March 19, 2007
Thr Real Enemy
JohnGalt thinks it is Plato, and Arnold Kling thinks it is Karl Marx. I have suspected that it is John Lennon. But I think we all must admit that the true philosophical leader of the forces of darkness and anti-modernity -- is Yoko Ono.
Oleg Atbashian, who grew up under Soviet totalitarianism has studied "The Gospel of John and Yoko" extensively, and narrowed it to these theses:
1. A collective hallucination can create objective reality.
2. “The fenceless and doorless world is soon to come.” Obviously it’s a good thing.
3. Middle America is stupid and “afraid of youth and the future.”
4. People work not because they’re glad to have a job but because they’re being bullied into working by the “tyranny and suppression of the capitalists.” (Karl Marx called and left a message).
5. Immature youth are “the aware ones”; traditional education and thought discipline is the enemy.
6. Material reality is evil.
7. “Come together rather than claim independence.”
8. “Feel rather than think.”
9. Immature and irresponsible behavior is a virtue.
10. Possessions are immoral. “Any possession that is more than what you need belongs to someone who needs it.”
11. A worldwide revolution (“progress”) is inevitable, and such a future “cannot be anything but brightness.”
12. To resist the revolution is immoral because it prolongs people’s suffering.
13. A society based on competitiveness and logic produces “hypocrisy, violence, and chaos.”
14. A society based on love rather than reasoning will produce “balance, peace, and contentment.”
15. To remove evil from this world men must be feminized (if you liked this one you will also like “The DaVinci Code” which is a 500-pages-long regurgitation of this very doctrine).
I was certainly brought up on this crap. Although I have aggravated some of my blog brothers and sisters with my rejection of Objectivism, I do credit Ayn Rand with showing me the fallacies in that way of thinking. Atbashian opens the piece with a Rand quote -- she remains a powerful antidote to Onoism.
Like Kling's Folk-Marxism, I see a lot of what drives my leftist friends in this, and recognize that anybody my age in America was inculcated in this nonsense.
Hat-tip: instapundit
Excellent! I enjoyed reading the entire article and find the following passages most important:
"Conservatives who support their positions with economic and political data but give away high moral ground to the “progressives” are thereby admitting that their economic and political achievements are immoral - and thus have no right to exist.
(...)
Because the spreading of the “progressive” morality has always brought suffering and misery to real-life humans, it should be exposed as inhuman and condemned. It should be opposed with the true human morality that is based on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - the one that has proven to spread happiness, prosperity, and real progress without any quotation marks."
And for the record, I think the real enemies are Immanuel Kant and John Dewey (yes, of Dewey Decimal System fame) but they both channeled Plato.
P.S. I think you meant "... the forces of darkness and ANTI-modernity..."
Posted by: johngalt at March 19, 2007 3:39 PMIt was a tossup between Kant and Plato for you, but I thought I'd go to the source.
Thanks for the fix on anti-modernity (since corrected).
Posted by: jk at March 19, 2007 3:54 PM | What do you think? [2]