The Death Of The Mind

…the work, proper to the human race…is to keep the capacity of the potential intellect constantly active, first for speculation and secondarily for action. (Dante, De Monarchia).
The machine culture forgot about the culture of the spirit, the spiritual. (Boris Pilnyak, The Naked Year).

 

It was in 1946 that Bruno Snell published his epic work, The Discovery of the Mind, in which he traced the origins of the West’s intellectual character back to ancient Greece. Thus, the Greeks discovered the mind.

The defining characteristic of the mind is self-awareness – which is that ability to stand outside of yourself and question your way to the truth.

The human being, therefore, is always independent of any predetermined condition (society, politics, religion, culture, even family), because he uses his reason to structure reality. In this way, the brain becomes the mind.

Other cultures, though much engaged in reflection (mythologized explanations of existence), did not veer into self-awareness, and thus the mind was closed to them, since they could not abstract themselves from the unfolding of life in both time and space.

Without self-awareness, without the habit of questioning into truth, there can be only conformity (mythological thinking). A culture is severely misunderstood when its reflection is taken to mean the mind. Thus no culture, other than the Greek, discovered the mind.

For the Greeks, self-awareness was further clarified into the intellect and the soul. The intellect is the source of human action, expressed through the will, while the soul is “the life of the body,” in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, for the soul is the vital essence, which gives human beings their moral character. Each person, then, has value, because each person has a soul.

Morality…the tireless cultivation of the mind

In one fragment, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus states, “As for the soul, you shall not find its limits, though you go here and there and all over – so deep is its structure.”

The mind alone defines and describes the human being, for inside each of us is the soul. Without the soul, the mind shatters and a person is no more than a flurry of emotions.

But can the mind also perish and die? Indeed, it can. Self-awareness is not a given; it is not a gift of nature, like sunshine or rain. Rather, self-awareness needs to be cultivated by way of conversation with minds that have gone before and who have left behind a legacy of both their intellect and their soul.

Only one mind can teach another, only one soul can guide another, thus forming a great chain that links humanity back to the Greeks, the first discoverers of the mind, and the world.

And yet chains too are easily broken. Self-awareness dies off when the brain engages only in reflection and expression of emotion, which are both reactions to material things.

When the mind cannot provide the soul its language of non-material things, of greater truths (the whys of life), and of infinity – the vital essence of a human being falls silent, and the mind dies. To deny the existence of the soul is to deny the existence of the mind.

Everywhere, the shattered human being is on display

With the silencing of the soul, self-awareness collapses into self-centeredness, or self-worship. What does this mean? Very simply this – the very integrity of the human being is destroyed, because he is no longer aligned with his soul.

The mind vanishes into the brain, which is now content with expressions of emotion that pertain only to the immediacy of the mundane.

The corollary to the death of the mind is the shattered human being, who is now mindless and thus held hostage by unending emotions, whose expression and fulfillment he eagerly and continually seeks.

Life thus becomes nothing more than a grand pursuit of desire, no matter how trivial – and society exists solely to enable individual whims, which often become manias. There is no meaning in life, no truth; there is only desire, and the hunger for desire.

A shattered human being becomes an automaton that may be reconstructed into any configuration, for the body without the mind is nothing other than a machine whose function is to persist.

If there is no soul, there is no humanity – there are only technologized creatures. The haves are those who can afford mechanical add-ons to their bodies – and the have-nots are the many who must live and perish within the confines of their human frailty.

This is the sad pivoting towards transhumanism, homines ex machina, where technology is given messianic qualities (cybernetics) that it might free us at last from all our physical impairments, so that we might live forever. Is this not nihilism apotheosized?

without the habit of questioning into truth, there can be only conformity

Everywhere, the shattered human being is on display. Because the mind has died, human brain size is shrinking.

Because the mind has died, people prefer to think with pictures rather than with words (the default ability of the brain).

Because the mind has died, people stare at screens all day long without tiring, suckling new “glass teats.”

Because the mind has died, human attention span has decreased to just eight seconds.

Because of the death of the mind, children too are expected to question and then choose whatever gender they like.

Because the mind had died, education is now meaningless, and universities cannot say why they exist, or worse, why they should continue to exist? How can there be education without the mind?

Therefore, courses only serve to give students predictable emotional postures to assume, and handy slogans to loudly declaim. It is not surprising that professors themselves have no idea why they teach, other than spouting versions of self-gratifications. Or they are fearful of their students.

self-awareness needs to be cultivated

Then there is the fragmentation of what constitutes a human being – into an ideologically contrived confusion of gender, of which there are now over a hundred types. This confusion is not only socially and politically encouraged as an expression of some vaguely understood “right,” or even as an affirmation of “progress” – but this confusion also affirms the death of the mind.

Self-centeredness is the abandonment of the self to emotional slavery, for the purpose of living without a soul is to demonstrate full submission to whatever diktats are declared worthy.

With the death of the mind, the body is made into a slogan, a message, meticulously constructed for the benefit of other people’s eyes.

This “billboard body” is not only the saddest version of virtue signalling (where the individual can aspire to nothing greater than the approval of others), but such a body is also a billboard of humanity emptied of all purpose, of a humanity without a soul.

With the death of the mind, the only aspirations left are the urges to persist, consume, and hunger after the praise of others (celebrity). To live is to be “messagey,” which is nothing more than the desire for self-annihilation.

Will we come to that stage of mindlessness where the body becomes useless once it has delivered its message? Eugenics and euthanasia may be understood in this light, for both are instances of devaluing the body in order to vaunt ideology.

The discovery of the mind sustained the West for more than two thousand years; it allowed for a true civilization to flower and to spread, and this civilization was rooted in a profound comprehension of morality, that is, the tireless cultivation of the mind.

the abandonment of the self to emotional slavery

But that discovery is now lost, and the mind is dead in the West, and both social and personal life is an endless display of either diversion or sloganeering.

With the death of the mind, comes the death of the world.

Perhaps in answer to our age “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” Yeats said, “We had fed the heart on fantasies, the heart’s grown brutal from the fare; More substance in our enmities than in our love.” In another poem, he looked closely at the consequences of this brutality:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Both the best and the worst among us now live without the mind.

We shall have to await the time when humans grow weary of living emotionally, and set forth to discover again the mind by cultivating self-awareness, and thereby recalling the soul from its long exile. Did not hope cry out to Pandora, in a weak, small voice, to open the box for the last time that it might sustain mankind?

In the chaos let loose in our mindless world, we can indeed hope for a new renaissance, when the mind will be born anew, and the dialogue of the mind with the soul will implant in people a yearning for a life that is greater than the individual body. But for now, we can say with Meister Eckhart, “Somewhere there is light.”

 

[The photo shows, “The Torment of Creation,” by Leonid Pasternak, 19th century]

The True Sons of Liberty

In individuals, insanity is rare. But in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.” (Fredrick Nietzsche).
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. (Edward Abbey)
Destroy or be destroyed, there is no middle way! Let us then be the destroyers! (Mikhail Bakunin)

 

Liberalism has yet another bastard son: Libertarianism. Sired by anarchist thought, this illegitimate child wanders the existing political order in search of a home.

Disillusioned by the right’s addiction to property and the left’s dependence on the state, the libertarian seeks to reshape the existing order. It is an ideology that transcends liberalism and is yet another nail in the coffin of “left and right-wing” politics.

The libertarian asks what should the state do when it can’t regulate?

Liberalism is a serious threat to the existing economic order. As the world shifts towards information technology, the concept of property becomes increasingly nebulous. If information is given a price tag, can you have free thought?

Computer script, the human genome, blueprints, and the thoughts in your head are all information. The government and private companies struggle to control the sale and distribution of that information – and yet liberalism believes in its free distribution and unregulated transfer.

What do Google, Facebook, Itunes, CNN, ABC, Netflix, every R&D and think tank have in common? They are all information-based industries. They manage data and ideas, and they are growing.

Since the libertarian believes in the free exchange of information, industries that rely on the sale of information are placed under threat.

Imagine a world where everyone has a 3D printer. Household goods are produced from within the home. Everything from furniture to baby pins is made from the family 3D printer.

If information is given a price tag, can you have free thought?

Furthermore, the cost of production normally tied to these goods is non-existent, and the cost of plastic is relatively negligible. The only thing someone needs besides plastic is the informational code that is used to shape it.

This world is closer than you think. In Russia and America, 3D houses have been printed in less than 24 hours at the cost of about $10,000 a house. The process is done with concrete instead of plastic.

The economy will soon pivot further around the sale of information.

In a capitalist model, this information is sold at a value for a profit margin. But in a libertarian model, this information is exchanged freely. One can already see the clash of ideology.

Pirate Bay is a website that illegally distributes copyrighted movies, audiobooks, songs, and other products that can be reduced to computer bits.

Thingiverse freely exchanges plastic model schematics for 3D printers. Everything from jewelry to dishware is openly exchanged.

This leads to the question: Can you really stop the spread of information? Data? Ideas?

These outlaws are incompatible with neo-liberalism. The left cries out for regulation, and the right demands property rights. But in the eyes of the libertarian, this is the true free market.

to reshape the existing order

Libertarians are more than just economic trouble, they are a political nuisance. Neo-liberals debate about whether the state should or should not regulate. But the libertarian transcends this issue. The libertarian asks what should the state do when it can’t regulate?

For example, take gun control.  A Texan by the name of Cody R. Wilson uploaded the schematics for a 3D printed gun on Thingiverse. Following the Sandy Hook school shooting, Thingiverse shut him down.

But that didn’t stop this self declared “crypto-Anarchist” from exchanging his ideas with the world. He made his own site, and posted the data for his 3D printed gun called the Liberator.

The libertarian asks what should the state do when it can’t regulate?

Picture a Democrat arguing with a Republican about gun control. Now picture Cody mass producing his own arsenal in his basement.

Is there any sense in talking about control, or at least in the conventional sense? Can you imagine a political order where everyone can pump out a gun from their house in about a day? It’s a neo-liberal nightmare.

At this point, neo-liberals normally protest the idea of guns being on the free market.

The libertarian questions the legitimacy of a free market that lacks the freedom to distribute products according to the demands of the people. Guns, drugs, and any other products that don’t restrict the freedom of the individual should be distributed wholesale in the mind of a libertarian.

It forces you to ask if you can trust individuals to make the right choices, or if they can even be stopped from choosing.

The libertarian world is one where anyone can print off a gun. It is a world where the law cannot control what is being read, watched, or built. The only force that can truly regulate the individual is the will of the individual – in other words, morality. The state cannot legislate that. Ever.

 

 

[Photo credit: J. Struthers]

One For All

When the rich man gazes down at the poor, does he realize he is one of the vulnerable ones? Every social hierarchy rests its security on the people that it rules. The stronger the foundation, the greater the security of that hierarchy. So, if you’re going to rule over the poor, at least do it well.

I have no optimistic dreams of a socialist utopia. I’m sure that cynicism is what such dreams are made of. I only ask that we have smarter and more coordinated masters. Ones that realize that all masters are chained to those beneath them.

For example, take health care. Even the Nazis made sure that the Jews weren’t sick in the camps, and it’s not because they loved the Jews – rather, they understood a basic biological fact that sickness spreads. If only we could be better than the Nazis.

all masters are chained to those beneath them

Yet, we struggle to understand why we should provide our own people health care, let alone why we should stop Ebola in Africa. Even if you see the poor as a bunch of rats and parasites, it’s important to remember where the plague came from.

Does it take a genius to know that we should educate our own people? We can’t even think for ourselves anymore. We import the educated, because we aren’t smart enough to work for ourselves.

All the while, we bicker over whether it’s in our interests to pay poor people to educate themselves. We supposedly live in a democracy, and yet we are economically and politically bound to these idiots!

We know that the air is unfit to breathe and that the food is unfit to eat, but we can’t seem to realize this isn’t just a poor man’s problem. We fail to realize that the same companies that feed garbage to the poor are the same ones that lie to us about our “organic” foods.

We import the educated, because we aren’t smart enough to work for ourselves

The rich and the poor have one common struggle, but the difference is the elites are the only ones who can actually do anything about it.

But of course, nobody cares.

The left is too wrapped up with the tribalism of identity politics. Ironically, the one thing that is supposed to unite the left is socialism, but a socialist can’t even make it through the primaries without getting stiff-armed out of the race.

Sooner or later you realize there is no left wing, Clinton and Obama were with Wall Street, not Main Street.

What about the right? Another meaningless term. The right-wing of liberalism was born of the desire to save the people from themselves. Now, these Neo-cons run around preaching the gospel of supply-side Jesus and have completely forsaken the poor, as well as themselves.

The left is too wrapped up with the tribalism of identity politics

The rich think that they are immune from the ills of their employees. Like young adolescents, these masters of the world roam the earth believing in nothing but their own invincibility.

No one is horrified when the poor are violated, not even the poor. It’s practically expected. When they suffer from gang violence, cancer, malnutrition, stupidity, rape, death on the battlefield, etc. no one is really shocked. Anyone who takes a walk through the South Side of Chicago, and sees the barred fortification of every window, knows that the poor expect it.

No, it’s the rich that never see it coming. The troubles of this world swoop in like some terrible bird, a grisly visitor who flies away with a piece of their life. As they gaze down from the tower of their social hierarchy into the abysmal suffering below, they begin to create a false dichotomy between themselves and the less fortunate.

But then they wake up with some illness, cancer, or kid with autism, and their world begins to shatter. Suddenly, they realize that they breathe the same carcinogenic air as those below them.

They begin to realize that the same laws that freed up companies to put poison in food and children’s toys – have poisoned them as well.

Every social hierarchy rests its security on the people that it rules

As the elite attempt to build their governments and companies on the minds of imbeciles, they start to realize that their national security and wealth is under threat. Their world begins to shrink, and they begin to understand that they are the same as those below them.

But do they know this can’t go on forever? The poor will get the worst of it, and the weak will suffer what they must.

But how long will it be before the elites save each other from themselves? And if gold rust, what shall iron do?

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.

Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.

Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.

Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.

Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.

Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. (James 5:1-8).

 

(The photo shows a painting by Sergey Korovin, “In the World,” painted in 1893).

Freedom Of Speech?

There has been a lot of news recently about free speech on university campuses.  Typically, one group of students invites a high-profile speaker to give a talk and another group of students agitates until the speaker is shut down.

But it’s not just high-profile speakers who are getting shut down on university campuses. Students are being silenced, too. But not all students, just those who don’t conform to the accepted ideologies that now dominate university campuses. My story is just one example.

One group silencing the opposing group is not coming to an agreement, it’s dictatorship

I’m an undergraduate student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. I’m also a member of the campus LifeLink Club. We are a pro-life club with no religious affiliation. We don’t use graphic pictures or loud, angry language; we practice calm, respectful dialogue.

I am a naturally peaceful and easy-going person; my friends and family can attest to that. If the pro-life club was the type of club that was aggressive and forceful, I would not be a member, much less the president.

In October of last year we planned a teach-in to motivate discussion. We got approval from our students’ union to use a grassy, outdoor area known as the quad. In early morning, we set up 10,000 small pink and blue flags with each representing 10 abortions that take place in Canada each year.

When classes began, we caught some people’s attention. I was encouraged throughout the morning by the genuine interest and respect of my fellow students.

But beginning in the afternoon the mood turned. Employees from my university’s Diversity and Equity Office, an official administrative body whose mandate is the fair treatment of all students on campus, placed a sign on the walkway leading to our display. It read: “Warning: Anti-Choice display ahead.”

we were censored because our ideas…contradict the new dogma of my university

I was dumbfounded. Why was a warning needed? We were peaceful and polite. And why had this “non-partisan” office of my university referred to my group as “anti-choice” when the term that neutrally describes us, and how we describe ourselves, is pro-life?

The DEO hangs posters across my campus insisting that students use “proper terms” when addressing the groups it explicitly supports, but went out of its way to apply a negatively torqued label to ours.

I had left during the morning to go to class and that sign was what I saw when I returned. I knew immediately that it had not been written by someone in our group, and if those who disagreed with us were putting up signs, the afternoon was not going to be as peaceful as the morning. I wasn’t very far off.

Displays like our flags are now prohibited

The sign from the DEO seemed to have the effect of enabling other students whose desire was not respectful dialogue to come out and harass us.

Some came and began to pull out our flags, yelling profanities and insults. Others spit on our club banner and the flags

I knew that there would be those at my campus who would disagree with our views, but I never anticipated such a degrading response to pink and blue flags.

Though intimidated, I and other LifeLink members stayed calm – as we’ve been trained – and tried to get our opponents to talk to us, but with little success. Special Constable Services were called.

One of the male students damaging our display, quoted in our campus paper, excused his behaviour saying, “The officers are here (telling me) you have to respect their rights and I’m like … I don’t because frankly, this is harmful.”

In the hours and days following the attack on our display, I heard that notion a lot. I heard that my group – despite being the ones subjected to verbal abuse, intimidation, vandalism, and spit – were the purveyors of harm and, as such, it was legitimate for our freedom of expression to be quashed.

Everywhere I went on social media, there was someone posting about how our display was harmful and downright terrible. There were multiple people who wrote that our group should never have been given club status and that we should get off campus.

There were those who were supportive as well, but it is hard to see the silver lining when so much hate is being directed at you because you stood up for what you believe in.

That day, to mediate the “harm” of our actions Laurier’s Centre for Women and Trans People added to their hours of operation but, on Facebook, cautioned attendees “you may have to walk past the protest to get in. Please stay safe…” Alternatively, they said, “If anyone needs a place to hang out with social justice values, the DEO is open.”

Students are being silenced

About a month later the president of the Students’ Union joined the chorus condemning LifeLink. He issued a public letter to the campus saying we were wrong because, “the adversarial tone of the event evoked a confrontation which eliminated the possibility of respectful dialogue and created an unsafe environment for all students.” Furthermore, he promised to work with the Diversity and Equity Office and other university organizations “to ensure this does not happen again.”

True to his word, within a couple of weeks the Students’ Union changed the rules on acceptable practices by campus clubs. Displays like our flags are now prohibited. Instead of trying to make successful discussion happen in the future, the university went in the complete opposite direction and further restricted what our club can do.

To be clear, LifeLink members did not have an “adversarial tone”; we made no one feel “unsafe” — records of the event show that is the case. In fact, when the university’s special constables arrived to monitor the event, they raised no objections to our conduct, issued no warnings, offered no interference, and, in fact, commended members of our group for their restraint in the face of harassment and intimidation.

Again, these were university’s officials. They observed our behaviour and only commented negatively on those for our harassers. And yet our tone was adversarial? We were the ones making people feel unsafe?

The argument of when life begins is far from being closed. I know many Canadians hold the same views as our club, as seen by the annual March for Life on Parliament Hill in Ottawa each May.

Most people shy away from the topic because it’s controversial, but this should not mean we stop talking about it altogether. One group silencing the opposing group is not coming to an agreement, it’s dictatorship. The last time I checked, Canada is a democracy and each citizen has a right to his/her opinion and a right to express that opinion, even if it opposes that of the majority.

Plainly, we were censored because our ideas and conduct, though respectful and lawful, contradict the new dogma of my university. I came to Wilfrid Laurier University to get an education and I sure got one. I’ve learned disagreement now equals harm.

More specifically, I’ve learned that certain campus factions with a strong ideological agenda are manipulating language and the concept of victimhood to silence opponents … and no one, least not the Students’ Union that theoretically claims to represent us all, is trying to stop them.

 

[Photo shows flags at the Quad, Wilfrid Laurier University]