Reasonings Archive

Common Good and Common Evil

Posted June 23, 2023 By John C Wright

Allow me to explain, if I may, how the lifeboat situation, where cruel necessity, as a matter of life and death, may require a volunteer to sacrifice his life for other, might apply to more common situations, or even to everyday life.

Extreme circumstances at times call for extreme sacrifices, as when a soldier throws himself on a hang grenade to save his team mates.

In less extreme circumstances, a mother suffers pain to give birth to a child who has signed no contract agreeing to be born, and a father earns his bread through the sweat of his face for his family. These are lifelong sacrifices. While the joys of parenthood including the benefit of augmenting the numbers of family, clan, and nation to add strength to strength is a benefit, the sacrifices of parenting are not made for the sake of such rewards, which are speculative in any case.

And the same principle applies to a lesser degree to lesser things.

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Not Interested in Self-Interestedness

Posted June 20, 2023 By John C Wright

Part of an ongoing dialog: A reader with the abbreviated name of MB writes,

“This is just my answer to your rhetorical question “does anyone need to be told to be more greedy and selfish?”

The answer is that yes, there are some people who need to be told to be less self-sacrificing or magnanimous and more selfish and greedy. Not that all people should be more selfish, but some people should.

Yes, I understand your answer thoroughly and completely. You stand on the ground I occupied thirty years ago.

Your analysis is flawed, because you are committing what is called a category error — albeit one might more clearly call it a play on words, or a pun.

You answer the question “does anyone need to be told to be more selfish?” with examples, not of selfishness, but of prudence. You mistake examples of imprudence for selfishness because folly mistakes prudence for selfishness.

But in no case you list is it the motive (selfish or unselfish) which is the mistake. In each case the mistake is misapplication of proper judgement as to person, place, condition, time, degree.

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Live and Let Abort

Posted June 15, 2023 By John C Wright

Part of an ongoing discussion.

The Libertarian maxim is laws deterring harm to others are licit, but laws deterring harmless acts are not. Harm here means physical violence, theft, trespass, fraud, breach of contract.

This is the core of what all variations of libertarianism hold in common: one may never initiate harm against the innocent. Harm is only to be used to deter harm, only in due proportion, and only against the one who initiates the use of harm.

Strangely, nearly all libertarians classify public drunkenness, recreational psychedelics, adultery, bigamy, pornography, pollution, draft-dodging, tax evasion, false advertising, suicide, euthanasia, and abortion as harmless.

Harmless must be allowed.

Whereas nearly all libertarians earnestly debate privatizing the police, public roads, public parks and common greens, and disbanding all standing armies, on the theory that maintaining borders and collecting taxes are unacceptable impositions on the liberty of the sovereign individual. And planning and zoning laws are right out. Using the coercive power of the state for public works or the common defense is harmful.

Harmful must be not allowed.

This inability to see harm as harmful is one of the main reasons why I departed the cause of Libertarianism.

Killing your unborn child is not harm? But defending the child is? So says that paragon of Libertarians, Ayn Rand.

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Unhumanity: Part VIII The Cult of the Un-Man

Posted May 15, 2023 By John C Wright

Continued from prior columns, here concluded.

The civilizational suicide of Wokeness is an eternal revolt against earth and heaven, seeking to undo the gains of civilization, and to reject nature herself. This means rejecting human nature, which the eternal rebels take to be fluid and ever-evolving.

To be one of them, one must be “Woke” that is, enlightened enough to see and reject the hidden sources of all the injustices of the world. These injustices spring from a world-spirit or zeitgeist the ancient called the demiurge and the moderns variously call capitalism, patriarchy, whiteness, white supremacy, and cis-heteronormativity (I kid you not).

To become enlightened, one need pass no test, shed no blood, work no miracles, donate to no charity. One need only recite the bromides, whatever happens to be fashionable, of the other members of the conformist mob of the Woke. To fail to do so invites ostracization, called cancellation and deplatforming.

No merit makes one Elect. Indeed, a lack of merit is an advantage.

The fact that you lack any virtue, any value to self or others, means you are a victim of the world-spirit, which proves your worth to yourself. The fact that you are a victim means you are secretly a king: the fact that you are a loser proves you are a winner.

The reasoning here is that of a paranoid megalomaniac: the Woke regards himself as worthy of the persecution of the world, for the same reason prophets and messiahs are persecuted, because of their exceptional exceptionalness.

What is really going on is that this Wokeness is satanic, and pursuit of their aims by their means leads the Woke, step by step, to jettison their own humanity within themselves.

Their project is the suicide of civilization, the corruption of innocence, the cessation of humane sentiment, the darkening of the intellect, and the damnation of the soul.  The aim is the abolition of man.

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Unhumanity: Part VII Revolt Against the World-Spirit

Posted May 12, 2023 By John C Wright

Continued from prior columns. The civilizational suicide of Wokeness is merely the current incarnation of an unbroken tradition of esoteric mystics from antiquity, forever seeking to synthesize all faiths into a unity, replace God with man, and create heaven on earth, or abolish earth altogether. It is a tradition of unreason, irreligion and inhumanity.

Unreason we have explored. We here briefly explore the inversion of religion.

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Unhumanity: Part VI The Darkness of the Inner Light

Posted May 9, 2023 By John C Wright

Continued from prior columns.

We have seen that Christian civilization has adopted a suicidal worldview, whose current name is Wokeness. It is one ideal, and ideal of death, with many manifestations (Hegelian, Marxist, Cultural Marxist) prompting many cults and causes (Feminism, Gender Ideology, Critical Race Theory, Climate Panic Theory) leading to several types of activism (Intersectionalism, Globalism, the Great Reset). This ideal is the modern version of an unbroken tradition of esoteric thought leading to Hegel from Boehme, Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism. This tradition is theosophy, not philosophy, for it is not based on reason, nor is it theology, for it is not based on revelation.

The civilizational suicide of Wokeness is a tradition of mystagogues forever seeking to synthesize all faiths into a unity, replace God with man, and create heaven on earth, or abolish earth altogether. It is a tradition of unreason, inhumanity, and antichrist.

Let us ponder the path of unreason: the politics, the theory, the history, and the modern fruition.

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Interview with Crimelaw Part 1

Posted May 8, 2023 By John C Wright

Mr. Stephen N. Gosney had my books recommended to him, and was so well pleased with them, that he declared himself a loyal fan, and asked me to be a guest on his podcast. We rambled on together for quite a while, so the piece will be released in parts. Here is part 1.

Here is the Rumble link:
https://rumble.com/v2l0dg8-conversation-with-sci-fi-fantasy-author-john-c.-wright-part-1.html

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Unhumanity Part V: Big Brother is Green

Posted May 4, 2023 By John C Wright

Continued from prior columns. Christendom is no longer Christian, but Woke, which is to say, benighted with a proud pretense of enlightenment leading civilization to self destruction, and souls to damnation.

This ideology, here proclaimed “the Ideals of Death,” arose after the time of the Terror in France, ironically self-proclaimed “the Age of Reason.” This ideology is the latest in a long line of long-hidden cults, heresies, and crackpots reaching back to antiquity, called the esoteric tradition.

The esoteric tradition takes the form of philosophies, ideologies, and radical movements in the modern day: Hegelianism, Marxism, Cultural Marxism, Feminism, Gender Ideology, Critical Race Theory, Intersectionalism, but also ecological and political movements, as Climate Panic Ideology, Globalism, and the Great Reset.

These various modern ideologies are one and the same philosophically and theologically with their ancient and medieval precursors, forming an unbroken historical tradition, differing only in application: one army under one banner fighting on multiple battlefields.

Philosophically, each promotes, literally or tacitly, nihilist metaphysics, self-contradictory logic, mystical epistemology, relativist ethics, antinomian politics, non-objective art, and esoteric theology: Reality is unreal, dependent on human will, and is created in ongoing evolution by a clash of opposites.

Theologically, each promotes Hermetic theodicy, Gnostic soteriology, Alchemical anthropology, and Neoplatonic eschatology: Evil emanates from the godhead, salvation is by rebellion, man is god, and the end of man is pantheistic reabsorption into the godhead from which all things emanate.

Nominalism, which holds words to be arbitrary; hypocrisy, which dismisses ethical standards; and syncretism, which holds all religions to be one, are recurring essentials of the esoteric tradition.

Previous columns have proposed that Hegel is a philosophy-flavored version of Boehme, who is a Christian-flavored Neoplatonist. Both are Gnostic in outlook, hence both firmly in the Esoteric tradition.

Marxism, by his own admission, is a materialistic version of Hegel. Cultural Marxism is a cultural version of Marxism: and when applied to the sexes, is Feminism; to sexual perversion, is Gender Ideology; and ; to race relations, is Critical Race Theory. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, also called Intersectionalism, is the doublethink amalgam of these mutually contradictory Cultural Marxist theories. Everyone is both oppressor and oppressed, both and neither, at the same time and in the same sense.

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Unhumanity Part IV: The Seven Headed Hydra

Posted May 1, 2023 By John C Wright

This is continued from previous columns. Civilizational suicide arose in the era of Napoleon, the so-called Age of Reason, as the main aim of intellectuals. Their doctrines are defended by gaslighting and cry-bullying, attacks both verbal and physical.

This is because the intellectuals promote a theosophical vision currently called Wokeness, but rightly called Witchcraft.

Philosophically, the Woke are nihilistic antinomians, who reject truth, virtue, beauty, law and logic. Theologically, they are narcissists and satanists.

Their dogmas represent the wholesale rejection of philosophy in favor of prehistoric and esoteric magical thinking. The current manifestation of this ancient and recurring cult goes by many names.

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Unhumanity Part III: The Metaphysics of Witchcraft

Posted April 29, 2023 By John C Wright

This essay is continued from previous columns. The nature of the ideals of civilizational suicide haunting the modern age were dubbed the Ideals of Death, and the Terror of France was named as the date of their onset. Next was explained the unvarying tactic of deterring rather than fostering dialog, eternally following the same steps of gaslighting and inversion, as when a cry-bully claims to be the victim of the aggression he himself initiates, accusing his victims of his own wrongdoings.

Now we to turn to a discussion of the ancient sources of modern ideology.

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Unhumanity: Part II The Tactics of Unreason

Posted April 21, 2023 By John C Wright

This essay is continued from a previous column. The first column named the nature of the ideals of civilizational suicide haunting the modern age as the Ideals of Death, and names the date of their onset as the Terror of France, ironically called the Age of Reason. The column explains the nature of the philosophies growing from these ideals, and notes the unvarying tactic of deterring rather than fostering introspection, reason, dialectic, dialogue.

These are the tactics of unreason, using speech to halt speech, using thought to halt thought, using accusation to answer accusation, using swords to stop words.

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Unhumanity: Part I The Ideal of Death

Posted April 14, 2023 By John C Wright

This essay is in several columns. The first defines the nature of the ideals of civilizational suicide haunting the modern age, and names the date of their onset. Further columns will explore the tactics and nature of these ideals, their continuity and singleness of purpose.as well as the ancient origins of the esoteric tradition from which such deathly ideals spring.

1. Bookshelf of Western Civilization

Once I had a bookshelf next to my desk where I kept the works of my school days.

My school, hence my bookshelf, was consecrated to the Great Books of the Western World, as compiled by Mortimer Adler of Encyclopedia Britannica fame. The top shelf held freshman readings, including Homer, Aristotle, Euripides, Euclid, Thucydides. The second shelf held sophomore readings, including Virgil, Aquinas, the Bible and the Testaments, Ptolemy, Livy. Junior readings on the third shelf included Milton, Kant, Jonathon Swift, Newton, Adam Smith, the Federalist Papers. Senior year readings filled the bottom shelf, and included Tolstoy, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Darwin, Einstein, Marx, De Tocqueville.

Because this bookshelf abutted my desk, I could put out a hand and pluck up any work of poetry, philosophy, mathematics, science, theology, politics, or history as might need to be reread. A chronological summary of all Western learning could be gleaned at a glance from the titles shining on the book spines.

A time came when I realized that my hand nevermore reached to the bottom shelf.

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Liberty and Anarchy

Posted April 6, 2023 By John C Wright

1. The Black Rag of Anarchy

In law school, at the urging of a friend, I read a slim book called THE BLACK FLAG OF ANARCHY. Or, at least, that is the title uncertain memory recalls: perhaps it bore a similar title. The author’s name escapes me.

It was, I confess. the most shallow treatment of the subject of any political topic I had ever read. On the first page, in his introduction, the author establishes the assumption on which his argument is based, namely, that there is no valid reason authorizing the use of force.

After many meandering pages discussing tangential matters, diligently trouncing strawman arguments no real person ever made to justify authorized uses of force, the author triumphantly concludes that there is no valid reason authorizing the use of force, ergo no valid reason for government of any form: anarchy alone is right.

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Against Libertarianism

Posted March 18, 2023 By John C Wright

During my recent interview by RJ of Fourth Age, I mentioned that I was once mesmerized by the sophomoric allure of Libertarianism, a political theory of admirable logical self-consistency, but, alas, one too optimistic for fallen man to follow.

A reader asked to me expound on these comments, which I here will, too briefly. An entire book could be written on any one of these points, and many have, so I hope I will be excused in the space of this short column if I fail to lay out the argument in a nuanced and rigorous fashion.

I submit Libertarianism it is a perfectly apt political philosophy for young and healthy men in times of peace, for they have no need to have Caesar do more, and they rightly suspect that he will abuse whatever powers are given him to do good.

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Morlockery

Posted February 14, 2023 By John C Wright

Morlockery

Note: It would be remiss of me not to mention at the outset that James Lindsay writes with more depth and breadth than this column covers on the issue here: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/09/first-amendment-case-freedom-from-woke-religion/

He is a writer I recommend, not because he says anything I myself have not been saying for years now, but because he says it with more clarity, more proof, and in more detail.

The Name of the Morlock

The Morlocks live among us.

The Morlock is a subhuman who imagines himself to be posthuman, that is, anointed as superior by fate or by evolution. The Morlock imagines men to be livestock. We, the vulgar, the lowly, the benighted, are lambs are to be shepherded and — for he too has a faith, albeit a perverse one — lambs to be sacrificed for the salvation of the world.

All these imaginations are vain, not merely inversions of the truth, but perversions of it. Deception and self-deception is the core of their mystery.

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