1.
Introduction
Rietdijk feels that current intelligentsia largely
adjusted to the status quo, among which are
vested interests and habits of thought. So much so that, in actual fact, it has
not much original to say anymore. Everything that has influence is humoured:
from farmers to doctors, from many a cartel to immigrants, and also
muddleheaded philosophy and art. (Only whistle-blowers are not.) They are
humoured not only by politicians but also by the ideological speech-makers. The
intelligentsia “institutionalised”. Only a few among such speech-makers fail to
fit in the two main categories: “politically correct” (egalitarian) and
“traditionally conservative” (kind to the rich, and back to religion,
patriotism, sexual repression and convention).
Accordingly,
in Rietdijk’s opinion, we should expect new developments and progress from what
J.K. Galbraith called “the onslaught of circumstance” rather than from our poor
thinkers. That is, such progress and actual developments in society, also as to
new ways of thinking, will be concomitants of scientific, technological and
economic (r)evolutions. For example, these produced radical changes in our
thinking about religion, sexuality, social relations, euthanasia, convention
etcetera. As a consequence, Rietdijk
– who will put first and foremost reason and rational values – is more
optimistic than most others. The more so because
various developments he favoured for many years are starting to materialize
now. A few specimens:
1) Freer sexuality and the development of a large-scale rational love market,
in particular via internet;
2) More rational and less “mythical” ways of thinking about man and his
qualities. Particularly note the role of genetics as to health, intelligence,
personality, crime,… The relevant research also caused eugenics to come in the
picture more and more. For example, compare the work of Lee Silver and the circumstance
that, in connection with artificial insemination, the qualities of reproductive
cells are advertised openly in the US.
3) The progressive erosion in the West of anti-rational ideologies: orthodox
religion, nationalism, convention and (more recently) also socialism.
4) Also more recently, we see a partial abandoning of the soft approach of
crime, Third-world immigration, squatters and the abuse of welfare.
On the other hand, there are disquieting tendencies too, among which have to be
mentioned a massive here-and-now way of thinking, consumption mentality and
increasing superficiality (everything should be amusing), also stimulated by
the mass media and advertising. Increasing moral relativism, further,
undermines values such as integrity and the prevalence of the common good on
interest groups. Such superficiality as well as indolence also contributed to
reducing the quality of upbringing and education. The latter now stimulate
social conformism rather than independent thinking and the cultivation of
rational values (optimise the common good). Compare Riesman’s other-directed
personality as contrasted with the autonomous one. It generally has the
appearance that Ortega y Gasset’s “rebellion of the masses” is now going on “on
slippers”.
2. Deep Coherence in Nature
1) Rietdijk sees the world – both natural and social
processes – as less chaotic (more coherent) than both most scientific and
popular speech-makers do. His rationalism and rejection of uncertainty and
chance are special aspects of this.
2) One among the scientific bases of this position is produced by some
demonstrations he gave in the professional Journals, to the effect that the
universe is four-dimensional in a realistic sense. This means that the future
and the past exist “already” and “still”, respectively. (Earlier, Einstein
expressed an intuitive preference for such idea.) This implies that the future
has also to be definite, which means
determinism. Such future and past that exist already or still also mean the
possibility that present events could be influenced not merely by causality
from the past, but also, “retroactively”, by a future that exists! Rietdijk
also proved in the physical Journals that in some cases this indeed happens,
though within narrow limits. Finally, he showed that such influences from the
future are precisely in a position of constituting Einstein’s “hidden
variable”. Note that, in Einstein’s opinion, the latter would define precisely
those physical variables that, on the contrary, are considered to be fundamentally
uncertain by quantum mechanics – at least within the famous uncertainty margins
of Heisenberg.
Additionally,
nonlocal influences that have been discovered rather recently and which are
sometimes operative between mutually distant micro-processes, appear to be
explainable within the scope of a realistically four-dimensional model of the
universe. In about 30 articles in the professional physical Journals, Rietdijk
also explained various other important phenomena from such model. For concrete
references and a survey see
Books, Papers and
Contributions to Conference Proceedings on Physics by C.W. Rietdijk. With an
outline of Rietdijk's realistically four-dimensional theory on physics
and
Four-dimensional Reality
and its Coherence – an outline of Rietdijk's theory on physics.
3) The conclusions of 2) mean that the coherence of physical phenomena reaches
farther than mere local causality, operative from past to present, beside which
there would only be coincidence and probabilities. For, because of Rietdijk’s
above-mentioned results, there are additionally retroaction from the future and
the nonlocal influences indicated that can be explained by his work. Jointly,
these increase the control of processes by laws co-defining them and,
therewith, the coherence of the world.
Rietdijk
also considers the question of coherence via laws versus coincidence from the
perspective of man and society. For example, he refuses to believe that “God
plays dice with tragedies and human destiny”, which would indeed certainly
occur if, in the last resort too, individuals would be co-dependent on “margins
of fundamental uncertainty” and on the “free will” of others. This instead of
the case that the entire pattern of events is deterministically defined by
four-dimensionally operative natural laws that, in a four-dimensional world, can also reckon with results, that is, with the future, and are not merely operative via mutually unrelated causal chains from
the past. In any case the relevant four-dimensional determinism leaves open the possibility that coherent laws define human destiny and the outcome
of great events.
4) By the mere foregoing Rietdijk’s work contrasts with what he calls the
“paradigm of relativism and uncertainty” which calls the tune in Western
thinking since about half a century. Such paradigm, apart from these two
concepts, is characterised by an emphasis on coincidence, the poly-interpretable,
an absence of direction, subjectivism, macro-incoherence and often
meaninglessness. It “governs” domains from micro-physics up to and including
social science, philosophy and art. Rietdijk’s mere rationalism and determinism
contrast with it.
Since decades it struck his eye that criticism of his work time and again
concentrated on the fact that such work flies in the face of the above paradigm
(that was never explicitly referred to), and, therewith, breaks away from the
“fuzziness way of thinking” which we see in so many domains. In particular,
besides his rationalism and determinism, his adherence to rational and
objective values and human qualities, and to makability and the idea of
progress, constitutes the pre-eminent object of criticism. His concrete
explanations and theories, then, will be ignored.
According
to Rietdijk, on the contrary, the paradigm in question cannot be based on
rational argument but can even be refuted by it. In addition, it only answers
to the preference of those many who prefer troubled waters rather than
transparent coherence.
3. Line and Coherence in Social Evolution too
1) Rietdijk considers as the core of what he sees as
the coherent process of socio-cultural developments an increasing refinement,
depth, and extension as to applications, of human intelligence or reason. In
science and technology, but also with respect to a rational value system, as to
the management of society and as regards the arrangement of our emotions
consciously and coherently. Such processes evolved from primitive societies via
Antiquity, Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Industrial
Revolution to modern man, culture and society. Especially the leading elites
participated in this.
2) The public interest may benefit from such “red thread” of increasing
knowledge, skills, and rationality of values and general attitude to life (for
which values only count in happiness and unhappiness, as contrasted with dogma
and convention), many vested interests by no means do so.
A
typical historical example is constituted by clergy and nobility during the
Enlightenment and the French Revolution. More generally, dogma, myth,
convention, privilege and censorship almost everywhere and during many ages
opposed to the same “red thread” of increasing reason and rationality of values
and emotions because these used to and will undermine or menace established
power, privilege and ways of thinking.
Rietdijk
shows that the whole of socio-cultural processes through the ages can be explained much simpler and
more coherently as soon as we see the most
important social and cultural dynamics as a struggle between “Enlightenment”
and “clergy and nobility”, both conceived in the
broadest sense of red-thread tendencies and their opposites.
3) He also applies this to the present in which – at least in the West –
violence, censorship, dogma, convention and poverty as instruments of power
have been largely succeeded by psycho-manipulatory ones (which have also been
refined as compared with the past). Think of taboos, ideologies (from
nationalism to political correctness), superficial conformism (again compare
Riesman’s other-directedness), bureaucracy and, further, the paradigm mentioned
in Sect, 2.4). Viz. the latter contains the
ideology of at least relativizing truth, reason, values and coherence. Note that the relevant “fog and chaos” are also favourable to the status
quo because they do not confront it with anything
convincing and, further, because fog stabilises by its making it very difficult
to move something from its place coordinatedly.
4) Within the scope of 3) Rietdijk explains many current socio-cultural
phenomena from one coherent point of view rather than considering them as coincidental or mutually
unrelated. That is, he sees many anti-enlightened
forces that are anti-reason-minded – and also because of this tend to shield
vested interests and in-crowds – conceal and disguise themselves, much more
than clergy and nobility did at the time
(that is, as to their anti-enlightened position). For in our modern economic,
technical and rather rational climate, openly
anti-enlightened ideas would not easily be accepted. Therefore, such ideas will
disguise themselves, unconsciously but suitably. Of course, you don’t say
openly that you want to keep people ignorant; it is far more effective to carry
through “progressive” educational reforms which reduce true learning and
general education. (Unconsciously, your intuition indicates such “political”
roundabout way.) Further, you no longer fight free discussion and argument by
means of censorship but keep on and on asserting that truth, good and evil will
be “relative” and depend on non-rational “premises”, so that one truth,
convention or policy is as good as another and, therefore, the truths and
values of the powerful and the status quo
cannot be objectively wrong. This also relativizes fundamentally the very idea
of progress (or, as the manipulators will say, the belief in progress).
As
important specimens of the relevant veiled “counter-revolution against reason
and enlightened thinking” Rietdijk discusses in his work extensively various
important socio-cultural processes and situations that, on the contrary, will
be seen as “coincidental” by our speech-makers and which, therefore, are said
to need no explanation at all. Among the relevant phenomena we see:
* Anti-rationalistic philosophies, such as existentialism and postmodernism,
strongly dominate.
* Virtually no public criticism is passed on incoherent “modern” art. The
latter seems part of an unofficial anti-rational ideology.
* The general climate is strongly dominated by the idea: “The world is
incoherent and coincidental, man is irrational, values are subjective and
relative, and (therefore) progress is an illusion (especially one based on
reason and moral improvement, which is also relative)”. Such an unmakable world
– also by “coincidence” – is very nice for conservatism (that currently often
calls itself “progressive”).
* “Innovation” of education in the entire Western world, that actually amounts
to keeping people dumb: less and less knowledge and learning. That is, less
emphasis on general education and on coherence and line in the subject matter,
from history and languages (grammar and the like) to mathematics (deduction)
and physics (system and general laws).
* A juridical system in which complicated and often obscure technicalities and
procedures are at the centre rather than simplicity, finding the truth, and
good and evil. If truth prevailed one would bring in the utmost difficult
position anyone – including his lawyers – who has to hide something. In this
context, also think of releasing a defendant because of a technicality! This
flies in the face of a rational ethic based on common sense.
More
generally, Rietdijk’s argument that ethic can and should be founded rationally
and, therefore, there is a mere one objectively correct one, meets much
resistance from both (dominant) relativists and traditionalists.
A
whole caste within our juridical system thrives on complication and a host of “rights”
that often frustrate finding the truth.
4. Rejection of Taboos; Rietdijk is far from “Rightist”: he puts first
and foremost Progress and Openness rather than Rearguards in a Broad Sense; on
the Contrary, the Pseudo-Left Cherishes the Underclass and Dumb Pupils, or
Considers them as Victims
1) Most taboos now appear around egalitarianism: the politically correct idea
that people are of equal value not only juridically but also morally and
genetically. Rietdijk feels such “correctness” to be reactionary also because
it objects to enhancing genetic quality (eugenics, which can be considered to
be the most vital variant of progress) and, additionally, does not oppose the
immigration of even more “disadvantaged”.
2) Rietdijk also violates a taboo as he posits that, unconsciously, “leftists”
favour such immigration because of “the more `deprivileged’, the more leftist
votes (in the long run)”, and the more clients for the “progressive”
disadvantaged industry (redistribution, emancipation, care of the addicted,…).
Opponents of such immigration will be called “extremely rightist”.
3) Our “free” society is so much conformist and positive as against the
establishment (vested interests) that it seldom looks for (unconscious) bad
faith at the background of negative phenomena and social abuses, such as the
soft policy with respect to crime, immigration, education, squatters or
addicted. Sociology is so conformist that it does not even seek an explanation
of the sexual taboos (mainly of the past): not so sympathetic intentions – bad
faith – might have played a part in their maintenance, which would undermine
the authority of “the group” or the establishment and its values in the first
place. Our social science – by pure conformism – does not expose taboos at all
anymore, as contrasted with Marx, Veblen, Michels,… Half a century ago,
Rietdijk himself explained the sexual taboos as being in line with
“traditional” censorship as to freedom of thought; in the sexual case it refers
to the instinctive-emotional domain. The basic idea of his relevant explanation
is that freedom of thought and of the emotional-instinctive, respectively,
cause man to be more conscious, coherent, articulate and rational in the
relevant domains, which makes him less manipulable, which is quite the opposite
of what anti-enlightened interests want. As to the manipulation of emotions,
think of religion, convention, nationalism and other ideologies. Nobody reacted
to this explanation, and the speech-makers kept considering Rietdijk a
rightist.
4) In all, he puts first and foremost progress, genetic and other human
quality, reason and a rational value system, as well as the exposure of taboos,
of anti-enlightened ideology and unconscious manipulation and, therefore, of
the bad faith of various sectors of the establishment. In his opinion,
“correct” leftism largely institutionalised to the interest group of
“evolutionary rearguards” such as anti-socials and problem youths, from the
soft-hearted “concern” with respect to whom many derive good positions. (This
is a reason why they strongly reject considering “nature” too, in addition to
“nurture”.)
Accordingly,
Rietdijk criticises political and cultural correctness from the idea of
progress (also as to human genetic quality) rather than the conservative
position. Its mere aspects of taboo, and the ambiguity of it (and of current
“liberalism” more generally) with respect to the idea of progress, cause
“correct” leftism to be actually conservative. It will even take under its wing
anti-rationalistic and anti-individualistic Third-World cultures and societies.
(Think of cultural relativism, multi-culturalism and soft Third-World policies
as to cruelty and corruption.)
Rietdijk
feels himself to be one among the rare people who are positively interested in
consistently extending the core ideas of the Enlightenment into the intimate
and the unconscious (excepting the thesis that all men are good by nature), in
the midst of a false dichotomy of the traditional right and a politically
correct pseudo-left. A left which became the pressure group of those staying
behind as to performance or moral or genetic level, and against the criticism
of whom it keeps up the most vigorous taboos of our time.
5. Some more of Rietdijk’s Socio-Cultural Explanations; an Exposing Method
of Thinking
1) According to sociologist Helmut Schelsky
ideologists will be suspicious of technology because the latter makes man more
independent of the superior powers of nature, so that he becomes less receptive
to the social or religious messianism of such ideologists. Rietdijk radically
extends Schelsky’s idea to a more general one. That is, not merely the
ideologists but large sections of the establishment are not only suspicious of
technology but, far more generally, of the earlier-mentioned complex of the
“red thread” of enlightenment at all: more-than-instrumental reason, rational
values, certainty, transparency and a coherent world that is far from
poly-interpretable. More generally, they have a bias towards relativism,
uncertainty and troubled waters. (Compare the paradigm of Sect. 2. 4.) These make people more dependent, uncertain and manipulable and –
again compare Schelsky – more prone to non-rational messianism, among which is
political correctness. Uncertainty, relativism and the poly-interpretable,
therefore, are very popular among our speech-making philosophers, artists
etcetera. Consequently, with the above extension of Schelsky’s idea Rietdijk
exposes whole schools of thinking and most “incomprehensible” art.
2) Their aversion to independence and independent thinking also explains why
major parts of the establishment will prefer seeing people to be “social” and
group-minded. Again think of Riesman’s other-directed personality, that now
dominates and is highly innerly dependent, not, this time, on the superior
powers of nature but on those of “the others”.
Also think of loudly proclaimed “uncertainty” and “unmakability” of life and
society. All of this precisely fits in an extension of Schelsky’s idea as to
the ideologists and technology.
3) The above partially appears in a specific way in the domain of religion. The
latter also thrives on people being particularly dependent as to questions of
life and death. This contributes to an explanation of the opposition of
religion to abortion, euthanasia, eugenics and, partially and initially,
contraception. Also think of the striking disinterest of religion as to
scientific research into a possible hereafter: near-death experiences,
out-of-the-body experiences, reincarnation and the like.
4) The whole earlier indicated climate of “the world is incoherent, man is
irrational, values are relative,…” (see the third item at the end of Sect. 3.), anti-rationalistic and subjectivist philosophy and most “modern” art
included, comes in a less than flattering light by the foregoing. In particular
does so its nature of anti-progress-mindedness. In the past, those of an
anti-enlightened mentality used to fight against reason and a rational ethic by
means of violence, censorship, convention and superstition. Currently, they do
so via relativation of the concepts of truth, reason, cogent argument, good and
evil, with which they actually declare
many things around “the great questions” to be basically uncertain,
unmakable, subjective or otherwise troubled
or beyond our power. Old wine in new
bottles. There is hardly a sociologist or politician who seriously occupies
him/herself with this kind of questions in an exposing way, which amounts to
one more taboo.
5) One more specimen of indirect and unconscious anti-enlightenedness that fits
within the above scope is constituted by the educational reforms which were
carried through in the Western world during recent decades (and earlier in the
US). “Intellectualism” and individual performance and independence have been
more or less substituted by “the social”, skills and “learning to learn”.
Coherence of the subject matter, deduction and general knowledge got less and
less emphasis.
6) Relativism is a particularly essential element
in the anti-enlightened, partly anti-scientific climate of current
philosophical, sociological and artistic thinking. It implies every criticism
of the status quo and any rational
argument and conclusion at all to actually depend on “premises”. That is, on
non-rational starting points (which will remain very unspecified). Such way of
approach even better shields taboos, prejudices and “correctness” than
censorship and jails did, whereas the relativists in question at the same time
breathe a “progressive” spirit of anti-authoritarian thinking: everything
becomes “loose” and noncommittal.
Do anti-reason, anti-coherence and a relativistic climate anyhow constitute an
unconscious conspiracy? Yes, they do so in a similar way as nationalism was one
earlier: a way of thinking and feeling that implied that – as one once
formulated it – “many exerted themselves for the benefit of a few”. Napoleon,
Stalin, Hitler and others, with their nomenklatura’s, indeed “concocted” such conspiracies unconsciously. And what to think
of medieval Church which stimulated guilt feelings, or of the Greek leaders of
Antiquity who said the gods to live on mount Olympus, but never took a look
there? Will they unconsciously have realized it was a
fraud, but one very advantageous to them? So much so that Socrates was condemned
to death because he was said to undermine the belief in the gods.
Note
that the above six explanations, too, fit within the larger scope of the
antithesis of pro- and anti-enlightened forces as the central source of
socio-cultural dynamics, everywhere and during all of history, as far as the
primitive stage had been passed. The concepts clarity, rationality, coherence
and the common good are essential in this controversy. The indirect method – shrouding,
repression, taboos, the unuttered,… – is well-nigh inherent to the anti-camp.
Rietdijk
sees it as a very strong aspect of his social core theory, as it has been
summarized in the foregoing, that it explains so much from so little: from subjectivist and relativistic philosophy and modern art up to and
including educational reforms, political correctness and the cults of
uncertainty and the unmakable, the prominent roles of which can hardly be
made clear otherwise. Such theory is both
simple and coherent.
6. A Number of Rietdijk’s Theses that Characterize his Work
1.
Happiness is a question of information and genes.
2.
Evil is just as objective as the unhappiness that is the consequence of it.
3.
Culture is efficiency in increasing happiness and in reducing suffering.
4.
What is the meaning of truth if it is not true scientifically?
Paraphrasing
Revel: Objective truth and goodness cannot but exist because it is so
extraordinarily clear what their opposites are.
5. Society
has no bases but efficiency and love of one’s neighbour.
6.
The moral ruin of our establishment, parliaments an the intelligentsia
included, is irrefutably demonstrated by the mere circumstance that it
acquiesced in whistle-blowers more often being fired than being decorated.
7.
I refuse to believe that nature plays dice with tragedies because its laws,
also in the last resort, would only refer to local causes (and probabilities)
rather than results too.
8.
If paranormal phenomena actually appear, they do not demonstrate that the world
functions less rational and less coherent than we used to think but, quite to
the contrary, that its laws and coherences even extend to nonlocal phenomena.
That is, to coherences referring to phenomena that are mutually distant as to
space and time.
9.
Philosophy is worthless as far as it does not bring us nearer to a coherent
model of the world.
10.
Art that lacks beauty, coherence and eloquence with respect to objective truths
or values is mere pompous emptiness; it can be compared with the emperor’s new
clothes in the well-known fairy tale.
11.
The only solidarity we should aspire to is the one with the objectively good.
For the rest, if something is not good in an objective sense, in what sense and
why should it be preferred at all then?
12.
The absolute truths of the past were wrong, not because they were absolute but
because they were not true.
13.
How can one be a moral relativist and at the same time subscribe to the opinion
that the Nazi’s had no right to choose a value system by which the Holocaust
was implied?
14.
One who has nothing to say should hold his tongue. (Let nine among ten
philosophers, politicians, ethicists, columnists and producers of “modern art”
keep this in mind.)
15.
Taboos constitute an informal way of censorship. Not only the ones about sex
but also those referring to “racism”, “discrimination” and eugenics.
16.
“Poly-interpretable” art, chaos, coincidence, relativism and uncertainty are
much in demand, for the simple reason that troubled waters are so.
17.
Social problems and abuses will be in the last resort moral problems. Underclass behaviour is one case in point. The explanation of such problems, then, should be sought on the moral level too.
Dogma’s as well as relativism will counteract such approach. Mainly for such
reason they are so popular.
18.
Once I advocated the thesis that the parents of seriously handicapped newborns
should have the right to choose euthanasia with respect to the child, after
consulting some doctors. Much publicity was aroused and 54 % of the Dutch sided
with me. Still, none among the prominent intellectuals or opinion leaders did
so publicly. So radical is modern conformism.
19.
Current Western values and purposes mainly amount to: consume and be amused. That’s why we lack more enduring values, motives of existence and vitality,
also in controversies with other civilizations. We
should scrutinize our values as to their being rationally deducible and,
therefore, objective. For, as far as they are not, we cannot pretend our
culture to be better than others. Egalitarianism, multiculturalism and
superficial materialism obstruct the relevant soul-searching…
20.
Softness on crime, addiction, the underclass and the like, disinterest in the
idea of progress and an aversion to eugenics, the degradation of education and
a general lack of direction, as well as a frequent experience of
meaninglessness, are also concomitants of our lacking vitality, that in turn
ensues from relativism and satiation. Therefore, one does not see crime,
genetic rearguards and social abuses as clear flaws of the creation, but one
reacts by “appeasement”.
From
this mere point it is clear that such softness with respect to crime, genetic
rearguards and abuses in the broadest sense does not stem from progressiveness
but from its very opposite.
21.
What a pity that historically the decline of authoritarianism of officials as
well as of the sexual taboos came about in “the spirit of the sixties”. That
is, a Bohemian ambiance – “here and now” and the incidental –, relativism,
not-so-serious upbringing, and indolence. Is it impossible to combine bourgeois
solidity, method and dynamics with the relevant freedom?
22.
My opponents will keep silent because they have no arguments and, apparently,
not much of a conscience too.
A more extensive outline of Rietdijk’s socio-philosophical ideas can be found
on the page On
Socio-Cultural Evolution – Outline of a Comprehensive Theory.
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