I’ve been away from this blog for several days, attending to some of the other things that bless my life, mostly music and children. But before I return to the next chapter in my book, I want to address the following, posted as a comment to my most recent chapter from Navyo Ericsen, one of this site’s most committed readers:
“The absurdification, if that is a word, of language, the making of true meaning irrelevant and proscribed meanings their only virtue, is underscored by the one word that really stood out in your piece here, Kenneth, at least for me - infantile. It is this reduction to a pre-learning state, the erasure of meaning and even understanding, that enables the woke progressive left to achieve its aims or even for it to exist. Tie it in with the terrible state education standards of the US, getting worse by the day, the creation of a type of imbecile - I know that sounds harsh, but evidence points to it - and people will believe anything. I was going to say they've been enabled for woke absurdism, but in reality they have been mentally disabled from cognitive function and the clear perception of actual reality. Rather than this being some freak outcome of misguided policy, I would posit it's been part of the greater plan all along. A dumb populace are the perfect obedient servants.
“Rather than repeat my previous praises I've been lauding upon you, I'd like to dig a bit deeper and ask your response to the above, if there's anything in addition you'd care to expand on that purports to enabled ignorance, or E.I. as I like to call it, and the ruse that communism is a thing, not an abstract, that it is being sold as the panacea for all our ills.”
I find “enabled ignorance” a singularly apt phrase, and I agree with Navyo that it seems as if some plan has been at work for a long while to dumb down the populace, the better to control them. Navyo and I are hardly alone in thinking so. (Only….who or what is doing the planning?)
I’ll leave the pulling of historical threads to those better trained in that field than I, and perhaps someday when all the threads are pulled some plan will make itself retroactively evident. But I will say that, plan or no, certain ideas that have come into prominence over the last four centuries or so have fed the fire that is burning down Western civilization. It is the purpose of this blog (and its eventual publication as a book) to ferret out some of those. In the Introduction, I put Nominalism at the headwaters, and from that we have seen a stream of reality-denying abstractions flow, with more to come. But there is one idea — a notion or assumption more than an idea, really — that I had not considered, which came out in an online discussion I had in connection with a recent event.
The event was the transportation of illegal immigrants from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard. I am not going to argue the merit of that action, as that would prompt a very long discussion on its own. Instead, I’m going to fast-forward to an online friend’s reaction to the response given by the citizens of Martha’s Vineyard to the arrival of the 50 immigrants: “The citizens of Martha’s Vineyard welcomed the migrants with open arms!” When I first read this comment I thought it must have sarcasm, but no, the commentator was serious. Then I found that certain broadcast journalists had also proclaimed Martha’s Vineyard to be filled with compassionate people who said they had been “enriched” by the immigrants’ visit — their very, very brief visit. For the facts did not support a positive view of the immigrants’ stay on the ritzy resort island:
The immigrants needed housing, and plenty of empty buildings, plus spaces amenable for tent dwellings, exist on the island. None were provided.
They needed jobs, and a look at the want ads in the local paper demonstrated that dozens of jobs requiring non-skilled labor needed filling. No jobs were offered.
They apparently intended to stay, but were told they could not, and within 48 hours of their arrival they were sent by bus to a nearby military base, there to remain for the foreseeable future.
The conclusion to be drawn from these facts: The citizens of Martha’s Vineyard did not greet the migrants “with open arms.” Said conclusion was, I posted to my online interlocutor, undeniable.
Undeniable. Undeniable? How could I say such a thing! Why could I not entertain an opposing view? How could I call myself rational when I refused to engage in further discussion on the matter?
I sense Hegel’s hulking presence somewhere in this mess. Hegel, or the perception/misperception of Hegel’s dialectic as endless back-and-forth, an unresolvable swinging of the cognitive pendulum. You say A, but I say B, so some new position, C, must be said to emerge. Neither A nor B can be undeniable. Everything is deniable. Men can be women. Race hatred can be anti-racism. Tossing people out of your town inside 48 hours can be hospitality.
Part of being a rational human being is being able to entertain new perspectives that contradict things you already hold to be true. But that doesn’t mean one must accept the new perspectives as valid if they butt heads with facts. My interlocutor was free to offer evidence that contradicted the facts I cited, and if indeed he had I would have been obliged to change my position. But his response was simple outrage that, given the facts I cited, it was undeniably true that open arms had not been offered. I stand behind that position, but I have the feeling a lot of people in addition to my online friend (who may or may not still be one) would judge that position to be reactionary and, God knows, somehow “racist” and even “fascist.”
The insistence on open-ended, never-ending dialectic and the refusal to accept that certain conclusions can be reached without contradiction is, to quote Navyo above, the population’s “reduction to a pre-learning state, the erasure of meaning and even understanding.” I accept Navyo’s label for this condition: “Enabled Ignorance.”
Look for the next chapter of WAR OF THE WORDS this Monday.
Thank you, Kenneth. I did not expect a post as reply. I appreciate it and your commentary. The obvious becoming oblivious is another way of seeing it, the blending of actual reality with fictional reality in some sort of cognitive smoothie of utter gibberish. In addition to your piece about Martha's Vineyard, there's also this:
Seven police officers visited a man who simply posted a satire on Facebook with the image of the swastika in rainbows to parody the fascist behavior of the woke. Apparently it offended one person, who was "made anxious", who then called the police about 'hate speech', which is now a crime in the UK. I can only think the officers must have felt a degree of humiliation in private, arresting a man who has done no physical harm to anyone but making humor out of absurdity and a socio-political comment.
https://twitter.com/PaulEmbery/status/1553471082501398528
There's another connection I'd like to make about E.I., which is that the experience you had about Martha's Vineyard, and every other woke absurdity we're being told to believe, is a psychological preparation for Biodigital Convergence, the Internet of Bodies, et al. We have to be dumb enough to accept it - E.I. enables A.I.