Importance and culture

A key indicator of how perfective a society is, is how important the typical subject matter is in the popular culture and media (including cable news media and the internet).

Concretization question: How important is the typical subject matter on Glenn Greenwald and Glenn Beck's (call 'em "The Glenns" for convenience) columns/programs, as compared with (i.e., contrasted to) the rest of the media?  How about Noam Chomsky?  Whatever else you think of him, the shit he typically talks about is damn important.  And how about what representative members of the Ayn Rand Society have to talk about, as it relates to contemporary political culture?  Why aren't they prominent in today's mass-media discussion?Wouldn't they have the most of importance to offer in explanation of this whole "Ayn Rand phenomenon?"  (One of them is a prominent Aristotle scholar currently at the No. 3 ranked department of philosophy in the English-speaking world, for crying out loud - and is editing a volume on Ayn Rand's epistemology due out this summer, as well another, much-anticipated Wiley-Blackwell volume due out hopefully in the very near future.  Which would be of greater importance for understanding Rand's Objectivist ideas, that or the next rendition of Ayn Rand Nation by a fuckin' amateur?  Which will the leftwing interblogs devote their attention to this time around?  Last time around, with near-identical publication dates ca. March 2012, it was Gary Weiss's Ayn Rand Nation getting all their attention, with Leonard Peikoff's Understanding Objectivism getting none of their attention.)  I mean, how fucking low does a culture have to be for their voices not being the most prominent in media discussions of Ayn Rand?  Isn't that pretty much as pathetically bad as Chomsky not being all over the popular media?

Relevant distinction: "Intellectually high-brow" and "Important" (also consider: "Relevant")

More to come . . . .

#saganized

P.S. Another checkmate to come . . .

P.P.S. 24 days left...

Ayn Rand vs. leftist idiots, cont'd

(For the positive, the antidote to this idiocy, try here for starters.)

The latest case-in-point making the rounds amongt the reddiots, from radio talk show host Thom Hartmann and former Democrat staffer on Capitol Hill, Sam 'Sad' Sacks.  This is a continuation of an inductively-observed pattern discussed previously in this blog.

Gee, a radio talk show host and a former congressional staffer.  Prima facie that's some formidable opposition to Ayn Rand right there, huh?

The article's byline provides a link to The Thom Hartmann Reader, which reminds me of a book I picked up the other day, The Quotable Hitch: From Alcohol to Zionism--The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens.  Drawing the obviously logical connection from that, I submit that one need only browse through both that book and The Ayn Rand Lexicon to see which thinker was way more profound (distinct from witty and one-linery) than the other.  Heck, one need only see Hitch's mentions of Ayn Rand (focusing exclusively on her personal relationship with Nathaniel Branden) to figure out the truly amateurish level on which Hitch was operating.  (His colleague and ignorant Rand-basher, Andrew Sullivan, operates more or less on the same level, cut more or less from the same mold.)

Anyway, back to the talk show host and Democrat staffer.  First off, I want to distinguish the American intellectual left - confined more or less within the ivory tower (the chief exception being Noam Chomsky, who actually makes an effort - no thanks to the cowardly corporate media and political establishment - to get the word out far and wide) from the American political left.  Setting aside direct critique of the former, I'll make the observation that the latter is intellectually bankrupt.  (As an indirect critique of the former, one need only pursue the line of reasoning following from the question as to how the political left ended up intellectually bankrupt.)  This doesn't mark out the left as unique in this regard: the entire lamestream political dialogue in the country is intellectually bankrupt.  Nowhere to be found is Jeffersonian-Franklinian-Paineist dialogue - certainly not dialogue at the level at which these representative Founding Fathers would carry a dialogue.  We have instead a lowest-common-denominator caliber of dialogue.

Hell, arguably the most intellectual figure in the mass media right now is Glenn Beck, whatever else one thinks about him, merely for regularly paying tribute to these geniuses on his TV show.  (He also discusses Ray Kurzweil on his show; what other major media figure is doing that?)  That alone demonstrates that he has some long-range, properly-Americanist vision thoroughly lacking elsewhere in the lamestream media.  His very proposal for an "Independence, USA" quasi-utopia demonstrates a greater degree of vision and imagination than found anywhere else in the lamestream.

Is it any surprise, then, that among any of the figures in the major media, Glenn Beck has the wherewithal to have a positive view of Ayn Rand?

I skimmed Hartmann's article and got the basic gist of why Hartmann is useless an an analyst of political trends: he actually thinks that Ayn Rand - author not just of Atlas Shrugged but also The Fountainhead, but also of non-fiction essays such as "For the New Intellectual," "What is Capitalism?", "What is Romanticism?", "The Comprachicos," and "Philosophy: Who Needs It" - has somehow become a decisive influence on our political establishment!  To anyone with a clue how ideas do affect a culture, that notion is ridiculous.  If some politically-motivated people want to use Miss Rand's ideas out of context, ripped out of the hierarchy of her philosophic system, not integrated with her other ideas, not inductively derived from the vast array of concretes of the sort that informed her philosophizing, then that's not her problem.  What evidence is there that our current crop of corporate and political leaders ever took Rand's philosophic message to heart?  For that to have happened is for our current crop of so-called leaders to be intellectually-inclined in roughly the same way that, oh, Jefferson and Franklin and Paine were intellectually-inclined.

In essence, I addressed this very point months ago.  It simply makes no sense that an intellectually-stunted culture is going to adopt and absorb intellectually-demanding ideas or ways of thinking.  (The dishonest rationalization here would be that Rand's ideas aren't intellectually-demanding, despite the real necessity for a lecture course called Understanding Objectivism, which would then allegedly explain her allegedly inordinate influence on our national direction.  Furthermore, an economic explanation and reality that the American Left evades is the effect of globalization on income and wealth dynamics at home.  That has not to much to do with any effects of ideology on culture but more like a worldwide recognition of the efficacy of markets to raise living standards in the previously non-capitalistic developing world.

The fact of the matter is, no one - left, right, or center - whether in the intelligentsia or in the lamestream political discourse has (much less is able to) both (a) come to grips with what it is that makes Ayn Rand great and (b) provide a compelling rebuttal to the essential thrust of her perfectivist ideology.

I've offered the following concrete example before and I'll offer it again: Jimmy Wales.  I've recently discussed "Jimbo" here.  Among reasonably widely-known figures on the American scene, Jimbo is (properly) paradigmatic of the sort of businessman who actually adopted, absorbed, and practiced Randian ideas.  So why does the Left never confront this evidence?  Well, I'll tell you why: he serves as a definitive refutation of the usual blatantly-amateurish characterizations (smears, really) of the Randian bogeyman-figure of the Left's feverish nightmare imagination, and the culture of the political Left is scummy.  That's not even to enumerate the many and growing examples of Randian scholars in the academic world, of whom the (intellectually-bankrupt) political Left are totally oblivious.  It's like they take pride in being ignorant.

What sets Jimbo apart from the great many other businessmen who might or might not be familiar with some of Rand's work?  He's intellectually-inclined.  How intellectually-inclined are the likes of Thom Hartmann and his sidekick, the former Democrat staffer?  (I referred to these sorts of idiots in my previous smackdown as "so-called liberals," forgetting that they like to call themselves "progressives" nowadays.  Same shit, different fraudulent label.)

It does all come down to intellectuality - how well people use their intellects - and it does (directly or indirectly, take your pick) implicate the Intellectual Class when a nation's cultural and political discourse is of the lowest-common-denominator variety.  I've concluded that the pathological condition on display in reddit-land toward Ayn Rand's ideas is not merely with respect to Rand in particular (although it's heightened in her case) but with respect to ideas as such.  It's not just Rand that gets dissed on /r/"philosophy", but also in effect Aristotle, whose value and importance also goes egregiously under-recognized there, even though he's arguably more of canonical figure among the philosophers (the other academic departments is another issue) than any others (Plato and Kant of course being the runners-up).  That he's as canonical as he is, may well be our culture's saving grace; where indeed would we all be without Aristotle's influence?  The only problem is that he's not canonized enough, being the foremost perfectivist in the intellectual tradition and all.

On a closely-related note: the public's seeming obliviousness to the Jeffersonian tradition of the Founders can also be attributed directly or indirectly to the doings of the intelligentsia (and most significantly among them, the philosophers).  As it is, I do happen to remember being taught about the Founders to some middling extent from grade school through high school, but after that . . . where do they get taught to people regularly outside of Glenn Beck's show?  [EDIT: Or C-SPAN's weekend "BookTV" programming?]  It's a rhetorical question on this blog at this point: what would the Founders themselves do in the face of these circumstances?  Hell, going to war for independence from the British Crown makes what they would do today a cakewalk by comparison; that's how much the spirit of the nation's founding has atrophied.  Thanks a lot, intelligentsia.

Another rhetorical question: why can't all of those in the intelligentsia be more like Aristotle?

"Why can't you be more like Aristotle?"  Say, that has a nice ring to it, am I wrong?

Alright, I'm off now to be more like Aristotle....

Glenn Beck's new 'Utopia'

Source: glennbeck.com

Source: wikipedia

This post is for the purposes of having a little bit of fun, while tying the subject to deeper and more long-range issues.

On Thursday, Glenn Beck unveiled his blueprint for what he called Independence, USA (or alternatively, "Galt's Gulch").  Very shortly after I saw the image of the planned site (first image above), my mind went to the pictorial depiction(s) of Sir Thomas More's Utopia which was written nearly five centuries ago.  Inductively speaking, it's the same basic idea, in essence, particularly given both More and Beck's devout belief in a Divine Creator.  So I figured I'd poke a little bit of fun at the parallels, as I do above.

But more seriously, while I take great issue with Beck's various paranoia-spreading proclamations about our government - the Obama Administration in particular (ever heard of Agenda 21?  The U.N. plans to come take our guns away! or something to that effect; it's hard to keep track of all the efforts afoot at the highest levels to destroy the American Way of Life) - there is one thing that he gets that seemingly 80% of the rest of the nation does not: the American Framers were effing geniuses who set an example for how we can be a great nation once again.

Is his envisioned Independence town built on the same principles that America was founded upon?  Presumably so, given his unceasingly high praise of the Founders.  And it's called Independence, after all.

This idea has drawn derision from various quarters, including the usual predictable ones (left-wing smear websites), but let's examine the basic concept.  We'd have some kind of self-sustaining community built on Jeffersonian ideals.  Lifelong learning would presumably be at the center of the community ethos.  Derivatively, industry and creativity and entrepreneurship would be inculcated from a young age.  For those who are temporarily out of work due to the "creative destruction" of the free market, there would be a plan in place for (non-sacrificial) mutual aid, retraining, and so forth.  Sounds pretty nice, doesn't it?  Why isn't everyone else on board with the basic concept, huh?  Surely we wouldn't want to cut off our noses to spite our faces by shooting the messenger; that would be vicious.

Now, my envisioned utopia - which the very term 'Perfectivism' might well have tipped off some readers to - is more ambitious than that: it would not simply be confined to some village located somewhere in Redneck Central, TX (a red flag in terms of the desirability of living in this envisioned Independence village), because it would not be necessary to build it in one place.  Instead, it would be everywhere.  So what stands in the way of this?

Supposedly, some "inherently corrupt" human nature stands in the way.  That's cynicism speaking.  I'm not a cynic; I'm an idealist.  And why am I an idealist?  Because I think that through education, people can become more civilized.  Further, if we have any meaningful adherence to the classic concept of free will, this is a real possibility open to us as a people.  If people are appropriately educated in the philosophical arts from an early age, then as they grow they find (a) little eudaimonic incentive in being vicious, and (b) the cultural mainstream of one's community would be such as to discourage misbehavior in a much more radically effective way than at present.  (And, even better, it wouldn't be a matter of conformity to the mainstream that would encourage virtue; it would be each person's own mind independently recognizing the desirability of virtue, as well as the not-conformist but understandable and desirable natural human sense of wanting to belong to a highly-functional and supportive community of people who've reached the same very-appealing conclusions about right living.)  So, the cynical response to such an ideal should easily fall by the wayside one we've framed this subject properly.  Moreover, the course of human history demonstrates that, as learning and knowledge advance and accumulate, this has a civilizing effect on people.  (Steven Pinker's recent work arrives more or less at the same conclusion.)

Moreover, we have the historical precedent of the Enlightenment and (imperfect by present standards) American Founding to point to as a guidepost.  As I've pointed out on this blog a few times already, this nation's third President was also president of the American Philosophical Society, a fairly close parallel to the original real-world "philosopher-kind," Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome in the 2nd century A.D.), who - unlike Jefferson - has the unique distinction of being a political ruler who also made a lasting contribution to the history of philosophy, with his stoic Meditations.  (Jefferson's most historically-significant philosophical insights derive from those of John Locke a century earlier; otherwise, his ethics were derivative of Epicurus and Epictetus as well as the historical Jesus of Nazareth.)

Thomas More's version of utopia - literally, "no place" - might be taken as a subtle satire on the very concept of utopia given the imperfections of human nature.  But this utopian theme runs all the way back to Plato's Republic.  (Is Jesus's 'Kingdom of Heaven' on earth a utopian ideal?  Supposedly we're corrupted by Original Sin, but once/if we all follow his lead, doesn't it sound like the result would be utopian?)  Some have suggested that Plato's Republic is also not to be taken seriously, that it could be implemented only by a select few philosopher-kings but not by society as a whole.  One thing to point out is that in Plato's time, literacy and learning were not as widespread and prevalent among the population-at-large as they are today (as abysmal as today's state might seem - and it is, by perfectivist standards).  The ordinary plebs just didn't have the knowledge, training, disposition, or sophistication to see how to rule wisely.  It must be kept in mind that Socrates was sentenced to death by a democratic majority - for something that he wouldn't be sentenced to death for today.  (Likewise, a heretic in the West today would not meet the same fate that Servetus met at the hands of that totalitarian fuck John Calvin and his beloved Inquisition.  See?  Progress.)

This utopian impulse (as it might be called) is not limited to Plato but runs throughout the history of philosophy.  The two most famous political philosophers of our era, John Rawls and Robert Nozick, seriously entertained the idea of utopia.  Kant's 'Kingdom of Ends' has a very utopian-sounding flavor to it.  Rand, of course, depicted her vision of a utopian society in part three of Atlas Shrugged, with the original "Galt's Gulch."  What might explain philosophers' tendency to entertain what the rest of those in their societies have tended to consider unrealistic?  After all, is it wise to entertain that which is unrealistic?  Here's where some confusions need to be cleared up.  First, it's been an unremarkable tendency among moral philosophers to think we have free will in a relevant sense.  Second, there's been a perhaps-more-remarkable tendency among philosophers to think that the rest of society can see the merits of learning and virtue just as they do - if they would just exercise their capacity for reason, dammit.  And various things have gotten in the way of people coming to see what they do, the widespread lack of the right education being a big one.  (See the mentality that produced Nazi Germany, even in the post-Enlightenment period of history - and I'm not speaking just of Hitler's psychoses or the dysfunctional state of the German intelligentsia which tended toward nationalism and socialism, Mises's refutations of state-socialist planning notwithstanding; see also the willingness of a critical mass of the German People to follow a charismatic "savior" even to the very gates of Hell.)  One thing that needn't stifle our human potentials for utopian living is the self-fulfilling cynicism that consumes so many people.  To combat that requires a change in attitude along with being presented a realistic blueprint for a path to utopia.

The Aristotelian utopia that I have proposed appears to provide such a realistic blueprint.  I want to clarify something, however: I don't even think that this utopia is specifically Aristotelian (or Randian, or Nortonian, or...), because it would be built upon a realistic citizenry-wide program of philosophical education in general.  I call it Aristotelian because, for one thing, my idea was sparked in good part by Prof. Homiak's essay on "An Aristotelian Life," but also because Aristotle is traditionally understood to have been most keen on the perfection of our intellectual capacity as the basic prerequisite for moral, aesthetic, spiritual and social improvement.  But at root, what people require is an education in critical thinking, and the rest (e.g., overcoming cognitive biases, which non-philosophically-informed psychologists seem to take as a given - as "naturally" ["normally"?] ingrained in our cognition) follows.  (Note, in contrast to a potential point-missing criticism, that this is not indoctrination, as that would be anathema to critical thinking.)  What's more, we have the tools and resources to make this happen with minimal investment.

So Beck is on the right track, but his proposal can be perfected so as to expand his ideal to everyone who is willing to open their minds to thinking as philosophers think.  It doesn't take native genius to make this happen, either; it takes the right sort of training to actualize the cognitive potentials that are already there.  What I see here, given the far-seeing philosophical perch upon which I rest, is a ("dialectical"; inductive) convergence that's been in the making in western culture (with some fits and starts here and there) for about 2,400 years now.  I call the eventual result the cultural singularity.

Given the priority of ethics over politics, the reforms required here - as much as they may require some measure of investment of public funds short-term - require a revolution in our ethical paradigm long-term, for which we have plenty historical literature to serve as promising, uh, leads.  And, given the priority of epistemology to ethics, what this ethical revolution presupposes is an intellectual revolution, and for that, all we need to do is follow the lead of the (best) philosophers in their quest for truth. As Peikoff said at the end of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (uh-oh, a messenger to be shot!), "To save the world is the simplest thing in the world.  All one has to do is think."

How could Glenn Beck - or anyone else, for that matter - possibly (coherently) disagree with that?

Let's get 'er done, shall we? ;-)

(I mean, it's going to happen, sooner or later with the inevitable advance of worldwide knowledge-integration, as long as the human race doesn't wipe itself out first - just as with the technological singularity.  So why not sooner rather than later?  Countless lives - in terms of both survival and flourishing, both of which depend on actualizing intellectual potentials - hang in the balance, after all, and if you're like me, you feel a huge sense of urgency about this.  Well, do you?  Spread the word as best you know how, then.)

P.S. A realistic utopia would be a virtuous-capitalism (capitalism = private property rights with voluntary association), with mutual-aid institutions.  Beck's (and Rand [I think! - see Galt's discussion about the conditions on which one provides aid to (virtuous) others] and Nozick's) vision fits that description, while Plato's and More's does not.  For explicit criticism of the latter (socialist = collective ownership) sort on economic grounds, see Mises.

On Being an Ultimate Blogger

Without people like Glenn Greenwald around, I would not have found inspiration to become The Ultimate Philosopher. Greenwald is someone with an (almost) unparalleled ability to condense issues down to their very essence. Consequently, he sees pretty much of all that counts as "mainstream narrative and debate" in this country as corrupted through and through, in some fashion or other. His approach to the whole Wikileaks/Assange farce is one such instance of this.

(From what I can tell, the very charismatic some-sort-of-genius-figure Glenn Beck is invoking America, Ah, America (tears) against the "threat" posed by Assange, nevermind what Judge Napolitano was saying on your very network not hours before. You know, America's News Network. You know, GOP figurehead Roger Ailes's brilliant Network-ized media experiment. You know, America and Democracy. And we all have a good laugh at that one.)

Greenwald recognizes what the whole farce the "left-right" "mainstream" discourse is in this country. The politicians are . . . politicians, you idiots!. You just can't expect to have serious, honest, principled, heartfelt debates from weasels, can you? Everything in politics these days is going to the highest bidders, and those very high bidders are the same ones running the media, so what better can you expect than the kind of media we're getting? There's a reason an Ultimate Commentator like Glenn Greenwald would not get any interviews on Fox News - because Greenwald is in the business of exposing in the nakedest terms the hypocrisy of our present-day political system, and Fox News is right in the middle of all that hypocrisy. Hence, The Media get the "Julian Assange - Terrorist!" discussions going. It's so obvious what's going on here to anyone who's paying attention. Greenwald, despite his credentials for intellectual integrity, just doesn't serve "the content needs" of Fox News, Inc. Network-ized, remember. Always remember that. "But how did things get to be the Network-ized way?" asks The Ultimate Philosopher, who knows about Rand and Hegel in addition to various and sundry other items of considerable interest and how they all interconnect.

Greenwald has come to the naked essence of matters concerning him as a constitutional attorney and a Jeffersonian at heart: the political system we have today is a farce of what the Framers envisioned for us. What we have here are two distinctive phenomena: (1) America, and (2) the political system currently situated within America. No one worth taking seriously is against America or at least the idea of America. But the politicians already know that and pander to that America-love to continue their farcical political games. We as a nation have forgotten the original lesson of America: keep your affairs from the hands of politicians as much as you possibly can. Rely on your selves and your communities, governed by some basic virtues like common sense. It's the whole notion of politicians as we know them that's against the ideals of America. But Greenwald also points out how the media establishment is in on the whole cynical farce, in which case the media as we know it - a vehicle of infotainment rather than enlightenment first and foremost - is also against the ideals of America, where the media is supposed to exercise an intellectual independence from the political system.

There's a way out of all this, says The Ultimate Philosopher. Does Greenwald see things at that great a level of generality and essence? Greenwald is describing the many symptoms of severe dysfunction in regard to his areas of expertise, in a better way than anyone else in his profession has described, but has he diagnosed the core problem with the country?

Is he aware of things beyond constitutional law and politics, such as philosophy or maybe Ayn Rand? Does he diagnose things at a level a philosopher would aim to diagnose it? I don't recall any time he has mentioned a specifically philosophical issue or demonstrated a familiarity with the great philosophers in his blog. He is just really good at what he specializes in, though.

What I'm saying is that my aim is to philosophize at the level that Dr. House diagnoses illness. Perfectionism and whatnot, at least on my part. (Dr. House is lost for the time being as a person, though; I don't admire his cynical-amoral methods.) Even if that doesn't make either of us popular or well-liked by the many.

[ADDENDUM: The mainstream media coverage and discourse in regard to the shootings in Arizona has been about as low as one would reasonably have come to expect with this country lately. The fact that Dingbat, a.k.a. Sarah Palin, is at the center of it all is confirmation of that point.]

The Genius of Glenn Beck

I want to start out by saying that to really "get" Glenn Beck, you have have have to watch his show for yourself over a period of at least a few weeks. (Perhaps this is a rule for immersing yourself in just about anything or anybody.) It simply will not do to rely on the hit-piece style of "quoting" from his show by (probably Soros-supported?) sources. Otherwise, what I say in praise of Beck's show would seem incomprehensible and/or crazy. But his show is some of the most riveting stuff in television; an hour of Beck just flies right on by. You just have to go into it with no preconceptions and get drawn in over time by the core message.

Anyway, to capture this man's genius in a nutshell: on today's show he quotes from a document called the United States Declaration of Independence, thusly:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Then he proceeds to ask: How do you "progress" beyond this principle? "There is no higher principle than this!"

Take that, "progressives" (a.k.a. cowards afraid to identify themselves openly with socialism and/or substance).