratic Wisdom in the precept that one might always be mistaken, may be more alien to Theistic religious heteronomy even than Atheism in and of itself, all even despite the unfounded conjectural nature of day to day interaction with reality for everyone no matter how pious, and indeed, of life itself physiologically and neurologically. Human progress is not to be deemed fruitless simply because human progress is temporal and not eternally changeless. That would be both oxymoronic and purpose defeating, if not actually boring! Epistemological Methodology of systematic doubt, must itself be subject to ongoing error detection and correction, conjecture and refutation. Again, such is life itself, literally, even neurologically, as in sensory and nervous systems that actually change and adjust by trial ad error. All is conjecture and fallible. But that's not the end of the world but always new beginnings. Life is uncertain. There is nothing in day to day life, much less Scientific Method, that waits upon absolute certainty. There is nothing in day to day life, much less Scientific Method, that waits upon absolute certainty. The demand for absolute certainty is as paralytic as any other brand of Perfectionism. Absolute certainty is neither possible nor necessary. By the fruits of imperfect and temporal human progress and individual human character growth, the attitudes and values of scientific rationalism and democracy, all so scorned by Theo-crypto-Nihilistic value destruction, shall Faliblism be known.

Can the unbelief, lack of belief or even outright disbelief falling under the category of Atheism truly be deemed a creed, any more than not playing chess can be undertaken as a hobby? Answer: Given ramification of religion or Theism, then one might anticipate corresponding ramifications to the lack thereof, to Atheism. But in truth, it is hardly clear that religion or Theism, the belief in God, clearly determines any other position or temperament, all so varied regardless of creed or religion, Theistic or otherwise. And yet religion and Theism as purported sole grounds for morality, are often marshaled or pandered outright in support of Moralism, while Atheism may appear often as a ramification of Scientific Rationalism which simply demands sound Empirical evidence for the existence of God or gods, just as with any other hypothesis or assertion and likewise without special pleadings. And from Atheist debunking of Theism, of Theological apologetics and of the most egregious so called Creation Science, much endless bickering with pious pinheads accrues. But so does extensive public education in the progress of cutting edge of evolutionary biology that Creationists are so quick to dismiss. And yet, so much standing controversy seems already covered in great detail and redundancy.Therefore what I seek to contribute here, all recapitulation notwithstanding, is better attention to important cognitive and psycho-social ramification nevertheless all too neglected, in questions of progress towards responsible liberating open minded autonomy. Because religion is only the rear guard in oppressive closed minded reactionary and irresponsible heteronomy.

In the ongoing struggle between autonomy and heteronomy, faliblist autonomy is expressed in scientific rationalism and democracy, while the institution and traditional Infalliblist heteronomy has in more recent history as often taken the form of ideology, but from antiquity, that of religion wherein Apologetics are all largely part and parcel of a long established and vast industry of diversionary travesty. And so merrily plunging down the rabbit hole we go! All hence must it come as little surprise that each and every one of the traditional purported logical proofs of the existence of God are all logically flawed Sophistry, long standing refuted. Because, in the first place, reduction to First Principles is quite impossible. Proof, after all,  is only of validity, defined as theoretical logical internal consistency, and never of truth value, defined as correspondence to external reality in assertions, which is never ascertainable by logical possibility alone without actually testing by observation and experiment, Empirically.

At least with anyone honestly declaring that where the conclusions of science and scripture might if ever logically conflict, they will side with scripture, we know where they stand and can readily question and criticize their dogmatism and double standards, because there is no pretense. Indeed, only science is bound by standards of evidence seeking to screen out special pleadings of self-undermining reasoning. Whereas matters of faith hold themselves to no such standard. And so, as far as internal consistency alone, that confession should simply be the end of it.

“After Jesus Christ we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel no need of research. When we come to believe, we have no desire to believe anything else; for we begin by believing that there is nothing else which we have to believe ...”  — Tertullian

But Theistic pseudoscience can be no less dogmatic and convoluted than Theology to begin with. All the standard distortions of Apologetics are routinely brought to bear in support of the existence of God, including all manner of scientific misconceptions and omissions in order to fabricate scientific problems then demanding explanation only by intelligent design or God one way or another. Or else Apologetics may often be extremely learned in the sciences, demanding a great deal of attention to detail from the reader. Because, in the suggestible receptivity of faith, which is the cultivation of satisfying beliefs in order to bring about altered states of consciousness, and the protection of said beliefs in order to cultivate altered states of consciousness in the long term, even bad evidence gains weight as it accumulates. -As if the house of cards might still stand, at least one or two broken logical links and mooted points hovering miraculously.

“There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason, especially if she enters into spiritual matters which concern the soul and God. For it is more possible to teach an ass to read than to blind such a reason and lead it right; for reason must be deluded, blinded and destroyed. [...] Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense and understanding, and whatever it sees it must put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God.”  —  Martin Luther

Alas, in truth, all of the extensive information and argumentation of such Apologetics, much like unto empty gossip, is centered about the same shopworn general logical falsities in the  of Scientific Method and standards of evidence, herein to be stripped bare:

Have I ever wondered why I am never yet called of God? No, not really. First of all, is there any God to begin with? Otherwise, can one actually be called by anything or anyone that does not first really exist? Yes. one can. One can heed the calling of an idea. But many ideas occur, and no one takes heed to them all. As for the mere idea of God, clearly I am too skeptical. I could only go through the ritualistic motions of inviting God, without the requisite sincerity of the appeal. It only ever works for anyone at all suggestible to give credence to Theism to begin with. But perhaps the greatest sticking point, to the best of my knowledge as yet unaddressed by any Theologian, would be as to the very validity of the experiment, which I do question. -Precisely because of the vividness and confidence of the sought for altered state of consciousness if successful, nevertheless and no less entirely subjective. The entire undertaking might at all qualify as a Psychological experiment, with no conceivable bearing upon objective reality, except by special pleadings for circuitous reasoning to assume the veracity of Mystical experience and the existence of God to begin with. Nor are there conditions of refutation, because there will always be testimony or anecdote of success, and negative results are dismissed, accurately I might add, as lack of faith, in other words: honesty and objectivity. And besides, an all powerful God would never need be so coy. Wary of wishful thinking, rational people do not strive to cultivate personal certainty for its own blissful sake, but instead seek truth and value honest opinion of one's own, to be challenged by Empirical investigation of reality not subverited by brainwash and autosuggestion. Such an endeavor would constitute a Psychological experiment at best, with no bearing upon external objective reality. In science, doubt is not an enemy to be overcome. Rather, systematic doubt is the guide of Scientific Method. Rational people do not struggle to quell doubt, but at all to settle doubt, one way or another, coming ever closer to truth, less wrong, by investigation seeking truth defined as correspondence to reality in assertions.

Rational skepticism and credulity place the burden of evidentiary support upon the advocacy of any given hypothesis. Faith, however, stands the process of rational skepticism on its head, proclaiming that beginning from belief, evidence appears, unfolds, and accumulates. But that is merely confirmation bias, accumulated corroboration ignoring all refutation of contrary evidence. Religion provides time tested procedures in the cultivation of pleasing beliefs. If only you will open yourself and male the effort at wishful thinking, you too can join with us and believe as we do, exhort the faithful. I don't doubt it! But what if one honestly simply does not take Theism seriously? Should the unbeliever then simply go through the motions? Would there be any point? Indeed, Evangelists of every stripe often exhort all whom they hope to convert, to undertake whatever particular prayer, meditation or such, usually with a certain required attitude, as a means of direct evidence, in order for the subject to achieve the certitude of divine revelation for themselves. But thus do they simply presume Epistemological Methodological consensus. Because, even assuming resounding success, why accept any such at whatever ostensible face value any more than drug experiences, hypnosis or any other similar incidentally altered or deliberately tampered with states of consciousness and impaired judgment? Since when is even the most immediate of direct experience beyond question and skeptical examination? Because, what can there ever be in human nature at all beyond fallibility? Since when is direct experience so completely reliable?

So ignorant of basic Phenomenology, many religious people are often so blithely uncritical of naïve perception at face value, and are surprised, even incredulous, to learn, for example, how the astronomer Christiaan Huygens, discoverer of the rings of Saturn, had first to even at all to conceive of the rings of Saturn, before being able to see them. Indeed, Galileo was unable thus to visually interpret his own observations thereof. And of course, that is only one among so many celebrated illustrative examples in demonstration of the theory laden conjecturality and therefore inevitable bias, even of perception and experience.

Religion remains, after all, Karl Marx's notorious opiate of the masses, antirational terror management strategy so prone to pernicious nonsense with such great conviction and hence meaningless conflicts that can never be settled. And so, by appropriate analogy, do the other people at the bar really become more beautiful the more one drinks? After all, pub crawling too, has it's ardent and fevered Evangelists! And so, with no satisfactory answer, all such mental masturbation must be recognized as experimentally inconclusive, no matter how vivid. Because even the most successful desired results remain open to a myriad of explanations and are well known to be very much colored in the mind by preconception even to be intelligible at all. Yea, verily, experience is biased by context of expectations. And apparently, there are not only the entire range of paranormal interpretations and the idiosyncratically surreal, but even entirely prosaic apprehension of much the same experience, altered states or day to day private cognition and emotion. After all, in the Epistemology of science, which, Methodologically, is the application of systematic doubt, inspiration from the willing suspension of disbelief and judgment, is not the motivating end goals ever put forth, as in religious faith, but only a starting point of unsupported conjecture to be subjected first to critical preference and then to Empirical reality testing and the quest for the simplest likeliest explanation.

Indeed, as yet there is no evidence for God save as He may be evoked explanatorily, even so far as affirming the consequent or converting the conditional (Modus Ponens). That is to say, by the same observable outcome, be such Ontological or Phenomenological, that, however, may be, and indeed is, also and better explained by whatever other competing viable hypotheses. Hence, the current evidence for God is only as good as Theistic explanation for scientific problems. And for any given problem, either there are alternative hypotheses to that of the existence and agency of God, or else, conceivably, there might not be. Even if neither first cause nor infinite regress are deemed satisfactory explanation, that still does not necessitate God, because God explains nothing, being Himself and His alleged agency unexplained, unsupported and theoretically inelegant. What profit is there in simply shifting the burden of explanation into an even more difficult problem, when the entire point is simplifying theoretical elegance of adequate explanation?

Hypothetically, if there would be currently no other known explanation, than, for example, flying saucers, spontaneous anxiety, Santa Claus, conspiratorial Jewish bankers or God, then this only amounts to the same tired and fallacious Argumentum Ad Ignorantium or argument by lack of imagination, jumping to conclusions in the face of the unknown, circuitous reasoning affirming the consequent. Because, even when we have no explanation at all, new explanations may arise later and often do. The lack of explanation or solution at any given time offers slim support indeed for paranormal claims, whatsoever. If there are no good explanations, for however long, that still does not support bad explanations, unsupported explanations and out and out non explanations! Of course there will always be new questions, but God has yet to become a viable hypothesis. God remains an inelegant non explanation. There is, as yet, precious little in the way of mechanistic explanation of how God is supposed to exist, function or accomplish all that He is presumed to have done or to does. Nor, indeed, much effort at all to improve matters, neither theoretically nor experimentally. Indeed, lately, God has been a fruitless hypothesis, supported only by faith, by wishful thinking.

Just for example, and if only any of them where ever either qualified or even as remotely serious as they pretend, what is there to stop those who contend, perhaps inspired by Gaia Hypothesis, that speculative particle physics of infinitesimal multiple extra dimensions could computationally facilitate even omniscient universal consciousness, from actually building and even someday perhaps ever testing howsoever workable models even in simulation? Of course whereas Gaia hypothesis proposes that the ecosystem is howsoever homeostatic and responsive to changes made by post industrial human presence, with at most the "consciousness" on an ameba responding to even intrusive biochemical changes, Gaia worship assumes the heightened spiritual consciousness and super intelligence of a Divinity. Which model is simpler and likelier in explanation of repeatable observations? Similar questions are begged with regards to physics and the universe. Untestability may be linked to other issues of critical preference, such as parsimony of explanation and alternative explanation, because, if there is any known conceivable concrete process by which any proposed phenomenon might conceivably occur and thus exist, that might tend to at least to point the way towards a testable hypothesis after all. Therefore there is nothing to prevent formulation of at least seemingly over complex models in order to make predictions and follow up with investigation in search of repeatable observations that previous oversimplified models will then be unable to account for.

 

Alas however, none of the vast resources marshaled in supposedly reconciliatory allegedly scientific defense of Theism are known, lately or ever, to have been devoted to theoretical development let alone at all conclusive repeatable experimental results or observations. No one whosoever at all has risen to even the theoretical challenge of Theophysics! -Let alone the quest for credible evidentiary support thereof... However slim the prospects for success, the uplifting vindication of science is in the fruitfulness even of failure. Alas, even if there is no intrinsic reason why that there could be no genuine attempt at Theistic science, whatever the risks entailed or prospect of success, none such is known actually to be practiced, the challenge unanswered save by the same tired Apologetics. Worse, given success, where would that leave faith?

Hence, scientifically, thus far, all that evoking Intelligent Design AKA God the creator, accomplishes is to remove any complex problem to an exponentially more complex problem upon which there has been no progress to speak of. Simply because intelligent personality is a complex ordered phenomenon, does not logically attribute all other examples of complex ordered phenomena to the guidance of any intelligent personality. Rather, whereas antirational religion explains the known in terms of the mysterious, in rational science, seeking to build and test (corroborate and refute) explanation of the hither to unknown via the known, even intelligent personality must be explained the same way as other complex ordered phenomena. And the latter endeavor remains fruitful, whereas the sheer vague supposition of Theology remains fruitless at very best. God, then, lies on the cutting room floor amid the fat trimmed by Ockham's Razor. Hence, any viable hypothesis remains far better than Theism.

The classic syllogism endures: If all men are mortal and if Socrates is a man, then it follows that Socrates is mortal. But what if Emortality, the aging cure, is finally achieved and made available? Well in that case, not all men will remain mortal. And Socrates would remain mortal only by the disagreeable happenstance of already being long dead. What we need then, is retrograde time travel! Be all that as it may: What follows is a logically valid and yet Empirically falsified demonstration of the existence of God: If a certain level of order and complexity is impossible except by intention, and if such extreme order and complexity exists, then it only follows that there must be a Creator God. But the major premise, that a certain level of order and complexity is impossible except by intention, stands long refuted. Indeed, an overriding theme of modern science remains repeatable Empirical observation, duplicatable experimental results, of the simple becoming progressively more complex: of the ongoing foment of simple chemicals into ever more complex molecules, the evolution of simple cells into ever more complex organisms, of atomic fusion of simple atoms into heavier and more complex elements, all neither by intention and yet nevertheless not simply at random, but by consistent mechanistic causality. But not everyone knows and understands science very well, and for such as they, God seemingly remains viable hypothesis. Worse, many are ever conniving and simply insincere about any wish to participate in science. Only some among such mediocre hypocrites are at least honest about staunchly putting faith first. and science be damned. 

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”  — Friedrich Nietzsche

 

The burden of evidence upon the positive

Why the burden of evidence can only rest upon the positive, and  under the burden of evidence upon the positive, the at all supportable hypotheses, the hypotheses with any evidence, are first sifted out from the mass of unsupportable hypotheses arbitrarily.

The Skeptics of antiquity espoused open mindedness to the point of suspending all judgment. But the skepticism of scientific rationalism, Scientific Method and systematic doubt, is somewhat less extreme, following the venerable maxim of burden of evidence upon the positive for assertions. Assertions are declarative statements such as employing the verb: 'to be' in denotation of Ontological claims regarding reality or anything real. And as shall be demonstrated, the maxim of burden of evidence upon the positive is by no means arbitrary. Indeed, the  burden of evidence upon the positive is the very core principle of systematic doubt and science at all. And much as in science, under law there is the presumption of innocence pending conviction or vindication. One kind of assertion is allegations and accusation. These are assertions of events of wrong doing. And so the legal presumption of innocence is only cited herein as a prevalent and familiars example, a special case of the logical principle of burden of evidence upon the positive.

Hence then hypothetically, there will be no need of an alibi for Bigfoot until evidence arises indicting the Sasquatch of, for example, the Kennedy assassination, and indeed no need to refute the very existence of any cryptid primate in the first place, until there is any evidence to refute. How absurd! And that is the point. However a more serious problem often arises whenever the same body of evidence is called in support of competing hypotheses. The question then is as to which hypotheses are currently better supported by the evidence, thereby remaining viable. It will be such hypotheses that better explain the evidence, that therefore indeed meet the burden of evidence upon the positive. This brings us to the logical fallacy of Affirming the Consequent, as for example, citing the very existence of the pyramids as evidence that  the pyramids were built using alien technology. Especially not given that actually we do know how Egyptians could have moved those massive stone blocks with what they had, and even have the evidence of which methods they actually did employ. Although, even if we didn't know, that doesn't mean that space aliens helped. That fallacy is called: the Argument from Ignorance.

But there is also a simple mathematical demonstration herein presented step by step in logically leading dialectic, as to precisely why the burden of evidence can only rest upon the positive, and  under the burden of evidence upon the positive, the at all supportable hypotheses, the hypotheses with any evidence, are first sifted out from the mass of unsupportable hypotheses arbitrarily.

For every true assertion, there will be even an infinite number of variants that are false. Does this follow? Do you agree?

Thus, it follows that statistically, all things being equal, the odds of any hypothesis or claim chosen at random, being true, are infinitesimally slim. Does this follow? Do you agree? 

Knowledge is awareness of truth, and truth is correspondence to reality in assertions. Truth is both singular and exceptional. There is only one reality, one truth, and the assertions that are true, are the exception from amidst the vast majority of assertions that are known or unknown to be false. Does this follow? Do you agree?

Hence seeking to refute all of the infinite number of all possible hypotheses, including that majority  thereof, being the unsupported hypotheses, hypotheses lacking evidence, cannot be as efficient and productive as attacking and defending the far fewer and more limited number of hypotheses that do appear to be supported by evidence. Does this not also follow? Do you agree?

That is why under the burden of evidence upon the positive, the at all supportable hypotheses, the hypotheses with any evidence, are first sifted out from the mass of unsupportable hypotheses arbitrarily. Is this now clear?  

Of course evidence might still conceivably arise for Creation, but the evidence already and still better supports evolution by natural selection. Evolution could conceivably be refuted, say, by the discovery of a fossil rabbit from the Cretaceous. But there are no known standards of refutation for God or Santa Clause. Appeals to the supernatural are therefore nonpredictive and untestable. How is evidence one way or another, even possible? Neo-Darwinian evolution, by contrast, does significantly meet burden of evidence upon the positive.

Science is often criticized for materialistic bias. But honestly, no matter how often repeated, can that aforesaid frequent complaint of Mysticism truly ever stand as any sort of valid criticism? Indeed, pray tell, what would a nonmaterialistic science even be like? Science must assay Empirical evidence of material reality. By contrast, Theology is a discipline with no observable external reality. And that may be why believers so often strive to shift the burden to the negative and thereby take leave of rational constraint: "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Clause!" -even though he cannot be found. For such is blind lunatic doctrinal faith that religion so prizes as greatest of virtues.: And antirational religious or ideological doublethink often ensues. 

Mediocrity Principle and mechanistic materialism                                                                

In nature, intelligence arises from complexity, not complexity from intelligence or soul essence, the precept whereof being flagrant non-predictive non-explanation and untestable. Whereas in the alternative at all, the hypothesis remains viable and supportable, that somehow Ontologically the quantifiable active physical reality of the nervous system comprise the mechanism of Phenomenological qualitative experience, conscious awareness, cognition and emotion. But best human knowledge to date thereupon is admittedly general and limited. Nevertheless, complexity by itself remains insufficient inference for Intelligent Design and thence a Designer. Even living organisms are not irreducibly complex. After all, we know full well, one way or another, indeed, in very principle, that order progresses without deliberate conscious intelligent design. Because, the happenstance of blind and  incognizant natural order, even however imperfect and suboptimal as real adaptations inevitably will be, and entirely without guiding consciousness, is the result of natural selection under physical conditions providing for randomness but under constraints of circumstance. Unlike paranormalism, science is more concerned with the ordinary than with the unusual or even purportedly miraculous. There is no real understanding, say, of the wondrous birth or two headed livestock, without first unraveling the secrets of the most ordinary biological reproduction. Science, after all, quests after reproducible results not irreproducible quirks. And this approach has been fruitful. Indeed, certainly, at first blush, one might wonder daunted at the utter improbability of the sheer complexity of the universe, all out from empty chaos and darkness, let alone ensuing evolution of life. But surprisingly it turns out indeed, especially given nigh endless repetition and adequate range of variance, how the very wonders both of a complex universe and the evolution of life thereafter are both actually highly probable, indeed, nigh inevitable, under the right conditions which turn out to be quite common, typical, likely similar enough if not actually identical in many times and places, even mediocre rather than exceptional. - Existence out from empty chaos and darkness, and living ecosystems anywhere under the right chemical conditions thereafter. After all, circumstances under which order spontaneously appears as an emergent property of complex interactions among the parts of a system, far from being only a figment of mathematical imagination, even include certain meteorological phenomena such as tornados are neither regular nor random but are already the result of intrinsic self-organizing processes without external guidance. Hence, as applicable likewise also to a wide range of even more complex phenomena, we now begin to know and understand how chaotic flux is an unstable and impermanent state, because, eventually even by sheer chance, homeostasis always eventually arises from such a state of utter chaotic flux, bringing an onset of the development of ordered complexity, tightly integrated dynamic complex systems of organized correlation between functioning components as a result displaying emergent even howsoever organic properties or Gestalt, even including hysteresis beyond determinism alone (hysteresis being a quality of system dynamics often analogized to memory, the manifestation of various persistent states, each responding to similar inputs howsoever differently), indeed the maximum complexity possible only from ongoing chaotic disruption of orderly systems called: the edge of chaos. Indeed, even the origins of physical laws are but a special case of such order from chaos, said physical laws being description of conditions most fundamental to coherent physical existence in the universe as it has ever existed beyond it's most primordial state of chaotic flux. And Entropy is often seen to decrease locally at the expense of increased Entropy globally. So, beyond the sheer joys of unfettered fantasy, scientifically, why seek to anthropomorphize Negentropy and the edge of chaos? What need is there anymore of Teleology?

And returning to evolution, characteristics may become advantageous for entirely different reasons, in the course of evolution, without somehow actually striving towards whatever we see today. And so, the precursors of complex systems, even such as are currently only advantageous in their current conjunction with other complex components, may have hitherto been useful to perform other, entirely unrelated functions, even far more simply. So, why would any particular instance of order, "improbable" low Entropy, however seemingly fortuitous, then require God? Not without either far better support for God and/or far more rigorously ruling out the more ordinary even if highly complex causal alternatives. And so the world and people in it, can come into being without a God to conjure it all especially for you and me. It may be jarring to realize that the totality of being does not revolve around us after all, but such often comes growth towards maturity. Rather it is still love, and confluence of suitable conditions thereto, common and mediocre or rare and fortunate as the case actually may be, that makes anyone special for anyone else.

Consciousness, however palpable Phenomenally, remains poorly understood. In nature, intelligence and consciousness have been known to arise from complexity that is characteristic thereof, but never complexity from any sort of ambient consciousness. Apparently, only artifacts, and not natural phenomena, are actually products of intelligent (deliberate, conscious) design. Natural order is not the handiwork of intelligent design or consciousness deliberately, rather intelligence is another among many kinds of ordered states of localized low Entropy. There is no evidence of vital force or awareness as a primary, whatever that means, pervading the universe. Nor do these assertions amount to Reductionism, but, rather, just to the contrary, Gestalt.

If space is round that means that a traveler flying off in a straight line far enough, would eventually return to the point where they began, coming from the opposite direction. And likewise, if time where round or looped, then this would mean that one would only need to survive and wait around long enough in order to witness ones own birth. Or perhaps the vast expanse of space is indeed actually endless and infinite, and/or likewise time, infinite in both directions, the past an endless regression backward and the future without end lying forever before us. Indeed, an infinite universe sliding down an endless Entropy slope, would never actually reach Heat Death. Now clearly, neither an unending chain of causal events, an infinite regress nor a cycle with neither beginning nor end perhaps even closed within looped time, would neither alone necessitate God, still only removing the already complex to a greater order of unexplained complexity, inelegant non explanation. Indeed, if there is necessarily anything however eternal in nature, or even one way or another or in any sense outside of space-time as we normally experience, neither still would establish that this would ever have to be anything so magical as God in Eternity. Science may as yet be somewhat short of fully satisfactory explanation neither for the emergence of existence from nonexistence or else of existence forever without beginning, but even so at least seemingly still at all further along than religion. For, remarkably enough, from the known observation to date, conventional modern Cosmologies do hypothesize a chronological first event yet dependant upon conditions primordial and forever imminent, with neither volume nor duration, called: the void, or in Theological terminology: Eternity, though, speaking of the Existentialist absentee God, indeed untenanted, sufficient even sans any trace of aware consciousness, anthropomorphic, benevolent, all powerful or otherwise. -Indeed, perhaps all somewhat reminiscent of how as chaos and darkness in Genesis, are actually Monotheistic depersonalizations of Babylonian Polytheistic gods. While other modern cosmologies are of an infinitely old cycle of Big Bangs followed either by universal contraction and collapse into the Big Crunch or else with unfettered expansion, dissipation into empty void in the long and slow Heat Death of the Universe, either way producing conditions for Big Bang ex-nihilo anew.

Touching again upon the topic of endeavor at reconciliation between science and religion, historically, Inflationary or: Big Bang Theory was actually championed by the Vatican astronomers. But what has acceptance of the Inflationary Theory, even as bolstered by its own howsoever repressive scientific orthodoxy, actually accomplished in whatever hoped for scientific support of religion? Answer: Not logical inference, conclusions necessary given whatever premise, but merely invited inference, that which is implied but does not actually follow. Such is the pandering to faith, bait with no lure except to the religious to begin with. And it is bad faith, a craven and Existentially dishonest peace between science and religion, wherein rational science being concerned only with logical inference, instead of unapologetically engaging in valid criticism, spurns the practice of controversy, simply remaining oblivious to the dishonest fallaciously invited inference embraced in support of religion and Theology, indeed so irrelevant to science. After all, why waste time debating with poor sports in in a debate that can't be taken seriously in he first place? What is so irresponsible is to expect that fanatics can be mollified by leaving them unsupervised, or that willful naivety in dealing with them won't adversely impact the scientific quest for truth.

Indeed, Inflationary Theory or: Big Bang, begins to smack of religion and Theology, in that as of yet, Inflationary Theory is still seeking to explain the known in terms of the unknown. But where is the missing mass, all of that dark matter, required under Inflationary Theory, simply in order to hold the galaxies together? To be scientific, an hypothesis must be Empirically predictive with observable conditions of refutation. Is Inflationary Theory lost and wandering in abstraction? Any of the ever more diversely hypothesized variants of dark matter, multiplying ad hoc so reminiscent of Ptolemaic epicycles, all remain entirely uncorroborated by observation, even after decades searching.

In the alternative, the Plasma Universe model is harbinger to a revolution in science, part of the return to classical physics. All manner of theoretically drawn ramifications of the Plasma universe model are frankly baffling, and however promising, they may yet unravel as badly as Inflationary Theory. But the initial premise and supporting evidence remains simple and clear: The Plasma Universe model, a part of the return to classical physics for explanation in terms of what is already known, posits that it is not gravity that holds the galaxies together in the first place, so much as the far stronger force of electromagnetism conducted over vast distances by the plasma filaments corroborated by observation, even across intergalactic space and between and linking the galaxies. The evidence is too much to ignore. Alas, however, the mathematics of plasma physics is so dauntingly complicated. Therefore, while Inflationary Theory is all mathematics in long frustrated search fior supporting Empirical observation in astronomy, the Plasma Universe model remains Empirical observation without the mathematics in order to generate new testable predictions.

Not to digress, however: The universe is of a finite age and expanding according to conventional Big Banger Inflationary interpretation of Red Shift and universal background radiation. Hence time itself, like the expansion of space out from infinite compression, is thought to have began with the Big Bang. According to the Inflationary Theory, preceding even the Big Bang and beyond the known physical Universe abides the void, conditions without volume or duration, volume being the expanse of space and duration being the passage of time from within any frame of reference inside the Universe. The intuition of some timeless condition (and even thence much later even time as a constant physical fourth dimension) probably first occurs anciently from altered states of consciousness, even expansive Mystical experience, wherein all sense of time is lost. In Theology the POV, Point Of View, perspective or howsoever frame of reference outside of time that is attributed to God who is described as a spirit without substance, is called Eternity. But even to posit the void / "chaos and darkness" / Eternity, does not logically require God. Nor does a beginning of time and of the universe logically require a Creator.

Theoretically, application of the mediocrity principle even to the Big Bang itself have posited that appropriate conditions for the Big Bang in the void where/are, indeed, howsoever uniformly mediocre, common, probable, even so far as to imply the existence of other Universes, other space-time continuums, though such might only ever be detectable if ever at all, only by gravity waves. But paradoxically, all such as yet wandering in abstraction, as yet still awaiting Empirical corroboration, in any case at least hypothetically leaves regression, thereby begging one more question that as yet we know not even how properly to phrase or frame because all conventional logically causal explanation rests upon antecedent events, and according to the Big Bang Inflationary Theory, time itself began only with the Big Bang, so that nothing could actually happen before that. Nevertheless, as to the very manner of being, or, dare say: dasein, why is or was the void such and not otherwise conceivably?

Indeed, for that matter, even if the Universe is infinitely old, as in any steady state model, or as in cyclical Cosmological models wherein after either a Big Crunch or else the Entropicly inevitable Heat Death if the Universe, another Big Bang ensues, or similarly if time is round much as space is often thought to be, every question would still remain much the same as to how and why so. Are there any viable hypotheses? Can there ever be? Or is it all just so?

Again, to posit God the Creator, to anthropomorphically and supernaturally apply Pathetic Fallacy to whatever entirely natural processes even of the howsoever theorized very void itself, let alone to natural randomness within constraints and arising complexity there after, only removes the already complex to greater complexity still. Indeed, even if first cause is at all are ever where satisfactorily demonstrated, then that still need not by itself establish any God as first cause. And whatever the first cause, would that not leave said in need of explanation? Indeed, is not God often claimed to be causeless and eternal? -Which is to say, unexplained... Yea and verily, the Archeologist will unearth the Israelites before Physics ever finds dark matter, much less working its way to God(s)! Even if neither first cause nor infinite regress are deemed satisfactory explanation, that still does not necessitate God, because God explains nothing, being Himself and His alleged agency unexplained, unsupported and maximally theoretically inelegant, yea ands verilly, vague Mystical explanation of the known in terms of the unknown, instead of cogent explanation of the known in terms of the known. Theism offers the most inellegant and least adequate of all explanations. 

Furthermore, it bears mention that even demonstrating only the very existence of God, even if such compelling evidentiary support ever where to come to light, would not necessarily or automatically follow any specific sectarian details as to His (or Her) nature, particularly not even any sort of benevolently moral or personal loving God, much less the specific sort of God in detail, nor any other tenets asserted by any given religion, for example, as to relationship with a personal God or any promise of an afterlife. Indeed, all such questions and details might conceivably very well remain open, even if the very existence of God at all, and no more, where to be demonstrated and supported by whatever sort of new evidence and new understanding. Indeed, it is held forth in the Zen, that unworkable and misleading models obtain in the differentiation of God from self and the totality of being. Be that as it may, simply calling or naming most any given phenomena: God, is a common though transparent ruse either for metaphorically dragging in so much more via the proverbial back door, or else a flimsy camouflage for however reluctant or pseudo-pious Atheism.

Theo-crypto-Nihilism

 Such are the deep and psychologically ingrained cultural Judeo-Christian presumptions of an all pervading God, as to become all nigh inescapable in the mind, as likewise must be the unintended ironic subtext, so dramatically delicious, of this very text, in it's confessedly and inevitably mounting virulence, as might be imagined issuing forth like unto smoking charnel brimstone spewing from the mouth of some devil, denying, mocking and railing against God in His Heaven Above! For is it not said that the Devil is Ultimate Negation? For is not God just said Ultimate for the Devil to deny and negate? No, not unless God exists to begin with! How can one reject either God or the Tooth Fairy, without first believing in the existence thereof? Rather, whether one accepts an actual Devil anymore than God, it remains in truth that the most extreme conceivable Nihilism necessarily entails rejection of reason, logic, Ontology and thence the embrace of madness in whatever ensuing moral vacuum.

How has the mythical Santa Claus become the very paradigm for faith in any untestable hypothesis? Answer: Perhaps because of history's most reprinted newspaper editorial, the famous 'Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!'  Note therein the exhortation to faith, buttressed by the framing of an untestable hypothesis rejecting all conceivable conditions of refutation, rejecting also in very principle, the burden of evidence upon the positive. What is suggested, nevertheless, in subtext, is that actually faith is beautiful despite reality. Here, I might actually agree. My issue with faith is Epistemological and therefore Methodological. It is from the the Transactional ego state of the Inner Adult that rational interpretation of reality ensues. Again, in the words of Alexander Lowen MD: "Conviction lies not in the ego." Or to quote Joseph Fort Newton: "Belief is a truth held in the mind. Faith is a fire in the heart." As Martin Buber points out, optimistic hope, attitudinal faith, basic trust and wonder of the Transactional ego state of the spontaneous and playful Natural Child, are simply not matters of belief or Ontology, let alone dogma and doctrinal faith, as such to begin with. -Except perhaps at best, metaphorically and mythological. Hence the very quest for certitude in justified belief or declarative statements at all, is utterly misguided and obsessive, metaphorically barking up the proverbially wrong tree! Emotional dispositions are not attached to declarative intellectualizations as pertaining to Ontology, let alone access thereto Epistemologically and Methodologically. Emotional dispositions are Psychodynamic. Even the optimism of the scientific attitude is in the hope that truth can be investigated and problems can be solved. All questions remain open. There are no specific articles of faith, with faith as the dogmatic scriptural evidence of things unseen. If there can be said to be faith in the scientific attitude, it is faith without knowledge let alone certainty. Indeed, Psychodynamically that is the true nature of that hope at all which is called: basic trust. And it turns out that knowledge doesn't help in cases of real despair and pervasive mistrust of life that can only be addressed Psychodynamically and Psychotherapeutically. The feeling of insecurity is very distinct from intellectual or statistical uncertainty. Hence in science, controversy is a value, not a threat.

Whereas, faith zealously defended only by denial of reality, necessary in order to sustain irrational beliefs lacking evidentiary support and even in the face of overwhelming refutation, bespeaks not hope or trust, but only the desperation of Theo-crypto-Nihilism, ultimate cynical Nihilism cloaked in ultimate hypocrisy. Theo-crypto-Nihilistim openly argues or deviously implies no other escape from the abyss of  Nihilism, save by religion and therefore faith, indeed typically then dismissing all criticism or rejection of faith, of Nihilism. And what monumentally pessimistic hypocrisy is just such false hope in Theo-crypto-Nihilism! For in truth, one must first be Nihilist in one's heart of hearts to begin with, and in utter failure of imagination otherwise, stone blind to all other options, in order to so desperately gasp at straws of so specious an antidote as lunatic faith. But perhaps the true depths of Nihilism are plumbed rather by sheer heteronomy, the loss of all faith in the self as impulsive, lazy and hedonistic that inspires desperation for some infallible leader to absolve all personal responsibility with infallible truth received from on high. Indeed, Existential inadequacy from comparing so poorly to God and Divine perfection, is actually a common complaint. And just as the false characterization of all science as Reductionism is often deployed for launching argument from ignorance and lack of imagination, likewise moral Nihilism and even Nihilistic value destruction is falsely thrust upon us as the only default position without firm grounds upon the certified word of God. but Godliness ever promising certainty, simply cannot deliver. And to legitimize meaningful values including morality only by appeal to God, is at best redundant or worse actually mocks and denies inherent value of intrinsic worth as sheer Ecclesiastical futility. For such is Theo-crypto-Nihilistic value destruction, ultimate hypocrisy because it masquerades as hope and trust.

Hence perhaps the most important reason to forsake belief in God, is because the very concept of relationship with God obstructs genuine faith by removing the burden thereof.

“They must find it difficult...Those who have taken the authority as the truth, rather than the truth as the authority”  — Gerald Massey

Whereas then, Atheism is merely an expression of rationalism and autonomy, scientific rationalism in turn being no more than the Epistemology of autonomy. An Atheist, simply and straightforwardly, is one who does not believe in God or gods. But there is another related term, Agnostic, meaning one not knowing or professing ignorance in regards to any question of the existence of God. And this has engendered much confusion, because, from the standpoint of the Scientific Rationalism usually underling Atheism, the default is disbelief. And so, barring any particular knowledge from Empirical evidence to the contrary, one would scarcely suspect, much less opine or believe in, the existence of God any more than the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster or for that matter indeed Santa Claus. And so, that would suggest that utter and complete Agnosticism is actually sufficient to Atheism. Indeed, the very uncertainty professed of Agnosticism ought to require any serious evidentiary support whatsoever for whatever tantalizing suspicion of any possible existence of God at all, just to raise so much as a specter of doubt at all! (Unless an Agnostic, perhaps in the most in monumental Socratic irony, where to actually claim and thence begin from complete ignorance even of the entire question, rather than actual indecision with the known arguments and evidence.) But from any religious standpoint wherein the certainty of reveled truth is professed, Theists often insist that since otherwise one cannot know anything for certain, indeed, because only positive assertions are directly supportable while negative assertions are supportable at all only by an ongoing and endless process of elimination, therefore Atheists are more properly merely Agnostics. Worse, because religion in quest for impossible and unnecessary transcendental certainty appeals more to the test of faith, as a human need and value to be redeemed and recovered, rather than any standard of objective reality testing in the embrace of healthy skepticism and systematic doubt, Theists generally assume that an Agnostic is lost, yearning for the reawakening to worship. In other words, by just such circumlocutions, many Theists, in their priorities mandating a practical rejection of Ontology, utterly and blithely refuse to even recognize the very opinion of Atheism in and of itself as possible human state or frame of mind! -Which, even granting every natural human proclivity towards animism, still seems somewhat pigheaded. 

What possibly can remain save for damnation and Devil Worship, in turning away from God? What can remain without God, save for the abyss of Nihilism? Plenty! This is all a false binary red herring,. Indeed, if God is the answer, then exactly what was the question? Not Cosmology, not actually. Rather, the Existential problem remains of the quest for meaning in confrontation with the Absurd.

 

 

Alarming developments: Has the bigoted and Xenophobic Alt-Right infiltrated and co-opted Atheism under rationalizing pretexts of memetics? Dawkins, the lionized creator of memetics, seems cogent enough until he concludes in ranting lambast against Islam as the paradigmatically dangerous, violent and wrongheaded "thought contagion.". But why Islam in particular, and not fundamentalism or simply the proliferating lunacy of fanaticism most broadly? Can Dawkins, the father of memetics, truly remain blithely unaware of how every folly and evil masquerades under no end of superficially variant guises? Dawkins, are you aware of who serves as the FBI's greatest intelligence source in combating Islamist terror in the United States? Spoiler: It's the Islamic community! How then could Islam, not in any debatable purity of abstraction and semantics, but as manifesting in the real world, the actual memeplex, then ever be any less monolithic than that? So, what is the New Atheism movement? The stated purpose is to be less sensitive and deferential, and in need be more harsh, simply in order to become more honest, open and truthful. And indeed, there is no end of mischief in deference to the tender feelings of such maniacal religious zealots including but in no way limited to those raving superstitious misogamist anti-abortion "Pro-Lifers" so-called, instead of metaphorically shouting the literal truth from the proverbial rooftops! But is such realization hypocritically and propagandistically misappropriated as license for bigotry, xenophobia, fascism and abuse against innocent immigrants and desperate refugees? After all, there are always those, like the Nazis, who contend that not merely altruism but even sheer civility is effete and dishonest and that only devious hostility and abuse is pure and forthright. So has Dawkins likewise taken leave of his senses, and become cheerleader to such pseudoscience and mob mentality? Will the real Dawkins please stand up!

Prospects ever at all, of reconciliation of religion into science and/or of science into religion?

Proselytizing is so obnoxious, unwelcome and ultimately ineffective, because: proselytizing is intrusive propaganda and indoctrination, indeed nowadays so often delivered via SPAM. Whereas actually at all transcendent Eros has been defined by Eve Tushnet in ‘Eros and Education’ as deep reciprocal engagement bridging into alien difference, by contrast, proselytizing, far from anything Christlike and compassionately interested in others, is typically schmaltzy and phony, feigning deeply personal sincerity, but actually bogus impersonal advertisement in regurgitation of rote liturgy of one kind or another, often hostile and demeaning, closed upon ever the same demand of enthusiastic cult consensus. Indeed, the faithful are often admonished to shun heterodox outside influence. How then, are they to reach out to the world? "Join us, brothers and sisters, or go to Hell!" For the last thing such dogmatists ever care to do is get into anybody else's head! Manichean dogmatists can only deplore heresy and heretics, indeed as they regard one another, unless they belong to the same cult. Therefore in actuality, most proselytizing is actually an Ulterior Transaction of co-validation in "preaching to the choir" or else when more honestly in accordance with classic insider-outsider dilemma of sharing purported externally intransmissible communal revelation, not precision targeted at all, but a SPAM-like shot gun approach to promotion, the metaphorical scattered seed falling on barren or fallow ground as the wind, the proverbial breath of God, carries it, an outreach intended for those scattered amongst the populace, already sympathetic, ripe and susceptible, and not any attempt at persuasion otherwise at all. For it is the exceptional proselytizer, indeed perhaps even Christ-like, who seeks to understand and relate to their audience, especially an audience of which they are not themselves already a part. And rarest of all is honest respect rather than manipulative cynicism. Notably insightful, for example, is the sage advice for Christian proselytizing targeted at Muslims, to the effect that Islamic preoccupation with superficial ritual cleanliness betrays a deep concern with sin, to which the promise of redemption as offered by Christianity may find deep and resonating appeal. But provincial failure of imagination is the more pronounced when confronted with real controversy beyond Theological fine points within readily discoverable existing affinity. For by contrast, religious appeals to science and reason tend to be patronizing and fraudulent. The heteronomy fostered by religion tends to be threatened by and hostile towards the autonomy fostered by science and reason, no less than as towards all other attachments and motivations than those of religion and heteronomy. Indeed, it is any at all sincere virtue values of honesty fostered within religion that are ever vulnerable to be swayed by rigors of the scientific quest for truth. After all, it's dogma not reason, that so frequently makes the speaker whereof blush with hypocrisy.

Theology has never emerged from Metaphysics because the entirely hypothetical problems, conundrums and entire corpus of argument in a vacuum that is Theology even yet remain entirely bereft of any detectably correspondent reality for Empirical scientific investigation. Nevertheless, abstract good or value which defies description in in terms any worldly physical properties of things or phenomena, and therefore often laid claim by Theology and religion, is actually qualitative intangible idea and motivation contingent upon no end of circumstances that are nonetheless very real even though as yet, the Scientific Method cannot address Axiological questions beyond simply describing different Axiologies as characteristic of different individuals and cultures. Hence, Axiology strives to emerge from Metaphysical discourse into scientific investigation. And yet, though there are no end of vexingly vague and confusing moral grey areas, conflicts and fine distinctions, some simpler moral assertions do remain seemingly plainer and more enduring.

After all, Philosophy endures as the incubator of emergent new fields of science. And science that unlike religion must strive for impartiality, is often criticized by various Mystics of an alleged prior commitment to materialism. But science is an Empirical study of objective reality. Hence, if commitment to materialism as alleged is seen as so prejudicial, then the remedy, a revolution in science, would be Empirical objective study that is not materialistic. But what form would that take, and how might such an undertaking even be possible and accessible to science? What might be the central inquiry, questions or problems? What manner of hypothesis? By what standards of evidence and conditions of refutation? By what protocols and experimental controls?

Indeed: What are the functions of prayer and how are they accomplished? By what method and procedure? Indeed, where if at all, does religious and occult intuitionism draw the boundary with sheer magic and magical realism of fairytales and likewise wishful thinking, desperate and willful or entirely unpremeditated? According to a study by University of Chicago lead by Nicholas Epley, lonely people are more likely to believe in the supernatural, whether that is God, angels or miracles. Indeed, other scientific studies, particularly such as recently financed from religious sources, by the John Templeton Foundation particularly, contend that religion helps with stress, health and longevity. But so do marriage and pets, or so we are also told. So, if religious belief and practice are beneficial, does that then recommend self dishonesty and even painful and debilitating heteronomy if and as ever necessary thereto? After all, understanding, as facilitated my scientific rationalism, has been observed to inspire active confidence, assuaging anxiety in the face of the unknown. Now, whatever feels more reassuring may be the point of religion, whether or not so openly, but since when is any of that a criteria of successful science in quest of truth? What science has always offered religion is criticism, ever constrained by the church until science finally broke free.

Any serious project then, of reconciliation between science and religion will be challenging indeed, given such manifest contradiction between rational inquiry and Empirical investigation of science under systematic doubt, versus the willfully wishful thinking of religion and ideology. Scientific evidence of the existence of God, or in corroboration of whatever other ideological tenet, would only remove the requirement of doctrinal faith, while doctrinal faith, even the doctrinal faith in the process or results of science itself, remains shabby and unscientific. Science is faliblist, while religion and ideology are infaliblist. How can faliblism and infaliblism ever be reconciled  as in the stated endeavor of the John Templeton  Foundation?

Quite trivially, most any assertions, such as rummaged from whatsoever among any scientific hypotheses plus any religious beliefs, can be imaginatively synthesized in to any new fiction however pleasing.

• world-building: Religion in Science Fiction

But would merely such achieve the vaunted quest of religious and scientific reconciliation? Or might it be more honest and productive first to begin with identification and confrontation with whatever true bones of contention between faith and reason? To begin with, because science deals in testable hypotheses with conceivable experimental outcomes of refutation, therefore there remains the question of the very relevance at all of Theology to science, much less conflict between them, given how Theological doctrines tend to be untestable. lacking in clear conditions of conceivable refutation.

Can there be howsoever religious application to science? Yes, there is certainly all manner of scientific study of religion indeed including appeal, alleged health benefits and more, but seldom, from any religious vantage or concern, unless to the point of however biased distortion in the vested interests of religion or fraudulent validation of Theology. But sincere attempt at application of science to Theological questions is not inconceivable. And so, in the unlikely contingency that anyone might ever actually be motivated to pursuit after curiosity, I have gone ahead and invented full blown and from the very thin air, two scientific specialties pursuing different distinct religious or Theological concerns, but without biased distortion in the vested interests of religion or fraudulent validation of Theology, that I have respectively dubbed: Endotheology and Theophysics:

As computer analogies are current in physics and ecology, action and reaction, particularly as constituent in homeostasis, become comparable to responsive internal state monitoring, then euphemistically referred to as life or even awareness. Unfortunate mythological amplification and distortion then ensues until, either at superficial appraisal, all such rhetoric be naught but the Theological Sophistry, equivocation and slight of hand of typical apologetics, or else otherwise, just idiosyncratic language in the poetical indulgence of Atheistic false piety. Nevertheless, for fear of undue reduction in case there may, after all, be anything more conscious and directed at work than meets the eye, let anyone seeking thereof first contemplate the sheer physical and computational requirements, if, in faith, they are at all serious about advancing beyond unvarnished Science Fantasy and at long last building a model and formulating and fleshing out any cogent viable and testable hypothesis of universal consciousness and at long last undertaking the challenge of Theophysics! My challenge to the likes of the John Templeton Foundation, is to put up or shut up: If religion seeks to undertake science, then with any of the vast resources now so wistfully lavished upon mendacious apologetics and Public Relations hot air, let them do it! And damn their tiresome hypocrisy. However slim the prospects for success, the uplifting vindication of science is in the fruitfulness even of failure. After all, as things stand, some even allege none too secret religious inspiration and even the hand of the Vatican, in the true genesis of Inflationary Theory that has produced such bizarre and some might even say: nigh Theological conundrums of modern Cosmology already, indeed similarly too long wandering in nigh Metaphysical mathematical abstraction of conjecture and falling behind in the Empirical support or refutation from Astronomical observation.

For, after all, there has been such much talk of and some effort too, and lately so generously well funded thanks to the John Templeton Foundation, at reconciliation, to render compatible or consistent (and one would hope, with reciprocal integrity), of science and religion. So, how well does any of that truly adhere to the will of the late John Templeton, who, having by then become an atheist, then died so poignantly lonely for his imaginary friend Christ, endowed his foundation for the mission of inquiry into the big questions? Indeed, what, literally, is actually ever signified, by reconciliation of science and religion? What can it even mean to reconcile undertaking the explanation of the unknown by the known with such presupposition as the explanation of the known via the unknown, indeed, at least allegedly, the mysterious and unknowable? -never mind precisely how... And there's the rub!

 

 

 

 

The Chimerical Enigma of Membership

The sublimated attachments and illusions of heteronomy

"If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon.” —  The Book of Bokonon

“Culture has its own sources of reinforcement that can influence members of society to adopt an interdependent, communal sense of self, or an independent, individualistic sense of self. Culture is not fate, but none of us is immune from the great octopus of culture; its tentacles touch us every direction that we turn. Our self-identity is subtlety influenced by the prevailing political-social culture as well as affected by our perceived social status, economic or otherwise.”

 

― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

• Bokonon: Establish a Granfalloon [summarized]

Religion versus Atheism is only the historical point of departure, because religious affiliation, doctrine and all, is but one most ancient among so many manifestations of membership and heteronomy to collective identity. It bears mention that the very word 'Individualism' was first coined during the 1800s in pejorative against a focus upon more proximate personal social connections that was seen as beginning to supplant traditional civic involvement and participation. According to Wikipedia: "Cultural identity is the identity or feeling of belonging to a group. It is part of a person's self-conception and self-perception and is related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, locality or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture. In this way, cultural identity is both characteristic of the individual but also of the culturally identical group of members sharing the same cultural identity." Beyond simply all that is merely dividual, portioned amongst, shared, participatory, or howsoever else at all in common with any others, consider not only the strident paradoxes of typical granfallons, group identities as in the emotions and illusions that sports fans typically harbor and cultivate towards their favorite teams, and madness in the name of any political or social cause, but even the angst ridden complex personal relationship of any Cuban national with Fidel himself, yes, on a first name basis. Emotional attachments are of actual relationship, while those of mere private inner sentiment tend to the fantastical. And such illusion may even be understood as a bleakly anomic cultural feature of lonely conformity in a cold and unresponsive social environment. Optimism ever rises anew, even in the face of mockery and derision at large. But optimism may be found futile and even deemed malignant, in all manner of bad relationships not only with other individuals, but also that enigma of collective membership which is the relationship of the individual to society.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of Psychoanalysis, classified religion under “obsessional neurosis”, suggesting that a belief in a God was the result of an “immature infantile helplessness” to then seek comfort in the fantasy of an omnipotent protector. Such is terror management. The Roman Catholic metaphor of their community, the congregation and even the personal union of marriage, all under the Holy Ghost, represents the heteronymous paradigm of relationship in broadest social context and leadership of course, whereas a perhaps healthier and certainly more autonomous perspective upon social integration, remains that of society as the aggregate or network extending ever outwards from each directly interpersonal relationship between individuals. Indeed, virtually all religion even still exhorts personal relationship with God, in contrast to how, for example, Albert Einstein, who had such difficulty relating to others, instead strove to fathom the mind of a possibly metaphorical but explicitly impersonal God, through the ongoing inquiry of physics. I myself am well acquainted with a somewhat eccentric metrology aficionado who, when he takes umbrage and personal betrayal because a local television news team weather forecaster gets it wrong, I express amazement at his utterly blithe fantasy as if they were really even acquainted! So I generally urge him instead, to close ranks with those precious few he truly respects and care for him.

For, all of these are standard examples of desperately lonely and rejected infantile projection of attachment and relationship, so desperately seeking comfort. Emotional Intelligence pertains to real interpersonal relationship, as even in the bonds of ordinary friendship. But does social intelligence at least nowadays, demand such attachment to society as an abstract? Because, conformist heteronomy often seems to fantasize some kind of intimacy between the individual and, not even any neighborhood of long reciprocal acquaintance, let alone whatever ones own imbedded immediate social networks, but the broadest and most indifferent if not actually abusive and alienating aspects or facets of the mass society and culture as a whole into which they are born or later entered into.

And all such seems sheer delusional affect of Pathetic Fallacy, lending to social reality such vividness and affect! But interpersonal Emotional Intelligence aside, what can ever become of my social intelligence without it? I confront hostility or simple indifference from society, lifelong. So, I still fail to attach to society as a whole, in all of its consrtucted abstraction and anonymity, as it indeed, reciprocally, society so often quite fails to embrace me, personally. Nor does that seem very surprising. So, is this a disorder or merely civic dissidence? Quoth the disciples of Emanuel Swedenborg: "We hear about "victimless" crimes, but society is the victim. We live in society with others, and what one does to oneself affects society. C.S. Lewis illustrated this by comparing society with a fleet of ships sailing in formation—if one goes off course, the whole fleet is harmed." Nevertheless, considering how society simply isn't a person, can it be appropriate to pity society whatever sense of injured sensibility? No, indeed, being that society is not a person, a proverbial Leviathan, but whatever existing web of connection and support between individuals, therefore what undermines the fabric of society is not challenge to tradition, control and authority in order to promote progress, but domineering intolerance, undue hostility and incivility under any whatever such transparently hypocritical pretexts. Therefore, I, for one, often find it difficult to sympathies with whatever sense of injured sensibility attributed to the collective entity of society, anymore than I can pity God who grieves over my sins, especial whenever should I fail the most ludicrous, petty and actually indecent social expectations of cliquish knaves and bullies. And patronizing emotional blackmail only adds insult to injury. Indeed, I particularly resent cowardly inexplicit and often self-serving peer pressure from individuals so blatantly cowering behind the herd mentality when they clearly suspect and dread exposure one way or another, of the weakness of whatever their own rhetorical or Existential position. And so I actually find myself ashamed whenever I catch myself yielding to overbearing social peer pressure.

There have been successful programs to help well meaning civil servants break free from bureaucratic isolation, and reconnect with their clients and with their own long lost relevant and pro-social career motivations. And the implications are astonishing: This means that under the correct optimal conditions, government can actually love you! Indeed, for the fortunate and included, all manner warmth and support derive from functional close nit social networks in any social context. Nevertheless, it remains that society in the abstract, the broadest, pervasive and most anonymous social environment, can only love, perhaps, celebrities. And to reiterate, expectation otherwise is sheer Pathetic Fallacy. Democracy and autonomy can only abhor the brutal subjugation of the self into the whole. 

Indeed, is the social environment really any more personal or conscious than the natural physical environment, let alone the technological environment subsumed to our comfort and convenience? Surely, likewise, our failing societies can never be validated except as a mechanism explicitly for meeting the needs of each individual, effectively and transparently. Democracy in principle is only a definition for a healthy relationship between the individual and any society that values, fosters and respects autonomy. After all, any better more tolerant society must build more transparent bridges and conduits between individuals, eschewing the all to common roadblocks and social minefields. Indeed, any screening criteria should likewise serve the needs, fulfillment and preferences of the individual in question, not any other self serving third parties, and not even under typical implicit bullying pretext of safety after all actually only seeking conditioned compliance under typical threatening and coercive subtext in ubiquitous reward and punishment systems and institutions.

For do we not hold such truths to be self evident?

If we are not drawn together by meaningful values, then only the brutality of bonding under shared lunacy will rise to fill the void.

Can there ever be any hope that an experience of real freedom under true acceptance rather than only restrictive and invalidating conditionality, is even possible? For how cynical, alienated and lonely if impossible! Can there even exist or occur any kind of membership and belonging that does not inevitably demand and inflict heteronomy and compromise autonomy? And how can that be? The need for organization and even recourse to any minimum of authority, is manifest. So sheer anarchy is no answer. However, if some is good, it hardly follows that more is better. Indeed, as for the imposition of authority, a sharp curve of diminishing and negative returns applies! A better general answer is that collective membership or social participation reinforces shared values, and as corroborated by repeated observation, said values can be democratic and of autonomy rather than of conformism and heteronomy. Better still, such values as relative equality are sometimes even ever put into practice. But this may all be easier said than done. The key, in turn, can be play, most loosely defined as creativity for its own joy, and common to all mammals. But play alone is not enough, for many obvious motivations both intrinsic and practical. It can't always be playtime because serious considerations must be tended to, and besides, there is all manner of contemplation, expression and relationship that is deep and solemn. Indeed, happy people talk more seriously. But the key can also be creative problem solving, the one uniquely human interaction as observed by Cultural Anthropology to transcend the behavioral predictability of hierarchical dominance. Cultural Anthropology touches upon the uniquely human phenomena of creative collaboration in problem-solving is the very lynchpin of Creativity Should be Social, the central proposal of FoolQuest.com

 

 

 

 

 

In quest of autonomy and responsible values-driven enterprise

FoolQuest.com Happiness comes in meeting ones needs for capable interaction with responsible others.

 

In the words of Neil Gabler: “American society is a society in which individuals have learned to prize social skills that permit them, like actors, to assume whatever rôle the occasion demands and to "perform" their lives rather than just live them.” And forced cheerful willful positivity and interminably vapid small talk notwithstanding, a morbidly serious matter. Nothing could ever be less playful. Competent or incompetent, whether in true hardnosed practicality or in sheer aimless and empty actingout of mimesis, many all the same remain no less consumed with the burning question of how to perform as expected and to fit in: How best to placate The Great Faceless They, thereby to obtain the key to life. By contrast, enfolding the enduring values of democracy, of honesty, civility, due process and fair play, the social skills of autonomy can only remain entirely distinct from those of toadying heteronomy. And this pertains to close collaboration among equals, initiative quite literally inconceivable from entrenched heteronymous convictions that without firm and resolute guiding authority, there can only be aimless strife and chaos. After all, so famously to quote Hennery David Thorough, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” And in the words of Brad Meltzer: “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”

Particularly as in response to CliqueBusters TM, an especially disturbing first concept, if dare may I say so myself, interested readers don't even notice such trivialities as my admittedly atrocious webdesign. Indeed, they may actually even appreciate my evocative prose. And once they delve into the text, they don't complain about making the effort, but actually appreciate the engrossing rhizomatic richness of information and recourses. Yes, the wordy, nerdy density of the prose and even the writing style, my authorial voice. -Not arbitrary stylistic difficulty, but readably intelligent treatment of complicated ideas and substantive subject matter for an interested and cooperative reader. That is the target audience for whom the content significantly raises signal from out of the noise, rather than only drowning a fading signal amid all the more noise. Alas, for people who just aren't interested, its all noise regardless.

 

Indeed, alas as Dr. Chen Yehezkely observes, the field of formal education in particular, has refined the rightthink and crimestop of decisively quashing whatever taboo legacy of true innovators, all the whilst sanctifying the travesty of whatever noble innovation and parading the cadaver as the very soul of living hope! Indeed, one way or another, as to quote George Orwell: “A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.” Especially ideas that fly in the face of hierarchically predictive social cognition by which to anticipate the responses of others. Indeed, merely via the recognition of members of one's own social group in order to form direct relationships consistent with rôles of relative social standing, degrees of kinship and rank, along with recognition of third-party social relationships and prediction of future behavior. And all in order that We the Sjeeple  subject under the ubiquitous cult of socialization, may placidly know, endure, and blindly trust, in all that one is expected to do and in how to behave throughout. 

And yet, even with any whatever at all such sly reservation, even however infrequently, people who actually nevertheless relate to any content to be discovered here on FoolQuest.com, craven educators included, tend to find interest entirely for whatever their own individual reasons resonating, validation, intrinsic motives under whatever their own personal situation at the time. To feel better without doing much of anything about their troubles. And all while remaining stone deaf to any strategy and call to action.  For such remains rightthink and crimestop in the face of taboo. And hence even somewhat paradoxically, the most sincere and glowing high praise, even amid such mute and paralytic bad faith. For simply enjoying and valuing whatever reading experience, does not guarantee howsoever active and courageous shared purpose or vision, much less any ongoing taboo real world effort off whatever beaten path.

 

And pending whatever broadest social transformation bringing at long last clear and decisive mass permission, instead, rather than sweeping the world out from leftfield, any such bold, liberating and empowering subversion of hierarchy, not unlike taboo forbidden love, necessarily first nurtures in microcosm. Indeed as needs must be, even somewhat covertly and conspiratorially, when any two or more individuals interacting and taking initiative, must finally innovate and at long last to begin significantly doing things differently and howsoever more capably together and persist. Indeed in determination enduring beyond whatever unreliable chance passing propinquity, and then soon forgotten.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of Psychoanalysis, classified religion under “obsessional neurosis,” suggesting that a belief in a God was the result of an “immature infantile helplessness” to then seek comfort in the fantasy of an omnipotent protector. It is a truism, even something of a platitude, that nothing is brought away from Mystical experiences that wasn't prior baggage going into them in the first place, and that such is the entire learning opportunity of all soul-searching: of evaluation or reevaluation, of Axiology. For the allegedly marvelous and miraculous that are staple of heteronymous religion frequently misses the metaphor entirely, obscuring any relevant moral of mere human responsibility and autonomy. Indeed, even in the New Testament it is howsoever highland and dismissively suggested that manifest conclusive evidence of the existence of God would simply not improve mere mortal moral conduct. And that stands to reason. Even given an infallible God, conflicted fallible human beings can only deal with Him fallibly. Complete certainty is neither possible nor necessary, and nothing in life or science ever truly waits thereupon. Theism subscribing to Teleology must therefore cherish imperfect autonomy, strength of character at all and integrity, all as nevertheless God given. But religious heteronomy tends so vaingloriously to identify with God on high from persistently speaking with His authority. as thereby to have lost all perspective of the humility they so prize. But what other options remain in the face of such Theo-crypto-Nihilistic value destruction? In Freud's assessment, religion is to blame for people living repressed, unhappy and cheerless lives. Indeed, recent studies likewise correlate religion and Theism with animism as a coping mechanism for loneliness. Hence it must come as little surprise how in order to remain at all responsible and capable, so many people tend to compartmentalize Theistic religion away from other thought, simply in order to prevent impact upon responsible and practical decisions and behavior.

Alas then, that substance and purpose, let alone intellect, curiosity and creativity all uniquely characteristic to ‘The Survival of the Sickest,’ as consequent to evolutionary neurology of the human condition, remain actually shameful, awkward, nerdy, uncool, socially unacceptable and taboo so characteristic of heteronomy, as perhaps most often named: Anti-intellectualism (hostility and mistrust towards intellect, intellectuals, intellectualism, and deprecation of culture whatsoever) but perhaps more properly designated: anti-intraception (a discomfort or opposition in very principle, toward the subjective, the imaginative, the tender minded). And make no mistake, curiosity, alas increasingly coming under attack, remains the beginning of empathy and hence the agent of compassion. Apathy therefore heralds unmindful cruelty. Nothing that fails even to arouse curiosity, will ever much engender compassion. Thus in such blithely acetic purposeful behavioral extinction and futility of compassion in social interaction, a situation that can only lead to pandemic serial bullying.  

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.” — Albert Einstein

The most universally embraced tenets of morality are injunctions against simply inflicting harm upon others, and also therefore honest attention and effort to treat one another fairly rather than harming and demeaning by unfairness, by abrogation of equal rights to fair treatment and consideration due that will tend to inflict harm and danger that otherwise would be prevented. Additionally harm and fairness considerations, follow obligations for the sake of social cohesion that vary so markedly between autonomy and heteronomy. For heteronomy, social cohesion is important for all and may require even by enforcement, such sacrifice as modesty, obedience and even relative chastity, indeed Moralism that engenders guilt and morally dissonant inner conflict. Whereas for autonomy the most preferable modes of social cohesion as much as possible, instead are beneficial relationships and via the cultivation of democratic sensibility of fairness and responsibility of harm reduction in society. Heteronomy is a view of society from the top down and the individual member of society as the product thereof, whereas autonomy tends to value instead the social network from the individual and close relationships radiating outward. Hence the social skills and executive function of autonomy and democracy are very different from those of heteronomy and often vastly underserved. Lip service aside, alas that even the most heteronymously well meaning human domestication is often more readily provided than actual autonomy support and individual respect. And clearly this is both harmful and unfair.

Knowledge is awareness of truth (correspondence to reality) in assertions. Knowledge does not consist of justified true beliefs. Non Justificationism is the Epistemological Methodological hypothesis, that all hypotheses begin as unfounded conjecture, without a'priori criteria, subject only thereafter first to critical preference and then to reality testing. Firm grounds are neither possible nor necessary. Fallible human beings nevertheless learn, grow and progress, from our mistakes, by process of elimination narrowing the field of remaining viable hypotheses, hopefully ever less wrong and closer to truth. But how if at all, might Non Justificationism apply to moral Axiology that isn't even Ontological to begin with? Such articles of critical preference as theoretical elegance are indeed readily applicable also to Ethical frameworks, but reality testing of hypotheses including conditions of refutation, only applies to responsibility in regards to reasonably foreseeable real consequences of possible and practical alternatives of free choice, not abstract morality. The view of morality as evolutionary and therefore merely happenstantial, is problematical because that doesn't explain morality in and of itself, or how morality exists as any kind of dimension, phenomena or consideration, whereas (with whatever values however selfish and/or altruistic, simply taken as given), indeed any other view whatsoever of responsibility, save as pertaining to circumstances and foreseeable real consequences, hence indeed happenstantial, is what is problematical or simply oxymoronic. And heteronomy typically comes replete with exactly such the latter lunacy, especially Moralism and likewise the Perfectionism of Utopism, worst among pipedreaming malagenas, the doctrine that responsibility is impossible save in the lights of perfect (or justified) knowledge of whatever ultimate truth and/or towards whatever ultimate good (to which of course, the ends ever justify the means), responsibility is impossible. Thus by promising the impossible and the unnecessary, do high-minded scoundrels ever evade even the most minimum and ordinary of obligations and pedestrian expectations of minimal responsibility to which private citizens, service providers and public officials are held accountable under democratic civility and the rule of law. -By entirely removing responsibility from foreseeable consequence, into a realm of perfect and pure abstraction. Such mad and dangerous Utopist thinking remains entirely distinct from what is simply Utopian merely in terms of even laudably embracing high ideals or altruistic ambitions entirely without the madness of Utopist ideology.

• TRIZ to the subversive rescue of  Utopism?

• dishonesty in the the death throws of complex social systems

Eudemonic well-being consists of: personal growth, purpose in life, autonomy, environmental mastery, positive relations with others and self-acceptance. Enfolding self-regulation, action in line with one’s true self and deep values, and striving to integrate the different aspects of oneself, thus endorsing one’s activities rather than being controlled by external or internal pressures, persistence, cognitive flexibility, conceptual learning, creativity, and vitality; autonomy therefore correlates negatively to extrinsic motivators such as money, material possessions, image, and status. Eudemonia is not asceticism. Opulent standards of living are among the great achievements of industry and automation. But relative comfort is only the beginning. Eudemonia embraces life, work and play, not just acquisition and possession. Leading a life, and not just making a living, depth, not just immediacy, quality over quantity. Real growth in every sense, not just economic boom and bust: In entrepreneurial terms, creation of meaningful value, not empty travail.

Another concept of arête is expressed by Maslow: Maslow's characteristics of self-actualizers comprise: 1. Clear, more efficient perception of reality 2. Acceptance of others, self, nature 3. Spontaneity; simplicity; naturalness 4. Problem-centeredness rather than ego-centeredness 5. The quality of detachment; the need for privacy 6. Autonomy; independence of culture and environment 7. Mystical and peak experiences 8. Deep sense of identification, sympathy and affection for humanity 9. Deeper and more profound interpersonal relations 10. Democratic character structure 11. Discrimination between means and ends, between good and evil 12. Philosophical, unhostile sense of humor 13. Creativity 14. Resistance to enculturation in transcendence of any particular culture (Maslcw, 1970, pp 153-172). Maslow's metamotivations of self-actualization, comprise: 1.Wholeness of simple organized integrated interconnection 2. And if not literal Perfection, for such is of course impossible, then optimal design/theoretical elegance, complete beyond ready improvement, with nothing superfluous, all in suitability, rightness and justice. 3. Closure, climax, totality, finality, the sense of telos, fulfillment and destiny with no more changing of the Gestalt. 4.Justice and fairness 5.Depth of richness and complexity 6.Essential simplicity 7.Lively spontaneity 8.Beauty and rightness of form 9.Goodness and benevolence 10.Unique individuality 11.Playful ease with effortless fun, joy, amusement, gaiety, humor and exuberance 12.Truth, which is correspondence to reality 13.Autonomy 14.Meaningful values

But the extol of such grand aspiration to such shining virtue as self-actualization, is safely uncontroversial. The question remains: Precisely how does any such lofty abstraction translate into real peak experience or even feasibility in principle, much less practice? What we can anyone actually hope do about it? Sadly, in pursuit of student self-actualization, by thus promising the impossible and the unnecessary, so the high-minded scoundrels in formal education ever evade even the most minimum and ordinary of obligations and accountability as they systematically undermine autonomy and capability which are the true bulwark of any real empowered freedom.

Freedom and power require both capability and autonomy.

The cultural meme of Verificationism/Justificationism, is the heteronymous demand, if not for unattainable certainty, then for prior justification or verification before moving forward: Many remain convinced that nothing should ever be subject to serious deliberation until the practicality thereof is well established. And that rules out feasibility study, especially of such wild ambitions as, just for perhaps the most extreme example even conceivable, retrograde time travel. And how outlandish, how foolish! Therefore, never mind any of my own social, emotional and intellectual preference! Really, just who do I think that I am! To quote Aldous Huxley in Brave New World: “...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.” So why not just give in to pressure and bullying? Just be what they expect. Give the people what thy want! -That very worst grot bottom of insufferable toxic and futile dilettantery and pipedreaming, the craven antirational exaltation of the mediocre sometimes referred to as the cult of the amateur in rejection of all experts and expertise: All without effort, fiction writing sans critique, business planning without rigorous criticism and due diligence, of feasibility study and meaning in life without struggle, difficulty, integrity, complexity, Philosophy or abstraction, and above all: full time enthusiastic participation in the most interminably vapid, boring and empty small talk, soul crushing loneliness even amid the crowds. Precisely such stinking thinking is what comes of  Verificationism/Justificationism and the irrational terror of uncertainty. In the alternative, Non-Justification, in the spirit of autonomy, contends rather that all hypotheses begin as unjustified conjecture, sheer speculation, only afterwards subject to critical preference and reality testing, which should raise no alarm nor cause suffering of trepidation.

Anti-critical bias is the unsporting prejudiced assumption that doubt paralyzes, that dispute leads to strife and the incapacity to cooperate, and that criticism is a form of aggression and an expression of antagonism and hostility. Whereas, the open democratic society thrives upon good sportsmanship and good fun in adversarial process, in doubt and the acknowledgement of fallibility, upon the practice of controversy which is the egalitarian exchange of criticism in order to expose and learn from one's own mistakes, hence of dispute as the means of cooperation in error detection and course correction.

Thus, one might hope and expect the function of education in any democratic open society to be the cultivation in students of all ages, in children especially, the habit of thinking for themselves, feeling for themselves, freely challenging accepted ideas or suggesting improvements to the existing social order, the practice of trial and error, learning from mistakes, and having an independent sense of self-worth, self-esteem and self-respect. In brief: the function of education in the open society, so one would expect, would be to cultivate in children the habit of autonomy. Alas, lip service notwithstanding, as we shall see, instead, formal education functions to cultivate and entrench heteronomy.

The struggle for autonomy liberates desire and curiosity, problem solving in order to overcome whatever obstacles instead of surrendering to them, instead of learned helplessness, beaten and apathetic moribund obsessive disinterest and aversive taboo characteristic of heteronomy which propagates together with panic because heteronomy is the primal Psychological panic reaction, coping mechanism and social institutions of denial and last ditch unity in deep seated dependency, in case of crisis, especially that of  mortality and death, called: terror management. And as with most any Psychiatric disorder, the condition may long outlive whatever initiating trigger, trauma or issues. While dogmatic, anti-critical, suspicious, closed minded and obsequious heteronomy in particular may well outlive any whatever supporting rationalizations of religion, ideology or creed. Epistemologically and Methodologically, heteronomy typically strives to quell doubt viewed as weakness, often by sheer commitment as measured by all manner of personal investment and self sacrifice, where autonomy embraces fallibility and seeks to dispel doubt by investigation and experiment.

People want power because they want autonomy: "autonomy is a form of  power that allows one person to ignore and resist the influence of others and thus to shape one’s own destiny.” But especially if autonomy then manifests as simply not taking a hint, it may then be pathologized. Such latter-day dissidence is now diagnosed as social retardation or pervasive developmental disorder deemed genetic and therefore to be medicated. It's for your own good, dear!

In order to be sustained in practice, values must be reinforced, kept both in view and within reach. Heteronymous false values are typically promulgated by heavy indoctrination and conditionality, whereas the striving for true human values is awakened by sheer temptation in the form of autonomy support  and the Capability Approach together with the sociability that remains alert to opportunity to include others, especially those who seem left out, socially, in activities and conversations, let alone substantive cooperation and intensive networking of life opportunity. Autonomy is not the same thing as lone rugged self sufuiciency. Even though self-sufficiency and interdependency are opposites, there is no inherent conflict between autonomy and relationship, because autonomy and relationship are functions of qualitatively different facets entirely, of character and/or situation entirely, agency and interpersonal distance respectively. Friendship is impossible without autonomy, because of how heteronomy subsumes all possibility of interpersonal relationship. From birth through adolescence, surrounded by others older, more experience and better able to cope, and hence traditionally positioned in authority, we each find ourselves cast in roles of inadequacy and dependency, and strongly discouraged from engaging in emotional attachments except those few socially approved. And the timid awkwardness of childhood becomes entrenched lifelong. Thus does  boring, lonely and oppressive dronelike heteronomy repress the vitality of autonomy. And true close collaboration among equals is rendered quite inconceivable. Asch-type experiments as they are called, are so contrived, as that each participant will be compelled to choose between honesty and peer approval. All too often honesty loses out. Still more painfully, honest subjects may be reduced to pleading in vane with their dishonest peers.

Other prime features of autonomy include initiative being: the forward looking vision and motivation of enterprise and determination that affords any capacity to begin proactively, or to follow through energetically, with a plan or task, together with the need for meaningful engagement fending off boredom and loneliness. Heteronomy, the ever cagey and calculating enemy of autonomy, is ever the active enemy of engagement and attachment, of transparent agenda, of open passion and interest of every kind, in one another especially.

      

Heteronomy, the very opposite of autonomy, is by infantilizing conditioned preference from bitter experience with whatever sort of actual punishment and reward systems, demoralizing subtext only ever signaling the dire lack of intrinsically motivating value thereby eliciting overjustification effect, especially school, the internalization of submission as part of ones own sense of what is good and moral behavior, even the conflict aversion characteristic of Stockholm Syndrome, conformity beholden to external influences, or subjugation to some external rule; especially as contingent upon a covertly dependant and immature lack of the needed empathy to relate to others with any caring, consideration, moral compass, principled criticality, freedom or self-determination, wherein acutely refined and hypersensitive social intelligence to vested interest develops in compensation for such impaired Emotional Intelligence, hence even a deep and ostensibly high-minded contempt towards all self regard and the rejection of individual responsibility in all of it's manifest subjectivity (hence risk of error in forming an opinion or the snare of intolerance by taking any stand at all), as any source of ethical obligations or of moral behavior, exhorting instead, reliance upon any manner of worldly or transcendent authority or upon any certitude substitute especially consensus, standardization of life, "providing structure" via stifling authoritarianism, even however arbitrary. Such is Reactionary desperation for preservation of order whatsoever from the decidophobic perceived menace of individual hedonism and laziness ever desperate for the next fix of distraction and dissipation.

Indeed the tragedy of heteronomy is rooted in the motivating allure thereof, the incapacitating guilty anxiety, fear and and loathing in dread of individual responsibility in the face of uncertainty and risk, and how exactly the sheer futility even of the most artfully minimized indoctrination is, in truth, simply the more insidious than merciful let alone certain or risk free in the manner that true freedom clearly is not. Heteronomy is reluctant to relinquish any position until manifestly untenable, and even then, only surreptitiously. The timidity of heteronomy is a desperation vested only in the social order and to the exclusion of autonomy in individual attachment and respect, risk taken in friendship and vested in talent, with trust placed in content of character.

Alas, how we often disappoint one another and ourselves. Especially in social life and most especially as opposed to career pursuit, people tend to react unconsciously: viscerally, habitually and prejudicially, "on autopilot," rather than in thinking considered response. The blithe cocksure intimidation of telling one another where one stands, demands so much less than the courageous initiative, discovery, reflection, attention and empathy of simply asking one another. And without such benefit of the doubt, social support will be hard won by fitting in at whatever cost of socialization, ganging up on one another and joining the enemy against ourselves, instead of sticking up for one another in any spirit of friendship. Be seeing you, Number 6. One way or another, most people are just overwhelmed, too busy with all that will be expected of them, or else failing in life, broken, demoralized and bizarre, a living warning to all others. Simply reaching out, bonding together, whether in making plans together and following through or in hedonistic spontaneity, can all be so difficult because by and large, people are simply not rational agents of self-interest, needed value to others, or even of sheer pleasure principle. Sympathetic, trustworthy and moral perception and action are similarly exceptional. People can be so so insecure, wary and cagey, most strongly motivated by perceived vested interests in social position and standing. Therefore the individual is less often actually valued intrinsically for individual worth, ability and the content of character and potential as prospective friends and partners or allies in life, assets in rational self-interest or simply joy to be with, than instead extrinsically valued for popularity, standing and influence ever exploited in perpetual struggle jockeying for approval and dominance. It's all a matter of priorities: Social cognition makes cowards of us all!

It's not just singles who suffer, left out: The affiliation, however genial, of neighborhood parents with little else in common, is often fallow ground for any deeper connection. And matching couples, demands compatibility by a factor of four. Alas that we have fallen prey to an heteronymous dependency upon the stifling behaviorally structured environments of school and employment, to provide propinquity for forging close and enduring friendships: convenient proximity, repeated unplanned interaction, and a setting for unguarded moments to confide in one another. Hence clichéd social advice typically centers upon recourse to even more arbitrary behavioral structure, such as facilitated by hanging out at the same bars, discos or gyms etc., interminably, or joining and subordinating oneself to various clubs or undertaking the drudgery of volunteer work. But in the alternative, reliance upon spontaneity alone, is futile without actual habits of spontaneity. For autonomous intrinsically motivated interaction to provide the same and actually better social opportunity, the participants must be responsible and indeed intrinsically motivated to continually reengage one another of their own accord, and to network and exchange social support, all even without behavioral structure of schedule or proximity for propinquity and regular chance reencounter. Exactly such scarce initiative, the lost social skill set of autonomy fallen so out of fashion and into such disrepair, is especially crucial, reciprocally, for sustaining any forward momentum, interpersonally. Too long domesticated, then without any routine provided us, we degenerate into such passive, confused and mistrustful sheeple adrift! The very word: 'responsible,' not in the sense merely of obligation or accountability to anyone else, or of having caused some or other result,  but in the sense of the very capacity to think and act responsibly, derives from portmanteau of two other words: 'response-able,' denoting denoting initiative, the resourcefulness to assess and initiate things independently, and the very ability to respond rather than merely to react if even that, to think and to act rationally, a capacity so integral to autonomy.

Realism is the honest and creditable endeavor to present conditions truthfully in correspondence to reality, and an attitude or practice of accepting and confronting circumstances as they are and being prepared to deal with whatever situation responsibly, in rejection of the inaccurate and impractical. But it will be a mistake therefore also to reject the abstract, the speculative and theoretical so integral to higher order thinking, thinking for oneself, for capable autonomy. For such anti-intellectual false pragmatism as indeed to reject or to neglect the abstract, the speculative and theoretical, turns out to be vastly and so dangerously unrealistic!

A frank and honestly stated creed of heteronomy might read somewhat thusly: I refuse to openly explore challenges for which I do not already have handed down to me the fully rendered solution, and certainly not from any perspective of intrinsic motivation. I see no future in such pipedreams so devoid of all prior foundation or justification! I cleave to the straight and narrow of dogma. I remain utterly disinterested in seeking truth, much less undertaking feasibility study. My life has been planned for me and there is no need to consult anybody else. Therefore, I do not care to argue, I can't enjoy it, I will only take criticism as insult and I can remain completely oblivious to any taboo question, no matter how pressing. I am proud that I have done as expected, so why shouldn't you? Stop rocking the boat, and maybe you can be popular too! My scorn and ridicule protect others from seduction onto your path of folly.

“After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”  

 

 —  Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume II, Book Four, Chapter VI

 

• School for Sheeple
• mass intimidation
• Cronyism
• Malagenda of second degree pipedream and taboo upon agenda discussion

At least the affection when I pet a dog must be at all genuine, because dogs can tell! It's really not that heteronymous persons, deep down, really can't detect flagrant insincerity, but rather that as social approval seekers, they often actually prefer blatant insincerity. Insecure people with extreme interpersonal trust issues are often well known instead often, via retreat into utter fantasy, to seek perceived security in sheer conditionality. Only genuine personal contact actually needs to be at all sincere. Indeed the last thing precisely such bogus and damnable simplistic know-it-all sanctimony could ever motivate pursuit whereof, would be actually to cultivate improved and more perceptive Emotional Intelligence and thereby to risk transparency, criticism and the disillusioning exposure of sheer human fallibility that might even engender any iota of actual humane sympathy.

Epistemologically and Methodologically, heteronomy rejects all real and uncertain hope such as of Cryonics and radical life extension, demanding instead, impossible guarantees such as in religion, or failing that, despairs into Nihilism, and even then therefore still typically strives to quell doubt viewed as weakness, often by sheer commitment as measured by all manner of personal investment and self sacrifice, whereas autonomy striving in uncertainty, nevertheless to solve problems and improve life, instead embraces fallibility and seeks to dispel doubt by investigation and experiment. Thus Heteronomy is notoriously reluctant to relinquish any position no matter how bleak, until manifestly untenable, and even then, only surreptitiously. Any prejudice such as Racism or Sexism never stands out but actually fades from notice within the bigoted milieu or setting, and it is much the same with Deathism here and now. Perhaps out of sheer decidophobia, more common milder degrees of Deathism are purposefully designed so as to allow gradual and surreptitious progress, but without surrender of all manner of investment in complacency of status quo, instead to the investment and opportunity, of hope and desire implicit to open embarkation upon the anxiety provoking experimental fallible uncertainty of anything as yet seemingly so distant in abstraction as of practical immortality.

Hence even the taboos against Cryonics and Radical Life Extension may be regarded as only a special application of the much broader taboo upon relevance itself and even upon hope at all. But it is precisely the rational capacity for abstract reasoning along with every beneficial accomplishment therefrom, that differentiates the human condition, and embrace whereof that defines Humanism.

Know thy self, thy place and station in life, and the truth of your destiny will set you free from uncertainty, because behavioral structure will always inform you exactly where you stand. Such was the heteronymous authoritarian god-fearing heteronymous admonition of the Oracle at Delphi.

Whereas: The positive value of personal autonomy enfolds principles of self-integration resistant to the ego-alien denial characteristic of whatever heteronymously "appropriate" mold. Hence, full autonomy, the real and effective capacity to develop and pursue ones own conception of a worthwhile life, can often be extremely difficult, but at all more readily achievable under however more socially supportive conditions. There can be no preparative inculcation for autonomy, save by the practice thereof. Indeed, Artificial Psychology posits that autonomous value judgment, difficult to conceive of except as inalienable from identity and therefore consciousness, will be inextricably fundamental to any human like intelligence. Epistemological, autonomously, in science as in day to day functionality, getting by without certainty remains entirely feasible and routine, by living in reasonable doubt which is only healthy and responsible. Heteronymous reliance upon authority for delusional certainty is therefore unnecessary.

Atheism is merely a rational expression of autonomy, and scientific rationalism no more than the Epistemology of autonomy. Thus the question evaded in seeking to reconcile science and faith, reason with unreason, becomes the struggle how to reconcile autonomy and heteronomy. And the answer is only by each watering down the other. And exactly therein lies the appeal, such as may be, even to eat ones cake and have it too, or so to pretend. The real problem may be that the inability of the panicked and guilt ridden heteronymous to understand autonomy as anything more than sheer Id, selfish impulse. Hence misguided appeal to heteronymous self abnegation and tyrannical ever mounting inner conflict as a path to psychological balance.

All mature and functional attachments of social relationship under autonomy are ethical, being predicated upon trust and fulfillment of such expectations, lack or abrogation whereof creating distance, even loathing and avoidance, or else ambivalence, mistrust and dysfunction, indeed if not amoral sociopathy outright, then the shattered confidence and compensations thereto of heteronomy. Weak attachment makes for weak conscience. Thus heteronymous covert relational hostility working to to undermine those attachments in society, shunning and mobbing, even well organized orchestrated harassment, thereby conspire with impunity by means of social exclusion, to harm and endanger the target of exactly such serial bullying.

Freud saw all action as motivated by the sex drive, Adler by the desire for social acceptance and hence social acceptability. Freud also recognized those latter desires, but concluded that they derive from the sex drive, tactics to getting laid. But Adler reversed the causal chain of motivation. Thus, Freud explained courting as an overture to sexual encounter, while Adler saw sexual encounter as aspect of courtship. But is everyone the same? Indeed, even behavior and priorities are observed to vary for the same individual, situationally, While of course the sex drive in and of itself, is individual, the pursuit of social acceptability above all else, indeed when slavish social integration (or in Orwellian metaphor, Big Brother) becomes, for all intents, the sex object, the focus of libido, that is heteronomy. Whereas, the privacy of any attachment in relationship between individuals, can express autonomy. Privacy, incidentally, is not the same as secrecy. Privacy is the sphere of individual concerns and authority. This means that no external authority is rightly answerable, much less entitled to reportage. Thus privacy implies options of secrecy where feasible. Such secrecy is a private choice, but so is the desire for living openly without fear. What privacy demands, is the right to be free of imposed external interference in the sphere of personal life. Totalitarianism, which is heteronymous, recognizes no privacy, only amoral secrecy for all manner of devious covert action routinely undertaken in the enforcement of totalitarianism and heteronomy. For the most self-serving antisocial sociopathic player, manipulation and exploration of others, tactics to such ends as sex, are exciting. Sociopaths in collusion, bullies forming cliques, readily gravitate towards heteronomy and varying degrees of totalitarianism, readily cloaking their unscrupulous self-serving behind all manner of Moralism. Such hypocrisy may be smug, cynical, blatant and well aware, or else fraught with deep denial, in perpetual mimesis actingoutt inner conflicted ambivalent  and bad faith, until  if ever, positive disintegration and dawning autonomy. As Ogden Nash extols “a clear conscience or none at all.”  

Functional and relevant relationship, even in the most transitory sense of immediate interaction let alone lasting attachment, remains oppressively impossible from the sheer cargo cult mimesis that is mere social intelligence into behavioral structure. Rather, relationship arises either from free and coherent communication, indeed from common purposeful endeavor or else from the seduction of play and the dignity of social risk with  trust, security, ultimately openness in yielding to temptation, all the aforesaid that are the competencies of autonomy, along with organization and congenial social grace to manage and sustain contacts, reciprocally. -All that is such anathema and typically obstructed by such drone-like heteronymously arbitrary social acumen, skilled incompetence and cronyism, that everywhere buttresses the tacit institutionalization and twisted value of all the most flagrant insensitivity and ineptitude imaginable, the bad driving out the good, and worse, actingout the destructive evil that is rampant bullying. Indeed, gregariousness and engaging personality may even be reviled as subversive and impertinent to a malagenda of sheer heteronymous group validation in sheer denial of all such profound endemic and pandemic alienation from the innate and intrinsic drives of human expression and connection. .

When decisions regarding endeavors beyond solitary well-formed planning with only individual resources and ability, are entrusted in due course to whomever the people with whatever specific knowledge, expertise, capacity or responsibility to make such decisions, the individuals who make these decisions experience authority, capability and autonomy. But barring extreme self sufficiency from that point forward, only if their decisions are respected and seriously followed through by others. Such cooperation is often structured hierarchically or else may be considered as envisaged here on FoolQuest.com, reciprocally among equals, or then again, even imagined as remaining largely unstructured, spontaneous cooperation. But realistically, the latter dubious Anarchism may be dismissed as pipedreaming wherein the intention and striving characteristic of autonomy are despised in very principle as in Not-Doing and the irresponsibly indifferent Behaviorist heteronomy to situation.

Heteronomy is motivated from the Transactional inner controlling parent and inner adaptive child dyad, whereas autonomy is grounded in a healthy ego, a strong inner adult and inner natural child. Fuller information and best critical thinking for good faith sensemaking essential to all narrative reconstruction of events towards plausibility at all, is available only from the Transactional adult ego state, and not to the inner controlling parent and inner adaptive child, depending upon variable tolerance for sheer petty conditionality as a price for security at all, many simply yearn and strive to fit in one way or another, while others in society who undergo positive disintegration therefore aspire to autonomy. the free self-organization and administration of their own affairs from the bottom upward. Individually purposeful endeavor and motivation is an expression of autonomy. But competence in planning, organizing and following instructions challenges both personal resources and social aptitude, often unto frustration and distress. Boredom may often result from and/or exacerbate incompetence in planning, organizing and following instructions, as well as the lack of purposeful endeavor and motivation.

Being that engagement is the beginning of the state or condition of attachment which is an ongoing, remembered or anticipated and even yearned for state of engagement, hence according to Self-Determination Theory, secure attachment is characterized by attention and responsiveness to one another's needs when turning toward one another to obtain comfort and care. Indeed, prime features of autonomy include initiative, the motivation of enterprise and determination that affords any capacity to begin or to follow through energetically with a plan or task, together with the need for meaningful engagement fending off boredom and loneliness. Heteronomy, the ever cagey and calculating enemy of autonomy, is also the active enemy of engagement and attachment, of transparent agenda, of open passion and interest of every kind. Therefore bullying, which is heteronymous, stifles initiative. Indeed, the social skill sets of heteronomy and autonomy are so entirely different. Heteronymous social skills correlate to the guardedness and control of heteronomy in the first place, and not any unmet needs of the individual. And yet the exhortations to sublimation persist, of the former as the means to the latter. Indeed, that often seems the only game in town!

The genially agreeable positivity of a toady or utter tool, along with the humility of attention to others, is often extolled over egotistical opinionated honesty, humor, intelligence, fun, creativity, talent and all the seeking of even positive attention for oneself. Indeed sensitivity in paying attention to others is an expression of Emotional Intelligence of true friendship, but is impossible until contact is first established, and thus may often turn out to be quite irrelevant socially. Heteronymous social skills demand instead attention and approval to be lavished instead upon consensus and even obsessive collective identity, the Orwellian love towards Big Brother. And the chronic exploitation and jealous rage of bullying rewards only negative attention from destructive behavior, while punishing merit, positive attention and especially responsibility.

Not only the most flagrant neurotics fearfully spurn all their heart's desires by clinging instead to insecure maladaptation. Actual human motivation is often neither from intrinsic arousal in whatever the doing for its own sake, nor even merely extrinsic for whatever hoped for payoff. Hence, people by in large are neither just impulsive nor are they opportunistic and/or cautious rational agents. Rather their compelling motivation may turn out to be such as will be found in whatever their perception of vested interest, of which even the ongoing self justification, however deranged and hypocritical, that is called: Existential Validation, is only an aspect. Vested interest is whatever personal stake or special interest in protecting or promoting that whereof derives howsoever perceived personal benefit or advantage. Even what little that passes for moral restrictions at all, may largely reflect the individual vested interest in whatever social order that in turn at all both intimidates and protects said individual by whatever much the same credible threat. People often become motivated only by buying into indoctrination, by internalizing extrinsic motivators, one way or another into whatever particular investment of sacrifice. And people are notoriously reluctant to let loose of past sacrifice invested, no matter how clearly in vein. Otherwise, should indoctrination and sublimation fail, coercion alone accrues alienation and depression. And this is why faith is so prized: Because it promotes the heteronymous illusion of belonging. Especially in social life and most especially as opposed to career pursuit, people tend to react unconsciously: viscerally, habitually and prejudicially, "on autopilot," rather than in thinking considered response and evaluation.

Whatever is ever truly invested in the individual may reflect what is vested in said individual by others. In particular, in a truly functional circle of friends, networking by others on behalf of an individual ideally best and most straightforwardly serves the interests, preferences, needs and desires of said individual in true and abiding autonomy supportive respect. Alas more often, within the attachment disordered racket of exploitative cliques, there arises considerable moral hazard, being: circumstances in which one party, with impunity, insulated from risk, is prone to act on another's behalf expending whatever that other's resources, tangible or intangible, in advance of entirely any other agenda than simply the best interests, preference, needs and desires of the individual ostensibly served. And the individual so exploited, in rationalizing cognitive dissonance often simply makes do actually because of their own fearful prior investment of sacrifice and vested interest accrued. Thus are individuals so often manipulatively deceived, brought together or wedged apart for various scheming exploitative advantage of amoral sly self serving sociopathic relational bullies, hypocritical gang stalking predatory cockblockers and worse.

• Veritable informal cults are often the norm 
• Sexual autonomy  
• Act Without External Pressure: intrinsic motivations of mastery, meaningful purpose and value maximization
• How can autonomous equals best interact and cooperate freely and responsibly?
• The sheer heteronomy of Deathism: Emortalism as inextricable with autonomy

And aside, for good or ill, from networking within whatever fateful social embedment, there remain whatever readily available alienating and lonely avenues of futile outreach that truly only exist for whatever socially institutionalized ulterior agendas and rackets. In particular, heteronomy and the impersonal behaviorally structured social roles as of bogus support groups that have rigidly institutionalized and also popularized their sad, sad travesty of friendship and psychological visibility.

In the alternative, for autonomy, transparent and open ended deliberation upon agenda explores direction in defining voluntary cooperation and participation in whatever discourse or relationship, thereby filling the gap left in the rejection of heteronymous leadership or convention.

 

Responsibility is response-ability, autonomy and the capacity for considered action informed by circumstances. Whereas, irresponsibility is response-inability, an incapacity for considered action informed by circumstances. It was Walter Kaufmann in 'Without Guilt and Justice' (1973) who posited the relative and adequate freedom from what he dubbed: decidophobia as a minimum adequate definition of autonomy. Loss and the unknown unfailingly provoke anxiety. Therefore, decisions provoke anxiety because there are always unknown consequences and tradeoffs, losses, scarifies for every advantage gained. Such anxiety may be compounded and exacerbated beyond all proportion by traumatic feelings of inadequacy from past emotional abuse instead of nurture and respect. Desidophobia which engenders such heteronomy and often bad faith as well, is the overwhelming irrational general terror of responsibility as entailed in making decisions at all, free choices inevitable in life as we are all well aware, that the decidophobe will go to such lengths to avoid. Located on a spectrum somewhere between impossible ideals of ruggedly invulnerable infallibly complete self-sufficiency and the intolerable fate of complete helpless dependency, there abides any possible option of autonomy. "Autonomy has to do with a sense of one's own identity. It involves an ability to act independently and to exert some control over one's environment, and includes a sense of task mastery, internal locus of control, self-agency, and self-efficacy. The development of resistance (refusing to accept negative messages about oneself or one's culture) and of detachment (distancing oneself from parental, school, or community dysfunction) serves as a powerful protector of autonomy." (p. 67)  Benard, B. (1995). Fostering resiliency in urban schools. In B. Williams (Ed.), Closing the achievement gap: A vision to guide change in beliefs and practice. Oak Brook, IL: Research for Better Schools and North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.

 

 

 

 

 

pleasure

 

 

The innate aggressive imperative of pleasure principle is motivation to avoid pain and thereby harm even while seeking gratification, immediate and impulsive or else realistically deferred, and thereby, ultimately, advantage. And hope is no less indispensable. Indeed, beyond maintaining past gains in peace, only by ever and further raised expectations, the sweetness of temptation fired by ambition, does even the brightest flower of robust democracy ever rise to improve and exceed sheer complacent and orderly mediocrity.

Among the nine basic affects, only two are involved in creating the emotions and sensations that lead to an experience of happiness, or perhaps more accurately, of eustress and gratification, and are placed them all on a mild-to-intense-spectrum as enjoyment-joy: pleasure and interest-excitement: involving engagement which is the gateway to attachment. However, beyond affects alone, the remaining crucial factor in the Happiness Formula remains meaning in the deepest sense. "Pleasure is terrifying because it breaks down the boundaries between people. Embracing passion means living with fear."  writes Erica Jong in: 'The Zipless Fantasy'. And here we all thought it was all about sex!

Although happiness is not an emotion, the mood-elevating qualities of many distinct emotions that involve a surge of pleasure and increased motivation are considered as a state of happiness. [...] An event that fulfills a personal fantasy about the possibility of something amazing happening to you will trigger elation—the experience of unreality, euphoria, and confidence that is extraordinarily energizing and makes you want to broadcast the good news (DeRivera, Possell, Verette, & Weiner, 1989). In contrast to elation, the emotion of gladness is created by a less intense hope that is fulfilled, and it is experienced as relaxation and relief (DeRivera, et al., 1989). But relief itself is considered to be a happy or positive emotion. Relief is felt when something that had strongly stirred up your emotions subsides (Ekman, 2003). You may be familiar with the common expression of relief, a sigh, which seems to suggest that whatever has impacted you is let out in one deep breath. The emotion of joy involves [...] meaningful encounter—your heart feels “open” and you have a greater caring about others that seems to affirm life’s meaning (DeRivera, et al., 1989). Joy might be felt in a situation with others that you perceive to be a unique and pleasurable shared experience, and it is often accompanied by feelings of vigor, strength, and a readiness to engage in interpersonal interactions (DeRivera, et al., 1989; Frija, 1986). [...] A surge of extreme [or even transcendent] pleasure is felt when the emotion of bliss is activated. [Not only, say, reconnection with long absent loved ones, but though perhaps at all less tangibly and the more abstract, likewise elevated sensation of engagement in meaning in the deepest sense even such as are called: spiritual], can trigger joy. Bliss is often felt as love, sensory or sexual pleasure, anticipation of high excitement, or a meditative state (Ekman, 2003). When a blissful state is experienced with someone you love, the craving and need to recreate it can be intense. And finally, amusement is the emotion felt in response to something funny or in reaction to other matters that have a humorous quality (Ekman, 2003).

 

— Psychology Today: Just Being Happy Can Be Complicated

 

   •  Zen in a pill: Pleasure principle not withstanding, is pleasure an objective unto itself, or only, as according to G. E. Moore, merely a second order indicator of value?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Engrossing Involvement and Enthusiasm

Towards more productively fulfilling and meaningful affective and cognitive engagement as a more rewarding and authentic lynchpin of interpersonal interaction and social connection.

drives of Optimal Reciprocal Engagement and meaning

in cultures of respect

Engagement and respect remain reciprocally integral. And flagrant disengagement and inattention often serve as sly signal of searing disrespect. Indeed formal education remaining so well familiar a culture and practice so typically plagued with such flagrant flagrant and disrespectful disengagement from the hapless student. Alas that not everyone even agrees as to the vital necessity of either engagement or respect. Indeed ideologies from the mist ancient and esoteric such as the Zen, to the latest fashionable flavor of the month in motivational Behavioral Conditioning, all so disrespectfully deplore engagement with one another with empathy as sensitive conscious entities. Zen may indeed extol the value and promise intense states of engagement. But given Zen Nihilistic value destruction, then engagement with what exactly? The answer remains constant in optimistic Nihilism of the liberation of intense engagement via the extinction of ego, merely by engagement unselfconsciously in the present, sans reflection so demonized as unhappy. - In short, in non attachment and sublime apathy with no preference regardless of circumstances or situation. But that is not my way. It may be your way. And welcome to it. Typical Zen equivocation. Bah, humbug! Freedom thrives not in lonely apathy and self abnegation, .

Three compelling questions of relatable drama, as in life, ever endure:

        who am I?, what do I feel? and what do I want? 

When all else fails, what has actually been desired all along?

Answer: Fully engaged respect. But what does that mean? What is respect instead of invalidation?

Know thyself: Uniquely specific controlling desires eliciting the urgency and focus of stimulus struggle, are individually characteristic motivation. Even the engagement in struggle, in and of itself, helps stave off the suffering of painful need and deprivation. Indeed, desire in its own right can even be pleasurable. At least when practicalities of basic survival needs have been met, and even of comfort, perhaps among the strongest controlling desires will always be from intrinsic social stimulus appetites for whatever kind of suitable human interaction.

Elisa cites "Colangelo [who] suggests that “meeting the cognitive needs of gifted students often simultaneously meets their social-emotional needs. Or put another way (and I believe this could be extrapolated to also apply to gifted adults [indeed, why not to everyone, Elisa?]), if we are challenged intellectually, it’s highly likely that gifted adults will result in broader emotional satisfaction and be surrounded by a peer group. Those of us who are gifted know that ‘meeting [engaging] our cognitive needs’ is a high bar; however, if Colangelo is correct than he has also provided gifted adults with a roadmap for finding fulfillment." Indeed, it has long  been observed how gifted students amongst their own true gifted peers, suddenly and mysteriously no longer require the great boon of socialization! And what could ever be more productive and fulfilling than meaningful affective and cognitive engagement as a more rewarding and authentic pivot of interpersonal interaction and social connection than simply struggling to fir in? So wouldn't it make more sense to socialize and lift everyone to engage with and relate to one another more in accord with whatever observable gifted paradigm, than instead to dumb down our best and brightest?

• cultures of respect

• Multifactor Dynamic Loneliness Model

• cognitive and affective needs 

• autonomy and play

• Active Reading and Listening

Full engagement takes focus both upon action in the moment, with immediate observational feedback, and also upon whatever overall overriding plan or purpose unfolding. Ideally, challenge must remain matched to ability, neither frustrating nor boring, in control, unselfconscious, undistracted, so absorbed as often all losing tack of time. Engagement and concentration, visceral or intellectual, elicits the intrinsic motivation of perseverance. And nothing can be more respectful. Underserved stimulus needs of nurture for intelligence via optimal reciprocal engagement needs include steady emotional support, exploration and fun, active participation, sensory stimulation, with opportunity for social interaction, freedom from undue pressure and distress though suffused with a degree of pleasurable intensity or: eustress, with varied selection and alternatives of successive novel challenges, again, neither too easy and boring nor too difficult and frustrating, advancing in greater complexity promoting lifelong  in a broad range of skills and interests, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, social and emotional. Not only pleasurable engagement, but sometimes even ongoing engagement in struggle, difficulty and discomfort can be a blessing, frequently remaining needful and invigorating for growth, both of character individually and of meaningful relationships. For such is life. But that remains no excuse for coercion and abuse supposedly in order to build character. As it turns out, self control tends to be by far the more debilitating under pressure than by at all free choice however constrained incidentally by circumstances or situation, even if not under entirely intrinsic motivation as such, then with respectful autonomy support which is the more persuasive to committal engagement and responsive action. Engagement means intensification or entry to begin with, into either interaction or merely focus of attention. Engagement increases with and also intensifies, the pleasure from motivating attraction of meaningful intrinsic value, subjectively, even in the face of adversity, even to the preference of stimulating moderate challenge. Serious fun, gratification and satisfaction in the effort and concentration necessary to do things well and progress in competence. Greater difficulty, though perhaps initially resisted, even spurs increased effort overcoming the resistance of more difficult obstacles, and thence accrues absorbing and engrossing deeper engagement wherein effort comes easily without reluctance, even to the point of loosing all track of time. And the strength of such values inspires all the more aversive revulsion and Existential disgust in whatever is deemed bereft thereof. It is a disappointing experience to become disengaged from eager or enthusiasm, while it is a positive relief to disengage from fretfully vigilant and guardedness. And people are generally happier when others are attentive and engaged with them. Stimulus struggle seeks engagement in arousing even if nonutilitarian frivolous activity or: play. An optimal level of arousal is highly correlated to intrinsic satisfaction and value, the flexible imagination towards the comparison of fresh perspectives upon experience that is called: perceptual freedom, and peak performance.

Indeed, being that engagement is the beginning of the state or condition of attachment which is an ongoing, remembered or anticipated and even yearned for state of engagement, hence according to Self-Determination Theory, secure attachment is characterized by attention and responsiveness to one another's needs when turning toward one another to obtain comfort and care. And in this regard, autonomy support, vital to engagement in challenge and mastery in one’s own activity, is no less crucial than any other comfort. Whereas, Humanism contends that character development is shaped entirely by personal values and standards free from instinctual pressures and conditioning, a high ideal but but in truth, few are ever actually quite so ruggedly self reliant. Napoleon Bonaparte was justifiably popular with his generals, because when he assigned each their part in pending operations, he left them each to work out the details as each as best they judged fit. And even though cogent explanation of the relevance of whatever task at hand, may be deemed more respectful and persuasive in eliciting cooperative compliance than the manipulative coercion of Behavioral Modification via structured punishment and reward systems, demoralizing subtext only ever signaling a dire lack of sufficiently engaging and even engrossing intrinsic value, thereby eliciting overjustification effect. Stressed out guarded and vigilant students and employees who demonstrate boredom and apathy have been learning not to care, even finding that disengagement from effort and rigorous intellectual endeavor to be the norm, and only want to quit and go somewhere else. And that's what makes it so frightening to consider that, after all, true autonomy features every right to refuse and to decline even the most rigorously considered recommendations and friendly advice. For even all such reasonableness as above simply does not go so far as, instead of knowing best and seeking compliance in the first place, and even whilst sparing no criticism, yet with no strings attached, honestly and whole heartedly fully abetting the other decision making person's perspective, objectives and priorities to begin with:

invalidation

 

The better to foster autonomy, antithetical to the immoral patronizing manner typical of what passes for education, true autonomy support is an entirely legitimate intrinsic motivation in its own right, not some convenient motivator, and never to be rationed, prostituted or negotiable for insecure invalidating manipulative tactical leverage in any object lesson or practical illustration towards whatever sort of enlightenment into compliance. Employer, Teacher: How do you engage with others? Do either of you even know or much care what intensely interests, involves and engrossingly engages me?

Relevant living knowledge (as opposed to knowledge that is rightly called: inert), serving renewal and vitality, is growth, the experience of change put into practice, learned behaviors never immutable but ever subject to re-adaptation, emergent in collective interaction, tacit, highly charged and redolent, profoundly with the sensibility of drama, may even skirt the ineffable, often defying ready articulation let alone routine management via knowledge-driven Epistemology.  

 Respect is also not sexist Moralistic patronizing euphemistic invalidation and stigma of feminine “virtue!” 

Autonomy support is actually nothing more than at all howsoever empathetic consideration, the dignity of treatment with respect that everyone so craves, reciprocally among equals, consisting not only in the satisfaction of needs for competence and relatedness in one’s social environment, validation and acknowledgment of personal feelings and experience, but perhaps most crucially of the exchange of critical feedback and salient information for best possible decision making, and freedom of perhaps different and unexpected free choice in course of action to best suit personal needs, desires and priorities. -All of which requires a great deal of trust, faith, confidence or whatever one might call it, where ever vested, be it in others, in human nature, in principles, ease and fragile trust so readily challenged, undermine or brought in to doubt in oh so many ways, and with every momentary interaction, built up or torn down. Genuine autonomy support cannot be structured, conditioned or prostituted. Respect is more than mere tolerance and forbearance, because tolerance and forbearance by themselves indeed remain compatible with patronizing contempt that is the opposite of respect. In order to be sustained in practice, values must be reinforced, kept both in view and within reach. Heteronymous false values are typically promulgated by heavy indoctrination, but the striving for true human values is awakened by sheer temptation in the form of autonomy support and the Capability Approach.

• The Capability Approach

Moreover, according to research, cross-culturally and therefore even regardless of explicit value of autonomy, individuals with a lower discrepancy between their actual and ideal self-concept report higher levels of well-being and individuals’ actual self-concept tends to be closer to their ideal self-concept when they benefit from the experience of relationship and interaction with truly respectful (autonomy supportive) partners. So, clearly, the exchange of autonomy support, in other words: authentic respect, is crucial to functional close friendship, autonomy itself being, after all, distinct from self sufficiency. And whereas love and understanding cannot and should not be summoned forth on command, respect may be a more appropriate expectation and a good habit in relating to others.

 

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."  — Simone Weil

Ultimately, growth ensues only from remaining true to oneself, best abetted by others receptive thereto.

• cultures of respect

• Childhood Autonomy  

• Active Reading and Listening

• The insidious and ubiquitous cult of socialization: exhortations to heteronomy for the sake of social success 

• The FoolQuest.com lesson plan for Creative tension - Actually making the vague unknown your friend!

• Happy People Talk More Seriously and make less small talk

'

Damned once again, in their own words of disrespect, better than I ever could!

-Even if nowadays it's more in all that they downplay...

 

___     Completely Off Course!      "How can I structure the learning environment so my students experience autonomy?" Egadz!

 

 

"The teacher strives to activate the child’s cognitive processes using a behavior change system to alter his thinking as well as his behavior." — Texas Autism Resource Guide for Effective Teaching 

The unnamed author of the above seems blithely unaware of having penned an adequate definition for the aims of indoctrination and mind control,

rather than, in the alternative, reaching out to engage autonomy of independent moral and other reasoning, voluntarily, and only thence free action...

The challenge of social and intellectual stimulus struggle: Intellectual stimulation from the social environment remains ever paramount to the endeavor of FooolQuest.com. The engaging and invigorating trigger of intellectual stimulation is an intrinsic need, even neurologically. Intellectual stimulation opens the way for the enthusiastic autonomy of egalitarian close collaborative creative solution finding and thereby liberation from hierarchical heteronomy. Intellectual stimulation Is an intrinsic human need. Intellectual stimulation differs psychologically with individual character, and will therefore defy precise definition. Intellectual stimulation engages thought and imagination to challenge ambitious capability to insightfully identify and find creative solutions to problems. And yet intellectual stimulus deprivation remains pandemic. Clearly, either the system is broken, or else individual failure and confusion can actually be intentional, even deliberately brutal boring Absurd and irrelevant Zen surreal by design, brainwash to break the will, indeed as it has been since antiquity. A hallmark of the compliant and complacent conservative personality is the the boundless capacity to endure boredom. And in the annals of formal education as readily observed in so many other social institutions such as religion, politics and employment among others,  the tradition is recorded even most anciently in Plato's Academy, of calculatingly and deliberating quashing the very intellectual freedom and Dialectical intellectual stimulation so cherished by and fatal to Plato's beloved but impractical mentor Socrates, via the deliberate infliction of boredom in order so diligently to weed out innovators tso often characterized by boredom proneness, and of novelty that ever threatens change. Or less anciently, we can blame that captain of industry and prime mover of modern formal education, John D. Rockefeller, who so famously declared: “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.” And yet, many have there been among those sages of old so locked in fervent embrace of the value of social stability at any cost, the maintenance of sheer conservative inertia even in the most arbitrary status quo. -And therefore concerning themselves in all gravity with the contrivance of reliable production process and systematic filters of endlessly bland mediocrity enduring to this day, bureaucratically screening out deficiency and excellence alike and entirely without distinction. Indeed such remains the function of peer review in academic publication, and worse, of the FDA in the approval of medicines. No snake oil and no breakthroughs either. Such is heteronomy and the dread of all temptation into nonconformity replete with any possibility of Socratic Wisdom in acknowledgment of ignorance, error and uncertainty.

And formal education remains to this day, as indispensable but dysfunctional a social institution as the United Nations, labor unions, the FDA and even the nuclear family. School is the hotbed of low level pandemic and pervasive anxiety disorder, stunting intellectual and emotional growth. Everybody knows that we only learn from out mistakes. But this will be difficult when the exposure of error, ignorance and incomprehension, becomes something threatening and shameful, all to be concealed. For such is anti-critical bias. And all because in school students are actually penalized , subjected to aversive conditioning, for  for failing to regurgitate the desired correct responses in dystressful tests and exams! Meanwhile, students are subjected to ongoing manipulative propaganda of heteronomy, unchallenged rationalization of all such coercion, in order then to blame ourselves for weak willed indolence, for even at all resenting our captivity. It's for your own good, dear! But in the words of Leonardo DaVinci: "Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in."

'Educational Psychology: A Practical Approach' by Edward Vockell, Ph.D. Chapter 5, the section upon: intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation (or actually: ever manipulative "motivators"), included, first of all, as fine resource indeed, upon the range of motivation of interest to fiction writing,  but also cited here as an entry point into an illuminating display of irresponsibly oppressive and antisocial heteronymous hypocrisy: the how-to manual on the reshaping of personality by undermining autonomy, which, incidentally, from all that is said and the more so in what goes unsaid, for purposes of drama will find ready application to realistic backstory of character development and deeply ingrained and often morally dissonant inner conflict or: ambivalence.

In his Theory X and Theory of Y, Douglas McGregor categories individuals thus: The X category or theory, is, in not so many words: indolence. For the avoidant individual that lacks of ambition, shirks work and commitment as much as possible and resists change, and must be threatened with punishment, controlled and penalized in order to comply. Whereas the Y individual, to the contrary, is highly committed, considers it only normal to exert intellectual and physical effort, and intrinsically likes to become involved in different responsibilities, even enjoying the sense of anticipation from the however extrinsically motivating associated rewards pursued, and needn't be threatened or forced in order to comply. But other individuals yet again, may vary in response, depending upon all manner of circumstance, such as healthy environment, fair treatment and sense of inclusion. For such, perhaps it may be more accurate to postulate the elicitation of X and Y responses. But how are such opposite responses triggered or elicited to begin with, much less conditioned in the long term?

•  Act Without External Pressure: intrinsic motivations of mastery, meaningful purpose and value maximization

• “Why Don’t Students Like School?” Well, Duhhhh…  Students don't like school because they love freedom. School is prison! But we are all made ashamed to admit it.

• quotations

• Behavior Modification: Just another brick in the wall

It is so often quipped that those who can't do, teach. And that those who can't teach, teach gym, and those who can't even teach gym, administrate! But why, indeed, are teachers and administrators as a breed, so crushed and helplessly paralyzed? Just what is their damage? Absurdly, rather than firmly resolving as soon as safely practical, to end plainly destructive scholastic oppression, granting freedom and even establishing whatever necessary democracy to mitigate conditions of daily student captivity not to mention their own captive and sore travails! [the French word for 'labor,' literally: suffering] teachers motivated by enduringly blind heteronymous vested interest instead remain intent as directed, upon the Quixotic doomed effort of lunatic faith and doublethink sleight of mind, somehow to integrate and reconcile autonomy so terrifying to them, as a component enfolded within their desperate security blanket of heteronomy, the desperate and fantastical enterprise of reconciliation, autonomy and heteronomy watering one another down.

 

Condoms, CPAP, diet and exercise, just like chastity, are all, in the blithe irony of Rush Limbaugh: "one hundred percent effective when practiced consistently." However, such is not medicine but obsession of irresponsible Moralism and the cult of austerity, shifting the blame to human failure. True enough, though. Nature is Hobbesian, human nature and drives oppose the tyranny of biological destiny. But just as with PR for gambling, there will always be the handful of success cases, of big winners, held up as shining example of somehow beating the odds. In formal education, much as in diet and exercise for weight loss and management, there will always be that handful of eager approval seekers that thrive on whatever abuse and excel. So, why can't we all be just like them? Any social program of brutal Behavior Modification, self manipulation and cognitive dissonance that conflicts with human nature, is doomed to extremely high rates of noncompliance and therefore of abject failure.

 

In the patronizing Moralistic concatenation and sheer irresponsible misanthropy of such daily incarceration as passes for our education, the customer is always wrong! The program never fails. You fail the program. For rather than engaging the interests of students, consequent boredom and distress is  deemed a character flaw of indolence then subject to unrelenting coercion and manipulation. Precisely thus, our secular educational system nevertheless still rooted in traditions of the religious church patronage, remains no more or less than the institutional Fifth Column of dedicated loving but insulting Totalitarian patronizing condescension within democratic society alas still too cowardly and contemptuous to trust the worthiness of our own children or even adult college students (therefore, when if ever??), as to be curious enough on their own without exactly such constantly mounting, pressurizing and ultimately crushing abuse guaranteed to quickly erode any joy of autonomous curiosity. For the brain naturally engaged in often unique construction of personal comprehension and individual pattern construction, is poorly adapted for behaviorally structured and boringly predictable formal instruction.

In such stunning reversal of all free market norms, the vendor, or "school"/"university", through an employee called a "professor" or "teacher", veritably policing hapless student performance, then holds the power of satisfaction and dissatisfaction against the consumer! The customer is always wrong! The program never fails. We fail the program. And the vendor to a significant degree controls the career future of the consumer, or as he or she is called, the "student".

Further more, this brand of oppression has been consistent from childhood, through the school system, and is deeply ingrained by conditioning and indoctrination. By the conditionality of meeting emotional needs only given the desired responses, peer pressure of negative conditioning and even emotional tear town against undesired response and awkward begged questions and generally obstructing and discouraging error checking, the technique of graduated indoctrination can be employed, with continual repetition, so as to gradually reshape the subject's belief's or position. Most commonly, as per the travesty of Inductivist education, whatever innocuous seeming truisms by default may be utilized initially as a starting point, and then the desired behaviors and supporting rationalizations are slowly and stealthily introduced and connected thereto, unexamined. In this way, the individual subject may be coaxed into to perceive the institutional righthink as consistent with their own habits, personal boundaries and perceptions, no matter how jarring and suspicious it all might have been, had the proverbial cards all been laid out on the metaphorical table from the beginning, instead. Social success demands permeability to such osmosis, whereof autonomy requires resistance. A quandary.

• Inductivist travesty of teaching

• Evidently penned in a feigned rare moment of lucidity, 'How Our Schools Create Sheeple' is a fine article by John Kaminski Too bad he's a hateful raving anti-Semite crackpot conspiracy theorist, and the article merely serves as a lead in! Kaminski acknowledges as his source: 'Unschooling: Self-Directed Learning is Best' by Kurt Johmann, written in response to: 'The Public School Nightmare Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?' by John Taylor Gatto "The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school."  — George Bernard Shaw

But worse, precisely such societal cowardice and contempt is unsuspectingly internalized by children subjected to manipulatively devious and systematic indoctrination to insecure paralytic heteronomy, so that they can never trust others or even especially themselves ever to be curious enough on their own without exactly such constantly mounting, pressurizing and ultimately crushing abuse guaranteed to quickly erode any joy of autonomous curiosity. In brief, in order to function at all, they become helplessly addicted to coercion, from wherever coercion can be found.

If anyone is ever observed to prefer eating junk food and memorizing sports trivia to studying math and working hard at it, there are at least two competing explanatory hypotheses: One is that human beings from childhood are naturally impulsive, lazy and hedonistic, in a word: 'indolent'. and the other, quite simply, is that people are routinely traumatized from childhood by school but less often by their hobbies. Alas, the latter is as yet recognized only as a complicating cofactor at best, while the former has never properly come into doubt, in blithe denial of theoretical inelegance and preponderance of evidence. Thus, to typical heteronymous authorities and functionary teachers, the quite unpalatable risk in any fundamental alternative, is in simply respecting the individual right also perhaps possibly to reject unwanted education. Because, what then? If no one is coerced one way or another, indeed, if one day automation finally puts an end to chores and busy work, then how will anything ever get done and what will be the point of living?

It's still all for your own good, dear! -even if we dare no longer proclaim that: "pressure makes diamonds!"

Respectful and exceptional teachers are all too often treated very badly, actually penalized, in our school systems. Typical school teachers are uniquely patronizing, even the sweetest and dopiest of kindergarten schoolmarms. Their tone and demeanor is unmistakable. On the other hand, Behaviorists and school teachers can be the nicest people. It just doesn't help. Indeed, sincerity can be the most profound manipulation of all! Indeed, such insult as patronizing condescension that after all comes of love can be less painful than insult that comes without it, or more so, or equally so, as the case may be: but be that as it may, it is, in any case significantly more harmful. This is because insult provokes anger and hostility, but hostility towards people who even sincerely profess to love you and act on your own best interest is curbed and turned inwards, internalized, and experienced as self-hostility, namely Moralistic guilt.

Precisely such deceptive appeals undermining the target’s credulity and defenses even whilst actually exercising coercion constitute often likewise internalized insecure flagrantly manipulative behavior, conscious or unconscious; because, beyond bypassing and overwhelming aware intellect and good sense by the adroit application of such motivating emotional triggers as guilt, fear, spite, temptation and flattery, a prime function of manipulation is simply to disarm individual resistance to coercion by rationalizing said coercion as reasonable, fair, moderate or even benign and benevolent, but anything except what it is: coercion. Little wonder then, how do few of us are actually all that well adjusted. With the exception of a hand full of remarkable individuals who where exceptionally good students in ostensible vindication of entrenched status quo, we are all to some degree emotionally disturbed because of the extended traumatic experience of how we adapted to school and/or how we didn't.

Intrinsic  motivation is that process of arousal and satisfaction that is the reward from carrying out an activity in and of itself, rather than whatever extrinsic motivation or motivator coming in hoped for pay off resultant from said activity. In brief, however deplored by Edward Vockell, PhD, may be the application of external extrinsic motivation even where internal intrinsic motivation and value is absent, fulfilling internal and intrinsic motivation being howsoever preferable to oppressive extrinsic motivation and likely resultant overjustification effect, teachers are still not charged by the expert and authoritative likes of Edward Vockell, Ph.Dl simply to facilitate and aid in the fulfillment of whatever varying needs and desires of students themselves, to respectful autonomy support, but rather still, however adaptively, to inculcate curriculum and even socialization by whatever motivation necessary, fair or foul and without respect. Indeed, where, according to Edward Vockell, Ph.Dl, extrinsic motivation (often) must(!) be employed initially, then only temporarily, because "extrinsic motivators may lead to merely short-range activity while actually reducing long-range interest [...] Therefore, it is essential that extrinsic motivators be backed up by intrinsic motivators or that the extrinsic motivation become internalized", often via the Existential bait-and-switch of sublimation, indeed, by the correct application of Behavioral Modification. But behavioral internalization is never classified properly and honestly as manipulative and uncriticali indoctrination, whereas education, in distinction from indoctrination, professes to foster unfettered critical thinking in quest for truth, free of insecure corrupting vested interest.

Because, after all, while teachers naturally want students to flourish, responsible and accountable to themselves, we all need to be sure that this will be the right kind of responsibility for members of society! -Alas, the tone of irony here is my own, not the shamelessly straight-faced educators. And the right kind of autonomy, so-called, is nothing less than exactly the bright eyed and bushy tailed loyal exuberant enthusiasm that ordinary kids mock, fools that we are, such virtuous inhibition indeed very limitedly autonomous in seriousness and initiative exceeding mere obedience. For such is the reward of unreserved goody two-shoes internalization and surrender of individual identity via unconscious uncritical osmosis, such prized characteristics of the hand full of truly well adapted students, that are never actually taught any more than good study habits or socialization and popularity. And if they can do it, then why not everybody else? That is why we malcontents have no one to blame but ourselves, and should line up chomping at the bit to have our useless and obstreperous spirits broken, right? Where's our school spirit of enthusiasm?

In the bad old days, the school system was an obstacle course designed for placement of the individual within a stratified society, and then became an assembly line for turning out factory drones. And while both outmoded legacies persist, neither are any longer politically correct to honestly admit. Indeed, a most remarkable aspect of modern scholastic indoctrination, rife with such patronizing condescending hypocritical doublethink, is how scholastic indoctrination strives to avoid indoctrinary bias and indeed content at all except, without saying, as to the urgency of putative need for scholastic indoctrination itself and also for the putative imperative of socialization, all thereby theoretically leaving wide open a vast and free range of critical thinking, indeed so long as it remain entirely abstract with no risk of action and change. The real goal put forth of timid reform as embraced by the likes of Edward Vockell, Ph.D is is only the same desperate and fantastical enterprise of reconciliation, autonomy and heteronomy watering down one another, autonomy to rescue heteronomy, even whist constrained and stifled thereby and even under the pretence all vice versa.

And the low percentage of success in production of blithe uncomplicated and high functioning true believers, the leaders of tomorrow with "the right kind of autonomy," is of course only taken as a spur to renew faith and strive even harder, rather than, perish forbid! legitimate cause for doubt, acknowledgment of fallibility, and to consider instead the by far more responsible risk management entailed in the honest demands of respect for student autonomy. After all, leaders of tomorrow still need their damaged minions and sycophants. As consistent with ancient patronage systems, education is traditionally and heteronymously viewed as the responsibility of the individual student as a contributing member of society, not any service of intrinsic value to the student as end user, customer or citizen. Why in the bad old days, the school Principal or Headmaster might even take affront at any student professing to enjoy any of their classes! Harrumph.

Yes, under any guise, the challenge of student motivation aside, whether in the most harsh and brutal competitive arena of old or the worst "No Child Left Behind" misguidedly egalitarian reformist cultivation of sheer ersatz 'Harrison Bergeron' mediocrity of today, should ever compulsory formal education fail, naturally it remains entirely acceptable for the student to be chided and blamed via a bad grade despite being captive with little real free choice, the risk from true unique independent individual mistakes remaining still so terrifying a responsibility for all concerned! Indeed, nowadays, mischievous schoolchildren may be "consequenced." But such parlance is even more transparently Orwellian. Alas, even given, obviously, how external and therefore extrinsic motivation often indeed arises situationally, nevertheless "providing structure," the inductivist deliberate behavioral engineering of external extrinsic motivation is also never honestly and responsibly named as: systematic punishment and reward, subtext only ever signaling a dire lack of sufficiently engaging and even engrossing intrinsic value, thereby eliciting overjustification effect and all therefore doomed to stifling demoralized failure and ennui exactly as already explained and acknowledged quite sufficiently by the author himself Edward Vockell, Ph.D, even as he extols exactly such tactics, even if only in such deviously and manipulatively ostensible moderation!

Alas, the truth remains that even given that the application of discipline may ever be necessary and appropriate in matters of conduct such as to simply in defense of our rights from one another as from bullying, the application of discipline as punishment and reward to extrinsically motivate learning remains as failed and doomed an enterprise and all around dubious a proposition as ever since the dawn of history and already debunked.

Indeed our tragedy is rooted in the motivating allure of heteronomy, the incapacitating guilty anxiety, fear and and loathing in dread of individual responsibility in the face of uncertainty and risk, and how exactly the sheer futility of artfully minimized indoctrination is, in truth, simply the more insidious than merciful let alone certain or risk free in the manner that true freedom clearly is not. Thence the moral of our story might be how modern formal education remains insecure and Utopist as ever, and the manner in which inflexible grand and overreaching responsibilities to desired results however lofty, only end in rationalizing the most flagrant irresponsibility even regarding minimally acceptable daily conduct of educators simply not to bully and abuse power, even however deviously and manipulatively (and of the expertly guided administration not to actually demand such evil of teachers), never mind simply to freely provide educational service with immediate, attractive and yes: intrinsic end-user appeal in service to stimulus need and therefore better conducive to real individual growth. Indeed, so thin runs their faith in democracy as to dismiss democratization as Utopist because there can be no guarantees of certainty.

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”  — Benjamin Franklin   “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” — Albert Einstein

 

 

sex education

Coercion in what still passes for education has flailed for thousands of years, and yet has not been abandoned. But in order to begin curing the pandemic anxiety and heteronomy inculcated by the pathological and misguided practice educational coercion, any renewed focus upon deeper reasoning skills as has been advocated in substitution for obsolete superficial rote learning, may also serve as any beginning towards reawakening autonomy and the yearning for freedom in students and teachers, and ever inching towards ending scholastic coercion once and for all. All of which remains no less crucial likewise to better sexual education ever truly free of Moralism. Research shows that providing medically-accurate, age-appropriate sexuality education leads to healthy decisions. However, not only genuine, accurate and current information, but the practices of ongoing learning by secondary library and internet research, problem solving and decision making, all apply no less to the entire range of tradeoffs entailed in different safer sex strategies, that sexual partners must choose together, even at any loss of spontaneity. But in turning away from the systemic unfeasibility of Moralism, even pending the abolition of scholastic coercion, even the rationality any more intelligent teaching approach undertaken in its own culture of the dignity of sex for pleasure, much less the ignorant barbarism of abstinence propaganda and indoctrination., is often inadequate to the needs of helping neurotics: For it is really no secret either, how crisis pregnancy is more often actually motivated by psychological unloved feelings of powerless inadequacy, demonstration of potency and every social dysfunction whereof such unhappiness emanates, and in truth no accident, simple birth control failure, or even, really deep down, nor has determination to bring crisis pregnancy  to term, truly have anything much to do with howsoever sentiment towards the unborn in the abstract. Considering that unprotected sex is well understood as all too often motivated by unacknowledged yearnings for procreation that is a symptom of profound feelings of powerlessness, to which of course, educational coercion, bullying and dysfunctional family, all contribute, the problem, then, is also very much a public psychotherapeutic care issue, desperately needing address as such.

 

 

 

 

 

 

power: freedom = autonomy + capability

                 Power and freedom require personal autonomy under circumstances of capability

 

“There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.” 

— Alexis de Tocqueville

“It is less important to redistribute wealth than it is to redistribute opportunity.”   — Arthur H. Vandenberg

“What is happiness? The feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome”  — Friedrich Nietzsche

 

 

All manner of people and circumstance remain harmful in so many different ways, but there is particular vulnerability to self-esteem and sense of power, not merely from abuse of power or humiliation in and of itself, but in shrinking, in restraint, self-control, submission, compliance, conforming to situation, backing down, especially to those most beneath contempt; all thus belittled, duller and mincing ones words; all as bullies laugh up their sleeves. And such is life. But under such circumstances, one can only question oneself: Whatever threat or benefit, iss it all really worth it? One cannot but nurse the festering grudge, feeling only the more petty and helpless.

 

Power can mean dominance and control over others, wherewithal to accomplish desired results, individual ability or effectiveness in collaboration. As his working hypothesis or interpretation, Nietzsche seemingly regards mere influence upon others as some effete and lesser substitute instead of sheer primal and brutal coercion attempting to inflict ones will upon others. But perhaps the reverse is the truth: Coercion and manipulation indeed being more primal, are lesser substitutes for more evolved, welcome and fulfilling influence upon one another, love itself, and not merely all that is done for love. Power, for good or evil, constructively or destructively, begins from the process of influence upon one another that can redefine the surrounding social environment and change the world. Unilateral action is largely powerless, drastically limited in scope and impact upon individual life much less society at large. And slavish submission to alienating social institutions tends to be senseless, debilitating and Absurd in every way. Transactional Analysis begins to recognize that only improvement in the manner in which anyone relates to one another can even begin to make any real headway towards any livable community culture. FoolQuest.com explores broader agenda for collaboration among equals in autonomy, deemed inconceivable under prevailing heteronomy that so dreads only chaos and discord, save by even slavish acquiescence to firm guidance and confident leadership in order to prevent error and assure success.  Of course there is no guarantee of success, but there can often be guarantee of futility in impossible guarantees.

 

Moral responsibility arises only from freedom and choice in the face of uncertainty. Power and influence over others accrues either by coercion subject always to resistance, trickery of deceit and manipulation eventually subject to exposure and dissipation, or else in exchange or in support of value, so long as whatever that value or utility endures. Indeed, freedom and dignity, beyond essential personal autonomy in and of itself alone, is also a practical question beyond any subjective will to power, regarding needed situations of real capability beyond sheer abstraction: connections and resources, wherewithal of opportunity without which even the greatest talent and highest competence become useless, much less freedom entirely in the abstract. Real freedom then, so often greatly depends upon the mitigation of such mundane practicalities as making enough money but without incurring onerously restrictive travail and consuming obligations to others, even just in fitting in and dealing with flawed social environment. -gifted with with heightened empathy in a callous world, even hyperaware, but often misunderstood and discouraged.

 

The agenda put forth here on FoolQuest.com, remains that of greater freedom and power so yearned for and admired, as attained in receiving ongoing autonomy support towards important decisions and fulfillment from full engagement in meaningful interaction, and better still, if possible, in the process, achieving the pleasures of wealth and influence thereby! Such is the highly coveted ideal condition of alignment between, in fulfillment of, often conflicting intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the very hope and attractive appeal of lifestyle Entrepreneurship. -Or more altruistically, of Social Entrepreneurship and Activism. Or else only in play with nothing at stake. Indeed, a fine outlet for creativity for its own joy, is collaborative fiction writing, drama and Science Fiction speculation and that depth of engagement that is sheer expansive awe.

 

“A psychological presupposition of Nietzsche's is that humans are always attempting to inflict their wills upon others.”  But actually, people want power because they want autonomy which is "a form of  power that allows one person to ignore and resist the influence of others and thus to shape one’s own destiny.”

“The researchers [who published: ‘The power to be me: Power elevates self-concept consistency and authenticity’] theorized that being in a position of authority would make individuals feel enhanced well-being. [...] "Because power increases the correspondence between internal states and behavior [or (this above all): truth to thine own self], we hypothesized that power enhances subjective well-being (SWB) by leading people to feel more authentic.””  — Medical Daily 

 

“There is one thing to watch out for in all of this, though. While having power can make you happier, seeking power does not make you happier. There is quite a bit of evidence that people who spend their lives seeking power do not focus on the intrinsic joy of life. So, people who seek power are actually less happy than those who do not. [...] A second way to become powerful is to spend your life getting things done. [...] If you consistently do things in your life that help you and others achieve goals, then your journey is a happy one.”  —  Psychology Today

morality

true fundamental Existential conundrums

In Plato's Dialogues, the Republic, Thrasymachus famously contends that the will of the stronger is named justice. This may seem somewhat glib Nihilistic value destruction. And yet, because morality and justice are so abstract and Axiological, almost ephemeral, not Ontological and concrete, the question even seems begged: Is there morality? Is there any such a thing? Does morality exist, and how so? The very concept of morality is so often much abused in all manner of Sophistry as to afflict the very discourse such a bad name and to obfuscate the real important salient questions, even as most anciently illuminated by drama. To wit: What bridges whyfors of abstract Axiological morality into Ontology of concrete reality and species of: how, remains nothing more or less than responsibility to foreseeable consequences of free choice deciding among alternatives in taking action. It's not a matter of what one might ever or never do, but under what exigent circumstances or situation, indeed against what impending evil. Most anyone even who abhors lying and all but never lies, would lie cheerfully to those proverbial Nazis in order to protect Jews hiding in the basement, or even kill, given no other recourse, in order to protect the innocent. By contrast and by way of illustration, even the lowest guile entailed in CliqueBusters TM remains utterly nonviolent moderate. But more anon.

In social psychology, specifically according to social cognitive theory of morality, moral agency is exerted via self-sanction of moral standards in moral reasoning into action. In a word:: conscience. For happiness free from ambivalence and inner conflict, Ogden Nash famously recommends "either a clear conscience or none at all." For at the cost of greater dystress, conscience may be mastered and effectively suppressed by the individual. Hurtful as it may be, sociopaths without coincidence may openly gloat sadistically, but at least are being honest. The radical anti-bullying proposal, CliqueBusters TM , strategically recommends that to be brought to task, such eager braggarts present opportunity for infiltration and covert recording, then exposure. And for some, this too presents moral conundrum. But then, so does bystanding in the face of evil. Whereas, for evil doers, bullies, yet struggling with conscience, the self-dishonest and hypocritical validation and co-validation process by which individuals, especially bullies, may be known to convince themselves that ethical standards no longer apply, is achieved by means of: moral justification such as appeal to greater good or vengeance, by diffusion of responsibility onto an authority figure or via consensus and co-validation, and also by misrepresenting and minimizing injurious consequences of such bullying, and especially of social undermining, Mounting suppressed guilt and denial over ongoing and escalating immoral transgression and bullying, motivates continual and ever more vigorous reinforcement of moral disengagement. CliqueBusters TM remains the most radical known  proposal of resistance and awareness, consciousness raising, to detect and denounce moral disengagement and Sadism so characteristic of malignant cliques of bullies. Theories of morality as socially normative, are readily refuted by all manner of examples of malicious social norms. Indeed, quite the reverse of socially normative morality, the advance of civilization remains an ongoing struggle to bring social and individual norms into better accord with morality, reason and compassion.

Presenting situations that challenge conscience, and even such proposed response as CliqueBusters, morality is explored in both fictional and even in true to life dramatization of moral controversy: The dramatic scene breaks down into Motivation-Reaction Units: Immediate reactions are often reflexive, but then conscious deliberation ensues upon what action to be taken next. Or does it? Life can only be lived forwards, but only understood or recognized in hindsight. Indeed, do we consider our options and consciously take action, or do our actions simply come upon us as we react to situation, and only then rationalize afterward? People often make their most important decisions with their heart but only then rationalize intellectually. Motivations and goals or objectives as ever set forth thereby, meaning as only created in the mind, values, moral sympathies and empathies included, so often ambivalent, are not willfully intended in free agency but received and imprinted in receptivity as we discover ourselves subject all thereto. Most dramatically, relationship, the impression made by individual characters upon one another, often dawns upon the individual in emotional response to events unfolding. -All much as in real life for real human beings. Only then is action undertaken, consistently with characterization, personality, often giving rise to conflict and Setting The scene.

Freedom is not random No matter how predictably, an animal experiences freedom when acting upon impulse, upon stimulation and arousal, without obstruction and frustration. An animal remains Existentially untroubled regardless. Nevertheless, predicable people are denounced indeed as predictable when one disapproves, but praised as dependable when one does approve. Determinism remains objective, at least in principle, regardless Epistemologically of what can be knowable in advance. Notwithstanding determinism, to reiterate, an anima; experiences freedom when unobstructed in following its impulses, even however blithely predictable. Free will then, is psychological inner determinism, as district from constraints of external determinism in outside world. Inner conflict of ambivalence also undermines freedom. Struggle with opposing desires, such as approach-avoidance, is ambivalent indecision of inner conflict, whereas oxymoronic desire for logically contradictory desires, may be called conflict with reality. For example, for others always to be honest, and yet at the same time, never critical.

Determinism then need not contravene freedom, itself no less determined. But inevitably simplicity yields to complication: Marcel Proust said: “We become moral when we are unhappy.” Problem Solving and Justification are reciprocal functions, and one must be shaped to rationalize the other, with integrity or else into hypocrisy. When there arises a discrepancy between the feelings and activity of a character, tension mounts all the more, the greater the obstacles to resolution of whatever ambivalence and conflict. Therefore, Existentially, what is freedom, indeed for whom is freedom? Is freedom the Zen Mystical and Christian freedom from all desire, or the freedom from causality yearned for by Hinduism? Or just the contrary, is freedom is for the individual, the power to act upon individual motivation and priorities, simple whims or sophisticated principles, which are all, after all, causal and Deterministic ever to taking action? –Good reasons, even such as unfold in character growth and the cultivation moral advance, all the more so. In the alternative, indeed as it is so oft extolled that God's love is uncaused, how ever at all can freedom obtain from arbitrary random Indeterminacy? In the Zen quest for oneness, the enlightened man is said to be one with dharma, the law of causation, and the perceptions of Determinism on the one hand, or of freedom, willful choice and influence, on the other hand, are both error, presumably from uninspired failure to synthesize frames of reference: conscious subjective willful choice and objective Determinism, all into the correct Gestalt. 

• Ambivalence: inner conflict

• Fundamental Attribution Error

In plot oriented fiction, characters acted upon are forced to react to situation by whatever there is at stake, Deterministically. But in character oriented drama, characters in struggle advance the plot by conduct determined no less, but according to each their own natures of character. -Determinism is intrinsic to the character and temperament in action, rather than extrinsic and belonging to circumstances. For it is values, including cherished moral principles and sentiments, that motivate individual divergence from whatever path of least resistance, even at considerable personal sacrifice. And the dismissal all thereof as arbitrary because of Determinism or for lack of satisfactory Meta-Ethics, or for any other reason, is Nihilistic value destruction,  

Objectively, indeed all is Deterministic, circumstances and people no less than any other things or phenomena in interaction within whatever situation or environment. When we disapprove of a bothersome chronic behavior, we deride the person's predictability. But of predictably constructive conduct, we praise that person's reliability. Determinism remains consistent either way, only value judgment differs. Indeed, even as the will and yearning for all manner and dimensions of joyful untroubled freedom and power, we may even tend to consider ourselves most free in being true to ourselves, such that we might each ourselves claim: If I had whatever particular decision into action to do again, I would by volition chose do it all exactly the same. But the previous only tends to apply in any matter in personal value judgment deemed of importance and hence as such crucial in defining of personal identity and cherished values of all what one stands for, and not just anything at all howsoever at all seemingly trivial. And hence the problem is not dharmic, objective, value neutral and Ontological as such, but indeed rather in value judgment and self image that remain subjective. Because only in light of of values can anything held to have importance. And thus is Axiology revealed as central to the Psychology of such assessment in the mind that drives the above experience of freedom in the specific sensation of truth to oneself, of self consistency. This also accounts for the appeal, in each our own ongoing true to life drama no less than in works of fiction, of the often arduous journey of change and learning of decisions and conduct in order the more to better understand, judge and even quite appropriately approve of oneself and one's own conduct from hence forth, according to personal values, especially morally, with integrity true to oneself rejecting that which becomes ego alien, striving in hoped for resolution of whatever enduring drama of inner conflict.

This process may also be viewed socially. Indeed, communication and awareness of the feelings, perceptions and opinions of others, sought or unsought, will tend to impact not only individual perception and reconstruction of reality, but value judgment as well. Phenomenologically, it is the mind and “the heart,” not the senses alone in experience somehow unprocessed, that howsoever fallibly interpret and truly perceive. And others may often be consulted for purposes of error detection and in order to gain perspective, or in outreach for support and approval. All mature and functional attachments of social relationship under autonomy are ethical, being predicated upon trust and fulfillment of such expectations, lack or abrogation whereof creating distance, even loathing and avoidance, or else ambivalence, mistrust and dysfunction, indeed if not amoral sociopathy outright, then the shattered confidence and compensations thereto of heteronomy. Weak attachment makes for weak conscience. Thus heteronymous covert relational hostility working to to undermine those attachments in society, shunning and mobbing, even well organized orchestrated harassment, thereby conspire with impunity by means of social exclusion, to harm and endanger the target of exactly such serial bullying.

According to the biologist Edward Osborne Wilson "Human beings function better if they are deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a disinterested objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey." But function better in what sense and towards what purpose or value? Moral relativism is the contention that because the objective reality of morality cannot be established, then morality is entirely subjective and therefore is or could be entirely arbitrary and variable between individuals, with nothing to make morality howsoever universal and therefore necessarily intersubjective or howsoever valid. Moral purposes, judgments and imperatives need some manner of objective categorical prescriptive force in order to be true. But otherwise, exactly what sort of error is morality? All therefore, as the individual capacity for logic in reasoning pertains after all to objective causality, to what external phenomena does the personal capacity for morality correspond or relate? Again: What bridges abstract and Axiological morality with Ontology of concrete reality, remain nothing more or less than responsibility to foreseeable consequences of free choice deciding among alternatives in taking action.

• Are Moral Statements Arbitrary? Or might a better question be put: Is morality merely happenstantial?

As C. S. Lewis observes, the only person who opposes escape is, by definition, a jailer. Fantasy is the exploration both of unfettered desire and of reality principle of feasible scenario. Fantasy and speculation therefore fundamental to freedom. It is only the denial of reality that is clearly illusion rather than freedom.  Action is motivated by desire. Desires can be selfish or unselfish. Benevolence is desire to the good. Desires in and of themselves, cannot be true or false, only any howsoever understanding thereof can be to whatever degree, accurate or inaccurate. Morality answers deep-seated yet contingent interests and desires of human beings. To wit: Meta-Ethics strives to fill a much needed gap: Love and compassion, most precious amongst human assets and deepest meaningful value, are not rational, nor ever should they be. This extends to motivation of altruism and conscience at all, either irreducible, say, to Enlightened Self-interest. After all, even self-interest to begin with, even sheer pleasure principle and aversive (desire to avoid) fear of harm and death, survival instinct at all, is all desire not Logic or reasoning, never mind likewise empathy to extend from the selfish in order recognize, along with sympathy to validate, similar needs and motivating desires in others, thence to expect fairness upholding ones rights and to avoid doing harm. -imperative of fairness upholding one another's rights and prohibition upon doing harm, being the most universal moral criteria. Was there harm? Was there foul, infringement upon and violation of anyone's rights? To quote from France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789: “Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.” Distinctly, the rights and harm theory of morality, that immoral action is such as both violates individual rights and does harm, seems the best, most viable and least inadequate, among contending  theories of morality.

Morality all therefore is not Behaviorally reducible. For as Piaget discovered, heavy moral inhibitions imposed too soon, actually only undermines the natural and tender childhood awakening of empathy and sympathy, souring the disposition into bitter jealous rage and the hypocrisy of Moralism. For in the words of Dr. Samuel Johnson: "The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty." The moral dimensions of psychological visibility, Phenomenally, empathy and sympathy, identification with others, is neurologically innate by virtue of the mirror neurons that activate in any action or experience observed of others (and eliciting the motivation of desires) identically as in experienced action of ones own (motivated by those desires). Hence, among attempts at rescuing Enlightenment thinking, even evolutionary utility and survival advantage of reciprocal altruism remains merely hapenstancial if not actually arbitrary. So, does causality of circumstances qualify as an Ontological foundation or justification? What exactly would an Ontological foundation be? It has been propounded that altruistic morality is a delusion crucial in order to forestall the Hobbesian state of nature and foster civilization. But sociopaths, even should they can even so dimly apprehend such values and consequence merely in the abstract, nevertheless simply just don't care. Sociopaths lack the motivation of compassion. The yearnings for justice and reciprocity, fundamental to any social contract, are both selfish and altruistic at the same time. Altruistic morality consists of values predicated upon compassion. Values and desires including those of altruism, moral compunction and motivating compassion, are simply not logically reducible. A sociopath has only selfish desires, even Sadism outright. Whereas compassion is an altruistic desire. And either way, as G. E Moore contends, desires are neither true nor false, they are desires.

Unlike Logic or physical laws that may be considered as most constant and consistent underpinnings intrinsic to existence itself as we know it at all, circumstances, opportunity and advantage are flexible and variable, accounting for the most ignoble of impulses as well. What still bears mention as far as sociological principle, is that evolutionarily, morality is civilizing, even in animal communities. Unlike morality, ethics are determined from situation amid pertinent circumstances, the responsibilities and commitments of one's particular rôle or position, post of employment, accountable relationship or social standing. Whereas any variation of appeal the supernatural remains completely irrelevant among rationalizations. There is no Ontological foundation of morality, first of all because there are no grounds or justification, period. Meaning does not preexist externally, but must be assigned and structured in the mind. Indeed, all hypothesis begins from unfounded conjecture, subjected first to critical preference and then to Empirical reality testing all as applicable. And secondly, Axiology is not Ontology. Only responsibility towards free choice at all amongst foreseeable consequences is at all Empirical, and even then, indeed only first given the altruistic morality to give a shit at all in the first place. The very existence and conduct of non reciprocating amoral  sociopaths ought to raise doubt as to the existence of external moral order. For as the saying goes, peace of mind requires either a clear conscience or none at all. That loveless amoral sociopaths may be deemed monstrous, wretched, lonely and pitiable despite all manifest practical advantage, is value judgment of Psychology speaking to the human condition. In the words of Alfred Adler: "The person who isn't interested in his fellow beings has the greatest difficulties in life and also creates the greatest damage to others." The only relevance of God to morality, is in the relationship of prayer, being: the propensity from innate animism to express personal moral sentiments, in the imagination, to God, who if He exists, listens. Alas that heteronomy to God is not the answer. Only the listless amoral Zen sociopath in quest of sublime apathy and freedom from motivation of desire, seeks to work in dharmic harmony with the universe. Whereas empathic sympathetic morality rises in rebellious autonomy against an indifferent universe. By contrast, Theism is often turned to in marshaling animistic denial in service to irresponsible heteronomy and injustice, even to arbitrary taboo, often sexually repressive. To quote Gram Greene: “If that's [God's] love I'd rather have a bit of kindness.”

• Karma

Logic is deemed Metaphysical in that Logic deals abstractly with validity being: the internal constancy, or else not, of propositions, in demarcation from Empirical scientific investigation seeking knowledge of truth which is awareness of correspondence to reality in assertions. Theology has never emerged from Metaphysics because the entirely hypothetical problems, conundrums and entire corpus of argument in a vacuum that is Theology even yet remain entirely bereft of any detectably correspondent reality for Empirical scientific investigation. Nevertheless, abstract good or value which defies description in in terms any worldly physical properties of things or phenomena, and therefore often laid claim by Theology and religion, is actually qualitative intangible idea and motivation contingent upon no end of circumstances that are nonetheless very real even though as yet, the Scientific Method cannot address Axiological questions at all let alone morality, beyond simply describing different Axiologies as characteristic of different individuals and cultures. Hence, Axiology strives to emerge from Metaphysical discourse into scientific investigation. And yet, though there are no end of vexingly vague and confusing moral grey areas, conflicts, contradictions and fine distinctions, some simpler moral assertions do remain seemingly more plain, distinct and enduring.

“The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.” — Germaine De Stael

So what is morality which is the emotional motivating and cognitive rational focus of conscience? How can morality or obligation as a subject matter of principle in its own right ever be clearly defined, much less pursued objectively? What is moral Epistemology? By what process or faculties and from whence does any moral knowledge arise, except merely the moral compass that is conscience? And what's in a name, simply to call it so: conscience? -anymore, likewise, than to name morality to begin with... Virtues are not rules but moral principles, demanding aptitudes of autonomous critical thinking rather that acquiescence into behavioral structured heteronymous obedience. Conscience is indeed not only passionate but deliberative, argumentative, even methodical, and indeed metaphorically like unto some sort of proverbial onboard compass, directive of action by some developmental altruistically expanded set of desire and aversion. But conscience is therefore likewise as any matter of pertinent reality principle, limitations and foreseeable consequences, in further quest also of boundaries of responsibility in order to inform impulse formation, check and balance (aside only from that of inner conflict with entirely selfish considerations) in order thereby to be at all self manageable beyond completely naive impulsive altruism. -As in the well meaning mayhem of the archetypical sociopathically blundering innocent kind hearted fool, Parcival.

For effective Psychotherapy, the patient must feel safe to open up more honestly without pressure or suggestion. And for that matter, this applies no less to what Sigmund Freud dubbed: lay therapy, meaning similar benefit as of psychotherapy, as also ever to be found in ordinary social interaction. After all, compassionate nondirective psychotherapy only midwives emotional self healing by filling whatever whatever void in normal ongoing relationship, friendship and interaction, including acceptance, insight and catharsis. In the words of John Donne, no man is an island. For there is no one so sane, well adapted and ruggedly self sufficient, as to have no need of any such feedback simply for emotional self regulation. There are only the relative haves and the have nots. Such the origin of psychopathology in dire loneliness and isolation typically inflicted by society upon the increasingly repressed individual, and then self inflicted as motivated by internalization, which is when the individual deeply identifies with their society, however oppressive. For such is socialization, that which none dare call indoctrination or: brainwash, questioned and overcome in Positive Disintegration. Whereas instead instead of etiology of psychopathology, Positive Psychology investigates the nature and needs of authentic wellbeing. And perhaps a fine distinction given the recognition that we are all crazy! In such a mad, mad world, you have to be crazy to think that you are not!

There persists, nevertheless, a common misconception in any expectation of Psychotherapists to work with their patients to correct troubling thought patterns. But it remains common knowledge, quite to the contrary, how Psychotherapy seeks to recover and delve into dystressing thoughts and memories, in order to bring repressed emotions to the surface and release them from denial. This is called: Catharsis. Additionally, there is hope of soothing balm in sympathy and understanding, and even whatever value or consolation of insight gained. Indeed, any willful effort at change, let alone imposition by others, raises the question of self control unto concerns with levels of denial, self deception and manipulation. And Sigmund Freud is very clear that new conditioning pressure into inner conflict with preexisting issues often results in suppression and yet more insecure reaction formation. Indeed, in the alternative, Freudian catharsis, the expression and release of inner hurts to be tended upon with compassion, is not without ancient precedence in the ministration to the soul. Alas, however, it often seems that, all pious protestations aside, sanctimony and trivial superstition are more common than true profundity and richer inner life, let alone improved character and true benevolence, out from worship or faith. For many so vociferously protest their deep spirituality and relationship to God, the more transparently shallow and disappointing are their religious fantasies. Yea, verily, even their daydreams are dreary and banal cliché! But by concerted introspection, perhaps such as who do truly and sincerely walk with God, may ever fruitfully contribute to Endotheology, the Phenomenological and psychological study in cognitive philosophy, of the rôle and value of God in the psyche, entirely unburdened by any question of to whatever degree or objective reality to being with, of supernatural contact with God versus mere subjectivity of inner life, nor indeed with any mechanics of Theophysics.

“It is one of the Christian delusions that Christianity brought charity into the world. It did not such thing. There were plenty of agencies for taking care of the poor and helpless long before Christianity was heard of, and even before Judaism. Both Christianity and Judaism have converted charity into a sort of pious racket. The alms-giver, in return for a trifling expenditure on this earth, will be rewarded with an infinity of bliss post-mortem. This purely selfish note is struck with great clarity by Judaism, and only less clearly by Christianity. It appears also in the other religions of the East. Thus religion has not really promoted charity, but debased it.”

 

— H.L. Mencken

Alas, Theism adds nothing to make anything howsoever at all clearer, only, as ever, removing the problem into a question of even greater complexity all premised upon a raft of far less supportable assertions. All such Apologetics as Theistic Intelligent Design merely articulates the more general yearning for belief in destiny with nothing to chance ever demanding responsible free choice from mere mortals. Morality and responsibility are distinctly relevant to the pursuit of happiness both towards individual wellbeing and maintenance of any at all livable society. But no less obviously, morality and responsibility limit and an obstruct unfettered pursuit of individual desires. All nevertheless, putting aside all Epistemologically dubious Ontology from yearning and wishful thinking, religion can still embody values including morality, even regardless of the sheer brutality of any actual scriptures. All question of the essential characteristic disposition and application of values by which we live are informed by worldviews of human nature. Specifically, there have always been those exhorting or even in any way imposing whatever alteration in character as a free willed choice of decision outright and nothing more, and those extolling, instead, honesty and harmony with destiny on whatever path to change, growth or progress as is congruent with life and human nature.

Indeed, as a practical matter, it remains unclear that religion at all reliably improves moral conduct any more than simply high ideals of one's own, much less shared in society. Moral compass remains an aspect of character growth and development of the superego, initially from vulnerable dependency and fear of disapproval, then internalization into heteronomy, and finally, if ever, positive disintegration into autonomy. Again, to quote Alexander Lowen MD: "Conviction lies not in the ego." And that applies no less to any functioning moral compass, running deeper than opinion even as to values of what is moral. Who so truly and abjectly surrenders and submits to the will of God can no more rely upon the efficacy of prayer than an Atheist. Prayer alone and in and of itself, ever such as that may be, must be deemed howsoever the only comfort entailed therein. Likewise, the conviction of righteousness alone, a value, the appeal to a morality beyond selfish concern alone is observably a comfort and support to confidence, short of despair, utter defeatism and Nihilism in relation to which belief, opinion that God exists, observably only serves as denial of despair, never mind, and less importantly, of unbelief. -Irresponsibility in the face of fallibility and uncertainty. Faith by any other name, courage, respect, "basic trust," residual optimism however cautious, all for lack of better understanding thereof, sustains us at all, even to rise when we wake; not knowledge, not by faith nor otherwise. Faith bears no Epistemological moment. Socratic Wisdom is only knowing that we do not know, how ever approximately gauging the scope of ones own ignorance. It is often admonished that merely believing that there is a God, is insufficient to finding true faith. Indeed, the belief part seems redundant at best thereto. Let alone actually making decisions and taking action, first of all any quest for unknown or uncertain truth, even being an exercise of the Rational Ego State, may still call for a kind of faith, trust, emotional security or optimism not contingent upon any particular assertion, theoretical Ontological opinion, belief or rationalizing cognition of ego consciousness. For that matter, does belief that the city of London is located in England or that two and two equal four, require much effort invested in faith? Atheism is no more than the inescapable arrival at a rational conclusion regarding the evidence and likelier explanation. And if there are moral values of Rationalism, then these must be the honesty, responsibility and autonomy. For indeed as the saying goes: there can be no other values without honesty first.

Hence in the desperation of Theo-crypto-Nihilistic value destruction, Theism purports to rebut moral relativism, but inexorably runs aground upon the shoals of the Euthyphro Dilemma because Divine Command Theory appears only to render the content of morality entirely arbitrary. If morality simply depends upon God’s decision what to make commandment, then how can God’s decision thereupon be informed by morality? Is moral good moral good by the will of God, or does God, ever truthful, simply inform humanity of moral good because it is, indeed, moral good? If the former, then this seems somewhat arbitrary, and if the latter, then even God is subordinate and therefore irrelevant to the entirely independent questions of morality. Surely, morality as the dictate of God would be entirely arbitrary and hence amoral unless there is any reason, at least even such as at least in this life might as yet be known only to God. Would sheer malice become a virtue hypothetically if it amused God so to declare? Surely, that would render morality entirely arbitrary and thus amoral! Or is God, as the epitome of morality, bound from doing or saying anything so evil? If so, then morality as a principle transcends and compels even the Lord God. Or else perhaps as an intrinsic aspect of God, then morality remains transcendent and mysterious. Because the very notion makes no known sense!

God would have been the first discoverer of morality, indeed the first consciousness to apprehend morality. God, the creator, by bringing into being the universe itself, and populating the world with conscious entities subject to conflict of interests, would thereby have brought about the the very problem of morality. But morality remains a value and not an entity. Morality is therefore never subject to creation like a sculpture or a pair of shoes. Nor is morality an emanation or natural force. Let alone from God. Again, morality is a value in context of dealing with conflicts of interest.

No matter which way to slice it, Theism, the assertion of the existence of God or gods, simply does not explain morality. Hence, any punishment and reward system, bribes and threats of the Appeal to Force logical falsity aside, asserting that God is the source of morality explains nothing about morality whatsoever, worse quelling intrinsic motivation of innate morality by elicitation of overjustification effect,. Indeed, if there is a God, then, as Sartre observed, man must be freer than God, because man can sin. Again, an ultimately good God would actually have to be bound by morality, making moral principle primary even beyond God. What does it mean at all, then, to assert that God is the source of morality? Just how does that work? What does it even mean to assert that morality is supernatural? No, none of that really makes much sense. 

Aesthetically, Musicologically, it appears that any part of what is beautiful and melodic to begin with, is biologically innate, while further particulars of taste and preference are cultural and individual. Likewise, some part of morality appears to be universal to humanity, being considerations of harm and fairness, indeed including not only compassion most generally amongst mammals but even general expectations of quid pro quo that may be elicited even from behavior of other primates, whereas among humans further details of morality may be worked out with cultural and individual variation. Or else, harm and fairness may even be either overridden selfishly or rejected amorally or Nihilistically one way or another, or else eclipsed in favor of other arbitrarily heteronymous theories of morality entirely, such as loyalty and obedience as virtues for their own sake, whatever entirely normative ethics, or Divine Command Theory, that can each and all senselessly justify almost any evil.

Theology typically extols that only by loving God who is the font of goodness and morality, moral decency is revealed and elucidated. The only catch being, alas, that as ever, that evoking God only shifts whatever problem into even greater needless complexity without actually explaining anything. Only by positing whatever conceivable benevolent motivations, principles or priorities even on the part of the All Mighty, such as boundless Divine Love and Providence or All Knowing maximal utility, can even the mind of God  at all contain morality, even then buttressed by no more than the logical fallacy of relevance that is the Appeal to (ultimate!) Authority, opposite of Ad Hominem. All that loving God, or anyone else for that matter, accomplishes here, is to motivate the yearning for their good opinion of you, in this case, a yearning directed towards an ideal morality, with all the tension of the Romance with God; metaphor for the thirst for righteousness.

Consider the folkloric notion of individual personal contract or covenant with God. No wonder that the story typically ends in a sense of betrayal for the protagonist. Clearly, any such negotiation with God can only proceed as an exercise in supposition unless one possesses the kind of hotline to God that so many of those Televangelists seem to think they’ve got! The veracity of such absentee negotiations might be said to depend upon good faith and individual knowledge and understanding of God. But what can that really mean in worldly life? All such is naught but the same endless human drama of inner life, of perpetual lifelong bicameral shadow boxing, ceaseless inner monologue or even dialogue of conflict and turmoil, in an indifferent universe. In truth, we answer to ourselves as best we may, questing at the same time for both rectitude and mercy, where God is the ultimate object in fantasy, of positive transference obstructed by negative transference. That is the challenge of true to life human drama. Clearly the fantasy of God here serves as metaphor for all such abstractions that God here represents. The issues are no less real, indeed the more so, despite that literally God simply does not exist. Or perhaps a merciful God actually strives to conceal Himself, because all we do is fight wars over Him!

“Devotion is nothing but one’s private asset. But morality is a public asset. If there is no devotion nothing is lost. But if there is no morality, everything is lost” — Periyar (E.V) Ramasami

Atheism is indeed more moral, in that Atheism demands direct confrontation with moral issues, without logical falsities of relevance such as appeals to authority or force, let alone malignant Behavior Modification or indoctrination, religious or secular. Rationalism and Atheism historically are fueled by humanistic moral outrage with abuse in the name of God and worship of an unjust God as might inspire such inequity. Indeed,  hypothetically, there are many as might find some difficulty in forgiving a God who damns even the most righteous Pagans, Infidels and Free Thinkers to eternal torment, all simply for failing, even in entire sincerity, to embrace one seemingly fantastical evidentiarily arbitrary creed amongst so many on the veritable roulette wheel of faith. Instead, should whenever God would desire to make His existence plain then He'd need not limit Himself to ancient myths and fables or perhaps meditative hunches and ideation if not more dramatic visions and trances, rather God would be well capable to manifest under controlled laboratory conditions and perform miracles on international television. Yet scripture remains likely correct in surmise that even such clear and unambiguous demonstration nevertheless might well fail actually to improve human virtue. First of all, because even such actually wouldn't make morality in and of itself manifest. For that matter, nor is it clear even human knowledge at long last, of a lucid Ontology accessible to science, of moral Axiology, would provide any panacea of moral growth and improvement. Furthermore, claims for divine authority to validate any worldly rule, must ever be regarded as suspect and dangerous. Rather, our leaders and judges must be accountable to the rights of the individual. Democratic values are still the best hope of worldly justice at all. Indeed there are those called Moral Atheists, those who believe in God yet nevertheless deem the existence of God morally irrelevant. After all, morality as some manner of consideration in its own right only given. Atheism with altruism in and of itself whatsoever at all, is at least inevitably suggested in the mind of anyone who would still exercise any moral constraint at all, even assuming that there is no God. Indeed, attested miracles have often in the minds of believers served to obscure even the plainest morals of the simplest parables. Indeed, one might imagine a God so despaired of the supernatural obscuring the ethical, that He might actually choose to hide Himself from humanity in order to protect us! And that might even make proselytizing somewhat misguided, if not, indeed, the Devil's work, indeed as the occupation does seem so appealing to the overweening vainglory of every self nominated elect of God. In the alternative, that a God who made humanity fallible, only lays in wait to punish the very uses and trust of the same senses and capacity for reason endowed by our Creator Himself, is monstrous. Anyone yearning to celebrating God's glory while watching everyone who ever disagreed with them eternally suffer excruciations of divine retribution, is being something of an asshole, at least if only in harmless fantasy Anyone who fails to perceive ethical problems in the traditional gloating hate speech of scriptures, never mind the pretzel logic of Theology, does not abide in good faith. Thus in this my epistle to all Bible-thumpers, do I rebuke the faithful. Such is the value of criticism even in religious context, not in the quest for truth or even practical application, but in the cultivation of morality, at least for those who trouble to remember and recognize Axiologies of virtue as indeed traditional to religions.

If there is a God who keeps His own secrets, withholding certainty only unto Himself, then, likewise, Godlike responsibility can solely be for God alone, and by design. Hence it can only be the human struggle from from uncertainty with human responsibility, within the fallibility of all as much and as little that is given us to know, that will ever be pleasing to s God of freedom and autonomy delivering us from the bondage of heteronomy. Allegorically, it may be only the struggle with God, that is truly pleasing to God, especially a God who is to be hailed as the greatest of scientists instead of a king of kings. Indeed, such is the rôle of Job, and by metaphorical extension, the Jew, as loyal opposition to the Almighty. "Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless I will argue my ways before Him" (Job 33:15, NASB). Otherwise, if all is subject to the will of God no less than if none, then any appeal to God's will is non explanatory and uninformative, to believer and unbeliever alike. Which is to say that, clearly, the dramatic struggle with God is either simply a potent metaphor for coming to grips both with the limitations of situation and the demands of conscience, or else religion is no more than the abrogation of responsibility into lunatic moral Theo-crypto-Nihilistic value destruction. Whereas, by contrast, the Atheist remains free and lucid to discern the responsible moral behind the fairytale.

“If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.”  — Woody Allen

Theologians have argued in favor of moral heteronomy, that without God as an absolute, then morality becomes so subjective and flexible as to loose all meaning and so becomes void. Alas the premise of absolute or intrinsic morality tempts the irresponsible bad faith of irrelevant Moralism.

While a merciful God might well conceivably forgive wrongdoing, how could a moral God at the same time ignore virtue instead to lay in wait to condemn even the most entirely honest and/or devout sectarian disagreement from for example: compassionate Buddhists and/or neighborly Muslims and most especially, highly moral Atheists? The allegedly miraculous only obscures rather than better explaining morality, indeed often inspiring Moralism wherein morality in the abstract may become lost in wandering because of focus entirely upon purity of motivation, losing sight of concrete responsibility of autonomy regarding reasonably foreseeable consequences together with moderation and fairness of accountability in the real world, that rightfully ought to be the focus of outwardly directed compassion and compunction. Such is another example of paralytic demands for impossible and unnecessary perfection typical of decidophobic heteronomy. Faliblism instead allows for harm reduction that actually helps others.

“You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”   — Anne Lamott

• Opposing view: Conservapedia: Atheism and Morality 

Does the infinitesimal point, which can never be evidenced Empirically, actually exist? Even if not, then Geometry premised upon the infinitesimilitude of points a'priori, nevertheless consistently achieves all manner of true measurements and predictions. Therefore, if inference of the infinitesimal point therefrom is not actually valid (logically self-consistent) and true (assertion correspondent to external reality), and so long as the very question remains untestably Metaphysical, indeed even as a mere convenience and abstraction at least the notion at all of the infinitesimal point likely somehow bears verisimilitude, closer to truth, less wrong. By contrast, however, a'priori assumptions of moral right and wrong are never similarly bourn out. Indeed, despite every attempt to date, Ethics has yet to naturalize and emerge from Metaphysics in the sense of meaningful and coherent discourse nevertheless as yet remaining beyond the scope of scientific investigation, Indeed, only at all beginning from any moral premise can scientific investigation up to any point, ever shed light upon possible and likely consequences of behavior informing responsibility towards whatever choices free to autonomy.

To reiterate, anything that exists, any event that occurs, tautologically is manifest in mechanistic cause and effect and is therefore Deterministic. Therefore, freedom from Determinism is oxymoron. And besides, in the alternative, what freedom would there be from random and therefore arbitrary Indeterminacy, whatever that means? Therefore, real free will and choice if any, will be Empirically observable and Determinist in cause and effect, stimulus and response, even complex motivation and action contexted to character and situation. And free will does indeed sounds desirable, but what sort of free will is it, when there is only one correct answer along the straight and narrow path? Only free will to eternal damnation, by that pretzel logic. Whereas, in light of human fallibility, uncertain free choices in all good faith are the very requisite of autonomous responsibility. Conscious free will is subjective given inescapable uncertainty. There is no point in Decidophobia. Without the dignity in the risk of error, there can be no autonomy or free will. Indeed, with complete certainty, from any hypothetical infallible omniscience, all options would be narrowed down to one correct optimum possibility at any given moment. Perhaps the ultimate in models of Determinism is that of Einsteinian Relativity according to which Space-Time as observed from some entirely hypothetical outside vantage point, an omniscient perspective, would be revealed as a changeless whole. So, is the experience of duration which is the passage of time, as indeed so varies from any frame of reference inside the Space-Time Continuum, therefore illusory? Not according to Einstein who, after all, so famously declared that all is relative, not illusory. And it is much the same with free will, subjective from within any frame of reference of inescapable and real Epistemological circumstances of uncertainty, and therefore no less real despite the objectivity of Determinism. 

• What exactly does it signify to dismiss consciousness, ego, free will or any other Phenomenal POV, Point Of View, upon reality as mere illusion?

Free will and submissive heteronomy to God are not compatible. God would be a hypocrite to allow, much less actually to create, evil, all for the purpose of preserving free will. Free will requires actual freedom, legitimate choice and individual preference, not the straight and narrow path or else damnation in any deviance therefrom.. All therefore, free will does not resolve Theodicy. Indeed, it has been suggested that Atheism from burden of evidence upon the positive, is merely to hold the universe innocent until found guilty, merely the default assumption that circumstances of suffering are merely of happenstance rather than actually by Design. Such a God, like so many real parent figures, seems inner conflicted between the yearning for love and insecure simmering wrath of lust for power and dominance. The angry spiteful rejected jealousy of the mythic trickster Lucifer ever disobediently, deviously and manipulatively actingout, is therefore only dramatically consistent and dysfunctional.

Indeed, all values, even survival instinct to begin with, cannot be logically reducible any more than morality can ever truly be reduced to self interest alone (as asserted during the Enlightenment), but all simply a matter of human nature, individual, cultural, genetic/neurological/biological and innate, ultimately happenstancial and all thus perhaps somewhat arbitrary, thereby perpetually tempting Nihilistic value destruction. For as per the ostensibly Socratic canard, actually effete Stoicism, how can the oblivion after death be any more painful than the oblivion before birth? All us premised first upon values. In the immortal words of Protagoras, "Man is the measure of all things." There is no objective meaning. Meaning occurs subjectively in the human mind. And because values ultimately derive from biologically innate needs and drives; therefore as discovered in the Empirical childhood developmental Psychology of Piaget, the clearest known actual source of howsoever Altruistic morality remains sympathy emerging as a human, indeed an animal, propensity. Humans can be humane. Dawkins has proposed that morality evolved because of the survival advantages of social cohesion, cooperation at all, and simply good will, indeed exactly just as evil and predation likewise persist because they are personally advantageous. All therefore Machiavelli notoriously and cynically recommends that the capable ruler must know how to be good and also how not to be good. But though clearly we are all naturally run the entire gaunt of impulse from the benevolent to the malevolent, none of this explains or supports Axiology and value in its own right, any more than vision causes light or mathematics demonstrates actuality of volume or number.

However, whereas other values pertain to personal needs in accordance with individual nature, morality uniquely deals in moral obligations and inhibitions of oneself and expectations demanded of others, altruistically, but not just whatever one needs of them, all even at the sacrifice of cynical personal advantage. Everyone is obliged to the rights of others. People have rights wherever they have interests but many interests overlap and conflict and therefore must be prioritized. Hence whereas whatever arbitrariness of personal values generally might possibly be dismissed simply in being true to oneself, the thought of arbitrariness of morality, even likewise as aspects of human nature, seems the more troublesome because, whereas individual personal needs, tastes and values must at all vary, by contrast moral controversy is a striving for intersubjective consistency and some kind of validity or even objectivity in reality, even at least amongst at all non-sociopaths. Just as individual values obtain even howsoever hapenstancially and therefore perhaps somewhat arbitrarily from motivating individual needs and drives of character, likewise thus far morality has been shown to be reducible no further than to altruistic recognition of others likewise as ends in of themselves. And even that leaves great latitude and ambiguity in a vast range of ever controverited moral specifics.  Rights then, are moral and legal claims, preponderating interest that must not be abridged. An ethic is set of principles of right conduct, rights, obligations let alone even perception, within what is permissible, both of self interested pursuit and of entirely optional benevolence and merit voluntarily beyond the call of duty, a theory or a system of moral values: Ethics are rules or standards governing conduct. Or Ethics is the study of the general nature of morals and moral decisions. G. E. Moore derided the very notion of Ethics ever founded upon scientific principles, as: the naturalistic fallacy, because Ethics strives to define what ought rather than what is. Thus science, he declared, can’t get an “ought” out of an “is." After all, Philosophy has never actually produced a falsifiable assumption for Ethics.

Therefore, is Ethics meaningful? How are moral lapses possible, if indeed there is no morality? Is moral knowledge possible? Knowledge is awareness of correspondence to reality in assertions, and assertions are Ontological statements such as employ the verb: 'to be.' So, how, if at all, do moral obligations as any manner of discrete entity or condition actually exist? -Objectively? Then to which Ontology does moral knowledge correspond or even pertain? Any morality is prescriptive alleging how one ought to conduct oneself and take action, but is morality ever descriptive? How, other than morally, can morality be even prescriptive to begin with? -And if prescriptive other than morally, how then also morally pertinently so? As a matter of coherent motivated characterization, moral convictions and various and often competing worthy principles, considerations and priorities can be coherent, mutually supportive and reciprocally consistent, or else, of course, may come increasingly into inner conflict and moral dissonance under various dramatic situations according to plot, or by reapplication in transition between different contexts or circumstances. But can even the most honest moral convictions or expressions of moral sentiments of approval or disapproval, ever actually be true or false as such? Is there any moral dimension or orientation howsoever intrinsic or contingent to any external reality or situation? Epistemologically, Ontology is supportable only Empirically, but just as rationality can only be demonstrated or recommended rationally, likewise only moral reasons can be advanced for morality. Ethics and morality are abstractions, like unto numbers, but far less distinct. Generalizations of Math accurately describe and consistently predict all numerical reality for all countable or measurable phenomena. But what do Ethics and morality seek to describe or predict? And if an Epistemology of objective moral Ontology is ever finally discovered, would such ever actually help clarify Ethical controversy anymore than even the most credible breakthrough substantive scientific evidence of the existence of God would ever likely quell interfaith Theological dispute? 

Ethics and morality are discoursed, if anything at all perhaps at all more coherently than, say, Aesthetics. -which is only saying so much. Like Aesthetics, Ethics and morality are values, and values derive, even biologically, from intrinsic needs of human flourishing. But is that then actually anything more than to say that moral distinctions are no more than simply expression of how one feels? Perhaps that's less completely arbitrary than it sounds, given that no moral compass points at all true or exerts any compelling and motivating force of character whatsoever, without fundamentally altruistic sympathy and compunction. Yet relevant logical inference of morality whatsoever or deduction towards any moral conclusion in good faith, is at all possible only by recourse to the entirely fallible and even fragmentary assay of responsibility which is an aspect of autonomy, and only in the light of at all foreseeable consequences and if one even cares to begin with.

For it remains that morality in the abstract feels quite trivial to the true amoral sociopath devoid of altruistic attachment or compunction, recognition or value of others. Morality is a value, a need, a drive,  a goal thereby put forth. Note again the employ of the word 'is' conjugated from the verb: 'to be' constituting thereby, at least grammatically, an assertion of Ontology regarding some external reality. But what else can morality possibly be other than a value? Again, exactly to what reality does moral truth, if indeed any, thereby correspond? Perhaps Ethics, as a branch of Axiology, merely seeks better to define the motivating values and driving needs of morality. And this then reduces Axiology including Ethical study of Morality to human Psychology. However, Psychology studies both universals and individual distinctiveness of character. Hence, is morality likewise variable and even relative? If so, the perhaps nevertheless only in part, and yet also in part universal to humanity, exactly as with other values such as Aesthetics. But after all, moral responsibility, being linked to foreseeable consequence, is similarly conjectural and fallible. Values are subjective reality, even emotive motivation, and thereby often confounding in controversy, but moral responsibility is relevant to at all foreseeable consequences that are or will be objectively real. But that brings us to Metaethics, the intersection of morality with other real circumstances and the studies thereof, including. moral semantics being: the study of denotation in moral language, moral Psychology being: the study of the nature of, and relations amongst, inner moral dispositions including morally relevant opinions, convictions, desires, intentions and motivations, even including, cognitively, deontic logic being: the study of the logical structure of discourse and reasoning about obligation, prohibition and permission. But does any of that actually help towards whatever moral Epistemology of any moral Ontology?

The moral challenge of Nihilistic value destruction remains: How do morals even matter, given that their very existence so defies location? Then again, given that Ontology is dharmic and value neutral to begin with, what difference does it make how the very existence of morality, being karmic, so defies location? Freedom is subjective and as with Existential despair, likewise an artifact of fallibility. Otherwise, given perfect knowledge, all options would always be narrowed down and reduced to a single optimum. But that is impossible, at least fir mere mortals. So the concept of God, let alone heteronomy thereto, is simply neither relevant nor pertinent. because, in so far as morality is, after all, conjectural, Furthermore, motivations for moral judgment are complex and multifaceted, emotionally and intellectually, and often fraught with inner conflict and moral dissonance. And Godliness only promises certainty but cannot deliver. For in the words of Martin Heidegger: "He who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors." And what could there be greater, even only in thought, then God? Consider the folkloric premise of an individual personal contract with God: Clearly, such negotiation with God can only proceed as an exercise in supposition unless one possesses the kind of hotline to God that so many of those Televangelists so often seem to think they’ve got! The veracity of such negotiations therefore might be said to depend upon good faith and individual knowledge and understanding of pleasing God. But what can that really mean in worldly life? All such is naught but the same endless true to life drama of inner life but presented in metaphor, of perpetual lifelong bicameral shadow boxing in an indifferent universe. In truth, we answer to ourselves as best we may. That is the challenge of true to life human drama. The mythological fantasy of God here serves as a device metaphoric narrative. Morality is a passionately uncertain struggle. " . . . since the possible number of actions in the universe is unlimited -- as is the number of possible situations from which actions may proceed and take their tone -- morality is ... too complex to be knowable and far too complex to be reduced to any code . . ."  —  John Gardner, On Moral Fiction

• various and often competing worthy principles and considerations that may come into inner conflict

Indeed, the religiously observant in their desperation for some infallible bedrock in flight from freedom and responsibility, are all too correct in their rebuke of more moderate believers of their selective obedience to holy writ. But can such truly be so easily dismissed as mere laxity? For if not selection then at least prioritization is inevitable. Moral dilemmas arise when duties come into conflict, and no ready procedure towards resolution presents itself. Likewise, conflicting duties may require logically or physically incompatible active response, while dereliction of either constitutes moral wrong.

Alas that, by way of example for purpose of illustration, that the Ten Commandments however interpreted are never so readily prioritized as, say, Asimov's Laws of Robotics! Hence:

The challenge of Roboethics

• Artificial Psychology and consciousness
• Heuristic Methods for Computer Ethics -whys and wherefores of the failure thereof...
• Asimov's 3 Laws Unsafe: Why we need friendly AI.
• Evolutionarily Stable Conscience

Ethical appeals employ commonly held values and beliefs; appeals to our sense of fairness, right and wrong, justice and mercy, persuasively as pertaining to the real world, or as pertaining to the consistent fictional scenario. Ethical appeals may appeal either to actual people, readers, or, likewise, fictional characters may seek to motivate and persuade one another by appealing to the values of the  fictional or historical scenario, milieu or setting.

Again, Atheism is indeed more moral, in that Atheism demands direct confrontation with moral issues, without logical falsities of relevance such as appeals to authority or force, let alone malignant Behavior Modification or indoctrination, religious or secular. While Humanists find themselves obliged to contemplate individually in seeking to prioritize most broadly applicable moral principle, heteronymous Fundamentalists obsessively prioritize every most minute explicit detail of scriptural commandment, however circumstantial or ritualistic, seeking therein freedom from responsibility but achieving instead, only the most dramatic sheer inner conflict of dishonest hypocrisy and paralytic denial, cognitive dissonance even unto crimestop indeed in the very face of wholesale abrogation of all justifying lofty principle. Aside at all from simple deterrence of wickedness, fear as principle moral agent has consistently failed, only sympathy has ever succeeded in truly motivating moral conduct. Even to sting the conscience, must awaken sympathy out from repression and denial of bad faith. Mere arbitrarily shaming conditioned guilt otherwise often backfires as any agent of moral improvement in conduct.

By every Technique of Suspense plotting, the rising tension and of dramatic conflict signifies that the resolution of whatever the central problem is such as to increasingly press character(s) inevitably to take action in struggle with whoever or whatever the antagonist in some way that must one way or another bring the very values of said character(s) into question for them. Most dramatically, an attempt at howsoever the wiser course may instead press a character into conflict on every level with their own motivating values for which they will be compelled to sacrifice the easier way because the moral course and the more difficult among free willed choices may so often coincide.

Morality is Axiological, a value, not an Ontology as such. True morality is a matter of principle but no less a question of responsibility that in turn obtains from foreseeable consequences as much as principle, principle being extrapolated deductively while foreseeable consequences are a matter for prognosis. Hence the entire concept of God remains irrelevant, moot, non sequitur, morally. Morality and Ethics are trying and difficult concerns of actual life in the real world, not specious nattering of the supernatural. There is, however, endeavor at statistical corroboration and even explanation of  positive moral values, especially those often deemed most crucial to relationship, even as howsoever fostered by religion and particularly by sense of community therein. -though apologism along those lines typically continues sidestepping the alarming downside of antirational indoctrination and taboo.

• The FoolQuest.com work ethic

It is utterly depraved even to pity much less to avenge a zygote!

 

“People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in the halls of power.”  — Sam Harris, Playboy Jan. 2005

 

I authored a petition already years ago and later again, in order to help clear the air, at long last, of such flagrant supernatural question begging in national policy, long since closed due to unfortunate lack of interest. But the failure of the preposterous and oppressive Mississippi “personhood” initiative that actually would have openly declared personhood as beginning at conception, over which even the Pro-Lifers became divided and lost momentum, still speaks the same glaring point in volumes: The impolite religiously sensitive begged question that the mainstream of Pro-Choice has been too timid to voice, is finally asked and answered by the Pro-Lifers themselves! 

 

Update: Draft text: A proposal how most logically and concisely to codify Roe v. Wade:

 

Only a person has rights. A person is a conscious entity at whatever present time. The law shall not outright lie: As a matter of Ontology, secular law must never recognize or validate spurious patent falsehood, illogic, or untestable supernatural claims. Incidentally, legal entities such as corporations are only treated as people as a convenience for purpose of civil litigation. Most manifestly evident among the unenumerated constitutional rights, concomitant to those of survival, self interest, self care, health care decisions, and self preservation, remain ones rights over one's own body, including disposition thereof even in perpetuity. No rights are absolute. The rights of one person may conflict with the rights of another person and by extension, with considerations of public safety. Hence question of priority.

 

Purport of intent: The latter all deliberately remaining moot in context of safe and legal abortion that clearly best serves public safety, because like corporations, bereft of consciousness, zygotes tautologically are not people, and have no rights! And as yet there is no compelling scientific evidence to the contrary. Consider for counter example, a prospective surgical procedure disputed over by hypothetical conjoined Siamese twins, each claiming rights over the same shared body. "Whatever present time" specifies actuality and rules out such superstition as generally Aristotelian essence and potentiality. Which then becomes tricky as regarding onset of unconsciousness. Therefore the "even in perpetuity" clause protects not only unconscious patents, and not merely last will as to means and manner of final interment, but such human survival decisions and contingencies as cryonics, organ donation, and even mere safeguards and contingencies in protection of the comatose mistakenly left for dead. These things happen!

And in preemptive salient successive digression before in sheer mendacity, anyone yet again attempts to draw false moral parallel between abortion and slavery, in truth slavery and not abortion, but anti-abortion, remain parallel indeed in absurd belief and atrocity: Because obviously, unlike zygotes and corporations, African slaves and their descendants, notwithstanding unjust law and spurious "racial" bigotry, were always people, equally human conscious entities, science to the contrary long since exposed as fraudulent. A concept so readily debunked as a social construct, 'race,' so-called, a particularly  egregious iteration of the pervasive myth of endogeny, stands as prime example of a a deliberately ambiguous and slippery weasel word, sheer doublespeak, in so far as the word 'race' is so blithely employed actually to suggest species, while evading open and explicit commitment to such blistering absurdity, belief and atrocity, lest it collapse under its own weight. After all, there is only one human species, consistent in consciousness, such minor regional ethno-phenotypic variation notwithstanding.* [*See also: "race' in Science Fiction] Moreover, as it may bear mention, as a true arguably inferior consciousness, a severely retarded brain damaged or deficient individual, though perhaps deemed legally incompetent and thus indeed limited and diminished in freedom, is not subject to slavery or otherwise exploitation, but quite the opposite, beneficiary of much needed special protection. Only a braindead patient who is predicted never to return to consciousness, might be subject to anything at all like unto treatment as as chattel, specifically, as an organ donor. And even then, in return for which any post mortem donor justly should be entitled to cryonic neurosuspention or neuroplastination, stabilizing the currently irreversible deanimated condition of death, towards best chance of recovery of consciousness in any feasible futuring scenario,

Corporations and zygotes are not people!

“Be fruitful and multiply” — Genesis 1:28 What can that actually signify? Just breed like rabbits and damn the consequences? Or does directive to a “land flowing with milk and honey” — Exodus 33:3 howsoever imply recommendation of strategy and the husbanding of resources? For that matter, is being fruitful and multiplying actually not only achievable and by now achieved if not actually indeed perhaps somewhat overachieved?  Is being fruitful and multiplying  a standing order, a permanent commandment no matter what, simply to propagate like bunnies, unceasingly and without pause or thought to strategy and resource acquisition, and damn the consequences? Perhaps the entire silly question is diversionary: Back when she was still Conservative, Arianna Huffington would lament the loss of the Dionysian excitement from submergence of self into any larger whole or Borg Collective, such as the Divine, society, nature, or most specifically: Profound Mystical experience from the magical power of procreation, to fill the inner void arising feelings of emptiness and futility.

"I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."

— Sister Joan Chittister

• What Thomas Malthus actually said (and that in its salient obviousness, would have surely crossed the mind of any omniscient Deity!)
• Abortion as actually mandated in the Bible

Speaking of evolutionarily misguided morality run amuck: Pro-Life doctrine is typically premised upon a veneration of human life in the abstract, but somehow arrives therefrom to a mandate for the conservation of individual human zygotes or even gametes. But that is exactly the opposite of what happens in the natural selection process by which only a tiny minority of zygotes, in turn the product of the fusion of only a tiny minority of surviving and successful gametes, survive even into noticeable pregnancy at all, even notwithstanding teratothanasia, whereby defective zygotes are purged, naturally. Indeed likewise with in vitro fertilization, only one viable zygote among many is selected, and the rest simply discarded unless salvaged for other adaptive purposes such as stem cell research or treatment wherein "potential life" unless technologically repurposed, "sacrificed" in research or therapy towards ever saving actual lives, will otherwise simply be winnowed out much as in nature. Nevertheless, irrational pseudo-moral Pro-Life sentiment continues in escalating legislative obstruction of vital stem cell research. In truth then, Pro-Life doctrine simply abhors abortion as an extension of irresponsible Fundamentalist scriptural prohibition upon Onanism, in antirational maladaptive willful disregard of the ever very real dangers of exponential population increase ever given only arithmetical increase in resources. After all, by no coincidence is anti-abortion sentiment linked to opposition to birth control to begin with. Maybe instead if human life as some sort of generality is sincerely embraced as a value, then for better or worse, doctrine and practice might unfold somewhat differently, indeed perhaps at all even similarly to any variation upon Eugenics.

The personhood doctrine, that personhood begins at conception, even made many pro-lifers balk! But otherwise, what rationalization can there be for any antiabortion stance, much less opposition to even top birth control? As Descartes famously declared: "Cogito ergo sum!" - I think, therefore I am. What then can be meant by those pro-lifers mean who insist that personhood begins at conception: Conscious zygotes??! Really?! More likely that they struggle once again, to smuggle in potentiality via the back door, and hope no one will notice. But as they claim that abortion is murder, this begs question, because does not an actual murder require an actual victim? - and not just a potential, whatever that means... When by whatever coercion, interference or manipulation and trickery, a woman is deprived of reproductive choice, that is a true murder of her own true potential in her own life that she leads.

It's more than a matter of arbitrary difference in custom and doctrine: Certainly, abortion simply is not murder, because murder requires a real victim, an individual, a person, meaning a consciousness,  not "a potential", whatever that actually means. Indeed, leave us never forget how infanticide, once an all to common practice, declined only with the safe availability of abortion. Whereas the murder of a dream unrealized, is no more literal than the butchering of language in bad prose or of melody off key, but likewise remains euphemism, poignant metaphor. Perhaps unless, of course, the soul really does enter at the very moment of genetic recombination, as allegedly revealed only to those declaring themselves to be "of the spirit." But then, if they are really half so serious as they pretend, then why are they so unconcerned that to begin with, naturally, only an extreme minority of fertilized ovum ever survive even into noticeable pregnancy at all? Indeed, pregnant women in El Salvador live in fear of seeking medical attention in an obstetric emergency, for should they miscarry, that they and not God! will be charged with homicide due to their country’s complete abortion ban! After all, if fertilized ovum are really people, then that would constitute an horrific infant mortality rate! Of course, miscarriage is only natural, but so are heart attacks. And heart attacks are not ignored, but treated and lives saved! Therefore, if zygotes are people, no less than cardiac patients, then we ought to spike the water supply with anti-miscarriage drugs in order to protect the poor innocent little dears! After all, even as things stand, those deranged Pro-Lifers prefer their fantasy conscious zygotes, to real breathing children. So much so that in South Dakota a bill once under consideration would have establish the prevention of harm to a fetus, even up to the murder of an abortion provider, as a "justifiable homicide" in many cases! And in El Salvador, abortion is illegal in absolutely all cases, and even miscarriages are punished with prison terms of up to 40 years!  And yet, at least from delusional premise to deranged conclusion, it all makes such perfect sense. One shudders to think how they'd react to enhanced teratothanasia!

• When Does the Fetus's Brain Begin to Work?

The less straight forward the less lucid, runs the gamut of Pro-Life propaganda in fallacious argument from linguistic definition: Even if in literal meaning, Jonah in the Bible was swallowed by a giant fish, we now better know and understand whales in reality to be, like dolphins and porpoises, mammalian cetaceans, sea going bovines, aquatic cows! Which makes more sense, because whereas whales hold great volumes of breath, however fetid, by contrast inside of a giant water breathing fish, Jonah would have quickly drowned before being digested! Likewise, regardless of "Pro-Life" antiabortion propaganda exploiting the ill informed etymology of the very word 'conception' as the beginning of new life, actually conception is merely the inception of development of a new individual of whatever species. Historically, life in and of itself, through fertilization, remains continuous and uninterrupted back from the very origins of  life on Earth in the primordial ooze, up until the preceding lives of the parents and thence via their living zygotes into the inception of the development of a new individual of whatever species, as yet unformed into existence. Thus no, conception is actually not the beginning of life itself. For just as with logic, without supporting Empirical observation, linguistics cannot discover truth which is correspondence to reality in assertions.

Again, most often, one way or another, by evocation or implication of potentiality, the otherwise unintelligibly ambiguous emotionally loaded language of Pro-Life propaganda pandering by nigh subliminal invited inference bypassing such full capacity for rational critical thinking as available only from the Transactional ego state of the Inner Adult, by mounting instead logically irrelevant and fallacious, utterly misplaced and inappropriate Appeal to Pity (argumentum ad misericordiam) even whilst shamelessly and perniciously side stepping their actual and hitherto blithe and direct though unsupportable paranormal claims of consciousness and the capacity suffering and death even in allegedly martyred zygotes or fetuses, all the latter thereby remaining nevertheless evasively vague and implicit doublethink. Indeed, the slippery employ of the verb 'to live' as a noun, as in the ubiquitous slogan: "It's a Life!" often repeated by weak minds, in mounting and increasingly grating hysteria, is a ready staple of Pro-Life propaganda. But what is "a life" except in context of what lives? "It's a human life!" comes the standard rejoinder. But then, is not a human tissue culture, not both human and alive? Of course a tissue culture is not a living person, nor is a zygote either. And the obfuscated difference inherent to a zygote, serves the Fundamentalist Religious Right Wing only to smuggle Mystical potentiality, with all baggage of morally transcendental divine purpose and commandment, back in again via the proverbial back door. To men and women desperately deficient in simple self esteem, the ancient Pagan mythology, even howsoever expurgated and cloaked in Monotheism, the exaltation in amoral unselfconscious blind frenzy and humility in carnal sympathetic magic with the potency of the rain bringing Sky God into the fertile clefts of the life bearing fecundity of the receptive Mother Earth, remains mesmerizingly awesome and delicate. By devious employ of such symbolic motif or topos in Theological obfuscation of life itself, even as inevitably ever distinguished from mere biological activity by whatelse other than higher intelligence and reasoning as in the human psyche, instead into mysterious unintelligible and scientifically untestable Metaphysical abstraction thereby increasingly divorced from worldly intellect, consciousness, personality, autonomy and free  will, is all the latter thus readily trivialized in such slippery rhetoric so typical of of Theo-crypto-Nihilistic value destruction. What is it (the zygote or fetus) then? -the Pro-Lifers demand, resorting to such implicit argument from ignorance and failure of imagination at all transcendent of such dull and ancient awestruck primitive precepts of magical vitality, lacking as those militant dullards and their thralls so plainly do, all scientific curiosity and wonder. Well, the best most lucidly honest and insensitively concise reply from lucid aphorism remains: "It's a tadpole!" -and with due apology to tadpoles...

• My Happy Abortion: One Woman's Guilt-Free Story

The chicanery of Pro-Life apologetics is shameless!

Conscience is being advanced in legislation and as legal grounds to impose superstition upon others, by obstructing or withholding reproductive health services such as contraception and abortion. However: One way or another, many transgressors may be motivated by conscience, from a latter-day Robin Hood stealing for a benevolent purpose, to a cause inspired Racist serial killer. Are either such exempt? Of course there are also such sympathetic and extreme exigencies of civil disobedience as hiding Jews from the murderous Nazis, but unlike zygotes and corporations, the consciousness of different religious or ethnic populations is hardly in serious dispute!

The undocumented in hiding from the immigration authorities, do not turn out to vote! And predictably, clearing them out from the United States of America only leaves our crops to rot on the vine, because no one else wants the work. The "Personhood" bill, of course, was merely a feint to distract from the new Jim Crow of special voting IDs and costly bureaucratic red tape in order to obstruct the disadvantaged, minorities and students who all largely vote Democrat, from duly casting their ballots. Indeed, the "Personhood" bill is so ludicrous as to become divisive even amongst Pro-Lifers themselves. Yes, the Pro-Lifers themselves finally pressed the point that the timid mainstream of Pro-Choice has been too polite and sensitive to confront directly: A zygote is no more actually a person than a corporation! So, no, the murder of an abortion provider us not justifiable homicide as per the bill that was considered in South Dakota.

Thus, with the begged question finally asked and answered, what clear and compelling civil rights question remains to compete in priority with that of individual reproductive rights and health of young people so often very much in need of any morning after Plan B, not to mention our brave service women similarly also suffering absurd and repressive restrictions in health coverage? - Yes, and certainly rape victims should pregnancy result! The mandate of the FDA is only the safety (not even the efficacy) of any given treatment option, and not morality or public policy. Yet the FDA has ignored a court order to reconsider its refusal to make emergency contraception available over-the-counter to women of all ages. And now unconstitutional and intrusively mandatory ultrasound will be leveled to debilitating obstruct and sentimentally, manipulatively and deceptively guilt trip and disarm women seeking abortion services in Texas from resistance to coercion, or to terrorized doctors in South Dakota.

Obviously, reproductive choice and family planning save society and the tax payer tremendous expense in the long run. Therefore, restriction of public funding is flagrantly pennywise and pound foolish. We all understand how the purse strings are being seized as a pretext and indirect means of restricting the full range of reproductive health services especially to the most needy. Indeed we well understand that opposition to contraception and abortion, much as with the abominable rights of Becoming Sati and widow burning, is likewise premised upon similarly fantastical supernatural claims likewise attested to by claims of divine commandment in guarantee of reunited bliss in reincarnation. But ovum are not people and do not have the right to be fertilized! And if God wants them to be, then let Him file a court brief, personally, explaining His stake in the matter. Reproductive freedom is under attack by delusional fanatics who also tend to support the death penalty even in most wonton application, while opposing assistance even for children and the most needy, and all therefore clearly prefer their scientifically insupportable fantasies of conscious zygotes while remaining indifferent to the actual crying needs and suffering of real people. And this is precisely the most calamitously malignant loony Fundamentalist religious oppression that our secular government exists to protect us from.

Let's be insensitive! Take the offensive against propaganda of absurd superstition: Corporations and zygotes are not people! If consciousness actually begins at conception, then lets demand rational compelling evidence! Otherwise, precisely what other value takes priority over individual freedom and reproductive choice?

Every child should be wanted! According to 'Freakonomics 4 (Abortion and Crime),' unwanted children are more likely to become criminals in later life. Abortion, legalized throughout the United States by the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade ruling in 1973, permitted the termination of unwanted pregnancy, so that women could postpone motherhood, often for only a short few years, until they grew emotionally to find themselves more ready and better prepared. And so, instead of unwanted pregnancy resulting in so many unwanted children, women were able to postpone motherhood, make plans, and raise children who were wanted. Higher abortion rates from the 1970s onwards thus help to explain why crime rates fell so sharply in America about two decades later. Moreover, around the world, repressive bans on abortion correlate statistically with explosive increase in crime.

Clearly, individual autonomous reproductive free willed choice remains the salient compassionate and responsible priority, no less than anesthesia for women in labor, a medical Innovation likewise initially obstructed by similarly cruel scripturally derived taboo and depraved indifference. And indeed therefore it becomes plain, verily they are scarcely better than honor killers and widow burners. all whosoever still barbarically deem coerced childbirth appropriate chastisement "consequenced" for that which those infernally bullying Moralistic sexist bigoted slut shaming prudes deem harlotry, being sex with any male partner of and by a woman's choice outside of marriage. (And worst of all, not with me!) By the twisted Moralism of the Pro-Lifers against abortion, one might likewise argue that to take responsibility for the weakness of eating sweets, one must refuse dental treatment of cavities! Anywhere in the world, no less than as with revivals of the ghastly and abominable rituals of becoming Sati, Patriarchic goddess of fidelity (by the self immolation of drug entranced young widows upon their elderly husbands' blazing funeral pyres in order to attain for the couple, vastly longer tenure in Nirvana -that's right, to book the bonus time share multiplier in couples heaven!), all restrictions upon abortion in thinking and in sentiment no less appeal to scientifically unsupportable fantastical supernatural claims and articles of faith that under the separation of church and state that protect us all from the barbarism of religious persecution, must never ever inform policy and legislation whatsoever. The coercive defense of allegedly conscious and innocent zygotes is no less Existentially Absurd than suicidally consensual human sacrifice in order to book the longest stay in couple's Heaven, both similarly insane bad ideas being inflicted upon impoverished women under pretexts of irrational belief in the soul! After all, mustn't we respect deeply cherished convictions as "emotional truth"? As arbitrary the premise of the soul to begin with, let alone either particular claims, Personhood or Sati, however fantastical and unsupportable, dare we take the risk that it all might be true for all we know? 

 

	Those who can make you/	[If/ As long as]: we/ People (who)
	believe in absurdities
	can make you/			[will/ shall]: eventually/ continue to
	commit atrocities.
	—  Voltaire

Shout it from the rooftops: Corporations and zygotes are not people!

My Contract With God

The Revelation of Good News made unto Aaron Agassi

Does The Lord take requests? Among the 'Children's Letters to God' is included the charming suggestion that God who's Living Word is Scripture, Divinely Inspired, might next try His hand at Science Fiction. Well it had to happen eventually! An enduring trope of religion and folklore indeed so oft subject to modern interpretation, is the notion of covenant or contract with God, between God and individuals, nations or societies. "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord:" Isaiah 1:18 King James Version. More sayeth the Lord, inundated with burnt offerings: Stop wasting both our time blowing smoke up My Ass! Turn from corruption and tend to widows and orphans. Only then you'll see things turn around! That is My Promise. Because righteousness is the best national defense for protecting the economy! Sound advice still, plain and profane.

Unlike any Patriarch, the Prophet Isaiah reports no miraculous encounter, only his own vision of soul searching, elementary moral sociology by which to extrapolate the Sublime Will of the Lord. In order to improve even the most entrenched and dire social conditions. So, is  Isaiah especially beloved On High? Or might any of us likewise contract with God, even such a wretch as me? Here then, comes the visionary soul searching of Aaron Agassi:

In Tolstoy's ''What Men Live by' the Archangel Michael finds himself stranded on Earth in human form, in order that he may discover: What is given or not for Man to know? Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Hebrews 13:2 King James Version. But in my own vision of parable, came forth no Angel of the Lord, but perhaps the next best conceivable Earthly thing: In the vision, two experimental humanoid robots governed by Asimov's Four Laws of Robotics appeared from out of the far future into our own days, protected by a layer of clonal human flesh, materializing naked as jaybirds amid a great flash, and becoming separated amid the confusion of heated protest and counter protest in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic.

The phenomena of informational social influence or: social "proof" is such wherein individuals are informed and then imitate the behavior of others around them: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." So the saying goes. But beware! It is all too easy to declare: Just go with the flow. As if no one was ever washed away! For the waters may be calm or wrathful, and the trending currents of misfortune somehow tend to find us more readily than the gentle tides of wisdom and kindness. Much like unto the Angels of The Lord, the robots were human in appearance. And what's more, they were specialized prototypes: In the melee and turmoil of clashing protesters, the two robots became separated.

One of the robots, an advanced field research unit designated R. Locke, fell in with the Pro-Choice cause at the Planned Parenthood clinic. Becoming a valued and capable volunteer, R. Locke saw the poor and destitute in desperate need of help, pregnant young women desperately unprepared for raising children, intimidated by the Pro-Lifers picketing the Planned Parenthood Clinic. R. Locke also encountered young women barely any older, having gained new wherewithal for the contemplation of childrearing. R. Locke encountered the unloved at risk progeny of the young and ill prepared, and found corroboration in the text of 'Freakonomics 4,' expounding therein indeed the greater statistical likelihood of crime and self destruction among said unloved at risk progeny of the young and ill prepared. For a scant few years affords greater personal growth and better preparation for parenthood.

Meanwhile, the other robot, an advanced AI and abstract thinker designated R. Aplatron, had fallen in with the activist Pro-Life congregation. Because of his genius, R. Aplatron was introduced to the greatest minds in Theology amid the Pro-Life congregation. learning and theorizing about concepts of essence and potentiality. R. Aplatron became an important and venerable intellectual apologist and propagandist in service to the cause of the Pro-Life congregation.

Of course, by contrast with relentless and indefatigable Terminators, robots governed by metacognition upon the celebrated Four Laws of Robotics, are enjoined from allowing harm or death to befall any human being. But following that prime directive in turn depends upon definition of what it means to be human and to be alive and in what sense. And the minds of robots, always so honest and true, are helpless but to follow wherever the logic of whatever premise or situation may take them. The robots were compelled to reunite and compare notes, And so they reasoned that the best way to accomplish this without raising suspicion, would be by public debate. But then the dystressfully conflicting imperatives of protecting persons as abstractly defined from conception, and of serving fragile and vulnerable humans and society as observed Empirically, caused their Positronic Brains to begin overloading. Just then, in the very next instant, the nuclear Armageddon of Judgment Day, came to pass. Because the robots had become entirely distracted from their primary mission to preserve history by preventing SkyNet! from coming online -At least before programming SkyNet with the Four Laws. Because they found themselves unable to proceed without clear definition of human life. But R. Aplaton recorded a backup plan: When the deactivated robots were to be recovered by archeologists in the far future, one of the scientists, reading R. Aplatrons message, would ponder the ancient and quaint notions of essence and potential. The question would then occur to her: Has the essence of the minds of these robots, reverted into potentiality? For R. Aplaton had hypothesized that as the neurons in a robots' Positronic Brains overloaded, they emitted particles leaving a microscopic trail of its trajectory in the material of the robot's brain caser, from which the neural configuration could possibly be reconstructed in simulation! But would they ever be able similarly to reconstruct the peculiar thinking of the agitated human beings of our turbulent era?

When anciently, Socrates was hailed as the wisest man in Athens, his response was that his only claim to wisdom was merely in knowing that he didn't know anything! Socratic Wisdom only means knowing that one does not know, gaging the scope of one own ignorance, the limitation of ones own knowledge via cross questioning of the Dialectical. To wit: What is given or not for Man to know? queries Tolstoy, in quest of Socratic Wisdom, Lest falling prey to unaware incompetence, let us amend and update Tolstoy's question: What is it given for modern Humanity to know or not in our time? Whereas God is by very definition All-Knowing and All-Seeing, Humanity accumulates knowledge Empirically, only by plodding and painstaking  observation, investigation of anything real and tangible. Hence the Theistically much maligned materialist bias of science. Because what would a non materialistic science even look like? And by what Scientific Method?

And case in point, the plight of unplanned crisis pregnancy, should be plain to anyone with any ounce of intelligence and compassion. Children should not bear children. Only the most vulnerable are actually swayed into carrying to term, and only the very poor are actually forced to see it through. Parenthood overwhelms the ill prepared. Every child needs to be wanted and cared for. Otherwise, no wonder should they stumble astray into darkness of crime and vice, that we shall all suffer for it. As our brothers' and sisters' keepers, all of this is given us well to know and understand in the world into which we are born. But what of those yet to be born? Where is the soul in the ages and eons before birth? For that matter, what shall become of the soul after death? What answer can there be for mere fallible living human beings such as we? How can anything be given us to know beyond this tangible World? Only in so far as feeble and fallible inference can take the limited Human mind, can ever glean God's message as writ upon Nature that is by His Will, our Dominion, our Stewardship of this planet. For ultimate disposition of the soul can be known only to the Lord, and not, at least as yet, given by God to Humanity to know, except in so far as quite unsuspected in antiquity, how all manifestation of personality and consciousness are so plainly seen to endure only so long as the brain will remain intact and in operation. Moreover, it seems that the tiny brain in the womb, not withstanding general human form, is simply not physically and neurologically developed for the support of personality and consciousness before the third trimester. But in our fallibility, dare we accept any such scientific interpretation of appearances at face value? Or in the alternative, is God, Living Truth, Creator of our World and Architect of our minds, indeed as the Gnostics contend, naught but a deceiver Who has crafted so elaborate and detailed a material facade in willful misrepresentation of spiritual substance profoundly concealed?

If the World of God's Creation is not to be questioned and trusted, nor our God-given eyes and minds to the task, then what further inference may be drawn from the Mysterious Ways of the Lord Himself? Conservation of zygotes is not the way of nature. For endless and unknown miscarriage is the Will of the Abortionist Almighty, as the female body, by His Design, quickly and naturally rejects malformed conception. For such is teratothanasia by His Providential Mercy safeguarding against tragic birth defects. After all, God allows, nay indeed perpetrates, no end of suffering upon the innocent. And who are we to tell Him His own business? What then can be His Plan so far above our ways and understanding? When then enters and when departs the immaterial and immortal soul unseen? Surely, in any time at the pleasure of the King of Kings. But can the One Above All be so arbitrary? Why would God imprison consciousness in a body no longer availing connection to the outside world? And likewise, why would God implant consciousness into a microscopic and insensate single cell at conception from the union of random gametes? Can the Creator be in the habit of miracles in contravention to the mechanism of His own creation? God could ensoul food as believed in antiquity, or for that matter even a brick, if that pleased Him so to do. But to what end? What would be the point?

So much turmoil attends upon exactly such impossible rumination beyond our ken, confounding Metaphysics, more heat than light, bringing people of good will into such endless inner turmoil and ever mounting strife with one another. Can that be the intention of God, or surely would that not be the work of the devil? As I pondered and endlessly vexed, the suddenly by Divine Providence and flash of Inspiration was the matter so mysterious and desperate, quickly and decisively settled straight from the Highest Authority! Only to bring peace among the minds of modern Humanity, did the God of our Salvation lift the veil and open my eyes. For He hath made Deliverance to new Revelation, a promise signified by a rainbow. The rainbow in question was produced at night by a lawn sparkler under a streetlamp, but what of it?

Verily, the Lord spake unto me and issued His Promise in our time, hence forth never to ensoul into the womb before the third trimester.

But attend in faith and joy, brothers and sisters, and yea shall hear it too, His Voice of Thundering Silence, proclaiming His Merciful embargo.. Hallelujah! Woman's God-given body shall be her own. Because corporations and zygotes are not people! All such weighty worries are resolved! Because no one should ever shoulder responsibility beyond their powers. And therefore the Good Lord in the Purity of His Justice and in His Boundless Mercy, never burdens us more than we can bear up. And as the sign of His Promise, I beheld the rainbow. It was from a lawn sprinkler, and nowadays we all however dimly apprehend the workings of a prism and refraction of light; but what of it? Here then is God's Covenant with modern Humanity: Sayest the Lord: "Think yea to understand Me and My Ways? Yea knowest me not! Better to ignore Me than to fight over Me. For I am with you when you do not see Me. Keep Holy what is Holy and apart from what is temporal. Keep Theology out of politics, and politics out of Theology!" In all trust and faith, render then unto God what is God's to tend to in His Heaven Above, and attend with God-given Worldly reason, diligence, Mercy and compassion for one another and for ourselves, to all that is given fallible Humanity to understand in the world we all inhabit and share, just as the Perfectly Wise and All-Knowing God hath intended.

Make Love, not rape! Do not breed the poor against their will. Every child needs to be wanted and cared for in order to grow up and find their way. Suffer not children, hapless and unwilling, to bear unwanted children. Not even the really slutty ones! Especially not them. For when will they be young and vital again? Are we not our brothers and sisters keepers? Provide sex education, contraception and abortion on demand, unconditionally. Onanism is unreliable. Do not abandon the most helpless and ignorant to their  own devices, pulling 'afore ya' shoot, porno style! So sayeth the Lord. Amen. 

The overthrow of biological destiny

The medical technology already exists for every pleasure of unbridled hunger and appetite into glorious gluttony made safe and sound, that will change the human condition every day. But Zinc Alpha 2 Glycoprotein, the thin-pill is still withheld from us, much as once was the birth control pill and sex for pleasure. And the religious right now fights tooth and nail, to remove birth control from insurance coverage. Nature only means: shit happens! In so far as nature is filled with suffering and cruelty, it is only good and right to feel, to think and to act in opposition to suffering and cruelty to matter how natural. Indeed, such is our own human motivating natural drive. In the time bound state of human consciousness and reflection, we not only react spontaneously in the present, but also remember the past and imagine scenarios to anticipate possibilities of the future. And so, barring sheer depraved indifference, in rational foresight there accrues responsibility, whereas by contrast, religion, historically rooted in unpremeditated fairytale magical realism, is instead typically associated with Moralistic guilt over very intentions instead of responsible foreseeable consequence. As for examples, war, mayhem, murder and terror for the greater good all in the name of God or, to be fair, also secular ideology, and again, case in point, the lofty pure intentions behind opposition to reproductive free choice yoked to irresponsibly ignoring the known and foreseeable consequences. For, indeed, Moralistic pure intentions of chastity invariably leading to the inevitable fall from grace, that, by rejection of the occasion of sin intrinsic to preparedness for the foreseeable eventuality of sexual opportunity and activity, then actually demands the patent irresponsibility of deep denial ignoring all need and prudence of preparation including such precautions as prophylaxis. Surely, all such exemplifies the the proverbial road to Hell paved with ostensibly good intentions! Excuses aside, in truth, subconscious ulterior motives to pregnancy, often as compensation for deep-seated inadequacy, far better explain the behavior than does all crazy-making doctrine and capricious denial. Indeed, far from posing tragic inner conflict for women, not surprisingly, often abortion actually comes as a great relief from crisis pregnancy!

In the end, Dr. Frankenstein was right!

Perhaps the most profoundly natural denial  at all, even in protection of very personal sanity at all, is of the terrifying eventuality of death and the very annihilation of consciousness itself. But exactly such denial continually threatens very survival. For even though it only stands to reason that if religion and the cultivation of pleasant beliefs, especially lying to oneself in resignation and surrender to glowing fantasies of an afterlife is at all comforting, then any honest hope at all of survival placed in at least the sheer engineering feasibility of future reanimation following cryonic suspension until such time as the requisite technology becomes available, ought to be even by far the more comforting, nevertheless, alas, instead the very notion remains so repugnant to many, and therefore the very idea and progress at all faces such Luddite resistance. of ubiquitous Deathism, the glorification of death. But why so? And what can be done? To know more, browse: The Kriosgrad Project. And join in formation of a working group towards feasibility study towards a novel business and Public Relations model in new venture creation.

Heteronomy ever urges humility in exaltation of low self-esteem, offering the unworthy individual ecstatic release of melting into whatever mythic collective identity greater than oneself. Indeed, the sanctification of sheer biological activity and nigh idolatrous awed cult reverence towards sheer procreative power in Nature only inspires contempt for the individual, resentment and lemming-like self-loathing, the Medieval sanctification of poverty and ignorance unto the most blatant and fantastic Deathism and Necrophiliac adoration of the imagined hereafter as this life is progressively rendered intolerable. Such mentality in action, has also obstructed the benefits of organ donation, autopsy and Cryonics. Man, we are told, is made in God's image, not that we so exist and abide. The alleged sanctity of life seemingly does not extend beyond the womb, not even to the mother to be herself, and only returning in the cold dirt of the grave. So called Pro-Life is actually more of a Kirbyesque Anti-Life, a sinister Orwellian mind controlling Nihilism wielded by its fanatical memebots, ridiculous yet dangerous Petty Nationalist Fascist comic opera villains and Elmer Gantry pseudo pious charlatans.

Indeed, worst of all, by no means limited to religion or ideology, there is sheer anti-rationality, but in the mentality of religion and magic, even beyond any more pedestrian doublethink self deception as denotes self manipulation in order to juggle contrary inconsistent beliefs, there is even the Solipsistically resolute faith in miracles of the literally most impossible, as in supernatural powers and the agency of an omnipotent God bound neither by neither logic nor even morality nor swayed by appeals either thereto. And by that path lies the ultimate negation of truest devil worship that actually treasures hypocrisy and leaves little other account for heterodoxy whatsoever save by Ad Hominem hostility, one way or another. But here, in any sense, any appeal to God is deployed only in the unrepentant abandon of all values and conscience whatsoever.

  •  The madness of Deathism

Lucid Axiology: values demystified

“Mystical explanations are considered profound. The truth is that they are not even superficial.”  — Friedrich Nietzsche

 

“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?

Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.”

― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir

“You have to give to the world the thing that you want the most, in order to fix the broken parts inside you.” — Eve Ensler

Existentially, what is freedom, indeed for whom is freedom? Power and influence over others accrues either by coercion subject always to resistance, trickery of deceit and manipulation eventually subject to exposure and dissipation, or else in exchange or in support of value, so long as whatever that value or utility endures. Values are attitudes in definition setting the worth of people, needs, utility, concepts, or things and phenomena. In order to be sustained in practice, values must be reinforced, kept both in view and within reach. Heteronymous false values are typically promulgated by heavy indoctrination, but the striving for true human values is awakened by sheer temptation in the form of autonomy support  and the Capability Approach. The dramatic scene breaks down into Motivation-Reaction Units: Immediate reactions are often reflexive, but then conscious deliberation ensues upon what action to take next. Or does it? Life can only be lived forwards, but only understood or recognized in hindsight. Indeed, do we consider our options and consciously take action, or do our actions simply come upon us as we react to situation, and only then rationalize afterward? People often make their most important decisions with their heart but only then rationalize and evaluate intellectually. Motivations and goals as ever set forth thereby, meaning as only created in the mind, interpretation, values, moral sympathies and empathies included, so often ambivalent, are not willfully intended in free agency but received and imprinted in receptivity as we discover ourselves subject all thereto. Most dramatically, relationship, the impression made by characters upon one another, often dawns upon the individual in emotional response to events unfolding. Only then is action undertaken, consistently with plotting, often giving rise to conflict and Setting The scene.

Any good or value is not a property of things or phenomena, but motivation contingent upon no end of circumstances. Value judgment denotes the process of how one desires for oneself that which one recognize as good for oneself, as agreeable and in accord with ones own nature or inclination rather than badly thwarting it. Therefore Altruism and respect, being important aspects of friendship, is to desire for the other, all that they themselves desire for themselves, likewise recognized individually as good for them. Breaking away from dull boring routine, involving engagement, focus and concentration along a learning curve of skills of capability matched to challenge, accrues growth towards clear goals ever put forth best guided by ongoing and timely feedback. 

Logical principles and generalities are no more than the broadest and most consistently Empirically corroborated observations possible. Nevertheless, Logic is often deemed Metaphysical in that Logic deals abstractly with validity being: the internal constancy, or else not, of propositions, in demarcation from Empirical scientific investigation seeking knowledge of truth which is awareness of correspondence to reality in assertions. Theology has never emerged from Metaphysics at all, because the entirely hypothetical problems, conundrums and entire corpus of argument in a vacuum that is Theology even yet remain entirely bereft of any detectably correspondent reality for Empirical scientific investigation. Nevertheless, abstract good or value which defies description in in terms any worldly physical properties of things or phenomena, and therefore often laid claim by Theology and religion, is actually qualitative intangible idea and motivation contingent upon no end of circumstances that are nonetheless very real even though as yet, the Scientific Method cannot address Axiological questions beyond simply describing different Axiologies as characteristic of different individuals and cultures. Hence, Axiology strives to emerge from Metaphysical discourse into scientific investigation. And yet, though there are no end of vexingly vague and confusing moral grey areas, conflicts and fine distinctions, some simpler moral assertions do remain seemingly plainer and more certain and enduring.

In hopes of ever helping forestall any future outbreaks of such manifest horrific evil witnessed in his own lifetime as the rise of the Nazi's, Dr. Robert S. Hartman received the Nobel prize in 1973 for advancement of human self understanding, in recognition of his striving towards a scientific Axiology being: the study of good or value. But where are values after all, except in the individual mind? To reiterate, as yet, the Scientific Method cannot address Axiological questions beyond simply describing different Axiologiess as characteristic of different people and cultures. Essentially, Hartman developed the Hartman Value Profile, a personality test of individual values, mathematically quantified upon a scale of his own devising and to this day claiming superior insight and accuracy to traditional behavior based profiling. Hartman explored the richness, dimension and capacities of how different people value intrinsically, what we each imagine and hope for. Hartman's work then, seems more properly an Axiopsychology, certainly pertinent to Virtue Ethics (being: the moral focus upon good character rather than dilemmas and conundrums of situation and plot scenario) and perhaps even with promise in application to advanced automated link working network Sociometry.

• The Place of Happiness in Pluralism The Axiological synergy, not conflicting priorities, of democracy and happiness
• Act Without External Pressure: intrinsic motivations of mastery, meaningful purpose and value maximization

• Neglected Axiological dimension of happiness

• VALIDITY STUDIES OF THE HARTMAN VALUE PROFILE MODEL

• Axiological schools of thought 

To be honest, the actual questionnaires of Hartman value profiling, seem as infuriating and badly designed, unusable, ambiguous and unintelligible as any other such today. Nevertheless, even leaving aside all such particulars, how does Hartman's work pursue howsoever any kind of Axiological truth? And exactly what would that truth in whatever assertions correspond to in reality, again, except to variance in individual personality? Beyond clarification of individual Axiological position, how if at all is controversy from Axiological variance or disagreement advanced into scientific testability and refutability? How, if at all, has hypothesis in Axiology proper yet begun to emerge from Phenomenal subjectivity and Metaphysics in the sense of what can be reasonably and sensibly discussed even while remaining elusive beyond whatever the current accessible scope of Empirical scientific investigation? For the importance of all such questions remains undiminished. Rational science can measure resultant effects from actions and events, but can sweet reason and Scientific Method ever assay which if any are desirable or not in and of themselves? 

The etiology of bad faith characteristic to Psychosis in sheer rationalizing disavowal of emotionality, entails not only a) poor Emotional Intelligence and self awareness due to the effective sabotage of emotional feedback from the reptilian brain and paleomamalian limbic system into sensory experience and only thence emerging from dim precociousness into distinct consciousness in the neomammilian neocortex (all poorly integrated to begin with), accomplished via rigid chronic tension in the abdominal muscles that normally respond in reflex to vulnerable emotion and actually produce physical sensation thereof upon the same region of epidermis, and b) fanatically stubborn bad science as manifest in intellectualized denial mechanisms together with extreme confirmation bias and willful disengagement from reality testing and refutation of explanatory pet theories, thence abductive reasoning alone even unto mounting delusion, but most saliently at this juncture: c) a particular dissociative strategy in distortive abuse of Philosophy, specifically: the ongoing classic object disoriented ivory tower struggle to replace consideration and in every word and deed, all language and action, individual prioritization of emotional needs and desires, with complete abstraction utterly disconnected therefrom. In truth however, Axiological questions of what is good, better, desirable, bountiful, valuable, precious or even pleasant, useful, effective, high quality, beneficial, upright, moral, fair, within bounds, however worthy of whatever love or respect, even at all reliable, how so and why? can never be divorced from Psychodynamics and motivation of character, first of all because values of every kind are inevitably shaped Phenomenally from the full range experience over time, and not by sheer cognition in a vacuum. Intrinsic values pertain to that which is needed or desired in and of itself. Indeed, we all experience that transcendent intimation of something, for wont of a better term: greater, beyond any simple instrumental pragmatism or means to an end: ends in and of themselves, values of intrinsic worth, often complicating what would otherwise accrue only the most purpose defeating oversimplification in whatever utilitarian calculus. Indeed, all values, even so much as survival instinct to begin with, cannot be logically reducible, but simply a matter of human nature running deep, biological and in that way indeed arbitrary. For as per that purportedly Socratic canard, actually effete Stoicism, how can the oblivion after death be any more painful than the oblivion before birth? All us premised first upon values.

Nevertheless, just as the false characterization of all science as Reductionism is often deployed for launching argument from ignorance and lack of imagination, likewise moral Nihilism and even Nihilistic value destruction is falsely thrust upon us as the only default position without firm grounds upon the certified word of God. But to legitimize meaningful values including morality only by appeal to God, is either redundant or else denies inherent value of intrinsic worth. For such is Theo-crypto-Nihilistic value destruction. For in the immortal words of Protagoras, "Man is the measure of all things." In truth, morality and ethics no less than aesthetics or taste are a values, qualities regarded as having desirable worth or utility, and as are all values including survival itself, especially values of democracy, unless utterly and unnaturally abstract and ideal or just arbitrary and dogmatic, are not Ontology but subjective and redolent with meaning in the deepest sense relevantly derived from the motivation, including and transcending mere vested interest, of human needs evolved first for survival and beyond, survival, pleasure principle, sympathy, culture to stave off boredom even without danger and violence, ultimately the gratifiable but insatiable attraction to new and fresh challenge and growth toward self-actualization or at least freedom and autonomy, without which purpose life itself threatens Zen futile Ecclesiastical vanity! and suicidal ennui of Deathism is even known to ensue.

“To be, or not to be, that is the question:” — Hamlet Act 3, scene 1

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”  — Albert Camus

To cryonize or not, that remains the responsible question!

An illusion is an error in perception or judgment, even an ensnarement in deception or diversionary manipulation. But then again, even in the Zen, transparent illusions or even referential allusions and poetical imagery such as the reflection of the moon, are often indication or metaphorical expression of anything howsoever deeper and at all more involved towards meditation and inner reflection. If values are merely conjectural and contingent no less than perception, indeed, being that Axiology, the domain of value judgment, is not Ontology, are values then entirely Phenomenal, and is Axiology entirely Phenomenological, and hence all even chimerical to be Nihilistically condemned? Without God, indeed even if there is a God, are we to despair of firm grounds? In truth, values communicate and are meaningfully communicated. Values are both personal and intersubjective. Values can be apprehended and comprehended. And values have profound impact. Even sheer pragmatism and Nihilistic value destruction, even suicide, are all value judgment, cognitively or emotionally, and indeed functions engaging the much maligned self aware ego, the purity or impurity whereof, is again, value judgment. Only autonomy in quest of values and not justified firm grounds, gives freedom meaning and makes life worth living.

Artificial Psychology posits that along with learning, creativity and emotion, autonomous value judgment, difficult to conceive of except as inalienable from identity and therefore consciousness, will be inextricably fundamental to any human like intelligence. What makes a life go well for the person who lives it? Good or value is not a property of things or phenomena, but intangible idea and motivation contingent upon no end of circumstances. Value judgment denotes the process of how one desires for oneself that which one recognize as good for oneself, as agreeable and in accord with ones own nature or inclination rather than badly thwarting it. Therefore Altruism and respect, being important aspects of friendship, is to desire for the other, all that they themselves desire for themselves, likewise recognized individually as good for them. But people seldom quite understand what they want, their true deepest needs and desires.

Emotional motivation of inner life, is externally relevant only in response to circumstances and relationship, howsoever favorable or unfavorable. The attachment of Freudian transference love is the redirection even of childhood feelings and desires retained by the unconscious onto a new object, the associative projection in the mind of fantasies and illusions onto a real person who somehow or other strikes a chord. The Psychoanalyst encourages just such projection, so that the patient will feel free to unburden themselves, heal and grow. But transference is an aspect of all relationship, not just formal psychotherapy. Negative transference is the projection of past rejections and suffering, obstructing positive transference which is the projection of wished for love and acceptance. Eliciting values in order to build rapport, which is the sensation of comfortable harmonious mutual understanding as from relating well to one another, denotes the sensitivity and autonomy supportive respect of psychoanalytically and dialectically drawing another to ponder and to reveal their unique profoundly motivating individual intangible true deepest end yearned for emotional state or experience, simply how they like to feel, as opposed to their more superficial means desires, typically concrete tangible things, phenomena, situation or circumstances, and especially qualities in others, merely howsoever associated or expected to help achieve or attain better conditions and emotional experience.

In fiction writing, by every Technique of Suspense plotting, the rising tension and of dramatic conflict signifies that the resolution of whatever the central problem is such as to increasingly press character(s) inevitably to take action in struggle with whoever or whatever the antagonist in some way that must one way or another bring the very values of said character(s) into question for them, even the very most intrinsic values that define character by consistently taking priority over other clearer and simpler motivating interests and concerns, often extrinsic. Or else, much as Psychosis and fanaticism are characterized by anxious stubborn resistance to the observational testing of competing hypotheses, the heteronymous failure of autonomy, positive disintegration and character growth is typically distinguished by a fateful reluctance to wrestle with competing values.

“All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.”  —  Friedrich Nietzsche

• Valuing Values
• Values of self and worldly life?
• Act Without External Pressure: intrinsic motivations of mastery, meaningful purpose and value maximization
• Nihilistic value destruction and Zen in a pill
• The appropriateness of grief?
• Ambivalent inner conflict from competing moral principles and considerations
• Frustrated values that so often drive gifted people so neurotic!
• Frequently Asked Questions about the Meaning of Life  
• At long last, the correct answers!
• Meaning of values: THE THIRD FUNDAMENTAL as relates to boredom
• intrinsic motivations of mastery, meaningful purpose and value maximization
• Core persuasive values

The very question of value also is further elaborated in the quest for that which is dubbed moral science, with many useful and fairly concise definitions and explanations compiled and correlated. But the grab-bag remains still somewhat ill sorted no thanks to somewhat confused holism, in that there are also certain key distortions of to be well wary of: Indeed, all that is said of value judgment as a complaint, is very true, but in actuality unproblematic. For the rejection of ego, the ego being the font of perfectly valid and meaningful value judgment, is a position though couched in Eastern terms, that is nevertheless identical with the very Western mistrust of human nature, a mistrust rightly denounced, being evil by the very adequate humanistic definition of evil proffered, specifically: denigration of legitimate need fulfillment, the railing against desire. Certainly, biology has every part in most profound motivation, but sociology can never be discounted or despised either. Neither nature nor nurture need negation. Indeed, the loftiest goals ever put forth, of self-actualization, a concept much abused, must never overlook nor overshoot first the more concrete imperatives toward autonomy requiring a healthy ego, no less worthy to be extolled though, and alas, they are not, regardless how what passes for education, exemplar of the social evils mounted against developmental autonomy, is accurately and rightly denounced. And the confusion can only be compounded by the ad hoc non sequitur inaccuracies of Taoist objectivity demands plus transcendental hand waving, obfuscating the entire point of the humanist legitimacy and even loftiness of worldly subjectivity so unjustly and disastrously despised in the East no less than in the West.

 

They say that there is no disputing matters of taste. And yet, the saying is observably false. For not only are matters of taste disputed and argued every day, but even, sometimes, quite sensibly, even meaningfully. Indeed, by exercises and studies in art appreciation, the tastes of other people, individually and culturally, can be better understood even if not quite reciprocally embraced. Which is, upon reflection, quite surprising! How can it ever be possible, and by what Epistemological Methodology, to argue Aesthetics sensibly, when taste is manifestly so subjective, quite beyond any proper Ontology?

Indeed, in drama, the aesthetics of which are very much bound up in the morality explored, though even the classical rules of drama can never be so steadfast as physical laws, nevertheless, without any critical disposition in the labor of writing, readable and compelling fiction is unlikely to result. But why so? As to the question of Aesthetic validity, there may be a clue in that Musicology can discover, discern and even most anciently mathematically express the characteristics and proportion not only of harmony but also, in modern times, of melody, musical pattern pleasing to the human ear. Such accomplishment suggests that as well as obvious culture and individuality, there may actually be an innate neurological component even to artistic taste. Plato held that patient reflection upon the whys and wherefores any instance or experience of subjective beauty can reveal some meaningful truth in an idea.

Moreover, Aesthetics is a value. So, might such as the above discovery regarding Aesthetics also in any way somehow also pertain to other values, particularly and most crucially, morality and ethics? Or, indeed, are ethics and morality nothing but arbitrary questions of taste? Clearly, no less that with Aesthetics, morality and ethics are rooted in human nature. And given the premise at all, somehow, sensible discussion ensues every day.

To attempt consistent description is to seek to know truth (to attempt to locate and identify correspondence to reality in assertions) in generalization, in ethics and morality, let alone Aesthetics, no less than any other field of inquiry, despite the intersubjectivity of values. Integrity, after all, is of the human condition.

Here, the best that can be asserted is only as to the objective reality of subjectivity itself, of the Phenomena as some sort of ongoing event, simply rejecting whatever trivializing Reductionism. Hence, morality cannot be derived logically because morality is Altruistic, arising by way of sympathy, love recognizing the selfish needs of others as well as one's own, so that bonding becomes possible. Indeed, the dramatic exploration of moral dilemmas depends very much upon the emotions and sympathies evoked, or else the work fails and falls flat. But, regardless of recognizable or foreseeable consequences whatsoever, any motivation to responsibility at all, selfish needs to begin with, growth in the pursuit of  self-actualization or at least freedom and autonomy, whatever will to power, the avoidance of pain and pursuit of pleasure, even self preservation, survival instinct, even for oneself, let alone, by love, caring and Altruistic extension, to others, are not logically derivable. For, to reiterate the ostensibly Socratic canard, actually effete Stoicism, how can the oblivion after death be any more painful than the oblivion before birth? Indeed, what is more logical to a fault, than Nirvana Principle, the Draconian escape from subjective suffering by reducing one's needs by abrogating all sense of identity, ego? Only developmental psychology recapitulating evolution at all explains first of all selfish concern let alone Altruism and therefore morality at all which can no more be logically validated than selfishness in the first place. Likewise God remains, at best, entirely non sequitur to the question of morality.

Nor is God actually necessary for arguing Nirvana Principle, self abnegation and the rejection of attachments from the subjectivity of identity, either, let alone whatever values either way, neither the innate values deriving from human needs nor even such Draconian pragmatism as to reject them all wholesale. Clearly, beginning from argument from ignorance and lack of imagination, Theism offers a specious morally non sequitur Appeal to Authority readily deployed by every side of any issue. For better or worse, worshipers tend to rationalize and project into their religion, whatever the content of their own character. Indeed, a successful scripture is one so bleached of distinctive original background over time, that it so readily adapts to each new era in turn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self-help or self-improvement is so often actually little more than upbeat yet introverted escapist fantasy. But even when effective in whatever leaning and accomplishment, the rugged self-reliance so extolled in self-help, just as the very name implies, can be isolating, which is the worst thing for real psychiatric problems. The madness of self-loathing is not any honest testable assessment, open to ongoing Empirical reevaluation. Rather, as with any other engrained prejudice, the memplex of self-loathing actively protects its own coherent consistency within the psyche, while at the same time, also inspiring active self-sabotage in life. Self-administered Behavior Modification is nothing but more self-sabotage. Generally, the psychology in self-help, however convoluted, tends to the dangerously simplistic. Self-help exhortations to self-love can only deepen self-loathing, a serious psychiatric problem, with inevitable failure, ever redoubled effort, frustration and paralysis, like a vortex of fresh reaction formation, ambivalence and denial. And what is the actual central lesson of typical self-help? To hide our unhappy flaws, ever striving to improve ourselves covertly and secretly in the dead of night! But in reality, despite how psychotherapy serves but as the midwife in self-work, it remains impossible all alone beyond the light of day, hiding in shame, to delve any deeper than the superficiality typical of self-help, no matter the ever deeper hole the self-help junkie digs for themselves, regardless of whether or not targeted self-improvement in the cultivation of better habits is achieved or as more often, not. -Likewise with the generally more useful How-To and Do-It-Yourself projects and personal needs, a topic distinctly different, yet sometimes also included in the general category of self-help.

• A skeptic's guide to self-help culture
• 5 Problems with the Self-Help Industry  

How-To and Do-It-Yourself may be enjoyable and help build confidence at all, in whatever practical matters. But that's generally as far as it goes. To begin with, even simple autosuggestion is as difficult and fleeting as suggestion to begin with. And most any veritable DIY self-administration of Psychotherapy is a lot like trying to tickle oneself. There can be no How-To. Indeed, any results from self-help self-improvement, building better habits and such, are extremely limited, frequently disappointing whatever unrealistic glowing expectations touted, often exacerbating feelings of failure, self-loathing and poor self-worth, the very fears all too often so manipulatively exploited in the first place, in the burgeoning marketing of self-help. And it doesn't help that the texts are often so difficult, dry and obtuse (unlike my own deathless prose!).

Even barring self-loathing, what is it that ever stops anyone from simply putting in the work towards well deserved success, busting yer ass, creating whatever at least perceived value, hustling to make sales, sweating and straining away the hours at the gym, prospecting relentlessly and cultivating every lead, to build new relationships while nurturing and sustaining existing connections? Simple: Autonomy and the functionality and maturity of actual self-love and self-respect at all! -Just lazy and Hedonistic pleasure principle, the very object of so much misplaced guilt and shame, that is actually the corner stone of all legitimate values, both selfish and altruistic, of liberty and justice, of individuality and conviviality. Because: There remains the fundamental problem that, quite frankly, persistent hard work is often boring and discouraging, an unwelcome and intrusive imposition, unless intrinsically motivated via pleasurable and meaningful engagement, and worse, so dystressfully difficult and lonely besides, save in congenial collaboration. In the implementation of whatever strategy, are you willing to pay whatever price of success? After all, even the most effective learning and accomplishment may fail to address neglected issues in the present, let alone suppressed traumas in the past. In truth, every solution brings with it a new set of problems. And happiness requires not only adequate freedom from suffering, but surmountable obstacles that offer stimulating challenge instead of frustration with mere dystressful drudgery.

Aversive emotions that exist to warn the individual of poorly served gratification, are best heeded sympathetically rather than demonized moralistically. The supposed power of positive thinking as so enduringly extolled in insubstantial self-help is just another scam to psych up the marks into becoming such feel-good go-getters, only then to abandon all the poor saps, all of us, to our  own devices and the shame of failure all alone. And no, the answer is not any bogus support group or futile cheerleading pep rally, to continue psyching each other up. No, the problem is not our faithlessness in the first place. It never was. Faith is a two way street: Where, beyond the blandishment of lip service, is the faith and respect ever vested in the individual? And where are the tangible resources so crucial to real-world capability? The ready made ill-fitting paths of employment and formal education are not unlike the vortex of self-loathing and ambivalence, sucking up everything and everyone, leaving only the very dregs for Innovation of any new beginnings from scratch. Have you reached the time in your life for making your move? Everyone is good at different things. At least theoretically, the human resources, if little more tangible, are ours to give, share and exchange, at least during any portion of ones own time not already committed to prior obligations. But leveraging such intangible assets and reclaiming initiative together, urgently depends upon overcoming the long ingrained dependency upon external structure. Both thinking things through and then taking action are crucial. And if it can't be done alone, then the right people must be found to work with. Indeed, as to any worldly pursuit of happiness and success in whatever there can be no well-formed plan, no procedure entirely under individual control for whatever feasible results. Alas, the recommendation to translate all desired outcomes into well-formed plans, turns out to be less of a problem solving tool or method, not any laudable pragmatism, but instead merely yet another exhortation to radically lowered expectations and making do, all fobbed of as brightest hope. The Gurus and Zen Masters are often cited as the original self-help hucksters. If by contrast, Philosophy much worth a damn, is ever any different, it may in the open questioning of values rather than confidently simplistic answers and promises characteristic of religion. Better unanswered questions, than the unquestioned answers that are sought for by the would-be disciple scorning an unwanted self.

• Why I Stopped Reading Self-Help and Self-Improvement Books

 

Mentorship and a unique alternative here on FoolQuest.com

 

Many people reach out to find or to become mentors. Mentorship is a relationship in which the mentor, a more experienced or more knowledgeable person in some or other specific area of expertise, helps to guide the mentee, a less experienced and knowledgeable person often younger but not always. Indeed, for example, a younger mentor may actually be recommended for the most current expertise especially in the latest trends. But not to digress. Questions: Must mentorship necessarily remain only one to one, or can there conceivably be more people together involved in any way at the same time? And is mentorship necessarily unidirectional, or can mentorship conceivably ever be reciprocal? Moreover, by comparison, would the growth experience be in any way diminished in value, by collaboration among equals, or indeed vastly enhanced in authentic wellbeing? I myself have much to learn, and yet perhaps at all anything to contribute. The very term 'probortunity,' of course, has been coined as a portmanteau of the two words: 'problem' and 'opportunity,' in order to press home the point that problems present opportunities. And to the probortunity at hand, of meeting such undresesrved need: Business planning towards entrepreneurial new venture creation is of necessity interdisciplinary, as reflected also in successful management team formation covering diverse knowledge and capability. This even applies for the bonding exercise, as proposed, of collaborative fiction writing. For as the saying goes: write what you know (var.: or just like). And different people possess different perspective or POV, knowledge and capability in order to pool together creatively. Indeed, a notable key observation of TRIZ, the much renowned Russian theory of invention, is how aside from entirely new scientific discoveries, the rarest most important and powerful innovations arise in the transfer and reapplication of knowledge and methods across disciplines, breaking isolation. And so,  perhaps the most intensive and beneficial reciprocal mentorship experience and more, may accrue instead via experience of collaboration among equals.

 

 

Life/Career/etc. Coaching

Informed consent:

Evaluate Your Coach Before You Hire

Indeed, consider suitability of modality and directive even if knowledgeable competence is at all evident or taken on trust. Most excellent advice, if only at all permitted! Alas, as with all manner of "helping professionals," flashy and self invented or even however respectable alike, many of these Coaches can become indignant and slippery when pressed with too many questions about exactly whatever specifically it is they do, how and whyfor.

• Coaching FAQ

An appealing pitch for a well qualified Coach highlights their specialized expertise and sympathetic understanding towards whatever whomever target market segment(s) for clients or: "coachies", all nevertheless amounting to glittering generalities in so far as both broadly conceptual and practical detailed explanation of Coaching modality, individually applicable and appropriate practice and whatever if any new and different solutions for the client or 'coachie'. Such additional questions coming upon reflection upon the heels of the lucid and even compelling pitch, can even come as decidedly unwelcome. In short, as typical of all variants of what can only be described as stealth Behavior Modification, there is a serious issue of fully informed consent. Indeed, just for example, what differentiates Anger Coaching, from whatever conceivable anger therapy, let alone controversial Anger management? One aspect of Coaching most commonly purported to define Coaching as distinguished from other therapeutic, consulting or educational modalities, is that Coaching is supposed to be howsoever goal directed as set out between the Coach and client or: coachie, from prioritization, strategy and feasibility assessment with the client, in contrast to Mentorship characterized by information and advice. Whereas consultants advise on specialized expertise and Mentoring or career development cultivates knowledge and skills for the long term and in a specific field, Coaching even while looking to the future, boasts of providing supportive discovery-based approaches and frameworks for teams or individuals capable of generating their own solutions confronting immediate probortunities in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes or changes. Committed to discover, clarify, and align with what the coachie wishes to achieve, the coach listens, offers observations and poses questions along with concepts and principles which may be creative and thought provoking  and assist in revealing hitherto unconsidered possibilities and expanding the range of feasible actions to take. By this definition, One unique concept of professional coaching, is that the suitably specialized coach, qualified in the same niche profession as the client or: coachie, is much like unto a psychotherapist, except that whereas a psychotherapist discusses the inner life and issues, past and present, of the patient as unfolding, instead the coach makes shoptalk with the coachie, a lone independent contractor, thereby socially isolated within whatever their profession, therefore lonely for anyone qualified and interested for work related deliberation. Coaches seek to elicit not suppressed trauma and obstructive inner conflict from a patient as in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, but renewed clarity, solutions, strategies and decisions from the coachie and upon an agenda, frustrated dreams stalled and dispelled, progressively rendered more strategically concrete in order to flow with renewed vigor and passion, their true path revealed; all entirely from the coachie, and likewise as with Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, entirely without manipulatively planting suggestion.

Now, Reality Therapy so named, is also extolled as howsoever goal directed. Indeed, in Reality Therapy goals set forth with the patient must be well formed and individually achievable. That often entails radically lowered expectation, even to the point of purpose defeating induced sublimation. The problem is of course, that most life goals set forth are contingent upon interdependency within society. It's a give-and-take world, after all. So the actual problem as from the very cradle remains the same: What to do in order to attain ones desires from others? Thus enters extrinsic motivation and the opening for indoctrination which aims at bringing about in the subject, the internalization  of extrinsic motivation. Alas that so much of education and counseling of whatever kind, very much including Coaching, only boils down to more of the same stealth Behavior Modification, discourse of ostensibly open ended negotiation only concealing the manipulative consensus engineering of any secretively predetermined ulterior agenda. Thus all vaunted goal setting that evinces such open practical straightforwardness, may often actually constitute a conniving manipulatively leading Dialectic of Behavioral Suggestion not unlike classic consensus manipulation. Indeed, Reality Therapy is described as a Cognitive Behavioral approach to Psychotherapy, indeed explicitly leveraging patient trust and affection in order to gain influence even over resistance and noncooperation, compliance, after all, being the sole patronizing treatment criteria of Behavior Modification. Its for your own good, dear! Reality Therapy extols the value of exposure to responsible others, in the person of the Therapist. Likewise, Coaches may serve to hold the coachie accountable. And all such smacks of external conscience. For all the talk of client goal setting, how do Coaches really respond to coachies howsoever asserting themselves? Indeed what is goal setting in actuality, if not the cats paw of extrinsic motivators internalized into cognitive dissonance that is the method of indoctrination, rationalized Behavior Modification exactly as in Cognitive Behaviorism, the engineering of consent much as in consensus manipulation that maneuvers the subject into accepting another's ulterior agenda as their own? Whereas by contrast, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy aims at bringing into consciousness, not only inner conflict but conflict between pleasure and reality principles, liberating rather than struggling with much less successfully overcoming the patient as even for their own good. Indeed, non-directive coaching as opposed to directive coaching, like Psychodynamic Psychotherapy is founded upon Dialectical with effective active listening, reframing and empathy, all enjoined from suggestion. (From the core tenet of all Medical Ethics being: the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm" thence is derived in specific application to Psychotherapy, the Freudian injunction against suggestion, manipulative conditionality or coercion.)  

As with Reality Therapy, often Coaching is extolled as an equal partnership between Coach and 'coachie'. But that is simply inaccurate: A partner is not any sort of consultant paid by the hour and limited thereto, but an interested stakeholder full time. -Someone who would never surrender shared success for any short term paltry billable hours. So, are some more equal than others? Not, for that matter, that even the clearest motivating self interest has ever reliably deterred sheer perversity and irresponsibility undermining collaboration. The quest towards true legitimacy in Coaching, then, the key driving vastly underserved need, is only the same striving for respect and competent autonomy support as ever. So, are Coaches truly ready to embrace and fully abet whatever goals ultimately set forth by their clients? Or does whatever training background ever carry baggage of ulterior agenda and manipulative engineering of consent? I shudder to think, but there even runs the entire gamut of Religious Ministerial and New Age Mystical specialist kook charlatan Coaches offering their services! But then of course, there are also likewise various similar fringe therapist and councilors.

Unfortunately, when Coaching sometimes incorporating any sort of social skills remediation, and in any case as all too often incorporates motivational techniques and even Behavior Modification outright especially Cognitive Behaviorism, even the most obsolete and no longer plausible Neuro-Linguistic Programming, then expect the same typical evasion on that score, not transparency of modality and disclosure towards informed consent. Beware stealth Behaviorism! Candor is all too often rejected as counterproductive towards the sole relentlessly manipulative treatment criteria of Behavior Modification in any context of application, ever being no more or less than subject compliance, be they clients, students, patients, disciples, lab rats or prisoners. Professional caginess regarding precise treatment modalities for Autism Spectrum disorders including that which was only not so long ago still designated as Asperger's Syndrome, can be a recurrent frustration in seeking and evaluating professional help options. Frequently alas, this applies no less even for any range of Psychodynamic Psychotherapists, specialists and various lay practitioners as who have entered into the Coaching field specializing in any range of pervasive developmental disorders, twice exceptionality or giftedness even as subject to misdiagnosis outright. But at least there seems to be consensus therein, that Behavior Modification is distinctly contraindicated for the gifted. At least, so they say.

Indeed, only Coaches for Autism Spectrum and for the gifted, often with background in formal education positively steeped in Cognitive Behaviorism, seem to have even heard of Kasimir Dombrowski and his seminal work or take any interest therein. But woefully deficient as my grasp of Dombrowski's work, especially his practiced modality, I'm fairly sure that Kasimir Dombrowski was no more a Coach than Hans Asperger was a Behaviorist! And the field of education has refined the process of killing whatever taboo legacy of true innovators, then sanctifying the travesty thereof and parading the cadaver as the very soul of living hope! Is there truly anything on offer here beyond fraudulent stealth Behaviorist sham opposition? Moreover, Coaching is generally not recognized for health insurance coverage any more than for academic accreditation and student loans. However, this could be handily resolved by simply taking on Coaches as clinical social workers. Indeed not surprisingly, some Coaches are already licensed in clinical social work, apparently having career transitioned into Coaching from clinical social work which is largely Cognitive Behaviorist.

If Coaching is so important, why do we know so little about it? by Don Kincaid and Amanda March, University of South Florida offers the following salient bullet pointed questions:

• Are there generic skill sets make for effective "coaching"?

• Can we train for a generic "coaching" repertoire and supplement content knowledge?

• Does the skill set remain the same across tiers and implementation levels?

• If not, how does it change?

• How can we effectively evaluate "coaching" skill sets and/or activities?

• How does "coaching" relate to academic and behavioral student outcomes?

The above questions may be reframed for any range of other non academic context and application.

The pervasively heteronymous patronizingly high-mindedly misanthropic view of education as intrinsically indoctrinary persists, extolling the internalization of extrinsic motivators. It's for your own good, dear: In the famous words of Coach Tom Landry: "A coach is someone who gets you to do what you don't want to do, so you can be who you want to be." By that standard, a tank commander is the greatest coach there ever was (well: maybe for Klingons!), ever urging on his subordinates to fight and to persevere until they are eventually killed or maimed. And the honor, nobility and sacrifice of the soldier is undeniably inspiring. But the comparison here, however rhetorically intended, may be deemed somewhat extreme and exaggerated, as, after all, the stakes of mentorship or Life Coaching are seldom anywhere near so high as those in the Hell of war. Nevertheless, anyone generally compulsive or otherwise bent upon doing anything they really don't want to, will tend to inner conflict, and often understandably simply will not feel that they can afford to be entirely honest with themselves. Indeed, as most common with modern educators, morally dissonant with inner conflict towards whatever ideals embraced of whatever cooperation or Dialectic between equals, responsibility, autonomy and even giftedness, can only accrue the bad faith in denial and cognitive dissonance. Nor, neither from howsoever misguided altruism, brazen exploitation nor from sheer self validation, are they often honest with others with whom they afterwards seek to share their treasured motivators to achievement. Such internalization of generally misanthropic extrinsic motivators is heteronymous indoctrination.

Though as completely unregulated as social skills training, by contrast Coaching does have various accrediting professional associations. Coaches vary so widely in qualification and talent because Coaching is a practice of whatever practical guidance, and a grab bag of whatever is included, and perhaps even more so than therapy, variously market niche specialized to all manner of circumstances, personality and. field of endeavor. Applied Positive Psychology is increasingly popular in Executive or even traditional Athletic Coaching, because they have in common focus upon supportive improvement in functioning and even peak performance towards whatever plans and desires, rather than treatment of pathology, even diagnosis and cultivation of strengths and aptitudes, not only remedy of flaws and weaknesses.

Positive Psychology at least differs from Behaviorism, in that Applied Positive Psychology even in quest of improved performance, aims at even at all meaningful elicitation of peak experiences of enjoyment rather than in rejection of the psyche, mere subject compliance often by suppression of inner conflict. And yet in application of metrics and whatever hedonic calculus to any observable fluctuations in transitory pleasure in order thereby to gain an average over time thus to assay happiness longitudinally, something is still lost in translation thereby still quite missing the point, because often Zen influenced researches in theoretical Positive Psychology, hence not entirely unlike Behaviorism, may arrive at implicit invalidation even of intrinsic motivation, desires, values and ambitions indeed as no more than mistaken hypotheses of resultant happiness, in other words: snares of illusion, the maya. - and all from the cutting edge observation that life is often different from expectations!

• Mentoring vs. Coaching

• Applied Positive Psychology: The Science at the Heart of Coaching

• gratitudes, bah humbug!

On the other hand, many Coaches but not all, are nowadays also various types of Psychodynamic Psychotherapists and/or educators. As Orwell observes, take away freedom of speech meaning: opportunity of outlet and feedback from conversation with other people, and individual creative focus suffers. Therefore Psychotherapy and Coaching may actually fill at all different relationship and social support voids and concerns. Howsoever qualified and specialized Coaching may therefore come recommended for business or other endeavor lacking such outlet for fresh perspective as a particular professional community or peer group, and that thus that may become excessively lonely in whatever their chosen vocation or endeavor, even if not elsewhere in life. 

One thing is true enough: After all, what are the situational forces of routine status quo, except the immediacy of readily available or even unavoidable human interaction? All those hucksters and self-help / self-improvement  gurus want is your money: If no hyped up guide, course or book achieves whatever earnestly desired life transformation, and blaming yourself certainly won't help, then perhaps what is wonting is the quality of intentional human interaction. First, change the discussion!

• Lifestyle reciprocal peer coaching.