Gab@StFerdinandIII - https://unstabbinated.substack.com/
Plenty of cults exist - every cult has its 'religious dogma', its idols, its 'prophets', its 'science', its 'proof' and its intolerant liturgy of demands. Cults everywhere: Corona, 'The Science' or Scientism, Islam, the State, the cult of Gender Fascism, Marxism, Darwin and Evolution, Globaloneywarming, Changing Climate, Abortion...
Tempus Fugit Memento Mori - Time Flies Remember Death
The ‘Enlightenment’ supposedly dethroned the religious occult and ushered in an era of 'rationality' and 'progress'. All hail. Before the 17th century all was dark, misshapen, ugly, superstitious, base, if not debased. Dandies and men in periwigs ‘saved civilisation’. So the story is told.
Few if any of the attendant myths around the Enlightenment are really true of course.
Modern science, innovation, technological application and political-economic improvements had already been on a long and extraordinarily interesting 1000-year journey before the 'Rational Enlightenment' declared itself. The main thrust of this so-called ‘Enlightenment’, purveyed by its self-interested, and self-declared 'geniuses', was to divorce religion and superstition from the pursuit of truth and liberty which was only found in ‘reason’. Reason is never defined. We can correctly state that much of what passes for reason is entirely unreasonable. So too is the worship of the ‘Enlightenment’.
The 'intellectuals' of the Enlightenment, many of whom were deists and in some cases atheists, had to declaim against the Christian medieval world, inventing the nonsense that it was a 'Dark Age'. As opposed to modern society where biological gender reality does not exist; endless war is freedom; reality is optional due to ‘relativity’; plant food controls ‘climate’; Biden won 81 million votes and 50% of all registered voters in 2020; Corona was a pandemic; and drugs convey health, amongst other shibboleths of the ‘age of science’.
Which age is philosophically darker?
The bastard stepchildren of ‘The Enlightenment’, namely Socialism, Communism and the varous strains of Marxism (political, cultural, sexual), developed 'scientific' approaches to managing and understanding the political-economy. Hegelianism, Marxism, dialectical materialism, statism, stage theory, class warfare and declarations of how the world really worked, rallied around this supposedly 'scientific' theory of world affairs. All of this leads to statism.
At the other end of the spectrum, deposited like cow faeces onto the farmer’s field, we have the hyper-individualisation which emanates from the ‘Enlightenment’. This has lead to social atomisation, ‘woke-ism’ the destruction of the normative family, ‘my biological truth’, and the mental illness of queer, pan-gendered sexual perversion, itself a massive market and industry for the government-pharma mafia. In other words societal and individual collapse.
Few of these main philosophical outputs from the ‘Enlightenment’ was or is rational. Only the mentally unfit would declare transexuality a healthy ‘normal’ and ‘reasonable’ condition. By denying the long history of Christianity and the important role that faith plays in developing reason and science and in defining reasonable boundaries and limits, the Enlightenment opened up a vacuum into which any swaggering theory of power with clarity and 'science' attached to it would enter.
The effects have been shattering
Much of the derivative from Enlightenment thought was simply gibberish laced with virulent strains of anti-Semiticism and profoundly inane anti-Christian bigotry. None of the Enlightenment's ‘geniuses’ did any real research into the Medieval world of course, nor did they understand the thousands of inventions within the political-economic and social spheres which were developed over from 500 to 1500 AD and which made the 17th century so reasonably comfortable to live in, compared to previous epochs. When you research the ‘philosophes’ the most striking feature is the lack of originality and complete ignorance of past history.
The very concepts of ‘reason’ and natural law rights are found in medieval theology and Scholasticism of course, as are the ‘discoveries’ of ‘natural laws’, or those patterns in nature which seem to underlie physical observation and experimentation. Such attitudes were informed in part by ancient cultures, including the Roman, Greek, Jewish and Near Eastern.
Human society was thus well acquainted with ‘Enlightenment’ ideals more than 800 years ago. This was long before effeminate men in garish costumes plagiarised such ideas and claimed them as their own. Where did parliaments (reasoned debate) and universities (reasoned education), both 12th and 13th century constructs found in many states contemporaneously, emanate from? Did the physics emanating from the cathedral school at Chartres in the 12th century categorise itself as dark and superstitious?
The arrogance and hubris of the Enlighteners is an undeniable and outstanding characteristic of their cult.
Are we as clever as we think?
Isn’t our modern philosophy of Scientism and love of all things ‘science’ and ‘secular’ a delusion? We rejoice in our ‘modernity’. The reality is that tooling, innovation and technology are not based on ‘science’ and never have been. A horse plough was not designed from abstract physics. A canal is not a derivative of algebraic theory. Watermills did not invoke Pythagoras. A steam engine has no correlation with research models. Electricity owes nothing to cosmology or physics. Buildings have always been constructed using evidential calculations and experience not abstract theories. Mathematical theory has no relationship to the chance discoveries of transistors which power modern devices.
What then ‘science’? Isn’t hands-on work and practicality the real driver of innovation?
The danger with 'Scientism' as elucidated by the Enlightenment was aptly stated in 1977 by the great Italian historian and philosopher, Augusto del Noce (1910-1989) who foretold that the scientific management of society would result in a totalitarianism. Noce presciently predicted, 'a war against all forms of knowing that are not deemed as scientific'. ‘Science and reason’ would thus become instruments of power, ideologies perverted by privileged elitists. Scientism would wage war on all other ideologies. With confidence we can say:
The irony is obvious. The Enlightenment, which supposedly was a revolt against the superstition and power of the church, is directly responsible for establishing what it was attacking, namely a cult managed by an elite who would enforce 'the right way of thinking and believing.'
The Enlightenment appropriated the Christian ideals of natural law rights, reason, rational debate and declared these to be ‘new inventions’. Most of us would call this theft. This appropriation came however, with an important caveat.
The age-old belief that the human was unique and thus had a singular responsibility to improve this world and live by normative moral constructs and objective reason was rejected. The Enlightenment went in the opposite direction. Natural law, natural rights, the immaterial, the emotional, even the rational which will differ based on the person, culture, history and context of a person’s life; would be perverted and twisted. Only approved ‘reason’, managed by the ‘reasonable’ and wise elite would rule.
Various cults of Scientism and ‘reason’ have long been offered. Utopia’s based on ‘rationality’ include Plato’s ‘Republic’ which was managed by rational ‘guardians’. Plato tried to implement his utopia of reason in Syracuse Italy and was ejected by violence and threats. Saint-Simon and the French revolutionary Enlighteners established a ‘Church of Science’ which was a 19th century precursor to the Reich Church of the Nazis. Utilitarianism [Rousseau, Bentham], or personal pleasure with no restrictions based on your rational objectives became popular and has led to atomisation and the imposition of state-protected groups such as LBGTQ+. Many sub cults of reason have been offered, and all are just variations on Enlightener themes.
The creation of the perfect utopian society, inhabited by the 'perfect man' is in many ways the end objective of the Enlightener obsession with ‘reason’ [pace Saint Simon, Robert Owen]. This has created a deranged focus on using state power to 'mould' children, people and the average citizen to do what 'was in the best interests of society'. The Corona plandemic was clearly an expression of such power and beliefs, itself an echo of Communism and Nazism totalitarian control. Education, the media, and governmental supremacy have been deployed to reform the individual so they can participate in a rational society of perfection.
The elite know best. Science is the only path. Follow and obey. Platonic ideals were plagiarised and repackaged during ‘The Enlightenment’.
Imagine if today some 'genius' declared that the era between 1500 and 1900 was a 'Dark Age', full of nothing but pain, superstition, occultism, illiteracy, dirt, darkness and ignorance. Such a ‘philosophe’ could justify this conclusion by pointing to:
colonialism, black enslavement, witch burnings;
destruction of the Ameri-Indians through plague and war;
abiogenesis and other unscientific gibberish;
‘germ theory’ a monstrosity with no proof;
the establishment of the health-pharma-drugs mafia complex;
frauds which dominate the cults of ‘evolution’ and naturalist ‘science’;
Communism, Marxism, various bloody revolutions;
the lack of hygiene and sanitation;
grinding, absolute, soul destroying poverty for the masses;
indentured white slavery in the US and Australia (30-50% of the US population in 1700 were white slaves, called ‘indentured servants’ - what is a rose?);
the endless stories of war, imperialism, poverty, disease, early death and hopelessness;
the satanic industrial mills of the 18th and 19th centuries and what must be termed white-slavery;
creating the antecedents for the global wars of the 20th century
A declaration that 1500-1900 was a ‘Dark Age’ would not be entirely wrong. But this era is a part of a larger picture, which eventually bequeaths in spasms of progress, encased in an inimitable complexity that is difficult to comprehend, the ease of life we now enjoy in our modern, albeit bankrupt, world. Yet this is what occurred during the 17th century. All eras previous to this were simply branded 'backwards'. How occultist and how bigoted.
Augusto del Noce's 1977 declaration is thus prescient, but also quite obvious when viewing Western development in the 18th and 19th centuries. If an era dethrones man from his central place in the cosmos, and violently attacks faith as 'irrational', and scorns any expression of non-scientific belief, than surely a new cult is being thrust onto society to replace the old order. Cui bono?
Given Ferdinand Braudel’s ‘long view’ of history, why wouldn't 'science and rationality' be used for political totalitarianism and power-mongering ends?
It is duly ironic that Enlighteners, and their various cults of ‘science’, technocratism, progressivism, positivism, rationalism, humanism, secularism and globalism, all premised on ‘reason’, use religious fervour and pre-modern techniques to silence their critics and propagandize their cult. Modern inquisitions abound, abetted by state and corporate power. Heretics are crushed and often killed. All of this is deemed ‘modern’.
Ironically, the self-loving modern secularist-Enlightener, promoting ‘The Science’, has become the intolerant, irrational, cult member that the Enlightenment tried to eradicate!
Further, we can ask pace the prescient insightful Noce, this simple question: ‘Isn't science and elevating reason above all else just a form of totalitarianism?’ Isn't the God of Science as much an act of faith as the God Yahweh or the Trinity of Christ ? Science, whatever that word might mean, riven with corruption, deceit, fraud and ignorance, cannot explain everything and has great trouble explaining anything.
How then can 'Scientism' be reasonable when the very foundations of that rationality have been removed? These are questions that the modern Enlightener, happily pickled in the myths of Enlightenment propagada, would never bother to contemplate, further confirming that Scientism is little more than a cult.
All hail the King.
==Del Noce
Augusto del Noce, The Problem of Atheism (Volume 84) (McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Ideas). 2022
Augusto del Noce, Carlo Lancellotti, The Crisis of Modernity (Vol 64), 2014.
Augusto del Noce, Carlo Lancellotti, The Age of Secularization (Studies in the History of Ideas, #74), 2017
The last 3 years revealed the overwhelming evil that resides in government. The Corona scamdemic, with an IFR of less than 1%, and for the under 70s 0.05%, or the same as the flu, was used a pretence to lock down populations, terrify them, face-mask them, and stabbinate them with mRNA experimental poisons, which are now a part of many governments stabcine schedule. Socialised health care, funded and bought news (fake) and funded and bought ‘science’ ($cience) along with the obvious capture of large swathes of big government by the criminal pharmaceutical industry, allowed the midget mediocrities residing in government to annihilate reality. The stabbinations have killed in the UK and probably most everywhere, 3x or 4x as many, as those who actually died ‘from’ not with the dreaded 0.03% IFR Corona. Yet the mass of the population beholden to authority, the state and socialised health care, ready to believe anything the $cience says, complied, many died, and many more would like to do it all again. How did we get to such a supine, stupid state?
Philosophy and words which inform culture matter. Since the Age of the ‘Enlightenment’ the cult of the state and of ‘reason’ has been forwarded as the salvation of man. Follow reason as demanded by the expertise of the state. Let the state and government run your life, tell you what to do, and inform all of your actions. Obey and comply. This mentality of the all-powerful Leviathan, has a long history, stretching back into pre-history, but today with the technological and financial apparatus now at hand, it can be fully realised.
Hobbes' Leviathan is one of the major works of political theory and its import is obvious in today’s world of Corona, Climate and $cience. It was in reality a prophecy and its impact is obvious and real. Hobbes was a Royalist during the English Civil Wars meaning he was on the wrong side of history and reality. He was a tutor to Charles II who acceded to the throne in 1660 after the fall of Cromwell and the Puritan Parliament. In 1651 Hobbes penned Leviathan, which is in essence is an ode to 'Divine Right' rule, and the unflagging power and inherent morality, of state might. It is an important book because it eloquently presents the case for state coercion and omnipotence. Such ideals were au-courant during the dynastic Kingships of early modern Europe. They are more relevant even now. Today our secular Leviathans can trace their lineage to Hobbes' theory which met the modern political order.
The crux of Hobbesian theory can be seen in the illustration covering his work. On it is a gigantic and majestic monarch who holds sway over the land. His body is composed of countless small citizens who have given up their freedom to form the corpus of the Leviathan state. The state in return will provide succor and safety to its 'children'. All that is needed is for the average person to give up his or her 'smallness' by joining the greater body of 'good' reflected in state power.
Hobbes wrote his work after the first phase of the bloody English civil war, which never really ended until the ascension of the Protestant William of Orange to the crown in 1688 and his victory over the Catholic James at Boyne in 1689. 1651 must have been a difficult time for Royalists after the Presbyterian victory in the civil war's opening act, and the granting of Parliament rights that had once been the exclusive domain of the monarchy. Post civil-war is usually a period of social disturbance and uncertainty. For Hobbes only state power refracted through the crown of divinely sanctioned royal, had the moral and social strength necessary to bring peace and stability to a civil-war scarred state. Indeed the Leviathan of state power was the only order which should govern society – represented solely by a monarchical house:
“This is the generation of the that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god, to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and defence....it is one person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the author....And he that carrieth this person, is called SOVEREIGN, and said to have sovereign power...”
Thus, the creation of a state Leviathan, must be managed by a 'great man' or divinely appointed superior in the guise of a monarch. By destroying the individual ego, and much of individual freedom, the society en generale will gain peace, industry, and stability.
Hobbes' theory as developed in the mid-17th century was certainly nothing new. Divine right rule had long been practiced dating back to the times of Sargon the Great in 2500 BC. Tribal leaders, Pharaohs, city-state despots, caliphs, Kings, Tsars, National Socialists, Communists and every civilizational expression had long used the 'strong man' theory to justify totalitarian or despotic governance. Merging the church and state into one body, and even better, one man, has long been an objective of the power-hungry.
Hobbes' theory is little more than justification for the eradication of a parliamentary balance of power, and by extension, the crushing of freedoms, both real and theoretical of the population. In effect Hobbes would have the world turn away from the division of powers encased in the US Constitution, or the late modern period of British parliamentarism, to a pre-modern world of arbitrary governance by one man, who ruled over a sedate and subordinated commons:
“The only way to erect such a common power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to them in such sort, as that by their own industry, and by the fruits of the earth, they many nourish themselves and the live contentedly, is, to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will…..to be acted, in those things which concern the common peace and safety; and therein to submit their wills everyone to his will, and their judgements to his judgement.”
Hobbes is calling for a cult. A cult of the state and a cult of the monarch. The problems with a cult are too many to list in full but could include inter-alia, a loss of free speech, expropriation of property, a loss of independent action, no check on state power, corruption, arbitrary laws, and even rule by inbred dunces. Hobbes seems to believe that 'royals' are designated by the immortal God as our superiors and are infallible. In actual fact royalist history reveals many incompetents, inbreds, sociopaths, miscreants and immoderate imbeciles. Not all 'great man' are bad or foolish, but too many turn out to be murderous psychotics along the lines of a Napoleon or Hitler.
Hobbes stands at odds with Locke, and the orthodox liberal position of Jefferson, JS Mill and Gladstone. History was moving on and Hobbes was standing still. Yet his ideas found a receptive audience and embedded themselves in the sub-conscious of our culture. The modern secular state is a monstrous Leviathan, more completely omnipotent than anything Hobbes could have fantasized. In an age of tepid Globalization, we were told that the nation state would be obsolete or mortally wounded. It would be a 'race to the bottom' in social security and welfare nets. The poor, the young, the old and the sick would all perish. Of course, the opposite has happened. With an increase in technology, trade and financial exchange, the state has accrued enormous strength and reach.
Hobbes' book is thus a prophecy. The monarch is the state. The state is King. Our individual wills have been neutered and transferred to the monarchical state. The process of the state is the all-power monarch. It rules and we the small little yeomen peasant on the front cover of Hobbes Leviathan jacket, swarm together to be warmly joined in the body politic of our great new master and King – the state. Hobbes' poem to the morality and omnipotence of Kingly power did not find its relevancy until the 20th century. It is doubtful that many in the 17th century believed that an all-powerful despot was the only organizational framework for society. But 360 years on his ideas have become the de-facto template for state power. This fact is not a positive, but it does make Mr. Hobbes a seer of bad tidings and unfortunate cultural and societal degradation.
What would the famous Bastiat make of modern France? A country dominated by the EU or German Empire, and massive, overweening, overwhelming government? A country invaded so relentlessly by Muslims and Africans over 30 years, that Paris looks like it belongs somewhere in central Africa, and Marseilles appears to be sited in Lebanon or Arabia. A country so debauched by self-loathing that any policy which may remotely indicate sovereignty, independence, cultural pride, or common-sense is categorised as fascist, hateful, and bigoted. A country which highlights where the inexorable growth of government leads to, namely state despotism. A country still wedded to the Rona fascism, stabbinations, interventions and soon a border where to enter as a mere peasant-tourist, you will need to have 4 fingerprints taken, along with 6 photographs and have your movements tracked and known. Surely this is the utopia of democracy and liberty. How did the France of Bastiat end up here?
Bastiat was the famed mid-19th French economist noted for his adherence to economic reality; and the disavowal of socialist-utopian schemes. In today's parlance he would be a conservative-libertarian, ignored by the main-stream media as an 'extremist' and condemned by modern Keynesian's as 'heartless'. But as Bastiat famously declared, in economics it is the 'unknown' which is far more important that the 'known'.
“The tribute paid by the people to commerce is that which is seen. The tribute which the people would pay to the State, or to its agents, in the Socialist system, is what is not seen.”
The consequences of socialism and government statist power are all too real and run through the width and breadth of the political-economy. Nothing in life is free – not even paper printed up and called money, which apparently resolves all economic ills, themselves caused of course by government.
Bastiat's sensibility runs counter to the socialist-statist addiction the current world finds itself in. If the Pharaohs build pyramids does that really improve your fictional GDP, itself a spending algorithm of little factual relevance? What are the unforeseen consequences of debt, printing money, and governmental interference in most of the political economy? What happens to your freedom when government can impose an endless array off taxes to 'save the poor'; 'provide for the elderly'; 'aid the little guy'; or create 'equality', 'fairness' and 'fraternity' for all? When you strip away the baseless rhetoric, the statistical lies, the mendacious declarations, what do you see but naked power, ambition, and the will to control?
Bastiat would likely die of shock if he returned today to his native France or meandered through the modern socialist America of xi Biden and the moron US plutocracy. The state controls over half the economy in France, and over 45% in the USA. Keynesianism mysticism, with unlimited spending, endless current and future liabilities and debts, and the issuance of paper money, along with political promises to 'do more' would likely cause Bastiat to die of a heart-attack. There is no end in sight of the collective madness now called 'democracy', which is really undemocratic mob-rule; and statism.
Bastiat on Government:
Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. For now, as formerly, everyone is more or less for profiting by the labors of others. No one would dare to profess such a sentiment; he even hides it from himself; and then what is done? A medium is thought of; Government is applied to, and every class in its turn comes to it, and says, “You, who can take justifiably and honestly, take from the public, and we will partake.” Alas! Government is only too much disposed to follow this diabolical advice, for it is composed of ministers and officials—of men, in short, who, like all other men, desire in their hearts, and always seize every opportunity with eagerness, to increase their wealth and influence.
Bastiat on the arrogance and ignorance of 'Great Men':
I cannot avoid coming to this conclusion—that there are too many great men in the world; there are too many legislators, organizers, institutors of society, conductors of the people, fathers of nations, etc., etc. Too many persons place themselves above mankind, to rule and patronize it; too many persons make a trade of looking after it.
Bastiat on the French Revolution, which gave the world Robespierre and Napoleon....]
[quoting from] Robespierre: “The principle of the Republican Government is virtue, and the means to be adopted, during its establishment, is terror. We want to substitute, in our country, morality for self-indulgence, probity for honour, principles for customs, duties for decorum, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, contempt of vice for contempt of misfortune, pride for insolence, greatness of soul for vanity, love of glory for love of money, good people for good company, merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for glitter, the charm of happiness for the weariness of pleasure, the greatness of man for the littleness of the great, a magnanimous, powerful, happy people, for one that is easy, frivolous, degraded; that is to say, we would substitute all the virtues and miracles of a republic for all the vices and absurdities of monarchy.”
At what a vast height above the rest of mankind does Robespierre place himself here! And observe the arrogance with which he speaks. He is not content with expressing a desire for a great renovation of the human heart, he does not even expect such a result from a regular Government. No; he intends to effect it himself, and by means of terror.
The ridiculous assertion that government programs fairly redistribute wealth:
Accordingly, orders are given that the drains in the Champs-Mars be made and unmade. The great Napoleon, it is said, thought he was doing a very philanthropic work by causing ditches to be made and then filled up. He said, therefore, “What signifies the result? All we want is to see wealth spread among the labouring classes.” ...Now, if all the citizens were to be called together, and made to execute, in conjunction, a work useful to all, this would be easily understood; their reward would be found in the results of the work itself. But after having called them together, if you force them to make roads which no one will pass through, palaces which no one will inhabit, and this under the pretext of finding them work, it would be absurd, and they would have a right to argue, “With this labour we have nothing to do; we prefer working on our own account.”
and
Whence we arrive at this unexpected conclusion: “Society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed;” and we must assent to a maxim which will make the hair of protectionists stand on end—To break, to spoil, to waste, is not to encourage national labour; or, more briefly, “destruction is not profit.”
Socialism and the inevitable plunder:
As the result of its systems and of its efforts, it would seem that socialism, notwithstanding all its self-complacency, can scarcely help perceiving the monster of legal plunder. But what does it do? It disguises it cleverly from others, and even from itself, under the seductive names of fraternity, solidarity, organization, association. And because we do not ask so much at the hands of the law, because we only ask it for justice, it alleges that we reject fraternity, solidarity, organization, and association; and they brand us with the name of individualists. We can assure them that what we repudiate is not natural organization, but forced organization.
The Barbarism of Socialism:
I know not to what barbarous age we should have to go back, if we were to sink to the level of Socialist knowledge on this subject. These modern zealots incessantly distinguish association from actual society. They overlook the fact that society, free of regulation, is a true association, far superior to any of those that proceed from their fertile imaginations.
The myth of 'collective right':
Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual—for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes.
The usual declaration that you are the state, and the state is you:
...because, setting out upon the maxim that nothing exists independently of the will of the State, you conclude that nothing lives but what the State causes to live. But I oppose to this assertion the very example which you have chosen, and beg you to note, that the grandest and noblest of exhibitions, one which has been conceived in the most liberal and universal spirit—and I might even make use of the term humanitarian, for it is no exaggeration—is the exhibition now preparing in London [Crystal Palace 1851]; the only one in which no government is taking any part, and which is being paid for by no tax.
[can you imagine an expo anywhere in the world not funded mostly by public tax money?]
Government in the mid-19th century was very limited indeed compared to today. It was only during World War I that government expenditure, regulation control and indirect power over the economy comprised 10% or more of the total GDP of the modern state. That 10% is now 50% for many nations and shows no signs of diminution. In 1850 perhaps 5% of GDP in Bastiat's France, might have been under the purview of political and bureaucratic elites. That total today is roughly 52%, a seemingly inexorable trend towards statism. The socialist tide shows no sign of abatement, even in lieu of bankruptcy. The state is now the new God, the new religion, the new altar of supernatural faith and the repository of divine rule.