Objectives:
(A) To indicate the need for a wide-questioning focus when approaching any problem or issue - much more might have to be investigated than seems evident.
(B) To show that any "solution" accepted as a definite and final "answer" may block further progress.
(C) To suggest that mystery, questioning, and searching tend to energize, while every "answer" is a form of dying.
(D) To demarcate personal stages that most people traverse (or get stuck in) during their quest for knowledge (or power).
(E) To stress the importance of nihilism: We need to destroy all our "values" in order to create real values for ourselves.
(F) To urge readers not to get stuck in any particular approach in their quest for knowledge.
(G) To indicate that the arrogance of pride in "knowledge" is not advisable.
(H) To pose some important questions which I think should be asked over and over again.
(I) To suggest that both the origin and the value of commonly accepted "moral values" should be investigated and questioned.
(J) To draw attention to Nietzsche's theory that most of our "knowledge" consists of more or less useful errors.
(K) To demonstrate the questionable foundations of our "logic."
(L) To indicate that our notions of "cause and effect" may be open to doubt.
(M) To describe idolatry and to ask some questions about it.
(N) To ask some questions about language.
(O) To draw attention to the "basic error" on which language is built.
(P) To highlight the relationship between language and behavior.
(Q) To ask some (loaded) questions about politics.
(R) To indicate that Gandhi was a philosophical anarchist.
(S) To suggest that politics may be a "set of deadly answers."
(T) To describe philosophical anarchism as "living life out of a context of questions rather than out of a context of answers."
What Ought To Be Done?
"What ought to be done about X?" Considerable practical experience has taught me that the first thing the scientist has to do in such circumstances is to face up to a problem which may sound rather paradoxical; he has to discover what it is that he ought to try to find out. Before he starts investigating anything, he should arrive at some opinion of what is worth investigating. It is surprising how often the importance of this stage is forgotten by those who have had little experience of delivering the scientific goods to an overworked practical man. - C. H. Waddington ("Tools For Thought")
There is a tremendous temptation - even an obsession - to fall into: "This is the answer;" "My search is over;" "I have found the truth;" "Meta-information is the solution to all problems." Note that every "answer" to an issue (accepted as "the answer") tends to result in the cessation of further questioning of that issue. The growth of knowledge depends largely on relentless and persistent questioning.
...I think questions are a form of life...
...Mystery has energy. It pours energy into whoever seeks an answer to it. If you disclose the solution to the mystery, you are simply depriving the other seekers...of an important source of energy...
...An answer is always a form of death... - John Fowles ("The Magus")
Personal Stages Towards Knowledge:
I suspect that there are broad stages that most people go through - or get stuck in - relating to the growth of their knowledge:
(A) Blissful ignorance: "They will solve whatever might be wrong."
(B) Dissatisfaction: "Something is seriously wrong."
(C) Seeker of truth: "I must find the truth."
(D) True believer: "This is the truth; everything else is rubbish."
(E) Disillusionment: "Maybe there's something wrong with this truth."
(F) Seeker of truth: "I must find the real truth."
(G) Half-believer: "This is probably the truth, but not all of it."
(H) Disillusionment: "Some of this is true; a lot is rubbish."
(I) Wise seeker: "No one individual, group, or "school" has the truth; how do I go about finding the truth?"
(J) Meta-information, consciousness, ruthless self-examination, persis-tent questioning of all supposed "truth."
Nihilism represents a pathological transitional stage (what is pathological is the tremendous generalization, the inference that there is no meaning at all).
Presupposition of this hypothesis: That there is no truth, that there is no absolute nature of things, nor a "thing-in-itself"...
Values and their changes are related to increases in the power of those positing the values.
The measure of unbelief, of permitted "freedom of the spirit," is an expression of an increase in power.
"Nihilism" is an ideal of the highest degree of powerfulness of the spirit, the over-richest life - partly destructive, partly ironic...
What is a belief? How does it originate? Every belief is a considering-something-true...
...That it is the measure of strength to what extent we can admit to ourselves, without perishing, the merely apparent character, the necessity of lies.
To this extent, nihilism as the denial of a truthful world, of being, might be a divine way of thinking. - Friedrich Nietzsche ("The Will to Power")
We should expect that many people will continue in blissful and com-placent ignorance - for how long? At the same time, crisis conditions are likely to increase the numbers of the disgruntled and dissatisfied. Most of these will probably latch onto the first "party," "religion," "movement," or "cause" that they come across - they will jump straight into the true believer stage without any real search for truth. They can be recognized by: "Blah is the only road to total freedom," "This is the only system I have found that can really increase your consciousness," "Blah is the only moral political philosophy," "Give me liberty or give me death..."
We should also expect that true believers will cling to their true belief with great determination and perseverance. And some, who move to the next stage of disillusionment, are likely to get stuck in a feeling of helplessness from a sense of having been betrayed...and some will simply latch onto whatever "movement" they next come into contact with..."and so it goes," according to Vonnegut.
And some will become more skeptical and discerning, and will join their next "movement" with less blind devotion and automatic acceptance of the "wisdom" of the charismatic "guru." They will also be less disappointed when they discover that their new "guru" isn't really all that enlightened. Some will even learn that there always comes a time when your next step is to spit in the so-called "guru's" face and to move on...
Profound aversion to reposing once and for all in any one total view of the world. Fascination of the opposing point of view: Refusal to be deprived of the stimulus of the enigmatic. - Friedrich Nietzsche ("The Will to Power")
A few will start asking questions, like: "How do I locate the scarce pearls in the vast ocean?", "How do I tell the fake 'pearls' from the real pearls?" and so on.
And some people will move all the way to persistent questioning concerning some areas of life while remaining blissfully ignorant about others while becoming true believers of some stage magician..."and so it goes."
Among the innumerable mortifications which waylay human arrogance on every side may well be reckoned our ignorance of the most common objects and effects, a defect of which we become more sensible by every attempt to supply it. Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things when they are shown their form or told their use; but the speculatist, who is not content with superficial views, harasses himself with fruitless curiosity and still, as he inquires more and more, perceives only that he knows less. - Samuel Johnson, 1758
Some Important Questions:
Here are some questions which I think are worth asking over and over again:
(A) The meta-question: What questions should we ask?
(B) What is natural and appropriate for human beings?
(C) How can we expand and improve the quality of the contexts in which we hold knowledge?
(D) What is it about humans that results in ..."x"?
(E) What we are attempting to do now - is it an attempted solution to a more basic problem? (Today's "solution" tends to become tomorrow's problem.)
(F) How can we identify "pearls of wisdom"?
(G) How can we disqualify "pearls of wisdom"?
(H) How do we communicate "pearls of wisdom"?
(I) How do we get "pearls of wisdom" applied?
(J) How do we go about creating the world we envision?
(K) What other questions should we ask?
Fortunately, I learned early to separate theological prejudice from moral prejudice and ceased to look for the origin of evil behind the world. A certain amount of historical and philosophical schooling, together with an inborn fastidiousness of taste in respect to psychological questions in general, soon transformed my problem into another one: Under what conditions did man devise these value judgments good and evil? And what value do they themselves possess?
Thereupon, I discovered and ventured divers answers; I distinguished between ages, peoples, degrees of rank among individuals; I departmentalized my problem; out of my answers, there grew new questions, inquiries, conjectures, probabilities - until, at length, I had a country of my own, an entire discrete, thriving, flourishing world, like a secret garden, the existence of which no one suspected...
...we need a critique of moral values. The value of these values themselves must first be called in question - and for that, there is needed a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which they grew, under which they evolved and changed (morality as consequence, as symptom, as mask, as tartuffery, as illness, as misunderstanding; but also, morality as cause, as remedy, as stimulant, as restraint, as poison), a knowledge of a kind that has never yet existed or even been desired. One has taken the value of these "values" as given, as factual, as beyond all question; one has hitherto never doubted or hesitated in the slightest degree in supposing "the good man" to be of greater value than "the evil man," of greater value in the sense of furthering the advancement and prosperity of man in general (the future of man included). But what if the reverse were true? What if a symptom of regression were inherent in the "good," likewise a danger, a seduction, a poison, a narcotic, through which the present was possibly living at the expense of the future?? Perhaps more comfortably, less dangerously, but at the same time in a meaner style, more basely? So that precisely morality would be to blame if the highest power and splendor actually possible to the type man was never in fact attained? So that precisely morality was the danger of dangers? - Friedrich Nietzsche ("On the Genealogy of Morals")
Why All Our "Knowledge" Needs To Be Questioned:
Nietzsche, more than any other philosopher (or psychologist) I know of, demonstrated the degree to which our "consciousness," our "knowledge," is suspect and subject to error:
Origin of Knowledge. - Over immense periods of time, the intellect produced nothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helped to preserve the species: Those who hit upon or inherited these had better luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny. Such erroneous articles of faith, which were continually inherited until they became almost part of the basic endowment of the species, include the following: That there are enduring things; that there are equal things; that there are things, substances, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in itself. It was only very late that such propositions were denied and doubted; it was only very late that truth emerged - as the weakest form of knowledge. It seemed that one was unable to live with it: Our organism was prepared for the opposite; all its higher functions, sense perception, and every kind of sensation worked with those basic errors which had been incorporated since time immemorial. Indeed, even in the realm of knowledge, these propositions became the norms according to which "true" and "untrue" were determined - down to the most remote regions of logic.
Thus, the strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth, but its age, on the degree to which it has been incorporated, on its character as a condition of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to be at odds, there was never any real fight, but denial and doubt were simply considered madness...
Thus, knowledge became a piece of life itself and, hence, a continually growing power - until eventually, knowledge collided with those primeval basic errors: Two lives, two powers, both in the same human being. A thinker is now that being in whom the impulse for truth and those life-preserving errors clash for their first fight, after the impulse for truth has proved to be also a life-preserving power. Compared to the significance of this fight, everything else is a matter of indifference: The ultimate question about the conditions of life has been posed here, and we confront the first attempt to answer this question by experiment. To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment.
Origin of the Logical. - How did logic come into existence in man's head? Certainly out of illogic, whose realm originally must have been immense. Innumerable beings, who made inferences in a way different from ours, perished; for all that, their ways might have been truer. Those, for example, who did not know how to find often enough what is "equal" as regards both nourishment and hostile animals - those, in other words, who subsumed things too slowly and cautiously - were favored with a lesser probability of survival than those who guessed immediately upon encountering similar instances that they must be equal. The dominant tendency, however, to treat as equal what is merely similar - an illogical tendency, for nothing is really equal - is what first created any basis for logic.
In order that the concept of substance could originate - which is indispensable for logic although, in the strictest sense, nothing real corresponds to it - it was, likewise, necessary that for a long time, one did not see nor perceive the changes in things. The beings that did not see so precisely had an advantage over those that saw everything "in flux." At bottom, every high degree of caution in making inferences and every skeptical tendency constitute a great danger to life. No living beings would have survived if the opposite tendency - to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to err, and make up things rather than wait, to assent rather than negate, to pass judgement rather than be just - had not been bred to the point where it became extraordinarily strong.
The course of logical ideas and inferences in our brain today corresponds to a process and a struggle among impulses that are, taken singly, very illogical and unjust. We generally experience only the result of this struggle because this primeval mechanism now runs its course so quickly and is so well-concealed.
Cause and Effect. - "Explanation" is what we call it, but it is "description" that distinguishes us from older stages of knowledge and science. Our descriptions are better - we do not explain any more than our predecessors. We have uncovered a manifold one-after-another where the naïve man and inquirer of older cultures saw only two separate things. "Cause" and "effect" is what one says; but we have merely perfected the image of becoming without reaching beyond the image or behind it. In every case, the series of "causes" confronts us much more completely, and we infer: First, this and that has to precede in order that this or that may then follow - but this does not involve any comprehension. In every chemical process, for example, quality appears as a "miracle," as ever; also, every locomotion; nobody has "explained" a push. But how could we possible explain anything? We operate only with things that do not exist: Lines, planes, bodies, atoms, divisible time spans, divisible spaces. How should explanations be at all possible when we first turn everything into an image - our image? - Friedrich Nietzsche ("The Gay Science")
What Is Idolatry?
Idol: (From Greek "eidolon" - phantom); a representation or symbol of an object of worship; a false god; an image without substance; a likeness of something; a pretender or imposter; a projected form or appearance, without substance; an object of excessive or passionate devotion; a figment of the mind or fantasy; a false conception or fallacy; a philosophical prejudice or idiosyncrasy; a title or symbol designed to inspire awe, respect, or reverence.
Idolater: A worshipper of idols; a person who admires or loves intensely - and often blindly - an object, image, cause, or activity; a devotee, or "true believer;" someone who manifests awe, respect, or reverence for titles and symbols (such as "Emperor," "flag," and "anthem').
Idolatry: The worship of a physical object as a god; immoderate attachment or devotion to something; reverence for idols; religious, political, or scientific worship of idols; projecting divine, magical, or mystical attributes into idols; treating a groupcept as if it were a unicept (see Section 2 for definitions of unicept and groupcept; e.g., failure to distinguish between bird and "flock"); showing respect for titles and symbols (such as "Emperor," "flag," and "anthem"); "patriotism;" arguing that because people do something they call "institutional analysis," therefore "institutions" must exist - which is like saying, "Some people pray - therefore, God exists."
Inverted idolatry: Imagining that an idol is real in order to make it an "object" to attack; attacking the physical manifestations of idolatry rather than the underlying mental idolatrous disposition; fighting what one imagines is represented by a groupcept instead of fighting the individuals repre-sented by unicepts (e.g., fighting "the flock" instead of fighting individual birds); burning an effigy or a flag, trampling on the cross, pissing on the "Queen's palace" (like Jonathan Swift).
He who slays a "king" and he who dies for him are alike idolaters. - George Bernard Shaw ("Man and Superman")
What is an idol? Who is an idolater? Is it possible not to be an idolater? Can a concept or word be an idol? Can language be an idol? Are the notions of "truth" and "honesty" idols? Is the notion of meta-information an idol? Am I an idolater? Do participants in the meta-information network have to be idolaters?
Why do humans have such (to a Martian) strange beliefs? Why do humans worship phantom concepts like "our culture" and "nation"? Why do humans kill one another because of devotion to invisible idols like make-believe "states"? Why do many humans seem to behave in a manner that seems designed to produce the exact opposite of what one would think they really want (like "fighting for peace"?)
Questions About Language:
What does a man do when he finds himself living after an age has ended and he can no longer understand himself because the theories of man of the former age no longer work and the theories of the new age are not yet known?
What a man does is start afresh as if he were newly come into a new world which, in fact, it is; start with what he knows for sure, look at the birds and beasts and, like a visitor from Mars newly-landed on Earth, notice what is different about man.
That singularity is language.
Is it possible that the questions about man's peculiar upside-down and perverse behavior, which he doesn't understand, have something to do with his strange gift of speech, which he also doesn't understand? - Walker Percy ("The Message In the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has To Do With the Other")
Is it possible to understand language? In order to understand something, we need a metaphor, we need to compare it to something else and say, "It's like this," or "It's like that." Now, we could do that without using language; for example, by a physical demonstration of how a machine works. And the person who gets to understand how the machine works - does he have to make a symbolic mental (memory) model, the parts of which he can manipulate "like the machine," in order to understand?
How can we understand language?
Imagine how it must appear to the Martian making his first visit to Earth. Let us suppose that he, too, is an intelligent being whose intelligence has, however, evolved without the mediation of language, so he can see things directly in their essences and communicate thought without language. What is the first thing he notices about Earthlings? That they are forever making mouthy little sounds, clicks, hisses, howls, hoots, explosions, squeaks, some of which name things in the world and are uttered in short sequences that say something about these things and events in the world.
This behavior seems a good deal stranger to the Martian than it does to us. This is because language is the very mirror by which we see and know the world, and it is very difficult to see the mirror itself to see how curiously wrought it is.Noam Chomsky is frank to admit our nearly total ignorance on the subject. He does draw a picture. He indicates the central phenomenon of language by a black box, contents unknown, labeled L.A.D., the "Language Acquisition Device," which receives the random input of language a child hears and somehow converts it into the child's capacity to utter any number of sentences in the language.
What is in the black box, then - a ghost or a piece of machinery?
How extraordinary, thinks the Martian, that these Earthlings who know so much about the back side of the moon know so little about the one observable thing which even Darwin agreed sets them apart from the beasts! - Walker Percy ("The Message In the Bottle")
Could the contents of the black box be isomorphism? (Refer to "Goedel, Escher, Bach.") What is isomorphism? Similarity? Or saying, "It's like this."? But what is that? Could this be the "basic error," or "original sin"? Could it be that "knowledge" really is "original sin"?
If you know why this creature talks, thinks the Martian, you might also know why he behaves so oddly.
Those who don't take this mater seriously forfeit the means of understanding themselves. Many people are quite content to live out their lives as the organisms and consumer units their scientists understand them to be; to satisfy their needs, even "higher" needs, according to the prescription of those who profess to understand such things.
A man is, after all, himself and no other, and not merely an example of a class of similar selves. If such a man is deprived of the means of being a self in a world made over by science for his use and enjoyment, he is like a ghost at a feast. He becomes invisible. That is why people in the modern age took photographs by the million: To prove - despite their deepest suspicions to the contrary - that they were not invisible.
Their basic placement in the world is such that they recognize a priority of title of the expert over his particular department of being. The whole horizon of being is staked out by "them," the experts...
This loss of sovereignty is not a marginal process; it is a generalized surrender of the horizon to those experts within whose competence a particular segment of the horizon is thought to lie.
The highest role of the educator is the role of Socrates: To help the student come to himself as a sovereign individual.
When a man appears and names a thing, when he says this is water and water is cool, something unprecedented takes place. What the third term, man, does is not merely enter into interaction with the others - thought he does this, too - but stand apart from two of the terms and say that one "is" the other, the two things which he pairs or identifies are the "word" he speaks and the "thing" he sees before him.
This is not only an unprecedented happening; it is, also, as the semanticists have noted, scandalous. "A" clearly is not "B;" but were it not for this cosmic blunder, man would not be man - unless he says that "A" is "B," he will never know "A" or "B" - he will only respond to them.
I cannot know anything at all unless I symbolize it. We can only conceive being, sidle up to it, by laying something else alongside. We approach the thing not directly but by pairing, by apposing symbol and thing.
This "wrongness" of metaphor is seen to be a special case of that mysterious "error" which is the very condition of our knowing anything at all. This "error," the act of symbolization, is itself the instrument of knowing and is an error only if we do not appreciate its intentional character.
The non-speaking organism only notices what is relevant biologically; the speaking organism disposes of the entire horizon symbolically. Gaps that cannot be closed by perception and reason are closed by magic and myth. The primitive has names for edible and noxious plants; but he also has a name for all the others: "bush." He also "knows" what lies beyond the horizon, what is under the Earth, and where he came from.
Symbolization is the essential act of the mind, whether it be in art, in language, in rite, in dreams, in logic, and as such cannot be grasped by conventional biological concepts. It is an "elementary need" of the new cerebral cortex. There is no other way, it appears, of accounting for the "impractical" uses of language and the "perversity of ritual." - Walker Percy ("The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to do With the Other")
Questions About Politics:
(A) What is a political idol?
Hung Fung was a Chinese philosopher of well nigh a hundred years old. The naked magician (called "Emperor" by the idolaters) once asked: "Hung, ninety years of study and observations must have made you wise. Tell me, in the form of magic my devoted followers call 'government,' what is the great danger?" "Well," replied Hung, "It's the rat in the statue." "The rat in the statue?" repeated the naked magician (who could persuade any idolater to call him "'Emperor"). "What do you mean?"
"Why," retorted Hung, "You know we build statues to the memory of our ancestors. They are made of wood and are hollow and painted. Now, if a rat gets into one, you can't smoke it out - that would be burning the image of your father - nor can you plunge the statue into the water - that would wash off the paint. So the rat is safe because the image is sacred." - Adapted from the words of Wendell Phillips, quoted by Leon ("None of the Above")
(B) Do those who call themselves "the government" represent "the people"?
In the classic tale about the Emperor's finely woven clothes, a child discovers that the Emperor is unclothed. That makes him a naked Emperor. But, for modern man, the point of this story should not be that the Emperor is naked, but that he is a liar. - Thomas Szasz ("Heresies")
(C) Are those who call themselves "government" likely to produce beneficial results?
Basic principle: Only individuals feel themselves responsible. Multiplicities are invented in order to do things for which the individual lacks the courage.
The state is organized immorality - internally: As police, penal law, classes, commerce, family; externally: As will to power, to war, to conquest, to revenge.
How does it happen that the state will do a host of things that the individual would never countenance? Through division of responsibility, of command, and of execution. Through the interposition of the "virtues" of obedience, duty, patriotism, and loyalty. Through upholding pride, severity, strength, hatred, revenge.
The tremendous machine of the state overpowers the individual, so he repudiates responsibility for what he does (obedience, oath, etc.).
Everything a man does in the service of the state is contrary to his nature.
In the same way, everything he learns with a view to future state service is contrary to his nature. - Friedrich Nietzsche ("The Will to Power")
(D) Can we count on those with guns and other weapons - who call themselves "government" or "state" - to protect us?
For the present, I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely, a striking situation! Yet, it is so common that one must grieve the more and wonder the less at the spectacle of a million men serving in wretchedness, their necks under the yoke, not constrained by a greater multitude than they, but simply, it would seem, delighted and charmed by the name of one man alone whose power they need not fear, for he is evidently the one person whose qualities they cannot admire because of his inhumanity and brutality toward them. - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(E) By calling themselves "government," do people (magically?) acquire the ability to do what others cannot do?
And, he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind and do more essential services to his country than the whole race of politicians put together. -p Jonathan Swift ("A Voyage to Brobdingnag")
(F) Can people who call themselves "government" or "state" make "laws"?
What strange phenomenon is this? What name shall we give it? What is the nature of this misfortune? What vice is it or, rather, what degradation? To see an endless multitude of people not merely obeying, but driven to servility? Not ruled, but tyrannized over? - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(G) Can people, by attaching the label "government" to themselves, acquire the (magical?) ability to conjure up resources, "jobs," "welfare," "health," etc., from thin air?
The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money or that he intends to use if for your benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travelers who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you; he does not persist in following you on the road against your will, assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you to do this and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures and insults and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.
The proceedings of those robbers and murderers who call themselves "the government," are directly the opposite of these of the single highwayman. - Lysander Spooner ("No Treason")
(H) When people (fraudulently?) call themselves "government," does this mean that (mysteriously?) they become more honest and more capable than other people?
I have been sometimes thinking, if a man had the art of the second sight for seeing lies, as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits, how admirably he might entertain himself in this town; to observe the different shapes, sizes, and colours, of those swarms of lies which buzz about the heads of some people, like flies about a horse's ear in summer; or those legions hovering every afternoon in Popes-Head Alley, enough to darken the air; or over a club of discontented grandees, and thence sent down in cargoes to be scattered at elections.
There is one essential point wherein a political liar differs from others of the faculty; that he ought to have but a short memory, which is necessary according to the various occasions he meets with every hour, of differing from himself, and wearing to both sides of a contradiction, as he finds the persons disposed, with whom he has to deal. - Jonathan Swift ("The Art of Political Lying")
(I) Should people who call something "free" (that has to be paid for) and who use compulsion and who call themselves "state" be trusted to "educate" young persons?
It is, therefore, the inhabitants themselves who permit or, rather, bring about their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude. A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yok,e gives consent to its own misery or, rather, apparently welcomes it. - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(J) Are there activities or functions that must be, or can only be, or are best, performed by those who call themselves "government"? If so, what are these activities or functions, and why do people have to call themselves "government" in order to become capable of performing them?
Men honestly engaged in attempting to establish justice in the world have no occasion thus to act in secret; or to appoint agents to do acts for which they (the principals) are not willing to be responsible.
The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers. Open despotism is better than this. The single despot stands out in the face of all men and says, "I am the state; my will is law; I am your master; I take the responsibility of my acts; the only arbiter I acknowledge is the sword; if anyone denies my right, let him try conclusions with me."
But a secret government is little less than a government of assassins. This is the kind of government we have; and it is the only one we are likely to have until men are ready to say, "We will consent to no constitution except such a one as we are neither ashamed nor afraid to sign; and we will authorize no government to do anything in our name which we are not willing to be personally responsible for." - Lysander Spooner ("No Treason")
(K) If people need to be controlled or refereed by others, is it necessary that the controllers or referees call themselves "state" in order for them to be capable of controlling or refereeing?
Everyone knows that the fire from a little spark will increase and blaze ever higher as long as it finds wood to burn; yet, without being quenched by water, but merely by finding no more fuel to feed on, it consumes itself, dies, down, and is no longer a flame. Similarly, the more tyrants pillage, the more they crave, the more they ruin and destroy; the more one yields to them and obeys them, by that much do they become mightier and more formidable, the readier to annihilate and destroy. But if not one thing is yielded to them, if, without any violence, they are simply not obeyed, they become naked and undone and as nothing; just as, when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies. - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(L) If people call themselves "government," is this an indication or guarantee that they might perform useful functions which you should support?
If he dares to inquire who the individuals are who have thus taken upon themselves the title of "the government," and who assume to protect him, and demand payment of him, without his having ever made any contract with them...
To him, "the government" is a myth, an abstraction, an incorporeality, with which he can make no contract, and to which he can give no consent, and make no pledge. He knows it only through its pretended agents. "The government" itself he never sees. - Lysander Spooner ("No Treason")
(M) If a p;erson has the word "state" (or "government representative") written on his body or clothing or on some object he carries, does this mean that you have a duty to obey this person and whatever he says is "the law"? (Idolatry?)
The Constitution not only binds nobody now, but it never did bind anybody. It never bound anybody because it was never agreed to by anybody in such a manner as to make it - on general principles of law and reason - binding upon him. It is a general principle of law and reason that a written instrument binds no one until he has signed it.
In practice, the Constitution has been an utter fraud from the beginning. Professing to have been "ordained and established" by "We, the people of the United States," it has never been submitted to them, as individuals, for their voluntary acceptance or rejection. They have never been asked to sign, seal, acknowledge, or deliver it, as their free act and deed. They have never... promised, or laid themselves under any kind of obligation, to obey it. Very few of them have eve read, or even seen it; or will ever read or see it. Of its legal meaning (if it can be said to have any) they really know nothing; and never did, nor ever will, know anything.
For the same reasons, the oaths of all the pretended agents of this secret band of robbers and murderers are, on general principles of law and reason, equally destitute of obligation. They are given to nobody; but only to the winds. - Lysander Spooner ("No Treason")
(N) If a person (who calls himself "Judge") says to a second person (who calls himself "Executioner") to kill a third person (whom the first person calls "Criminal") and the second person kills the third person, does this mean that the first person murdered the third person or that the second person murdered the third person, or does it mean something else?
And, as matter of fact, there is not the slightest probability that the Constitution has a single bona fide supporter in the country. That is to say, there is not the slightest probability that there is a single man in the country who both understands what the Constitution really is and supports what it really is.
The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible sup-porters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: (1) Knaves - a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth; (2) Dupes - a large class, no doubt - each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a "free man," a "sovereign;" that this is "a free government," "a government of equal rights," "the best government on Earth," and such like absurdities; (3) A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them or do not choose, so far, to sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change.
(O) If people call themselves "government" or "state," is this an indication or guarantee that they will keep their promises?
I do not know how it happens that nature fails to place within the hearts of men a burning desire for liberty, a blessing so great and so desirable that when it is lost, all evils follow thereafter, and even the blessings that remain lose taste and savor because of their corruption by servitude. Liberty is the only joy upon which men do not seem to insist; for surely, if they really wanted it, they would receive it. Apparently, they refuse this wonderful privilege because it is so easily acquired. - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(P) Should you fear that the people who have to hide behind the label of "government" or "state" are so powerful that they can prevent you from being free?
...Whoever desires liberty should understand these vital facts, viz.: (1) That every man who puts money into the hands of a "government" (so-called) puts into its hands a sword which will be used against himself to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will; (2) That those who will take his money without his consent, in the first place, will use it for his further robbery and enslavement if he presumes to resist their demands in the future; (3) That it is a perfect absurdity to suppose that any body of men would ever take a man's money without his consent for any such object as they profess; (4) If a man wants "protection," he is competent to make his own bargains for it; and nobody has any occasion to rob him in order to "protect" him against his will; (5) That the only security men can have for their political liberty consists in their keeping their money in their own pockets until they have assurances, perfectly satisfactory to themselves, that it will be used as they wish it to be used, for their benefit, and not for their injury; (6) That no "government" (so-called) can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support. - Lysander Spooner ("No Treason")
(Q) Do you have to do something about solving the problem of "state" or "government"?
Doctors are, no doubt, correct in warning us not to touch incurable wounds; and I am, presumably, taking chances in preaching as I do to a people which has long lost all sensitivity and, no longer conscious of its infirmity, is plainly suffering from mortal illness. Let us, therefore, understand by logic, if we can, how it happens that this obstinate willingness to submit has become so deeply rooted in a nation that the very love of liberty now seems no longer natural.
In the first place, all would agree that, if we led our lives according to the ways intended by Nature and the lessons taught by Her, we should be intuitively obedient to our parents; later, we should adopt reason as our guide and become slaves to nobody. - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(R) Should you become dependent for your survival on the privileges or favors received from those who name themselves "government"?
On general principles of law and reason, every corporation, association, or organized body of men, having a legitimate corporate existence and legitimate corporate rights, must consist of certain known individuals who can prove, by legitimate and reasonable evidence, their membership. But nothing of this kind can be proved in regard to the corporation, or body of men, who call themselves "The United States"...
The "nations," as they are called, with whom our pretended "ambassadors," "secretaries," "presidents," and "senators" profess to make treaties are as much myths as our own. On general principles of law and reason, there are no such "nations." - Lysander Spooner ("No Treason")
(S) If the people who call themselves "government" or "state" are so wise, capable, and clever, then why do they have to compel people (through violence and threat of violence) to buy their services, and why do they call such payment "taxation"?
Since freedom is our natural state, we are not only in possession of it, but have the urge to defend it. Now if, perchance, some cast a doubt on this conclusion and are so corrupted that they are not able to recognize their rights and inborn tendencies, I shall have to do them the honor that is properly theirs and cry out to them, "Long live liberty!" Many among them die as soon as captured: Just as the fish loses life as soon as he leaves the water, so do these creatures close their eyes upon the light and have no desire to survive the loss of their natural freedom.
It is incredible how, as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. It is true that in the beginning, men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born. - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(T) If someone writes a document and calls it a "Constitution," do the contents of this document then convey obligations or duties upon someone who: (1) Has never read the document; (2) Does not know what is in the document; (3) Has never agreed to any part of the document; (4)Has never signed the document as a contract; and, (5) If asked, would refuse to agree to the document?
The art of government is the organization of idolatry. - George Bernard Shaw ("Man and Superman")
(U) Does any so-called "government" or "state": (1) Exist as an organi-zation, entity, or institution? (2) Exist as a volitional entity? (3) Have any substance so that it can be observed and measured? Or is it a "convenient" (for some) figment of the imagination or a collective hallucination?
He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has, indeed, nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you.
Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then, you will behold him, like a great colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight, and break into pieces. - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(V) Should the tyrants be toppled? If so, how?
The good seed that nature plants in us is so slight and slippery that it cannot withstand the least harm from wrong nourishment; it flourishes less easily; becomes spoiled, withers, and comes to nothing. Fruit trees retain their own particular quality if permitted to grow undisturbed, but lose it promptly and bear strange fruit not their own when ingrafted...
There are always a few, better-endowed than others, who feel the weight of the yoke and cannot restrain themselves from attempting to shake it off: These are the man who never become tamed under subjection.
These are, in fact, the men who, possessed of clear minds and farsighted spirit, are not satisfied, like the brutish mass, to see only what is at their feet but, rather, look about them, behind and before, and even recall the things of the past in order to judge those of the future, and compare both with their present condition. These are the ones who, having good minds of their own, have further trained them by study and learning. Even if liberty had entirely perished from the Earth, such men would invent it. For them, slavery has no satisfactions, no matter how well-disguised. - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(W) De la Boetie wrote all this three and-a-half centuries ago; what can we learn from him?
Who created these debts in the name of "the United States"? Why, at most, only a few persons, calling themselves "members of Congress," etc., who pretended to represent "the people of the United States," but who really represented only a secret band of robbers and murderers, who wanted money to carry on the robberies and murders in which they were then engaged; and who intended to extort from the future people of the United States, by robbery and threats of murder (and real murder, if that should prove necessary), the means to pay these debts.
Furthermore, this secret band of robbers and murderers, who were the real borrowers of this money, having no legitimate corporate existence, have no corporate property with which to pay these debts. They do, indeed, pretend to own large tracts of wild lands, lying between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and between the Gulf of Mexico and the North Pole. But, on general principles of law and reason, they might as well pretend to own the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans themselves; or the atmosphere and the sunlight; and to hold them, and dispose of them, for the payment of these debts. - Lysander Spooner ("No Treason")
(X) What does all this have to do with language?
The essential reason why men take orders willingly is that they are born serfs and are reared as such. From this cause, there follows another result - namely, that people easily become cowardly and submissive under tyrants.
It is, indeed, the nature of the populace to be suspicious toward one who has their welfare at heart and gullible toward one who fools them. Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by wormy bait than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to speak, before their mouths. Truly, it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were, for ancient peoples, the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books. - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(Y) What can we learn from Gandhi?
Any man who subordinates his will to that of the state surrenders his liberty and, thus, becomes a slave. - Gandhi
(Z) Was Gandhi a philosophical anarchist? Has Gandhi been the most influential philosophical anarchist to date? Why have hundreds of Gandhi biographies been written?
Surely, it is important that Gandhi repeatedly called himself an anarchist, that he refused positions of political power, that he called for the abolition of the Indian Congress after independence; that he desired the abolition of the Indian military and maintenance of, at most, a minimal police force. Surely, it is important that his entire social program revolved around establishing decentralized "village republics" which would use social sanctions to maintain order and which would be free of state control. Surely, it is important that Gandhi was a vigorous opponent of imperialism, war, censorship, and virtually every other kind of state intrusion...
Many analysts have pointed out that Gandhi was in the anarchist tradition and that his anarchism was strongly individualistic. In contrast to the supposedly oriental view that the individual counts for nothings, Gandhi argued that "the individual is the one supreme consideration." "No society," Gandhi wrote, "can possibly be built upon the denial of individual freedom. It is contrary to the very nature of man. Just as a man will not grow horns or a tail, so will he not exist as man if he has no mind of his own. In reality, even those who do not believe in the liberty of the individual believe in their own." - George Smith ("The Voluntaryist," June 1983)
(AA) Why did Gandhi succeed to the extent that he succeeded? Why did Gandhi fail to the extent that he failed?
True heroism consists in not fighting under the banner of sacrifice, devotion, disinterestedness, but in not fighting at all: "This is what I am; this is what I want; you can go to hell!" - Friedrich Nietzsche ("The Will to Power")
(BB) Could it be that politics is a "set of deadly answers" based on deception and violence?
Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: And then everybody would shamelessly cry, "Long live the King!" The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them. A man might one day be presented with a sesterce and gorge himself at a public feast, lauding Tiberius and Nero for handsome liberality who, on the morrow, would be forced to abandon his property to their avarice, his children to their lust, his very blood to the cruelty of these "magnificent emperors," without offering any more resistance than a stone or a tree stump. The mob has always behaved in this way - eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honorably accepted and dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably endured.
They didn't even neglect, these "Roman emperors," to assume generally the title of "Tribune of the People," partly because this office was held sacred and inviolable and also because it had been founded for the defense and protection of the people and enjoyed the favor of "the state." By this means, they made sure that the populace would trust them completely, as if they merely used the title and did not abuse it. Today, there are some who do not behave very differently; they never undertake an unjust policy, even one of some importance, without prefacing it with some pretty speech concerning "public welfare" and "common good."
...The earliest "kings" of Egypt rarely showed themselves without carrying a cat or sometimes, a branch, or appearing with fire on their heads, masking themselves with these objects and parading like workers of magic; by doing this, they inspired their subjects with reverence and admiration, whereas with people neither too stupid nor too slavish, they would merely have aroused, it seems to me, amusement and laughter. It is pitiful to review the list of devices that early despots used to establish their tyranny; to discover how many little tricks they employed, always finding the populace conveniently gullible, readily caught in the net as soon as it was spread. Indeed, they always fooled their victims so easily that while mocking them, they enslaved them the more. - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(CC) Could it be that politics is a deadly (possibly terminal?) disease as a result of which millions have perished?
And the men who lend money to "governments" (so-called) for the purpose of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen...
When these "emperors" and "kings" (so-called) have obtained their loans, they proceed to hire and train immense numbers of professional murderers, called "soldiers," and employ them in shooting down all who resist their demands for money...
All these cries of having "abolished slavery," of having "saved the country," of having "preserved the union," of establishing "a government of consent," and of "maintaining the national honor," are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats - so transparent that they ought to deceive no one...
The lesson taught by all these facts is this: As long as mankind continues to pay "national debts" (so-called) - that is, so long as they are such dupes and cowards as to pay for being cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered - so long as there will be enough to lend the money for those purposes; and with that money a plenty of tools, called "soldiers," can be hired to keep them in subjection. But when they refuse any longer to pay for being thus cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered, they will cease to have cheats and usurpers and robbers and murderers and blood-money loan-mongers for masters. - Lysander Spooner ("No Treason")
(DD) Could it be that politics is a terminal evolutionary error and that if we don't find a cured, the human race will become extinct?
I come now to a point which is, in my opinion, the mainspring and the secret of domination, the support and foundation of tyranny...this does not seem credible on first thought, but it is nevertheless true that there are only four or five who maintain the dictator...five or six have always had access to his ear, and have either gone to him of their own accord or else have been summoned by him, to be accomplices in his cruelties, companions in his pleasures, panders to his lusts, and sharers in his plunders. These six manage their chief so successfully that he comes to be held accountable not only for his own misdeeds but even for theirs. The six have six hundred who profit under them and with the six hundred, they do what they have accomplished with their tyrant. The six hundred maintain under them six thousand, whom they promote in rank, upon whom they confer the government of provinces or the direction of finances, in order that they serve as instruments of avarice and cruelty, executing orders at the proper time and working such havoc all around that they could not last except under the shadow of the six hundred, nor be exempt from law and punishment except through their influence...
The consequence of all this is fatal, indeed. And whoever is pleased to unwind the skein will observe that not the six thousand, but a hundred thousand, and even millions, cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied...such a scheme caused the formation of new ranks...the creation of offices; not really, if properly considered, to reform justice, but to provide new supporters of despotism. In short, when the point is reached, through big favors or little ones, that large profits or small are obtained under a tyrant, there are found almost as many people to whom tyranny seems advantageous as those to whom liberty would seem desirable.
Whenever a ruler makes himself a dictator, all the wicked dregs...who are corrupted by burning ambition or extraordinary avarice, these gather around him and support him in order to have a share in the booty and to constitute themselves petty chiefs under the big tyrant. This is the practice among notorious robbers and infamous pirates: Some scour the country, others pursue voyagers; some lie in ambush, others keep a lookout; some commit murder, others, robbery; and although there are among them differences in rank, some being only underlings while others are chieftains of gangs, yet is there not a single one among them who does not feel himself to be a sharer, if not the main booty, at least in the pursuit of it. - Etienne de la Boetie ("Discourse on Voluntary Servitude")
(EE) Can there be a cure for politics?
And we are so insane, or so wicked, as to destroy property and lives without limit, in fighting to compel men to fulfill a supposed contract which, inasmuch as it has never been signed by anybody, is on general principles of law and reason the merest waste paper, binding upon nobody, fit only to be thrown into the fire; or, if preserved, preserved only to serve as a witness and a warning of the folly and wickedness of mankind. - Lysander Spooner ("No Treason")
(FF) Is it possible that politics is the "societal" manifestation of individual ignorance and internal disharmony and conflict? Is politics to "society" as ignorance and mental disturbance is to the individual?
It seemed to me that, in this business, someone was continually making me face up to facts instead of letting me dodge unpleasant facts the way most people manage to do throughout their lives...
For the fir time in my life, I was reading things which had not been approved by the prophet's censors, and the impact on my mind was devastating. Sometimes, I would glance over my shoulder to see who was watching me, frightened in spire of myself. I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy...censorship. When any government, or any church, for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whoe mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything - you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him...
Please understand me - it is easy to be free when you have been brought up in freedom; it is not easy otherwise. A zoo tiger, escaped, will often slink back into the peace and security of his bars. If he can't get back, they tell me he will pace back and forth within the limits of bars that are no longer there. I suppose I was still pacing in my conditioned pattern... - Robert Heinlein ("Revolt in 2100")
(GG) Do we need a collective cure for politics, or an individual cure, or both?
There's a lust for power in the Irish as there is in every people, a lusting after the ascendancy where you can tell others how to behave. It has a peculiar shape with the Irish, though. It comes of having lost our ancient ways - the simpler laws, the rath*, and the family at the core of society. Romanized governments dismay us. They always resolve themselves into widely separated ascendants and subjects, the latter being more numerous than the former, of course. Sometimes, it's done with great subtlety as it was in America - the slow accumulations of power, law upon law, and all of it manipulated by an elite whose monopoly it is to understand the private language of injustice. Do not blame the ascendants. Such separation requires docile subjects, as well. This may be the lot of any government, Marxist Russians included. There's a peculiar human susceptibility you see when you look at the Soviets, them building an almost exact copy of the czarist regimes: The same paranoia, the same secret police, the same untouchable military, and the murder squads, the Siberian death camps, the lid of terror on creative imagination, deportation of the ones who cannot be killed off or bought off. It's like some terrible plastic memory sitting there in the dark of our minds, ready on the instant to reshape itself into primitive patterns the moment the heat touches it. I fear for the shape of things which may come from the heat of O'Neill's plague. Truly, I fear, for the heat is great. - Fintan Craig Doheny
--Frank Herbert ("The White Plague")(* A rath is a prehistoric Irish hill fort.)
(HH) What ought to be done about politics?
In essence, a dictator's strength depends not upon guns, but on the faith his people place in him. This had been true of Caesar, of Napoleon, of Hitler, of Stalin. It was necessary to strike first at the foundation of the prophet's power: The popular belief that he ruled by direct authority of God...
The people believed this - the minority of doubters dared not open their faces to dispute it for fear of being torn limb from limb...and I am speaking of a rending that leaves blood on the pavement, not some figure of speech. Spitting on the flag would have been much safer...
I had believed it myself, all my life; it would never have occurred to me to doubt such a basic article of faith - and I was what is called an educated man, one who had been let into the secrets of and trained in the production of lesser miracles. I believed it. - Robert Heinlein ("Revolt in 2100")
(II) Could we describe philosophical anarchism as "Living your life out of a context of questions rather than out of a context of answers"?
For the New Year...today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought; hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish for myself today, and what was the first thought o run across my heart this year - what thought shall be, for me, the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth? I want to learn more and ore to see as those who make things beautiful. "Amor Fait" [love or fate]: Let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly; I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. "Looking away" shall be my only negation. - Friedrich Nietzsche ("The Gay Science")
Points to Remember:
(A) Before deciding what to do about any particular problem or issue, it may be necessary to widen the scope of investigation.
(B) Anything accepted as a definite or final "answer" may prevent further advance.
(C) Mystery, questioning, and searching may be energizing forms of life, while "answers" could be a form of dying.
(D) The personal stages that we may go through (or get stuck in) during our quest for knowledge.
(E) The importance of nihilism: Destroying our false values so that we can create fresh real values.
(F) Don't get stuck in anything (not even in "meta-information"!)
(G) The arrogance of pride in "knowledge."
(H) The important questions which may have to be asked over and over again.
(I) Both the origin and the value of commonly accepted "moral values" should be investigated and questioned.
(J) Nietzsche's theory that most of our "knowledge" consists of more or less useful errors.
(K) The weak and questionable foundations of our "logic."
(L) Why our notions of "cause and effect" may be erroneous.
(M) The meaning of idolatry.
(N) The "basic error" on which language rests (metaphor/isomorphism).
(O) The relationship between language and behavior.
(P) Idolatrous language may be at the root of destructive behavior.
(Q) Politics may be based on violence and deception.
(R) Politics may be a deadly disease to which millions have succumbed.
(S) Politics may be a terminal evolutionary error - if we do not find a cure, it may mean the extinction of the human race.
(T) Politics may be a "set of deadly answers" enforced through violence and deception.
(U) Politics may be the "societal" manifestation of individual ignorance and inner disharmony and conflict.
(V) Philosophical anarchism could be described as "living your life out of a context of questions rather than out of a context of answers."
Clarity Check:
(A) Are there any areas of life that are not worth further investigation?
(B) Can our knowledge in any domain ever be complete?
(C) How do you think you could widen your focus in relation to any problem you are attempting to solve?
(D) What do you think of the notion that questions relate to energy and life, while answers are a form of death?
(E) In your own search for knowledge, are you currently in any of the stages mentioned above?
(F) If you were to formulate such "stages," what would they be?
(G) What do you think about nihilism?
(H) Should one continue with a particular approach to life for as long as it works or seems to work?
(I) Should you be proud of what you have so far learned in life?
(J) Which very general and broad questions about life do you think are worth asking over and over again?
(K) Which moral values do you think need not be questioned?
(L) What do you think of Nietzsche's theory that most of our "knowledge" consists of errors?
(M) What do you know with absolute certainty to be true?
(N) Do you think that the foundations of our logic are sound?
(O) Is it worthwhile questioning the basis of our logic?
(P) If our logic has an unsound basis, should we abandon logic or should we regard it as one among several tools, all of which can be improved?
(Q) What do you think about cause and effect?
(R) Can you remember being very certain about something, then later (possibly in an unexpected manner) discovering that it wasn't true?
(S) What does idolatry mean to you?
(T) What do you think of the idea that language is built on a "basic error" or "cosmic blunder"?
(U) Do you think that there is an important relationship between language and behavior?
(V) What do you think of the notion that idolatrous language might be a factor resulting in destructive behavior?
(W) What do you think about politics?
(X) What do you think should be done about politics?
(Y) What do you think about philosophical anarchism?
(Z) What do you think is the most important question for you, right now?
Disclaimer - Copyright - Contact
Online: buildfreedom.org - terrorcrat.com - mind-trek.com