Mental Masturbation
Them: “Nonsense — you need to look up the definition of Anarchy.”
Me: [Stunned incredulity that anyone can, with a straight face, attempt to stipulate that Anarchy, of all things, be proscribed in its definition]¹.
Of course, the real irony of the above is how right they in fact are … and how little they realise that; because, of course, I am in no position to dictate to them what Anarchy is any more than they are to me — the only difference in our approaches being that they make recourse to the fallacy that 100,000 lemmings must be right, whereas I am, entirely reasonably, of the opinion that the only opinion that matters is my own ² and they can go ████ themself.
Okay, so … holding all that in the back of your mind for the moment … Conway’s ‘game’ Life is the perfect model of how order can arise within chaos without the presence of chaos being negated … of entropy-driven order ⁴ … and proof, therefore, that the fact that human beings congregate into groups which result in ordered societies does not disprove the assertion that Life, The Universe And Everything are anarchic.
It’s also fascinating — at least it is if you look into later developments (in particular 3D variants) and I recommend the chapter on cellular automata in A.K. Dewdney’s book The Armchair Universe for some particularly thought-provoking examples.
The upshot though is that Conway’s Life ‘game’ proves that I am fundamentally right about the nature of Anarchy and the universe (never mind world) in which we live and that anyone who disagrees is, to put it charitably, misguided and would do better to keep quiet and listen: knowing, as I do, that, statistically, the chance of their not being a complete and utter cretin is so vanishingly small as to be not worth considering … probabilistically so unlikely that, morally speaking, the impossible has more right to occur … (see here for the mathematical proof of this theorem) … I’ve done all the thinking for them in advance and all they need do is listen and learn in order to become immeasurably better informed and wiser than they weren’t — no, I’m not being patronising ⁵ … it’s just an inevitable universal truth that I am brighter than them ⁷ (see here and here), QED, and should, by all rights, be elected Dictator of the Universe In Perpetuity ⁸.
Anyway … I didn’t start out intending to talk about Anarchy … it was just by way of a preamble to what I do want to talk about. The general points I was leading up to concerned opinion vs fact and moral relativity, but I got a bit sidetracked
So, anyway …
You can tell what people want by what they do:
There was a reason why I wrote a note here, to remind myself to link to the above ‘story’, but then I got so distracted by the other stuff that I can’t remember what it was now …
It was definitely going to be relevant though.
*sigh*
Never mind, if I remember later, I’ll edit this to include it — in the meantime I’ll leave it in as an aide-mémoire, in case it jogs my memory at a later date (watch this space!).
Anyhow …
Morality — which is where I intended to go with all this.
In the matter of those aspects of Life that do not have a moral dimension (which again, will be a matter of opinion ⁹), it is a purely subjective experience and we are, ourselves, aware of that — we differentiate between judging (analysing) and being judgmental (assessing).
The thing about Morality though is that it is just as absolute as our opinion …
…and, however open-minded, easy-going, live-and-let-live, liberal we may like to flatter ourselves we are or … or may even be … we nevertheless hold our truths to be self-evident platonic absolutes and if we claim otherwise then we are, albeit unintentionally so perhaps, hypocrites … fooling ourselves: because we do not in fact have the moral values we profess (whether to ourselves and/or others) but others unstated ¹⁰ — when the time comes that someone transgresses our boundaries, we won’t calmly say “Oh, well, like, it’s all relative, man, you dig”, we’ll be at least muttering darkly about how it shouldn’t be allowed, if not outright calling for them to be lynched.
So, the idea, and it does seem to be oddly popular of late, that there is a kind of person who might be considered amoral, is utter nonsense.
Even ‘psychopathic’/’sociopathic’ individuals have moral values, standards by which they live. It’s just that their values are flexible, to say the least, and basically boil down to “I’ll do whatever I like, whenever I like, if I think I’ll get away with it.”
They do recognise boundaries that should not, in their opinion, be transgressed … and, in doing so, therefore, absent themselves from the realm of the amoral and step decisively back into the domain of Morality.
It’s just that, being the ultimate hypocrites that they are, their boundaries consist of “as long as I’m not the victim” — watch them squeal with outrage, when someone else takes the same approach …
They are, therefore, not amoral at all, but immoral¹¹ … for were they amoral, they would recognise no boundaries at all, but rather sanguinely accept the right of others to do unto them as they (would) do unto others.
So, this trend for moral relativism strikes me as, at best, misguided … at worst, part of a wave of gaslighting intended to normalise immoral behaviour. It’s been going on for far too long and a stop needs putting to it.
“It’s just politics/business … nothing personal.”
No, it isn’t … it’s immoral! And it most certainly is personal: you, personally, benefit … whilst someone else, personally, suffers.
Okay … so, here’s my ‘problem’ with Philosophy.
Philosophers will/have argue/ed the toss about the hardcore solipsism arising from Cartesian Dualism.
Wannabes … who know no more than they have learned from tutorials/lectures/Wikipedia … will argue that Descartes himself later refuted it — as though the Inquisition’s offer to let him recant (publicly announce the error of his ways), rather than simply burn at the stake for heresy, played no part in that. ¹²
Either way around, however … quite apart from the fact that, philosophically, until another position is proffered that is more logically unassailable, I have no choice but to be a solipsist … as a psychologist, I know that, if Descartes was wrong and it is all externally real … really real, so to speak … then, by the time I become consciously aware of anything, it has been so mediated by my brain that I’ll never know to what extent my neurocognitive model tallies with the external stimulus — and Descartes was, therefore, right even though he was wrong.
Furthermore, I have in my life experienced things that I knew not to be real even as I experienced them. I still really experienced them, however.
So …
Given that my experience of something is itself real … that what I experience is as real as ‘real’ is ever going to be for me … that I’ll never know any different … Epistemology and Ontology are bunk and the only field of Philosophy that is not the playground of the intellectually and morally destitute is that of Moral Philosophy ¹³.
So, frankly, I’ve no time for the navel-gazing pseuds of the academe world who call themselves ‘philosophers’ … because, whether I’m real or a figment of your imagination is irrelevant if the punch in the mouth felt real and really hurt, isn’t it?
And, for all their being trapped on the cusp between pre-operational and concrete operational stages of development … and, hence, unable to recognise that neither are they the centre of the Universe nor must everything have a physical reality … even the mental midgets in the realm of Physics who favour the so called ‘observer effect’ of Quantum Mechanics grasp the fundamental truth that we create reality for ourselves.
So, really, even Moral Philosophy is just mental masturbation too … because philosophising about it all doesn’t make any concrete difference to the World or its inhabitants — not even for the worse.
Sartre was right ¹⁴ … what matters is how we act — sitting around contemplating how many ̶a̶n̶g̶e̶l̶s̶ of the underprivileged can dance ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶i̶n̶ in a squalid, taxpayer-funded bedsit owned by a sociopathic, non-dom, fat-cat rentier landlord is for wankers.
You wanna understand it … study Psychology/Sociology.
You wanna make a difference … become a politician/lawyer/doctor/whatever and make a concrete difference to people’s lives.
But don’t be a wanker — there’s more to oral sex than sitting around talking about it!
</rant>
—
¹ Just think about it.
² For any given value of ‘I’ … at the end of the day, the only opinion that matters is ‘mine’. Sure I might value your/their opinion but only because yours/theirs is significant in my own opinion — even if, in my opinion, someone else’s opinion on a particular matter carries sufficient weight for me to defer to it, it is my opinion that that be the case that matters (for otherwise their opinion would be of no import at all to me). People who write “IM(H)O” … or make statements like “in your opinion” … really are insufferably sanctimonious, pseudointellectual arseholes: well, duh … whose opinion else could it be!? ³
³ And our next contestant tonight on Mastermind is A. Pedant — specialist subject The Blindingly Obvious.
⁴ See here for an introduction.
⁵ That’s when you ‘talk down’ to people and tell them things they (do/probably/should) already know ⁶.
⁶ It’s like being condescending in a way.
⁷ Yes … you.
⁸ By this stage, you should have no difficulty in appreciating why that be the case but, just in case … given that it’s pretty much inevitable that you’re one of the reasons the World’s average IQ is as low as it is …
⁹ I don’t consider imagery that promotes the oppression of others to even constitute Art, let alone be moral, for instance, and consider it should be strongly discouraged if not even legislated against … but someone’s liking for Jazz, on the other hand, is not cause for them to be censured — no matter how much I might wish it were.
¹⁰ Ah, yes … that’s why I was talking about being able to tell what people want by what they do, not by what they say they want: you can tell what people’s moral values are by how they act, not what they claim — it doesn’t matter if you go to church every Sunday if, the rest of the time, you behave in a manner that is un-Christian.
¹¹ At least IMO anyway … so, they are, therefore, by definition so, QED.
¹² They crammed ‘Descartes For Dummies’ but didn’t bother to study the man himself.
¹³ What we’re gonna do about it.
¹⁴ Inevitably so — it’s the only logical step after the realisation that both Descartes and neuroscience/neuropsychology dictate that you will never know that it isn’t all real.
