dialectic of cognitive distortions and history

[consuming negativity]

we are now aware of cognitive biases in the way we think, that shield our ego, and provide us with a way of experiencing the world which makes us better able to survive. for example, we pick up on movement easily. and we also keep high self-esteem to encourage us to thrive, with moments of weakness that allow us the chance to imprint on ourselves based on new experiences in our lives.

the very fact that we have advanced in intelligence enough to require cognitive distortions gives us the very consciousness that allows us to be conscious of these distortions and subvert them to obtain a completely accurate view of reality

i posit that the difference between conservatism and progressivism in mainstream society is the difference not between intelligence, but between the amount that people are aware of their own cognitive biases and the amount of effort they put into over-riding them to see reality as it is, in different aspects of their life

conservatives view reality as though it is egalitarian and authority is justified, while progressives see reality as unequal, and attempt to change things to make it more equal

the main "spectrum" of political thought can only be, then, our willingness to accept authority. the societies of history have, historically, always reflected the groups of individuals, regardless of who the leader was, because people have always been able to act to change their political system. this was much easier on a smaller scale, because you only had a few people you had to win over, and all of you were likely to know each other.

as population increases under the influence of capital - to increase the supply of workers and thus decrease their relative worth - it becomes more difficult for us to relate to one another, because of our distance and a lack of trust

historically, great thinkers have always come to the conclusion that in order to escape our chains of slavery, we have to see one another as trustworthy, to work against those who would oppress us and attain our freedom. it was the primary message of jesus, whose message the muslims rightly recognized as corrupted by paul of tarsus and the roman government, even if they did not wholly escape the recuperation of the thought of jesus by the slave-owners.

the first estate, the clergy, just like the brahmins of india, just like all over the world, saw religion used as a tool of control which stated that rather than overcoming our cognitive distortions and seeing reality the way it is, we should accept the status quo and accept everybody of the same religion which promotes the same hierarchy. whether the old class was allowed to be recuperated or simply destroyed, the basic idea has always been larger groups of people as our in-group, maintaining control over outsiders out of fear and unfamiliarity, and using them to help ensure their own continued slavery, so long as the power existed to do so.

but, of course, the solution is in the problem itself: by making everybody part of the in-group, we eliminate fear and create a society of masters, who are slaves only to themselves.

as people have grown wiser, more and more, they keep the good parts of their religions and discard the remnant bullshit used to corrupt truths into lies and keep people from acquiring knowledge of what reality actually is. every religion contains in itself the truth that rules out the bullshit, and experience is our method of figuring things out and learning about the way the world actually works.

the separation of church and state represents the separation of the spiritual and the personal from the political, which is the key to maintaining the cognitive dissonance within our modern society. people who believe everything is well and everybody is fine - who are right, in actuality - are much more likely to want to defend that in-group from outsiders. conservatism is not just opposed to us but, in the highest acceptance of authority, fascism, it is the ultimate contradiction: that everybody is good and yet everybody is evil, dependent only on how close a person is to you.

globalization itself is the tool for overcoming the problem of globalization; because the economy has grown to include nearly all of humanity, we are getting closer and closer and it is becoming harder to maintain the illusion of enemies and fear. by becoming better people - by gaining knowledge and seeing reality as it is - we experience the pain of cognitive dissonance, but at the same time, we increase the whole collective knowledge of society, as we are a part of it. and through our actions, the only thing we can do, so long as we're doing what we think is best, is evangelize on behalf of human progress. the ultimate contradiction of life is the exact opposite of genesis, and yet is the same message as genesis, taken differently: that knowledge and freedom are not a choice. both in the sense that they are not a choice we are allowed to make, and in the sense that we don't get the choice - we have to, in order to be fully ourselves, choose knowledge and freedom.

some dude figured that shit out centuries ago and the romans found out and turned it into a fairy tale used to keep people from ever figuring out the truth. now we all know the truth and, with the roman masters long gone, we are flagellating ourselves for no reason at all other than the fact that we all still believe we need hierarchy and that other people should be feared, which is itself a distortion caused by the reality that other people have, in the past, been stupid and forgotten that we were enslaved thousands and thousands of years ago. it is a downward spiral of stupidity that can only be solved when we snap the fuck out of it; when we've accrued so much cognitive dissonance that we're forced to face the music, even if it hurts, and be communists.

we are the dumbest fucking creatures, god fucking damn it.

[ckaihatsu]

the separation of church and state represents the separation of the spiritual and the personal from the political, which is the key to maintaining the cognitive dissonance within our modern society.


I'd welcome any elaboration on this part, especially since you're *critical* of caste-based organized religion and rule -- wouldn't it be *progressive* to keep the state and church separate, so as to favor secular government over that of religious sectarianism -- ? Or perhaps you see the two powers as being roughly *equivalent*, just in different ways, thus making it a mere shell-game -- ?

[consuming negativity]

I'd welcome any elaboration on this part, especially since you're *critical* of caste-based organized religion and rule -- wouldn't it be *progressive* to keep the state and church separate, so as to favor secular government over that of religious sectarianism -- ? Or perhaps you see the two powers as being roughly *equivalent*, just in different ways, thus making it a mere shell-game -- ?

sure thing. and thanks for reading.

hierarchy is self-justifying: it doesn't matter what we believe, so long as we submit to authority. this is the true morality of the ruling class: it has never changed, only developed.

we willingly and readily destroy each other, and thus ourselves, and we say that we don't have a choice in the matter. but we actually do have a choice. no matter how hopeless it is, we could refuse slavery. but we don't.

it is precisely our selfishness - our willingness to tolerate hierarchy while we wait for "better times" - that allows for hierarchy to persist in our society. because we aren't willing to call the bluff of the ruling class and put our lives on the line, we remain enslaved. we are the ones who willingly accept our own servitude and we do so because we want to. because it is safer to be a slave than to be a master and we are terrified of our own freedom.

when you ask a communist what their vision of communism is, it is just capitalism, but the exact opposite: it is a direct inversion of capitalism which, at the same time, preserves all of the morality of capitalism. because capitalism and communism both, at their core, promote the same thing: hierarchy. the only difference is how hierarchy is justified. nobody actually wants to get rid of the bosses, they just want to change how they are selected. nobody actually wants to change the mode of production: all they want to do is change who profits from it. nobody is actually interested in destroying hierarchy because we prefer having power.

the separation of church and state was, fundamentally, a way for us to avoid the question of which should be dominant. it was a way to avoid the inevitable conflict between two ostensibly opposite belief systems which are in actuality exactly the same, because they are both, at their core, ways of justifying heirarchy. the same way that the ussr and usa never actually fought to the death. why? because, at the end of the day, the values they held were exactly the same: both valued the continuation of hierarchy over the destruction of their foe, because the destruction of their foe would mean to destroy the source of each others' power that they only held through fear of the opposite gaining control: we submit to authority because we're scared. we are ruled by fear through different names. radicalism entails the rejection of fear entirely in favor of self-rule. i don't want a secular OR a religious government: i don't want government. i reject the scenario entirely in favor of reality.

[ckaihatsu]

i don't want a secular OR a religious government: i don't want government. i reject the scenario entirely in favor of reality.


I have no differences with your *political* conclusion here.





the separation of church and state was, fundamentally, a way for us to avoid the question of which should be dominant.


But, since you're also referring to history, it's worth noting that state and church weren't exactly arm-in-arm throughout the Middle Ages. There's a dialectic of historical development here, and secularism has had the advantage of a *scientific methodology* for its inquiries, whereas religion has not, and has for centuries fought *against* rational-minded investigations into how the world works.

These paradigms are *not* equivalent, and it doesn't do anyone any good to blur the distinction between the two. For example, in current events there's the problem of ISIS, which shouldn't be seen as 'equivalent' to a secular state like Syria, whatever its own problems. (I even tend to tolerate outside intervention to *curtail* ISIS, but the track record there hasn't been encouraging, either.)

[consuming negativity]

I have no differences with your *political* conclusion here.

But, since you're also referring to history, it's worth noting that state and church weren't exactly arm-in-arm throughout the Middle Ages. There's a dialectic of historical development here, and secularism has had the advantage of a *scientific methodology* for its inquiries, whereas religion has not, and has for centuries fought *against* rational-minded investigations into how the world works.

These paradigms are *not* equivalent, and it doesn't do anyone any good to blur the distinction between the two. For example, in current events there's the problem of ISIS, which shouldn't be seen as 'equivalent' to a secular state like Syria, whatever its own problems. (I even tend to tolerate outside intervention to *curtail* ISIS, but the track record there hasn't been encouraging, either.)

religion only fights against knowledge when it believes that knowledge undermines its power: the same reason that secular institutions also fight against knowledge which they believe will undermine their own power. historically, the religious leaders were the only people who were actually educated to begin with; they were the ones who were able to actually read and interpret religious texts, many of which were in languages that nobody actually used in their day to day, be it ancient arabic, latin, or sanskrit. they were never against learning, they were against losing their power, which they had through knowledge.

it's a balancing act: slaves who have knowledge can do infinitely more for you, but they're also much more likely to be able to recognize and resent their enslavement, not least because they're smart enough to know how much they actually do deserve respect. and every time the balancing act fucks up, a revolution happens, which restores hierarchy in a form palatable to the populace. and that's the thing: no matter how radical some of us get, and no matter how much power the radicals get, we won't ever be able to lead everybody out of the darkness. they will get what they want because it is always the masses who have the power; it's just whether or not they're willing to use it - how dissonant their current conditions are from what they want them to be, and how hopeful they are of change in the future. when we hate our position and have no hope for a better tomorrow, we revolt. capitalism has nearly perfected the art of giving us nothing, making us great, and at the same time, convincing us that things are getting better while they're actually getting worse.

[ckaihatsu]

religion only fights against knowledge when it believes that knowledge undermines its power: the same reason that secular institutions also fight against knowledge which they believe will undermine their own power. historically, the religious leaders were the only people who were actually educated to begin with; they were the ones who were able to actually read and interpret religious texts, many of which were in languages that nobody actually used in their day to day, be it ancient arabic, latin, or sanskrit. they were never against learning, they were against losing their power, which they had through knowledge.

it's a balancing act: slaves who have knowledge can do infinitely more for you, but they're also much more likely to be able to recognize and resent their enslavement, not least because they're smart enough to know how much they actually do deserve respect. and every time the balancing act fucks up, a revolution happens, which restores hierarchy in a form palatable to the populace. and that's the thing: no matter how radical some of us get, and no matter how much power the radicals get, we won't ever be able to lead everybody out of the darkness. they will get what they want because it is always the masses who have the power; it's just whether or not they're willing to use it - how dissonant their current conditions are from what they want them to be, and how hopeful they are of change in the future. when we hate our position and have no hope for a better tomorrow, we revolt. capitalism has nearly perfected the art of giving us nothing, making us great, and at the same time, convincing us that things are getting better while they're actually getting worse.


Again, no disagreement with your politics, but I have to reiterate the point about *content* -- 'religious texts' are not value-neutral, and each cultural paradigm of whatever religion has been a source of *superstition* posing as *science*. Objectively that kind of content is *regressive* and counter-revolutionary, no matter how erudite its proponents.

[Futility Personified]

In psychological terms, I fully agree that people are far too prone with a kind of tribal allegiance to their world view. This is something that is inherent with every ideological group, and if we view socialism as a necessity, whether ethically, historically or practically, then it is important to expunge falsehoods as falsehoods.

Someone wrote at some point (write that one up as an academic reference) something about people, conservatives in particular, being threatened by the idea that everything is not going well, because that would (assuming they are decent folk, as in all honesty I think most people are deep down) expose their privilege and the possibility that what they are doing to benefit from this system is actually quite wrong. It is one of the most strange things that christianity is linked with conservative ideas, when Jesus was espouting some extremely radical ideas for his time (fuck, they are still extremely radical now, and to me seem to go far beyond simply being nice to people).

With globalisation being an answer to itself, I see it as the inevitable evolution of capitalism. As capitalism becomes fully global and the centralisation of wealth continues, the proletariat of the whole fucking world have their interests aligned in material conditions much more solidly. It seems much less abstract to suggest that the international working class rely on each other when all of our standards or liberties are under threat, and all of us are more deeply linked in consumerist absurdity.

[ckaihatsu]

In psychological terms, I fully agree that people are far too prone with a kind of tribal allegiance to their world view.


I'll suggest that any given 'tribalism' / sectarianism / 'groupthink' -- where loyalty to the in-crowd trumps common recognition of objective reality -- is due to *historical* factors, and also of *scale*, since being 'on the ground' is where people *exist*, largely in the dominant culture of the status quo.

I've got a diagram for this (of course):


G.U.T.S.U.C., Individualism - Tribalism

http://s6.postimg.org/izeyfeh9t/150403_2_Individualism_Tribalism_aoi_36_tiff_x.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/680s8w7hp/full/)