From Common Sense to Collective Non-Sense

Tocqueville famously said, “I think that in no country in the civilized world is less attention paid to philosophy than in the United States.” It's a good insight to a country that once put its emphasis on common sense realism. Yes, the intellectuals can explain things better, but it does not mean they have the depth to understand Truth. Take Rousseau, Marx, Foucault—good intellectual masturbators, bad lovers of Reality. In fact, the intellect is quite the trickster and can take us further away from Reality. 

I'm reading this short, but interesting book by Robert Curry called Common Sense Nation. So what exactly do we mean by common sense? It's true some may say what's common sense for you is not the same for me (especially if you studied in a left-leaning humanities department). In capturing the what we believe to be fundamentally true—or the axioms necessary for us to reason—we are pulling from and formed by many sources. Some of us these apriori sources are from lived experience, tradition, sentiments, observations, and culture. There are also the more innate sources of our conscious if we are open to our deeper instincts and intuitions. All of these aspects are prior to even philosophy—consider this the basis of Reason (of the whole person) verses reason (as just the intellect). 

And just because you can't really say it eloquently, does not mean you don't know it elegantly. I recall Rudolf Steiner, having been born into a working class family, never lost his appreciation for the lives of the common folk and for what he called the “peasant wisdom.” He often saw more wisdom in the peasantry than he did among intellectual elites, where he found too much arrogance and a lack of open heartedness and simplicity.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila says it best: “Reality can not be represented in a philosophical system.” Or at least not the way philosophy is depicted these days. There is a way to philosophize that goes beyond mere intellectual rumination—where we turn our view towards the totality. Josef Pieper discusses this as a philosophy with a Christian orientation—which was never based on a system, but a Person:

 “Christian philosophy is more complicated because it does not permit itself to arrive at "illuminating" formulations through ignoring, selecting, or dropping certain areas of reality; and this is because, placed in a fruitful state of unease through its glimpse of revealed truth, it is compelled to think more spaciously and, above all, not to be content with the superficiality of any rationalistic harmony.” 

But the bad news is we eventually got away from sensibilities that were common, and educated people in more sophisticated theories of rationalistic harmony—and often even disharmonious. Take today, the individual with agency and universal values as objective truths have been undermined by the idea that we are impotent to external forces (the “system”). We are all now just victims of social constructions. The only way out is to dismantle the system, and subjugate the individual to the new utopian power grab. 

Curry lists out some of the self-contradictory premises that has resulted from postmodernists, which in turn, often creates problems not based on reality... 

• On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad. 
• Values are subjective—but sexism and racism are really evil.
• Technology is bad and destructive—and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others. 
• Tolerance is good and dominance is bad—but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows, and opposing views are not tolerated.

Friedrich Hayak once said, “The savage is not solitary, and his instinct is collectivist.” The irony of “progress” through postmodernism is that is has turned us back, away from our common sensibilities and without the gratitude for the fruits it bore. Moreover, collectivism is contrary to common sense realism, as it counters the spontaneous creative order and wisdom in existence. The new borg is taking shape, and soon resistance will be futile.

Unfinished Business

We are always unfinished. Since we are finite beings, we can never be complete since only that which is Infinite is complete. But maybe Frank is finished...

I got a charge out of watching this video. It takes dharma hootspa to put yourself out there, and display your firewarts and all along the path. But is Frank really 100% complete... Enlightened, Cooked?

He certainly did have a breakthrough to the Infinite. It appears his channels are opened up and he is no longer the sole doer. He may now has aligned his will to the Will of the Absolute; however, he is still a human being.

The cross best represents us as a point on the vertical and the horizontal. We are always unfinished morally, intellectually, and aesthetically as we are often encountering changes that requires us to adapt to the circumstances. There is an awakening to the transcendent—a realization! And before and after we also awakening our minds to new ideas, we're awakening to inhabiting new ways of being with others, we're also awakening to more mature ways of building our character. But maybe this is easier if we exhaust the seeker, or maybe not.

Take Georgia.... 

She may not be awakened in the transcendent sense, but she seems to have awakened to the façade of certain ideologies she had been indoctrinated into. I myself have been on this road and it took years to see through it. It does seem this sort awakening has to go beyond the intellect. There is something deeper for us to intuit, similar to how we can also open to the transcendent, but not necessarily the same. 

How we get there can't always be determined by just the facts. I recently read a couple compelling books, here and here, as to how applied postmodernism is undermining truth in the quest to be politically correct—where critical theory, feelings, anecdotes, and platitudes are taking the front and center. The authors fall into the secular classical liberalism camp and therefore focus on objective truth based on science, which is objective on one plane; however, never filling in the entire story on all planes. We have to leap beyond the information where we can find a unity of knowledge that coheres and integrates. And in order for this to occur, we need to inhabit an epistemic humility to what we don't know.

Human reason is not always transparent to itself. In fact, the point of departure where we stand on something lies buried in the unconscience or preconscious. To change that worldview, always requires an awakening or the faith to be open to reality. 

Sadly, more diverse ideas do not necessarily bestow more truth, as many clever concepts can take us further away from Truth. But there can be metaphysical complementaries to ideas; freedom and equality being one set—and each side can be distorted through libertarianism and leftism. But the tensions need to exist in their essence, as to meld all ideas to one would be its own form a totalitarian stasis. The dynamism comes in the polarities—that are not to be negated—but can be lived differently from a higher order. As to where we lean will always be a reflection of our imprint that is brought to bear in this existence.