Authoritarian regimes vs. knowledge/honesty

The basic gist goes something like this: Authoritarian regimes such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (see here for some of the horrors they're up to under the current dictator), defunct Communist regimes, the Nazi Party, and the Iranian theocracy rule by heavy censorship and punishment of dissenting voices.  This means, I believe, one of two things:

(1) "Ideas so good that they're mandatory"

(2) These regimes tacitly confess that their ideological dictates can't win in the free, fair and open marketplace of ideas, which means their dictates are likely fundamentally flawed or false, with evil/destructive consequences to be expected for so many concerned/affected.  By being forcibly imposed, these ideological dictates have not received a proper vetting to accountably distinguish mere opinion from knowledge.  This being so, the likes of Xi Jinpeng don't know that they're "leading" their nations in a good or healthy direction; as far as they know, they're doing just the opposite.  The coronovirus outbreak is the tip of the iceberg, and that's just this one authoritarian regime.

You might readily guess which of these two interpretations I subscribe to.  Heck, do any conscientious philosophers disagree about this?

Socrates/Plato/Aristotle vs. Christianity?

Or: is Original Sin plausible?

(a 'Green Friday' special lol)

Based on my exposure to Christian thinking over the course of a few decades, it strikes me that very short shrift is given in Christian thought to the message and examples set by the iconic Greek trio of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.  It compels me now to ask such questions as: Okay, that is a highly disappointing apparent performance by Christendom on the whole, but what about the strongest examples of Christian thought, especially ones deeply conversant with the Greeks and Aristotle (the pinnacle of Greek learning/thought) in particular.  And so, my mind goes (of course?) to Aquinas.  And so I have to envision (for now) what Aquinas might have said on the topic of Original Sin in light of these three sage examples, and it might also work to research whatever he actually did say on the connection between these two topics.  (If he had said things about this connection, wouldn't we have heard a lot about it by now?)

I recently saw quoted a letter from Ben Franklin to a man who claimed to be able to self-rule just fine without traditional religious beliefs, and Franklin said that this may be fine for him (the correspondent) but a lot of people simply don't have the discipline; they're weak of will, perhaps incurably ignorant -  fallen and corrupt if you will.  Some Christian thinkers go further with their wording: "wretched and miserable."  And Aristotle even seems to say as much about a lot of biological humans who just don't seem cut out even remotely for a philosophical life.  They being oftentimes base and vicious, the best we might hope to do in such cases is to train them in nonphilosophical habits of thought that nonetheless encourage socially acceptable behaviors.  The Framers of the United States Constitution said that because of human weaknesses it is best that powers be separated so that bad judgment and appetites be kept in check (especially where the levers of coercive force/power are concerned).  Many present-day American Christians take this as part of the body of evidence of the nation's "Judeo-Christian provenance".  (I ask as I've asked before: so how come it took only until after John Locke, who formulated the most complete theory of individual rights up to that point, for there to be an America-like nation "founded on Judeo-Christian principles"?  Perhaps such Christians should make extra efforts to avoid the vice of epistemic hubris, heh heh.)

But isn't Original Sin supposed to be an unqualified and universal condition of man the species, of mankind, and not merely (say) the vast majority of men, and that all humans need Christ as redeemer?  And isn't it supposed to be eminently plausible (from overwhelming evidence in the world) according to standard Christian doctrine that there are no exceptions to this?  And so now, the obvious(?) question: How do Socrates, Plato and Aristotle fail to be exceptions?

I guess I'll leave it there for now.

[Addendum 12/12/2019: This isn't even to bring up Nietzsche's well-known antipathy to Christianity, particularly its human-weakness anthropology in contrast to his own heroic-possibilities, noble-soul one which he appears to share with Aristotle.  To him, it didn't ring true that even people like him were unavoidably weak and corrupt (without Christ).  But something is telling me that bringing up the examples of the ancient Greek trio is less triggering to Christians than bringing up Nietzsche.  Nietzsche's aphorism about the noble soul comes, after all, in a book triggeringly titled Beyond Good and Evil.  What does Nietzsche's new value system have to offer the weak and less-smart masses?  Roughly, his modus ponens looks like Christianity's modus tollens: if man is weak and corrupt, then he needs Christ for redemption or salvation.  And from what I can tell his anthropology divides humanity into the weak/dumb masses on the one hand and people such as him on the other, whereas Christianity doesn't make the division (except, I suppose, for the one human+divine person in history).  Plato and Aristotle are less triggering in this regard (how much so?...), and there's the Aquinas connection that would be a bad idea for Christians to ignore....]

An ultimate hypothetical

As an ideas-merchant I try to keep well-attuned to how an audience responds to framing.  Example: I propose the idea of a perfectivist utopia characterized at root by people maximally exercising their intellects.  The response may well be characterized by disbelief, incomprehension, cynicism, defensive cognitive bias or outright evasion, or who the hell knows what.  (Hard to predict, see, just in how many ways people can fail to recognize a good idea for what it is.  The best I can hope to do is to figure out ways to cut them off at the pass, do an end-around, be as dialectically comprehensive as I know how to be, set up as many safeguards 'twixt cup and lip . . . and then maybe there will be some success at getting the idea across.)  One problem in framing the issue in terms of an intellectualist perfectivist utopia is the sheer unfamiliar-ness of the idea to so many.  How can it possibly be concretized in their minds to their satisfaction given their limited context of knowledge?  Concretes do help a lot, after all.

So the concrete I'll use for framing is one Thomas Jefferson.  He's the guy that drafted the United States Declaration of Independence in 1976.  He's more well-known, more visible to the average citizen, than the author of the Nicomachean Ethics.  (In other words: If you polled the American citizenry and asked who authored the D of I, half of them might actually give the right answer.  Ask them who authored the Nicomachean Ethics, you might be lucky to get one in five answering correctly.  So the idea of presenting the latter as a basis for the cognitive revolution we so desperately need has a considerably greater chance of fuck-up on the transmission line.)  Another concrete to pair Mr. Jefferson with might well be that guy whose face shows up on the $100 bill, but probably not that guy who authored The Rights of Man and Common Sense (notwithstanding how well-known and influential as that guy was among the early Americans).  Perhaps the term "polymath" would draw blank stares, serving to throw the audience off the scent.  Perhaps "excellence in all endeavors" would convey the (Aristotelian) idea to more populist effect.  Jefferson and that guy on the $100 bill were polymaths strove for excellence in all endeavors.

How some guy ends up on the $100 bill, might very well intrigue a few in the audience.  Perhaps that could lead in some interesting directions.

It so happens that these two comprehensive-excellence-pursuers were either founder or president of the American Philosophical Society.  But so as not to distract the average citizen, one might want to avoid saying something like "if everyone lived the way the great philosophers did, . . . " because that would lead those who easily miss a point to wonder who would then do all those vitally important things like engineering, running businesses, conducting scientific research and development, raising kids, hitting home runs, cooking restaurant meals, growing the cannabis (oops, distraction) brewing the beer, directing the movies, balancing the books, performing open-heart surgery, etc. etc. etc. etc. - all those things "the philosophers don't do."

So we have to reframe this in terms of something like: constantly striving for improvement, which takes continuous learning, growth, intellectual curiosity and insatiability, development of talents, health-conscious lifestyles, cultivation of social relationships, seeing things from others' point of view rather than merely through one's own cognitive biases or filters, recognition and respect for human dignity and freedom, and other things listed on that hierarchy of needs thingy by that one psychologist guy.

Now, as it happens, carrying out these things successfully requires a love of wisdom, no question.  That doesn't require that one sit atop the rock like that thinker statue whatamacallit with the chin resting upon hand all of the time - just some of the time at very least -  and even that requires a good developmental environment from an early age, which includes decent nutrition, decent parenting, decent educational opportunities, and so forth.  A decent community would do whatever is within reason to ensure that its young members have as much of a good developmental environment as possible.  (Does this create a chicken-and-egg problem?  How do the not-young people figure out how to be so, um - is "virtuous" the appropriate term here? - kind and decent in intention and efficacious in action so as to foster such developmental excellence for the young'uns?  How do they do that, while also holding down a job and coming home tired, etc.?  Well?  Am I supposed to have all the answers?)

So, anyway, with that preamble out of the way, here's the hypothetical:

Say that the American People came to a broad minimal consensus: If we emulate (too distracting a word?) follow the example of behavior set by the greatest of the nation's Founding Fathers, especially TJ and the $100 bill guy - that is, if we sought to secure for ourselves and our family, friends, neighbors, and other community members the most optimal conditions for our flourishing (yeah, I think that is a good term to use - that mad-as-hell guy in Network uses it, too), that is to say, if we as a people sought to cultivate and foster the conditions under which people could flourish the way these gentlemen did in numerous endeavors be they science, philosophy, arts and letters, community and civic participation, statesmanship, business and entrepreneurship, education of one's fellow Americans, ethical and moral excellence, spiritual fulfillment, and so forth, then what kind of society might we come to inhabit?

(There's that pesky, distracting matter of their having owned slaves.  We shouldn't follow their example in that regard, of course.  Surely we can set aside that tree for the sake of the forest?)

Imagine our having a hypothetical conversation with these two men, asking their advice on how to improve the state of affairs in this country.  Assume if you possibly can that in our hypothetical conversation these men have some 200 years of hindsight that they did not actually possess in their time, but which they would have if they were alive today.  What would they think about what has become of the nation since their time - but more importantly, what advice would they offer for improvement?  Might they appeal to various historical figures for inspiration?  For example, Jefferson in some of his letters touted some ancient guys with names like Epictetus and Epicurus as deliverers of moral and practical wisdom.  Also, while Jefferson didn't believe in the traditional God of theism, he did believe in a Creator who set the world in motion (a view popular at the time, known as deism), and also praised as a genius one Jesus of Nazareth; as framing for the average American citizen goes, that's some pretty good stuff, but Jefferson would (of course) urge us to seek wisdom from all kinds of sources (hence his knowledge of those ancient Epi-something guys, among many others).

I do believe Mr. J would lament the polling data pointing to unacceptable levels of ignorance among the citizenry, but he would also be pro-active about solutions.  Beginning with the ignorance of the very political system he and his buddies founded, he might ask such things as: Why are the people this ignorant?  Is it because they're just intellectually lazy, or has their political system gotten to where they are apathetic or too discouraged about participating in the political process?  If we can devise a fix whereby they become genuinely interested in the political goings-on around them, their knowledge of such things will naturally expand.  Were I interested in the fate of the Green Bay Packers, I'd know quite a bit about them.  And while there's no obvious reason why every citizen ought to be interested in the Packers given their limited time and priorities, it's a plausible proposition that every citizen ought to be interested in our political system and ought to be able to pass a basic science literacy test even years after being a fifth grader.  (That unbelievably awful show would have no place in a Jeffersonian culture.)

Now, in presenting such a hypothetical one might well encounter stubborn cynicism:

"People are just the way they are, hardwired and stuff, or Original Sin, you can't expect them to improve." (UP: Speak for yourself!  Also, what about what that Harvard psychology guy has been saying about the decline in levels of violence over human history?  I can dig up the reference if you're curious.  Or how about slavery no longer being a societal norm?  And, to cite this one 20th century author lady, if we have free will as the proponents of the Original Sin idea nevertheless say we do, then why couldn't the idea of Original Virtue make just as much sense?)

"IQ's will always be centered around 100, how do you expect people to get smarter?" (UP: Aren't literacy rates a lot higher these days than in the Dark Ages?  Same basic genetic structure, yet better outcomes.)

"Those are great men, how do you expect ordinary people to live up to such lofty standards?" (UP: Who said anything about everyone becoming a Jefferson or $100 bill guy?  Let's start with a more realistic idea: a considerably greater number of people of their caliber than at present - in effect, a shifting of the cultural bell curve.  Besides, we're talking in essence about excellence of character.)

"You're trying to sneak in the idea of a Utopia under the guise of widely-implemented Jeffersonianism.  But people - even reasonable, intelligent and thoughtful people - will always disagree among one another about various things.  In a Utopia there isn't supposed to be such disagreement, since everyone is supposed to be 'perfect'."  (UP: Call it what you will - Utopia, Jeffersonianism, Nicomachean Ethics-ism - what you're talking about is a strawman.  This societal ideal need only meet certain minimum requirements, like nonviolence, stable social unions, a rule of law.  Now, to get to such an ideal would take some amount of time and, in short, education.  There's a good reason to think that in order to get to those minimum requirements just stated, the necessary process of education would lead to widespread improvement in moral character, which turns this society into not simply a "liberal, freedom-respecting" one, but also a highly virtue-encouraging one as "communitarian" theorists argue for.  A nice integration/synthesis reconciliation of these seemingly competing ideals, isn't it?  And if some people even in such a social order somehow find it to their advantage to be among a criminal element, that's what the rule of law is still there for.  But most likely by then those who comprise the society would have discovered much better ways of preventing and responding to criminal behavior than they do now.  That's what you'd expect in a society in which intellectual curiosity and insatiable learning are a cultural norm rather than an exception.)

At this point, I'd have to leave it up to the hardcore cynic to come up with objections that even I have not yet anticipated.  (I mean, shit, if they're that persistent and that creative at coming up with objections, how does that not just reinforce the perfectivist Jeffersonian point that humans can get pretty good at things if they set their minds to it?  Now, is that an ultimate flanking of the potential opposition, or what?  You can't refute Jeffersonianism. :-)

I.e.:

"Checkmate, unimaginitive naysayers."

Now: What would America end up looking like if it went wholeheartedly back to its Jeffersonian roots, i.e., to what made the country's founding and the country's greatness possible in the first place?  What might America look like?  If the American people can't even so much as entertain this thought experiment, then they might very well be fucked doomed.  But what, in principle, is there to stop them from entertaining it and going on to act accordingly, besides nothing?

ADDENDUM: Oh, by the way, for those of you not out of your element: is that one scene near the end of the pretty good story that the Stranger unfolded, that scene with the nihilists, is that about overcoming nihilism accompanied by a diminution of the Appetitive Soul?  And what about that goldbricker pretending to be a millionaire?  What does he symbolize?  There's a vanity theme there to be sure.  And how about the slut nympho that poor woman, or, for that matter, the known pornographer whom she's been banging?  And what about the strongly vaginal artist, and the video artist with a cleft asshole?  And how about the Stranger?  Is he a daimon of sorts?  A lot of strands to keep in my head, man.  A lot of strands in UP's head.

A Mind-Nugget Re: Utopia

A standard objection to laissez-faire capitalism or to utopian visions more generally is that "It would work only if people were morally better; as it is, people are too destructive in their behaviors." Unfortunately, that seems to be a discussion-ender for many people; the idea of bringing about a society of morally-better people just doesn't strike them as realistic enough to even entertain, or for it to even occur to them. All we know, historically, is a mixed record of human behavior.

My current project is focused, meanwhile, on how to bring about a society of morally-better people. Not only would objections to laissez-faire fall apart if there is a realistic blueprint for human moral perfection in place, but all other sorts of problems and objections, over and above politics, go away. So at the least I have a one-up on a lot of critics or opponents of laissez-faire: true enough, even if you don't need morally perfect or better people for laissez-faire capitalism to be the most desirable socio-economic system, you just cover a lot more ground when you begin to focus on the issue and the question of human moral perfection or betterment, over and above how well markets and property rights "work." (This is exactly an illustration of the nature of hierarchy: a philosopher, in drawing broader and broader integrations, covers more and more all-encompassing ground.)

Here's the next further-encompassing integration: we are all committed, in some fashion or other, whether we all realize it or not, to achieving just the kind of utopia I aim to provide a blueprint for. How is this? Well, we know it is achievable in principle, because of one thing a great many of us already accept: we have free will.

Free will makes possible Nazi Germany - and it makes possible laissez-faire utopia. There's really nothing hard to figure out here. To deny that we can end up with either of these is to deny the causal efficacy of consciousness and its products. (Even those who "deny free will" can't realistically deny that people can be greatly influenced by ideas swirling around in their cultural environment.) Further, as a certain novelist-philosopher put it, our basic and most fundamental virtue - that which (metaphysically) makes the greatest number of others possible, and which (epistemologically) explains the greatest number of others - is the virtue of rationality, which amounts in practice to nothing more than an integral commitment to thinking. (This also explains the last line in a comprehensive philosophical book by said novelist-philosopher's best student.) Not only that, but intellectual and moral virtue can make our lives - individually and socially - a lot better. So there's great incentive and reward involved with being morally better.

That's all it fundamentally comes down to: the virtue of thinking.

[ADDENDUM: "She was thinking all the time." -Harry Binswanger, in 100 Voices and/or "Centenary Reminiscences" - in reference, concretely, to Rand's manner of arriving at her concept of "value." She just spent all her time thinking about it - with no other thinker she could really refer to, save perhaps for Aristotle - before she found a fundamental explanatory answer. A real philosopher should be at least as fascinated by her process of thinking and arriving at answers, as by the answers themselves. It's really of secondary importance here whether the conclusions and arguments she used are true and sound. Given where she started and what she had to work with, it's really quite amazing what she managed to integrate in the time she had. It's exactly why Peikoff, Binswanger, Gotthelf and other trained philosophers in her midst compared her to Aristotle. It's not some fawning fucking cult-like devotion, but a natural response to the fact that she out-thought everyone she came in contact with, including being able to prove convincingly everything that seemed "weird" to outsiders or the uninitiated. (Up to and including the reasons she broke with that slimy bastard Branden.) It's just mind-boggling how so few people have picked up on this. What failure of thinking brings this about? Having only Aristotle and perhaps Nietzsche as chief formative influences, and philosophizing mid-20th-century, how formidable a system of thought could others come up with? Rand just fuckin' blows the others away, that's all there is to it; the rest is just a matter of explaining that point to anyone with a curious and functioning mind. And that's why her opposition is so often so disgusting. (But it can be corrected.)]