Sorry for the delay...

As you can tell from the date of the last post — 10 days ago — I haven't posted here for quite a while. There are two reasons:

1. I've been preoccupied with writing the first ever production script for my manga Spanner for Script Frenzy. I wrote a lot of pages and claimed my victory. You can read more about it on my project blog.
2. I thus haven't had much time to seriously think about my politically incorrect opinions or even about simply blogging.

But I'll make sure to post here more often. After all, I'm the kind of opinionated person who wants people to know where I stand.

Atheism Without Nihilism

In some of the many books packed in the bookcases in my living room, and in some of the books I've checked out at the library, I've been reading about how some atheists have become convinced that life is meaningless because there's nothing to look forward to after death. They think this makes this life meaningless. But one of the things I learned back when I was a closet disciple of Ayn Rand is that, though the universe and existence as such have no intrinsic meaning (one way of interpreting her statement that "existence exists" is that the universe just is; it is its own meaning), life itself has meaning, especially human life. All living organisms have purpose; this is the primary difference between living and nonliving things. Living things are goal-pursuing things; for example, green plants constantly seek light. But human beings don't just pursue goals; we create meaning. One can even go so far to say that the highest purpose of human life is to give meaning to the universe; thus we have science, art, religion, etc. So even if the soul perishes with the body at death, life and reality are not meaningless.

Why am I writing this? I've heard and read that some of the most intelligent and sensitive people have been driven to suicide by their belief that if there is no God and no immortality of the soul, then life is meaningless and you might as well kill yourself. I'm saying that this "existentialist" — really nihilistic — position is nonsense. The belief in a "higher power" implies that no value is possible in life and reality because value, meaning, and purpose emanate from On High. Well, science, and objective realist philosophy, have dispensed with the supernatural Platonic realm and have been all the better for it. Metaphysical idealism, the belief that truth belongs to the supernatural realm alone, has the unfortunate side effect of sucking all value out of this world. Objective realism places truth and value right here on earth and in this life, where they properly belong. Truth is what is, and value is in the goals we pursue.

So throw away those pills, or take that gun away from your head, and start living your life in the here and now. If God is dead — and there are many philosophers and scientists throughout history who have dispensed with the need for a Higher Power entirely — then let's return our attention to living the life we're in now. Nihilism is an error that consists of deleting God from transcendentalism and then wailing that God's death has killed all meaning and value. Don't look for meaning and value in a supernatural realm that has disappeared, if it has ever even existed at all. It's all here. Truth is in reality, and value is in your life. You might find that there was never really any need for Higher Powers at all.

Why Patriotism Is a Sin

A front page article in today's New York Times relates the tale of a Chinese student at Duke University who came upon clashing pro-Tibet and pro-China demonstrations. She tried to bring peace between the two groups. However, the pro-China group reacted viciously. She was publicly defamed on the Internet as a "traitor". She, and her family back in China, received death threats. What drove those pro-China people to persecute someone who just wanted to bring reconciliation to her school? Patriotism.. This is the true essence of patriotism: "my country right, right or wrong" — which really means "worship my country or die!"

Patriotism is a cult. The cult is called nationalism. Nationalism is defined as the cult of the State. With the death of Christendom, and Dar al-Islam threatened with being dragged out of the Dark Ages, nationalism has become the new Christendom. Inquisition, crusade, totalitarianism, and terrorism necessarily follow. And that's why patriotism is a sin.

Class Struggle

Back to the subject of my previous post "Populism vs. Elitism". Basically, what lies behind this phenomenon is something people call "class struggle." The idea is older than Karl Marx; it's an Enlightenment idea that predates even the French Revolution. In fact, it's impossible to understand the history of Western civilization since the rise of the Greeks without it.

What is this "class struggle (or warfare)," anyway? First I must explain that people in different roles in society tend to have different interests. Sometimes these interests clash. The most important clash of interests is that between those in power and those out of power. Those in power usually have an interest in exploiting those out of power in order to gain benefits at others' expense. Free riding, for example, is an almost irresistible temptation of power. Those out of power, however, would rather do their thing without busybody authorities constantly interfering in their affairs. This fundamental contradiction inherent in any society based on dominance hierarchy -- which means, right now, any society, period -- has its inevitable consequence in the form of some sort of class struggle.

Two eras have been plagued by wars originating in class struggle. These are the classical societies of Greece and Rome, and the modern age which started with the Renaissance. The cause in both cases is the idea of democracy, which has inspired the common people to resist the oppression of their kings, dictators, politicians, bureaucracies, and churches. Democracy is inherently revolutionary. That's because whenever the common people assert their interests, the people in power are always threatened with the loss of their power, and strike back. That's why revolutions, social and cultural as well as political, are always so violent. No establishment has ever tolerated any kind of popular revolution; so either the ruling establishment is overthrown or at least transformed, or the establishment prevails and the revolution is crushed.

Unfortunately, the rulers have their revolutionary ideologies too. Stalinism, fascism, Nazism, and neoconservatism are among the most popular elitist ideologies that sprang up since World War I. All of these are heavily influenced by synarchism, an ideology that originated in France among Catholic and neo-Gnostic monarchists who revolted against the principles of the French Revolution (but see the note below), and by Social Darwinism, a pseudoscience that tells the elite that they are the vanguard of evolution and that Nature, red in tooth and claw, has preordained them to supremacy over the masses. They are more violent reactions against the popular revolution that steal from the people their language of revolution. All true populists oppose them, since they attempt to use the new revolutionary means to restore the old order by any means possible.

Populism and elitism exist because of the class struggle, and are its political expression. As a libertarian populist, I've long since taken my stand. I'll tell you what I think about certain antipopulist "libertarians" and "objectivists" in a future entry.

Note: If you enter the word "synarchism" in any search engine, most of the entries you'll find come from the Lyndon LaRouche cult. He stole the idea from Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, and uses it in his wacko conspiracy theory as a code for his eternal bete noire, the "kike-limey (sic) conspiracy." But he's hiding behind "synarchy" to cover his own lust for dictatorship. Synarchy? Jeremiah Duggan suffered it from LaRouche himself. I'll write a future entry, or a full-blown essay, on this.