Why the Orthodox do not Like my Ideas
Wim
Rietdijk, D.Sc.
|
|
The scholar has ceased to be a sage and
become a technician. |
|
Part 1: Many People
Simply do not Like Consistent Openness, Clarity, Coherence and, therefore,
Reason; they Like Manipulability, Myth, the “Political” and Playing Games
I. (Abusive) power will need myth and manipulation (and, indeed, some white
lies too)
1. Apart from
their frequent siding with "the disadvantaged", our intellectuals
will not show any moral indignation on social evils. What's more: they loathe
this website more than the many abuses discussed in it. And they practically
never positively violate a taboo: about genetically based IQ and other
differences between social groups and races, or about eugenics, or as to
fighting crime ("privacy", "right to silence",...), with
respect to the causes of Third-World problems, or by publicly ridiculing modern
art,... Such "adjustment" is the single most revealing sociological
phenomenon of our "free-speech" age. For, only two alternative
hypotheses can explain it:
1) About all intellectuals happen to be individually immoral (least plausible
hypothesis);
2) They collectively conformed, and humour a taboo as to criticizing major
vested interests, as all former clergies and orthodox ideologists did too.
In recent years I advocated on Dutch radio
and tv the right of parents of seriously handicapped newborns to opt for
euthanasia applied to their child. 54 % of the Dutch agreed (30 % opposed).
Still, none among publicly known intellectuals or speech-makers (or, for that
matter, any representative) openly sided with me. This illustrates the above.
2. Voltaire to a
friend: "God does not exist, but don't tell to my servants".
President Roosevelt had foreknowledge of
Pearl Harbour, and decided to do nothing. He was right: it was the only way to
involve America in the war for democracy.
More generally, life and society abound
with white lies, tacit conventions, repressions to avoid inner or social
conflicts, taboos in order to "avoid open problems", social games
such as starting from the others to be in good faith, politeness etcetera. Also
imagine the inner problems of those differing from me as to sex-sublimity
integration, if they did not repress much now and then (e.g.,
either the sublime or the sex)! (Compare the page Paradigms as Association Complexes,
point 6., about something unusual in my psyche: a strong integration of, and
harmony between, my sexuality and experience of the sublime, as well as between
my emotions, reason and conscience more generally. Such inner life does not
foster manipulability, and causes me not to adjust to many conventional
associations and prejudices.) And what about those seeking the votes of the
"deprivileged", and egalitarian solidarity, if they did not taboo
much of genetic research and its results! Also think of leaders fostering
"solidarity" in general (nationalism, other-directedness,
religion,...) - of course solidarity centered around various economic,
socio-cultural or power-related interests such leaders "sympathise
with" -, if everybody saw through things precisely. What about the
emotions about the flag and the national anthem, about crosses and
group-mindedness, about tacit gentlemen's agreements among unions, employers,
lawyers, moralists, churches and merchants, if so strange a fellow like me
would indeed succeed in convincing people that dropping in on the Olympus - compare
the motto of Paradigms as Association Complexes - is long overdue!
All subtle compromises, repressions and gentlemen's agreements would be
endangered by such bull in a china shop who dares call them unconscious
conspiracies! How can we integrate society without myth - and,
therefore, without various white lies and repressions - and without
accepting major social interests and pressure groups as they are?!
In somewhat other words: my approach is
hated because it rules out any escape, harmless reinterpretation, ambiguity,
noncommittance and repression of unpleasant truths (which will be far from
unpleasant to me!). Of course my frequent exposures are
unpopular with (mostly other-directed) people whose main interest is selling
themselves,
being acceptable to others, and making a career. They even deem my work rather
irrelevant because their own purpose is achieving something in society, whereas
finding the truth if nobody wants to listen is not interesting to them...
3. An essential
point in the orthodoxy rejecting my ideas is their correct conclusion that I
undermine social solidarity (and "integration"):
1) My explanations simply expose many interest groups as being in bad faith, at
least unconsciously, and as having an immoral mentality;
2) I downrightly posit various groups in society to be morally and/or
genetically inferior, and propose eugenics;
3) In positively deriving a moral basis, identity, certainty, values and
purposes from other sources than the community - think of the red thread,
objective rational values, sexual and other beauty associated with the sublime,
radical rationalism, hope on the Promethean,... - I undermine the basis of the
dependence of the individual on the group.
Note here that both the in-crowds and many
individuals are in need of solidarity; the former because it is the pre-eminent
power instrument throughout the ages. Also note how extremely unusual it is to
expose major interest groups in society [Marx did, and compare 1) and 2)
above]; it being virtually taboo to do so in itself strongly suggests that some
hidden interests are at stake here. Such interests want the individuals to
be morally dependent on the "We" solidarity of the group (in which
the in-crowds dominate), rather than morally debunking the latter, as this
website does.
Of course, such debunking only results from
the group's neglecting its task: fostering happiness and progress, up to and including
the enforcement of integrity by all available means and the stimulation of
research into "the essential problems of life", such as whether an
afterlife exists.
Finally, realise that the above desire of
the elites to keep the individual innerly dependent on the group means a
radical extension of Schelsky's idea that many ideologists distrust technology
because it tends to lessen the individual's dependence on their Utopia's or
social solutions.
II. Also most individuals need repression, playing games and
irrational "defense mechanisms"
4. So far about
the objections to this website of the dominating ideology. Additionally, there
is an instinctive reserve from the average intellectual too (others hardly
understand the site). For mind that the repressions, myths, and social
conventions to avoid problems and unpleasant truths (e.g., about sexual
attractiveness, or death, or the moral quality of many, or conflicts,...) are
also very welcome to many individual persons, with their conflicting longings
and uncertainties. They are not at all like me as indicated in 2. above, and
fear consistent straighforwardness at all roughly for similar reasons why
they don't like lie detectors, a transparent large-scale love market and
violations of their "privacy". They don't like
pursuing the Enlightenment unto the intimate and the unconscious, and
ultimately hate the entire spirit of this website, from determinism to
lie-detectors, from a coherently scientific world to rational sex markets and
from cracking down on crime to eugenics. They want room for ambiguity and the
poly-interpretable, and ways of escape from arguments and for human failing...
They do not derive identity and support from a coherent universe and a moral
world order - and neither from their own authentic coherent complex of
beautiful emotions -, but from personal relations and the
association complex inherited from their social group, that I expose as highly
fraudulent...
Frankly, they are not much like Luther in
the Reichstag of Worms: "Here I stand; I cannot otherwise. May God
help me. Amen". They will not even be downright fellows and need a host
of half-truths, euphemisms, repressions, conventions and many superficialities
to keep life pleasant. Also, they are simply associatively aquainted
with them, just as with their city or family. Well, this website simply will mix
up too much for their well-being based on routine and repressing the unpleasant
and the contradictory, the difficult and the unusual and - above all - on their
harmony with their social environment (and with themselves).
For this requires a host of compromises, half-truths, repressions,
euphemisms,... Many, too, are attuned to having one's cake and eating it, to
inconsistence and white lies. Hence much hypocrisy, for essentially similar
reasons why it abounds in the sexual domain. Most people want to
repress many desires, failures, sinful inclinations, manipulative behaviour and
anxieties. Hence not merely politics but the whole of culture and society for a
great part accommodates this by cultivating much indistinctness, sitting on the
fence, and ambiguity. The inconsistent mess in the relevant psyches can be
inferred from the fact that most people can hardly express what precisely
causes their frustrations and what would make them happy. The gist of
this website flies in the face of all this...
An even more radical factor may be that
most people, like formerly religion and tradition or "their
country", currently need the others as a primary "defense
mechanism". They need the group and solidarity with and support by it
as a major defence against anxiety of hardships, uncertainties and uneasy
feelings (partly originating from the others themselves; these will be
repressed as much as possible). Because they cannot stand alone, my work is
menacing to them: first, I show their "god" (the group) to be not at
all sympathetic and dependable as a support and, second, my exposures re-awaken
their anxieties of it, which they just repressed with much effort.
Third, there are repressed guilt feelings: in feeling compelled
(by their inner weakness) to solidarise with society, many people sense that
this implies their having a share in the responsibility for "what is
rotten in town". If my work reminds them of that - of both the massive rot
and the responsibility - they are not pleased. The result is that
they defend their repressions by devaluing or hushing up my work and/or
character. More generally, I undermine the present-day "religion of man as
he is". For the rest, we see the nature of (secularized) religion of the
relevant "solidarity" from the tabooing of heresies (that anyhow
"devalue" man): eugenics, euthanasia for the demented or seriously
handicapped newborns, "racism", "stigmatization",...; also
think of the "inviolability of the human body", the social origin of
values, and the tacit assumption that interest groups will be in good faith.
Such religious nature is further suggested by the fact that practically nobody
publicly violates the above taboos.
In other words: as far as they feel
dependent and anxious, people still need religion these days; and the
main current religion in the West is that around "the group" (the
others; also think of Riesman's other-directedness) as the
secularized God. He is demystified and run down by my work, which makes many
unhappy.
5. One more,
related, factor is that most people don't want at all a massive crackdown on
evil, after optimum transparency exposed it. For - far from the situation with
me as indicated above - good and evil will be mutually intricately mixed and
associated in their psyche. Sex with aggression and competition, lust with
shame, guilt and secrecy. Most of their happiness cannot be separated from
antinomies, projections, social games (sports!), deceptive images, bad luck of
their neighbour, myths (don't drop in on the Olympus!; compare Paradigms as
Association Complexes), repression, the unmeasurable and the
poly-interpreable. I do not pretend to be completely clear of such
"mechanisms", but the integration and conscious coherence of my
psyche referred to in 2. above and on the page just mentioned do much more than
compensate this. I also feel to have awakened to the circumstance that white
and black in the many shades of grey can be separated by science and our being
innerly consistent and straightforward. In the last resort I don't need my
neighbour to be hungry for savouring a meal, or sex having to do with
aggression, shame or secrecy. I only feel aggression against what is cruel,
frustrating or dishonest. And I am too much emotionally conscious for believing
or joining in social games. Hence, I support our cracking down on evil,
troubled waters, the unmeasurable and those preferring making career by
networking to ultimately doing so by having their genes, brainwaves and other
qualities measured! Let's choose for straightforwardness, the
"scientifization of culture" and - eventually - a coherent model
of everything imaginable. Then man takes his destiny into his own hands.
That is progressiveness, much more than softness on rearguards of any
kind. Let's no longer keep our eyes half shut, but start the organisation of
happiness. Free speech, democracy and free markets will safeguard us from
organizing too much and from the "Robespierre variant". But mind:
organizing - also with respect to happiness - is simply using our intelligence.
How intensely many wallow in the negative,
unsolvable problems, ambiguous personal relations and dead-end situations we
see from (highbrow) literature. They like failure (with others) and
resignation. This highly characterizes current public climate. To a great
extent, modern man got stuck in contradictory wishes and illogical associations
and, therefore, in uncertainty. The establishment of vested interests likes it
this way...
Conclusion: Evil is thoroughly integrated in our "paradigmatic
association complex." (Compare Paradigms as Association Complexes.) This is
its strongest weapon, jointly with the obscurity, unawakedness and
lack of coherence of most people's minds and emotions. These are the main
allies of fraudulent power and other abuse, precisely like massive ignorance
was so in former times.
6. Partly
summarising: most people innerly depend on so many repressions, irrational
defense mechanisms, myths about the moral dependability of the others and our
rulers, and illusions about the moral quality of our laws and social
conventions, that my clearly and exposingly formulated explanations and
theoretical coherence - with radical consequences - are utterly painful to
them because of such very clarity and irrefutability. Such people
would be highly embarrassed "if the queen would appear to have
stolen". Many of my theses have such purport...
The above is compounded by the fact that I
argue or imply that most current problems are easily solvable if we only
consistently act according to logic and rational values. You cannot accept my
work and, subsequently, pass to the order of the day. You should innerly stop
playing social games and abandon the moral support of the community.
Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit - far more
"negative" than my work - in most people's minds has the
"advantage" of implying: "The world is indeed a mess, but that's
just the way it is because people are so; we can do nothing but resign ourselves
to this". Many find this easier: no culprits, no solutions and no
conflicts. A vague and noncommittal "solidarity" can go on.
For my part, I prefer being victim of
concrete vice and stupidity to being one of an anonymous fate, in
"solidarity" with all those many tolerating open abuses. Of course
the establisment prefers the second attitude... Céline's undangerous book is no heresy with respect
to established "solidarity" and association complexes. It leaves
troubled waters troubled by not indicating culprits, mechanisms and solutions. No
euthanasia for newborn mongols, no efficient sex markets, no lie
detector-controlled interviews with politicians, not making the fight against
crime more efficient by no longer fretting about "privacy" and technicalities,
but (possibly) "deep" tittle-tattle about "being",
"alienation" and "revolutions" in modern art. That's the
way the status quo likes to see it.
Of course, you need many repressions and
defense mechanisms to acquiesce in a society in which concrete abuses will not
be mentioned, let alone their profiteers, and "solidarity" is an
essential defense mechanism against the corresponding frustrations. Now
compare such collective situation with individual neurosis. It is well-known
that, with the latter, making conscious the repressions and exposing the
defense mechanisms is painful to the patient in psychotherapy. Well, this
website tries and induces an awakening as to vital repressions and an exposure
of many defense mechanisms, now as regards the collective, social, neurosis
such repressions etc. constitute. Small wonder that so many feel embarrassed
and pained in reading my work! They cannot endure such shock therapy. The more so
because it implies their complicity: their indolence, manipulability, coward
defense mechanisms and the paucity of their intuition as to good and evil made
possible the continuation of the abuses and the repression.
Analogously to "private
neurotics", coping with reality by those suffering from a
"collective" variant is embarrassing to them because my work shows
their repressions and defense mechanisms to be due to a flight from rather
essential problems of life. Problems many of which could easily have been
solved if the relevant people would indeed have been massively and consistently
rational and straightforward, abandoning repressions and irrational defense
mechanisms and (innerly) attacking evil and stupidity in their concrete -
though mostly veiled - forms: irrational ideology, troubled waters and
relativism, lack of efficiency or integrity, humouring special interests etc.
(As to those problems, e.g., think of the anxiety Riesman found with the
other-directed, of silent disappointment with many - also in consequence of an
inadequate love market - and of various psychological complaints that hitherto
are attributed to private circumstances. Especially think of so many who, in
the current nihilistic climate, lack any perspective in life apart from
consumption. Of course, the perspectives of a moral order in the world and some
meaningful evolution of the individual are vital here.)
The above points 4. - 6. also make clear
the remarkable circumstance that hardly anybody partially rejects my
work, seeking discussion about other items: who is against is against the whole
way of thinking.
I owe various important insights of this
point 6. to my good friend Marcel van den Boogert.
III. Shunning rational argument as an obvious policy of the
anti-enlightened
7. Within the
above scope, and that of anti-enlightened mentality at all, it is conspicuous
how much the speech-making community wants to avoid discussion about
subjects as discussed in my work. The speech-makers never go into concrete
examples and explanations - about philosophy, art, abuses, lie detectors etc. -
but vaguely turn against my "extreme rationalism", my
"tone", "repetitions", or "the noise" that would
cause my message to be unintelligible.
Avoiding discussion about the gist of the
matter is a more consistent pattern in how our speech-making community
aproaches concrete social problems. A few specimens:
a) Crime: genes and permissiveness are repressed as causes; removing
serious repeaters from society for good in most countries is repressed as a
solution;
b) Addiction: obligatory kicking the habit under pain of continued
internment is practically taboo;
c) Third-World immigration in Europe: nobody speaks about the clear
interest of leftist parties in having more "deprivileged" within the
national borders, as (future) voters;
d) In The Netherlands, the price of houses became extremely high;
the authorities' keeping building land very scarce (because of pressure by
environmentalists), as a major cause, is absent from the discussion;
e) Education: genetically defined low IQs with many pupils and a massive
lack of discipline (because of "progressive" theories as well as an
unconscious preference of the consumption mentality and industry for the
"easygoing" consumption-prone type of man) are not recognized and
tackled, repectively;
f) The relation between underclasses, crime etc. and genes
remains virtually beyond discussion. Hence so does eugenics;
g) A possible hereafter: Most people in the West and in the world
believe in life after death; still the most relevant is not even discussed.
Viz. investing billions of dollars in research of out-of-the-body and
near-death experiences, and of reincarnation and the paranormal...;
h) Sexuality: As already discussed elsewhere: the two major sources of
frustration are completely ignored;
i) The economy: substituting the right to strike by obligatory
arbitration (which has been introduced in Switzerland) will be a non-issue; the
same holds as regards not seldom very inefficient work rules and job
restrictions that are enforced by such very right.
It is quite obvious why in such spiritual
climate this website is incongruous... For the above shows that we are not far
from the death of socio-cultural criticism, consensus and neocorporatism being
dominant, apart from a "lunatic fringe" of Greens, anti-globalists
and the like, who are even more anti-enlightened and anti-Promethean than
mainstream thinking.
8. It might be
suggested that this website does not draw more attention because it would be
"not interesting" rather than by its violating taboos and unwelcome
arguments. This hypothesis, however, loses much plausibility on our realising
that, in the professional journals, I published four demonstrations from the
Special theory of relativity that the world is four-dimensional in a realistic
sense. This does not merely imply determinism but even that the future exists
"already". (For details see the page on my publications on physics.)
Though the first proof appeared in Philosophy of Science as early as
1966, none of them has ever been refuted; still, they have been virtually
hushed up. Well, their results certainly cannot be considered as "not
interesting", but indeed fly in the face of the "orthodoxy" to
an almost unprecedented extent. Could the reasons why they and this website
were ignored as yet be simply the same, and have little do do with "not
interesting"?
IV. Why I can hardly compromise, not even while admitting that we
need some white lies (compare 2.)
9. By way of
exception, I might suggest a compromise with the establishment, but should
still start from:
a) Why not integrate society on the basis of enlightened reason and rational
values aspiring to optimum public happiness, rather than that of "the
wisdom of the past and actual developments" (which to some extent amount
to the law of the jungle)?
b) If you still are so Machiavellian that you yourselves want to thrive on
repressions, taboos and "tacit compromises and collusions" of vested
interests (that is, on unconscious conspiracies), you are simply fraudulent.
For you want to continue whistle-blowers to be fired and integrity not to be
enforced by all available means, such as in the domain of law and justice. I do
not want a compromise then. Ultimately, you will be overturned by Galbraith's
"onslaught of circumstance", just as former establishments.
10. If, however,
your "white lies" are of the nature of Voltaire's and that of
Roosevelt, some compromise is indeed possible. You start from the idea that
most people indeed need "gods on the Olympus", myths and repressions.
Well, in any case see to it that they are in the spirit of the Sermon on the
Mount, that is, of a rational value system aiming at optimizing happiness. No sexual
taboos, no limits as to enforcing integrity, decoration of whistle-blowers and
massive research into out-of-the-body and near-death-experiences, so that at
least the religious myths may be substantiated.
I am not optimistic as to such compromise,
for I surmise that intuitively you already sensed yourselves that I was willing
to compromise in a way accepting Roosevelt and Voltaire, but still you hushed
up my work... Indeed, you want repression, taboo, myth (e.g., about the
inviolability of human life), and humouring of vested interests (e.g., of
unions enforcing inefficient work rules and lawyers sticking to much
complication and myriad "rights"). But you do not do so because they
could smooth social processes and soothe conflicts, but because you
yourselves are allied with the pressure and veto groups constituting the
pre-eminent frustrators of democracy and consistently enlightened values! Also, you
did not go to all lengths to refute the (logical) surmise that you made an
anti-intellectualistic and unruly mess of most Western education because you
instinctively prefer a "socially" oriented happy-go-lucky and
consumption-prone type of pupil or student to one that sees really thinking as
an ideal, respecting Luther, Voltaire and Einstein more than base- or
footballers, Eminem and the whole relevant pop state of mind.
11. Also, I
accuse you of appeasing farmers, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, unions, big
business, car dealers or even pinda growers at the cost of the public because
you yourselves are representatives of such well-organized and often colluding
interests rather than representing democratically the majority.
I accuse you of needing
"solidarity" myths, complicated bureaucracy and much ideology and
repression to hide such elementary point from view and, consequently, of having
an instinctive bias for troubled waters, anti-enlightenment and muddleheaded
philosophy or incoherent kinds of art.
And - most of all - I see you as morally
corrupted - by all of this, or even in the first place by nature - because you
apparently are not outraged by the fate of whistle-blowers, the frequent
efficiency-frustrating consequences of union power, the immigration of low-IQ
groups into the West, and many earlier criticized abuses. If you had
a good conscience, and were interested in happiness, justice, and human
quality, you would yearn for progress, transparent sex markets, lie detectors,
brain-wave and gene measurement technology, and eugenics rather than
cultivating a climate of massive obscurantism and non-information examplified
by Heidegger, Warhol, Rauschenberg and the nouveau roman. And you would
radically crack down on recidivists, those obstructing the fight against social
abuses and others who wilfully thrive on unhappiness or inefficiency.
Hence I see no compromise; you will
certainly continue to ignore my work, but I bet on the onslaught of
circumstance - that is, in essence, the progress of techno-science and
of the economy, and its socio-cultural concomitants - that will bring you
down.
You are far from "wise compromisers between legitimate interests": you
are indifferent to evil and unhappiness, or even are relativists. You are
Machiavelli on slippers.
Part 2: Completion by Various Vital Points
1. Substitution of
“old orthodoxy and convention” by a ratio-empirical scientific approach, as is
applied in my work, is more radical than what “normal” atheism and positivism
will do. They – and positivism in particular – will leave values, purposes,
ideals about the future, the intimate and inner life at all to subjective
choice – such as about (therefore relative) good and evil –, “free will”, and
uncertainty. In any case, they are considered to be largely beyond science
and rational definition: they do not fit in coherent models defined by rational science but man has “free disposal of
them”.
Quite
to the contrary, in my “system” current “gods” or ultimate standards – i.e.,
man and/or the community – are subject to science and reason rather than their
being self-defining, free and inviolable, say, to objective rational criticism
of their moral or genetic level. As to man’s
and/or the community’s positions as secularised but inviolable gods compare the
tabooing of eugenics, and Riesman’s other-directedness. (See also our web-page Current Religious Orthodoxy:
"The Group" as Supreme Being.)
2. The rational
(objective) value system – emphasizing optimum happiness and, therefore,
integrity, efficiency and coherence – inherent to my general philosophy, that
prevails on subjective or cultural choices and to vested interests, is
antithetical to, inter alia,
a) The usual treatment of whistle blowers;
b) Allowing privacy or technicalities to play a major role in the juridical
domain;
c) The atmosphere and spirit of incoherent modern art;
d) Anti-eugenics, even with respect to habitual criminals, personality
disturbances and the retarded;
e) The circumstance that only internet initiated a more rational large-scale
love market, the situation before it leaving finding a mate mainly to chance
meetings.
A society co-characterized by a) through e) can hardly like my work…
3. In
contradistinction to (pessimistic and/or “misanthropic”) people like Céline,
Henry Mencken and others who “debunk(ed) particular people, society or
mankind”, my work gives a coherent
alternative, which is much more dangerous to
the status quo. Within this scope, I
reject the RU paradigm (see the page Paradigm in Default; the
paradigm emphasizes relativism and uncertainty) as well as man or the group as
new religion, and all “sitting on the fence” that pervades politics and much of
society. Rather than relativizing them, I take good and evil so much serious
that I debunk some groups up to and including their genes. I don’t compromise,
neither with evil, taboo, repression, lies, the irrational or incoherence in
general, nor with inferior genes and human “inviolability”. I am solidary
with human suffering and with integrity; not with received wisdom and what is symbolized by the national anthem.
Many do not feel happy with this…
4. My work is also
inimical to “the orthodoxy” and group think because it makes the individual innerly independent
of the collective by its rejection of all values and taboos that cannot be legitimised by rational argument, and its related giving precedence to “nature” over “nurture” as
regards matters like intelligence, crime, personality,… This does not help
conventional “solidarities” (religion, nation, ethnic, social,…) that are a
basis of most irrational power and conformity
Establishments
as well as John Doe prefer such solidarities and by no means like the
undermining of them as also implied by my continuous exposure by reason of
vested interests, ideologies, and many social actors. The elites need them for
making people rally around “the centre” (and also profess them for their
careers), and John Doe for (moral) support and safety. The mass media and an
increased mutual interweaving of interests strengthen the conforming
tendencies. Relativism and “fuzziness” rather than radical rational moral
criticism fit in with the above interests, that is, with the “political way of
being” and “solidarity”.
5. Two points
related to the above are
(a) It is inherent to my theory’s radically progress- and science-minded
approach that power over people is highly substituted by
power over nature, chance and destiny
as a primary human interest and purpose. Generally, establishments were not
very happy with such transition, that became more and more prevalent during the
last two centuries.
(b) Especially political correctness (PC) and
the traditional right – the main current foci of socio-political thinking –
have their own reasons for not liking my theory. For note that it is essential
to PC to subordinate individual and group moral and genetic (quality)
differences to “solidarity” and egalitarianism. For instance, racial IQ
differences and eugenics are the utmost anathema to it.
On
the other hand, rightist ideological lore does not less start from collective
values and individual inviolability that cannot be made plausible by reason
(the latter, among other things, implies that integrity and compassion should
prevail on myth, convention, dogma etc.).
In all, my comprehensive socio-cultural theory is a scientific alternative, not
merely to conventional wisdom, political and cultural correctness, the RU
paradigm and “the secularised religion of man and the group”, but also to the
actual system of ideologically pushed vested interests. This makes it a threat
to everything irrational in culture and society. Many reactions to it are
accordingly. Such reactions represent a mentality that also implies
de-emphasizing truth, rational values and genetic quality so much as to make
the firing of whistle-blowers, “privacy” and technicalities in the courts, and
tabooing eugenics respectable options.
For
the rest, the foregoing does not at all imply my rejection of solidarity and
the value of the community as such. Quite the contrary, I also reject
“solidarities” like nationalism, PC, other-directedness etcetera because
they detract from the “natural” solidarity:
the one among those of good will, for whom objective ethic prevails, which aims
at optimising total well-being and implies integrity.
Part 3: The Role of Groups as (Para)normal Information Networks
1.
In Research Letter No.
8 (October 1977) of the Parapsychology Laboratory of the University of Utrecht
(The Netherlands) I published The function of the paranormal (pp. 40-59). It contains a theory of which some points are
(a) The paranormal is not fundamentally an “erratic and exotic” phenomenon but
has a function in how society and
culture “operate”, particularly in the communication and cooperation among
people.
(b) This also works in such way that “inductors” or centres of association can
function on an inter-individual level just
as, say, a knot in a handkerchief can act analogously within an individual psyche. At the relevant person’s looking at the knot, a recollection associated
with it re-enters into his conscious mind.
(c) Now parapsychologists suggested that, say, the watch of my father I give to
a clairvoyant may sometimes function as such knot: by looking at it the
clairvoyant “(re)members” some contents of my father’s psyche that is associated with the watch as an inductor.
(d) Such idea is based on the hypothesis that – to a certain degree – mankind
is an organism in the sense of having some “collective unconscious” as proposed
by C.G. Jung. Well, then an inductor such as the watch acts in the collective
psyche – between the parts of it my father’s mind (or particular experiences)
and the clairvoyant’s one constitute – like the knot associating two parts of
my individual psyche does, the two parts being its conscious focus and the
special item to be remembered.
2. One more part of
my theory is the hypothesis that the above watch is a mere tip of the iceberg
as regards communication and cooperation via the collective unconscious. In
particular, clairvoyance and susceptibility to telepathic impressions are
probably not wholly restricted to a few “professionals” but, to some degree,
appear more often, as a complement to normal communication and cooperation
among people. In such context, all common utensils, pictures, concepts and
emotions may in principle act as inductors in a relevant group or society. They
also facilitate cooperation among men on a deep level, complementary to how
normal communication does so.
3. The above
contains that, just as flags or the national anthem in a normal way tend to
make people feel more solidary, or cause them to cooperate in subtle ways, the
relevant inductors may do so in a paranormal one too. All of this is based then
on communications like those via the watch. Throughout history, religion,
common culture and “stars” may have functioned within this scope, as inductors,
in addition to their “normal” role.
The
above may contribute to the striking uniformity as to ideas and preferences
among most members of a community or society. That is, to the generation and
maintaining of “orthodoxies”, up to and including ideology, the RU paradigm and
political correctness.
4. Now I return to
my main subject of the (emotional) resistance to my work.
I hypothesize that, in turning against many among current ideas, fashions and
“totems”, I am a threat, not only to the solidarity in the community and to
many interests, but also to the functioning of the paranormal communication and
cooperation network. For I reject what most people like and vice versa. They like the RU paradigm and the
“religion of man and the community (or society)”, also as “sympathetic
inductors”. On the contrary, I criticise and detest them and, in doing so, also interfere with the subtle (para)normal communication and cooperation
in the group, which is partly based on
subconscious attraction and rejection of concepts, pictures and attitudes. As a
result, the “adjusted” will also paranormally reject the spoilsport and do the opposite of cooperating with him
(which is usual in the network). They will
intuitively sense: “This man’s work is contrary to our common values and even
to our collective-unconscious cooperation; let’s even paranormally counteract
it by at least hushing it up collectively”. But even negative paranormal influences
– called “voodoo” in common language and psi-missing by parapsychologists:
paranormally caused negative (harmful) “coincidences” – may hit a relevant
nonconformist person…
5. The above
hypothesis is sustained by two results of professional parapsychology (see The Scientifization of Culture,
Chapter 10):
a) Telepathy appears to be more easy between people who have a common sphere of
interest;
b) Paranormal performance (telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis,…) is
counteracted by a hostile atmosphere among the participants of an experiment,
which even furthers psi-missing.
Please react! See our
Discussion Page