pinkfloydpsw's Blog

I was wondering what your thought were on this and that, but I can probably already guess because I know you well, and I know the way you would like things to be….

Marx had a theory that one day in the future, his future and possibly our now, there would be a time where capitalism would not only mean the means of the control of the methods of production and distribution of goods, but would also define the social fabric of societies. A time where who we are is analogous to what we do in an inseparable manner. The danger of that is that we become what we do for a living, and in our actions we feed the beast that feeds us, thus our autonomy is removed and society is that which demands from the controllers of the methods of production exactly what is wishes to produce. You can imagine the scenario I’m sure where the latest tech innovation is produced, in the full knowledge that they (a rough guiding term for a group of concerned individuals who hold what we may describe as power, but without the conspiracy aspect hurling us into the category of tin-foil-hatted lunatics, and therefore easily dismissed as is customary, but more likely to indicate a tacit and necessary to be spoken of pre-agreement between similarly motivated persons of greed who find all the aces already nestled comfortably in their sleeves in the zero-sum game we call capitalism) can foist it upon the masses and know it will both create a new need to have it, and a force by which it will be a loss not to have it, because the desire for it will fulfil a psychological, albeit short-lived, need to use it so that we may know who we are as a self.

What I’m saying is that we have passed through this stage, the stage of knowing ourselves by the product based definition where we identify and market a piece of clothing, or a car, or a house, as if we are marketing a part of who we are, as if we are identifying ourselves as merely a consumer. As if that would have ever fulfilled the need within us to be accepted by other selves. They were stuck in the same sand trap as us, and knew it’s falsehood as well as we did. No it is by the means of what we think we know that we now have an ill-deserved confidence in ourselves, a more deeply insidious and pernicious rot has invaded our “Self”. And worse than building a false self, a façade or a facsimile, like a Facebook or a Tinder profile (and that can be a very destructive falsehood, especially when taken seriously – see my piece on the created self), we now borrow once again from a very inspirational methodology when constructing the new falsehood. I’m referring to religion as the inspiration, and to belief as the falsehood. In the 5^th century one might be forgiven for not being able to accumulate the intellect that could challenge dogma, but each century that followed, up until a critical point where what we could contend as knowledge was so challenged by the rational and the demonstrable, there has been erosion. We now have far too much access to the sort of information that make the religious claims of the past so infantile and ridiculous that the churches have been forced to strategize a way to change what the message means so as to fit with all that challenges it (IMHO this hasn’t been a success). I think there are no real Christians any more, there are those that claim it, but none that can live it; effect not affect, like playing a role.

When we borrow this mechanism of “believing” we employ the tactic of faith that overpowers and overrides reasonableness, exactly at a time when it is this reasonableness, our natural in-built mechanism against intellectual exploitation, which should be paramount. To adopt a position because you have confined your scepticism and your cynicism to some dark corner of your mind and you are going on faith alone in something, something that has a source other than that which is replicable in a scientific way, that which is discovered by doing, that which is demonstrable by others, or that which is sound in philosophical terms, is to find faith. Granted there are things that cannot be reasoned, we call that the subjective, and I would be the first person to defend the validity of a subjective argument from the perspective of the person making it, i.e fruit pastels are much nicer than wine gums and why (these things are important), and I mostly agree with Roderick when he says that very few humanly important things arise in subject areas where all are in agreement.

What we see is faith in the person, the cult of the individual, the demonstrable liar whose followers will not be moved by the demonstration of the proof, the demonstrably invalid nature of the position or the argument. I had wondered why this was the case, but I think I may have figured it out after much thinking and much debating on the subject. In moving beyond the feeding frenzy that centred around objects and brands we find ourselves validating ourselves, and we mostly all fall down on this, with the aloofness that used to only belong to those people who either were superior, or thought they were superior, to the average person by means of insight. This insight can be in the form of being smarter than the average person and actually knowing some stuff, or having an expertise, or the foolish pleasure that is feeling absolutely correct about the nature of what happens after life and thinking you are fulfilling the criteria (Freud is good on this in the Future of an Illusion, but Nietzsche is better in the Genealogy of Morals, Harris also is a goldmine on the subject). That level of insight, false or otherwise, is stabilising and validating, it gives comfort, it tells the self that it is a self of value. Apply this thinking to the weak minded, the feeble, those that were once the willing consumers of brands but have now tired of that strategy of validation, what do they have now to fill the empty unreflected spaces? Well they have Trump, and Bojo and Bolsanaro and Brexit and Transgendered rights and BLM and Extinction Rebellion, they have taking a knee and anti racism racism where the pendulum swings just as far the other way, they have anti capitalism objects that they use capitalism to create, they have the establishment masquerading as the anti-establishment solution to themselves, they have government supported charities that are indicative of the failure of their own governance (the paradox is alarming), they have a sexually liberated society that is not having anything like as much sex as the repressed generations of the past, they have faith that they can find benevolence in leaders that come from the very demographic where self-promotion, egoism, entitlement, greed, and a stark lack of communality override any sort of idea of the best interest of others.

I said I would ask you, but I already know what you think because I know what you want, that’s your faith, your strong belief that you can make the truth of the world by holding a deep conviction in what you have assimilated as truth. It is this which I wish to challenge, and by two means that I get from ancient sources. Who does is serve for you to believe what you believe? And how do you know what you know?

Paul S Wilson