Excellent piece and idea. That's why they set about renaming everything in the nineties during that first wave of leftist pantymelt political correctness and have accelerated their efforts the past decade. One aside...the statistical probability of a non portly women joining any group in the states must be down to 18% after the five point BMI increase post lockdown to an already 67% obese or overweight demographic. which means the adjectives petite, athletic or skinny are the only ones needed now for deviation. How's that for sad truth?
You point to one of most depressing realities of life in contemporary America. Still, I can't stop myself from mentioning such unflattering details - even if nonspecific, they are fairly reliable indicators for comorbid clusters of unhealthy beliefs.
Iβve always thought of my way of thinking - this way of thinking that you have described - as objectivism. Either way, the defining characteristic of such a thinker will always be his willingness to lay bare the working of his mind.
I appreciate what you said and the intention in your decision to use objectivism. I think his word is better, because it describes, if you will, the objective of the activity. The etymology of the word objective leaves me feeling a little cold. Truth does exist, and with it comes a rush of human meaning. Objectivism seems to activate rational brain organization, which is also certainly needed, but alas, probably not enough.
Objectivism is obviously fraught with Randian associations and misconceptions. Think of me then as a transcendental objectivist or objective transcendentalist who sees transcendence as an objective aspect of reality.
Are the ideologues just not that smart? Thinkingthat words are βmagicβ and they canβt worry about two things at the same time? (Electric cars are charged by the coal plant? Whaaaa?!?!)
My experience is that many of them are highly intelligent. If anything, the nuance and complexity of ideology makes it an effective trap for the unwary intellect.
Intelligence is generally defined as the ability to learn, not a guarantee they learn anything useful. The old expression, "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" Is an observation that a lot of smart people don't do anything useful with their intelligence. Wisdom is probably a better characterization than intelligence. I've never met a leftist with much wisdom.
A friend once suggested that "intelligence" probably derives from "inter" ("between") and "legere" (to read), in other words to read between the lines, to make valid inferences from limited knowledge. Sounds about right to me.
Learning something and regurgitating it is the definition of intelligence, but progress is made by creative innovation. That's sort of the reading between the lines metaphor, where we learn some things and adapt them to problems not specific to what was learned. The ability to develop useful conclusions or capabilities based on what was previously learned seems to be the more important function of intelligence.
I don't think that's the definition of intelligence at all. Intellect does indeed involve the ability to assimilate new data, but it also involves pattern recognition, and a capacity to creatively solve novel problems.
Yes, the dictionaries define it as ability to learn. But that's not very practical. It would be like being intelligent enough to memorize the dictionary. Not enough to be functional. Lots of different kinds of mental ability. Problem solving is a different kind of cognition, probably the most important. We need a better word to describe how well intelligence is used. Effectigence maybe. Some call it street smarts. But I know lots of certified smart people with impressive credentials that I wouldn't trust to sweep my floors.
Absolutely! I'll let wikipedia provide a base definition of NFC:
"The need for cognition (NFC), in psychology, is a personality variable reflecting the extent to which individuals are inclined towards effortful cognitive activities."
In the modern information environment, and with the current array of social incentives around academia that you have highlighted so well, those with low NFC and high IQ are preferentially selected for positions of power and influence. These types have no problem engaging with the intellectual cul-de-sacs of postmodernism and critical theory to get the grade or publish the paper. They also aren't chagrined by the need to stay within the Overton window, even when that window doesn't encompass anything true or accurate (as assessed using an appropriate epistemological framework).
On the other hand, those with high NFC find it very difficult to accept this bullshit and "go along to get along". It isn't moral superiority, as in some superior commitment to accuracy and truth that causes this in my conception. I believe it to be biologically determined and places one at very high risk of wash out, cancellation, or some combination thereof.
For the low NFC high IQ individual, getting stuck in these traps is a feature, not a bug. They revel in the comfort provided by a framework that shields them from the criticism of those with both high NFC and high verbal intelligence. People with high IQ and low accuracy motivation are terribly frustrating to me. They have the capacity, they just don't have the desire to engage in the cognitive effort required to pursue truth, so they end up using their intelligence to justify their pursuit of their other, sometimes nefarious, subjective desires while mired in intellectual "traps" that effectively safeguard their self-delusion. I think the combo of this phenotype and the various types of psychopaths constitute the bulk of our opposition in this fight.
That's an interesting perspective. Framing it as a need rather than an ability for cognition makes it sound like 'well we just can't help ourselves, we're drawn to it', which ... is probably true. For some of us participating in obvious lies exhibits a disgust reflex every bit as powerful as consuming rotten food.
My only complaint about the concept is in the nomenclature. 'Need for Cognition' is incredibly vague, as is the definition involving 'effortful cognitive activity''. It seems to dance around the core of the distinction, unless I'm missing something. Learning the intricacies of a bullshit intellectual system can be quite cognitively demanding ... often more so than operating with a more accurate system. Compare, for instance, the difficult of calculating planetary positions on the sky using the Ptolemaic system with its epicycles inside of epicycles, with the much easier calculations that can be performed using Kepler's laws.
It is vague, but useful and best appreciated by reading the section on it in Robert Cialdini's textbook on Social Psychology. I'll see if I can dig it up to share if you're interested. You are getting at an important limitation of the concept if taken in isolation, but something I didn't include is that NFC is also highly associated with accuracy motivation. Cognitive motivation gets complex, and accuracy motivation can be influenced heavily by environment, but I think one of the main factors that tends to determine intrinsic accuracy motivation is NFC. This could also be related to personality and ego. People with high NFC tend to enjoy debate and discussion right? Everyone likes winning right? Even in the absence of debate, I think almost everyone enjoys being right. It is a lot easier to win arguments if the beliefs you internalize are accurate. You will be right more often if you are preoccupied with accuracy. With respect to your comment, your high accuracy motivation immediately identifies a key limitation to the position I outlined. You wouldn't want to internalize this concept without ensuring that the glaring issue you identified is resolved satisfactorily. If you did, it might leave you vulnerable to your ideological enemies. Fuck that. Meta-cognition can get a little recursive, so I'll just say that since internalizing this paradigm about 15 years ago it has been my experience that those I perceive to be high NFC also tend to be concomitantly motivated by accuracy. This is perhaps just the logical consequence of Pavlovian conditioning within a mind compelled to, for example, argue with itself iteratively. I have a borderline pathological accuracy motivation. I prefer accurate insults over inaccurate compliments, for example. I attribute the development of this condition to high NFC. I get especially frustrated with inaccurate insults, I can't stand the inaccuracy, but it is impossible to convince anyone that I'm not just butt-hurt at being insulted. You ever experience anything like that?
I wonder if the need-for-cognition (NFC) combined with a need for truth/accuracy that you describe isn't simply the manifestation of a right-hemisphere dominant orientation, as described in this article? A left-hemisphere dominant (LHD) person may have a high IQ and perform well on discrete tasks that are divorced from a broader reality (e.g., standardized tests, academic papers in the humanities, office politics, etc), maybe even performing better than a right-hemisphere dominant (RHD) person, because the LHD person isn't distracted by the "bigger picture." LHD people don't stop to ask, "What's the point of all this?" Asking and seeking an answer to that question takes time and mental energy. Instead of expending that time and energy on justifying the activity dujour in terms of something of real value within a larger context, the LHD is happy to spend that time doing the thing to reductio ad absurdum extremes.
Currently, the subset of LHD people with a high IQ are the ones dominating certain areas of society because they're unencumbered by the need to justify their activities and commitments in terms of a bigger picture. The RHD person cares about whether the cognitive activity ultimately means anything real, while the LHD person is content to pursue the cognitive activity for its own sake, even if it is completely artificial. Anyway, your comment was interesting, but I wonder if the concepts of NFC and need for accuracy are describing anything different than the existing concepts of high IQ with a right-hemisphere dominant orientation? I'm quickly out of my depths on this topic, so I could very well just be missing a real distinction you're making.
That's a good point, but I think NFC is still a useful phenomenon to consider. I think the logical implication of having high NFC is that you will be predisposed to be RHB dominant because there is more fertile ground in pontificating about the big picture rather than some very specific model. I'll need to dig up the section on it that I read in a social psychology textbook and share it somewhere, the wiki article doesn't do it justice. I do think you're onto something in that high NFC folks will end up being more RHB dominant, but even people low in NFC can be RHB dominant as long as they aren't provided incentives for LHB dominance (i.e. the school system).
I knew an old Jewish woman from New York, and she was a classic βprogressive. βThe problem with most progressives is they want to see movement and they mistake it for true progress. Anything that develops which is not in comport with the true nature of Man is in no way progress. This woman tried to find ways to use systems to bring people together to solve problems. She was head and shoulders above the others in the class known as progressives.
One important thing that is also misunderstood is how little ideological beliefs matter. The notion that people behave the way they do because of their beliefs, and thus to change their behaviour you must first change their beliefs does not have a whole lot of empirical support. Certainly it happens sometimes, but the more usual direction is the other way -- I behave the way I do because I want to or because I must, and I therefore shop around for the beliefs to justify it.
For example -- many people become Vegetarians or Marxists or Musicians because they think that it will make them attractive to cute members of the appropriate sex (who already profess these beliefs). Later they will assert that it was the theory that convinced them. Others join groups because it gives them the right to hate people they already wanted to hate, or were already hating -- including themselves. The theory tells them why these people deserve it. 'I'm in it for the violence and the looting' doesn't get mentioned a lot, as if this sort of thing is 'unthinkable'. But many people do indeed make a hobby of such things. Academics have a problem with this, and search for deeper pyschological, economic, or sociological reasons for such behaviour in people while they mostly are not looking for similar reasons behind socially acceptable hobbies. 'I play boardgames because it is fun and I want to' is good enough for most people for most of the time.
The base instincts certainly lead many people into ideological thinking, but without the ideology no one would become a vegan. Looked at from a memetic perspective, ideologies are essentially memeplexes that hijack biological drives.
Alitheology... reminds me a bit of ichthyology... I think I need to hear it pronounced a few times :D
I like this idea a lot. I am not sure I am 100% on the inapplicability of ideology to our sort, but I find this argument pretty damned compelling. I need to reread this once I have more sleep and less sickness making my head fuzzy. Names are important.
I don't know that I would say Marxism came out of liberalism. I am not entirely certain how I would draw that lineage, but I am pretty sure even in the US liberalism still meant freedom and essentially capitalism when Marx was writing. I am too muzzy to figure that out right now, though.
I'd argue Marxism is something of a perversion of liberalism, and probably an inevitable one. Worth remembering that when liberalism first emerged it conceived itself as explicitly in opposition to the established political and religious order, a revolutionary force whose goal was the emancipation of man from the bondage of superstition and unearned, hereditary class privilege. Instead, liberalism would establish a rational order based on science, logic, and humanitarian ethical principles. For all that it sees itself as an opposing force to the bourgeois social order created by liberalism, Marxism's self-conception is almost identical.
Yes, but the liberal project could as much be framed as rejecting a current and dysfunctional ideology and attempting to build either a better ideology or rejecting ideology in general (depending on how much one wants to run with your thesis here.) In a sense, liberalism was to free men from the oppression of other men, while Marxism seems to promise freeing men from the oppression of reality.
I think I would put Rousseau as the illegitimate father of Marxism, but Rousseau is such a dumpster fire it is hard to really pin it to him. Both writers did entirely neglect their real kids, so there's that. Same guy, totally.
>the liberal project could as much be framed as rejecting a current and dysfunctional ideology and attempting to build either a better ideology or rejecting ideology in general
Which, aside from the rejection of ideology, is exactly what Marxism claims to do.
> In a sense, liberalism was to free men from the oppression of other men, while Marxism seems to promise freeing men from the oppression of reality
I think that's exactly correct. Really just a subtle shift in emphasis.
The danger with any ideology, really, is that it can be taken to insane extremes. What's good in one era can become the source of unspeakable evil in the next.
You are essentially correct. Marxism is an alternative form of classical Ricardian economics and substitutes the wellbeing of the working classes for that of the rentier class.
Liberalism itself is just a hodgepodge of ideas blended together in the 19thc. The best liberal thinkers preceded liberalism by many generations. As a rule, I prefer to differentiate between liberal practice (respect for property rights and a bias towards toleration) which flourished in 18th c England and liberalism (the mouldy ideology of nervous, twitchy, social theorists, social engineers, do-gooders and crap-artists).
Marxism and liberalism alike belong to world that disappeared more than a century ago. The bourgeois social order (entrepreneurial capitalism and a bourgeoisie with substantial personal/familial capital and independence from the state) expired in Europe in WW1 and in North American not long after. Welfare-capitalism (New Deal etc) kept a mock-bourgeoisie on life support long enough to conclude the Cold War. Now the kleptocrats and globalists are euthanasing the 'middle-class' and attempt ting to stabilise oligarchy with technocratic pretensions. This is why Marxism and liberalism seem so silly: they are simply archaic.
I love this article, and will do my best to incorporate your new nomenclature for where many people across a broad spectrum of core beliefs now find themselves into my everyday thoughts and speech.
My earnest hope is that this wil spread, for I think itβs very likely that we alitheologists must find ways of uniting together in local groups to find means and ways of getting through the trials that almost assuredly lie ahead.
An excellent thesis which should explode a few ideological heads, but will get a conformational head nod from those who can handle a truth.
The history of the Branch-Covidian Crusades is so eloquently encapsulated in the perambulating run-on sentence. I will add that to my list of quotable literature.
I generally abhor run-on sentences, holding to the motto Grammatik Macht Frei. On this occasion it seemed appropriate for effect, however; glad you appreciated it.
I love it. Alitheology, as you describe, certainly seems to encapsulate the essence of what we are trying to do - articulate what we see to be true (in reality, as opposed to theoretically) by observing the 'whole', in the full context of whatever it is we are observing.
I'm writing right now about our love for the machine model, a metaphor so embedded into our psyche we find it near impossible to not see everything through this limitation. The alitheologue however, would not first come with a model, and then make an observation of an object, in isolation, with the goal of fitting that observations into the model to make sense of it (yet this is what happens all the time in 'science'). Rather the alitheologue see the object in its context for what it is (a right hemisphere specialty requiring appreciation of the whole, relationships and the indeterminate). And if a metaphor is required, which it almost certainly will, then it comes AFTER the observation.
Anyway - thanks for the word - count me in as part of the alitheology camp!
They actually does raise an interesting epistemological question: whether a given phenomenon can be seen as thing-in-itself and thing-in-nature absent any model at all. A word, after all, is a kind of model, being of necessity an abstraction. Without attaching a word to a concept, it is much harder to recognize.
As you say, it's all about the order of operations. Let the perception come first, then the model; and flicker one's attention back and forth between object and context, model and world, in order to avoid getting stuck in the the model.
Yes we can't divorce ourselves from words (abstractions as you say) and to describe phenomena, process, requires words and often metaphor - but let's do that without putting the cart before the horse, so to speak - as you say, the perception first, then the model. And even then, the model should be held lightly.
Imagine if we did this with say... our understanding of the immune system!
[A press release today from OzSAGE was warning of the dangers of believing that people who have had COVID have a lasting immunity - which they say is completely false. A perfect example of ideology completely superseding any semblance of reality.]
I wish I could be surprised that a government agency was happily ignoring centuries of accumulated medical knowledge in favor of their ideological narrative, but, nope, that's not surprising anymore. π€‘π
Really really fabulous! A very nice neologism. It is completely needed. Iβm reading a book right now, called βKrivda.β Krivda is a Russian word that means a bent or crooked truth. Itβs useful in that it describes much of our modern narrative discourse, and in fact the discourse from the time of the ancients. The author is attempting to identify the differences between what she calls the Godtrix and the matrix.
Alitheology Is certainly the subject she is pursuing. If you havenβt read the book, I canβt recommend it yet as I am still reading it. But it starts out with a very strong thesis, and the particulars of her life fill out itβs epistemological value. Thank you John Carter
I just wanted to challenge one of your premises. βCovid: The Musicalβ didnβt seem to spread, per se, so much as It seemed to pop up in select locales. Denis Rancourt has done the analysis that best supports the idea of non-spread.
"They ground their view of the world in their ideas. The sane alternative is to ground one's ideas in one's view of the world." That nails it. Excellent essay! (Like everything else on here!)
If We Could Escape the Control of the Controllers: A Vision
We could make a world that benefits everyone including the environment. Let me share a vision, not a blueprint. Each continent would have its super quantum computer with AI to sort out the needs and offerings (services, goods, and resources) of every village and city minute by minute. This could be coordinated on a world scale. It would be managed horizontally with no central authority. It could also be used as a repository for all innovations.
There would be an agreed upon social contract that guarantees human rights, perhaps similar to the United Nations Charter, which unfortunately, is not currently followed. The platform for organizing would be horizontal governance, which is extremely transparent, autonomous, and virtually incorruptible, politicians and lobbyists would not exist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wywMhg604W8).
The world would be confederated under the social contract, for the purpose of collaboration and cooperation.
The aim would be to create social environments where everyone flourishes. Where the needs that all humans share would be most easily met. A world of caring, of unconditional love for everyone and respect for the environment.
There would be no militarization.
It takes one generation for people to be acculturized (look at Germany). If there is a healthy, just, and caring culture, there would be a healthy, just, and caring people. A society, if not controlled (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btF6nKHo2i0) by psychopaths, narcissists, nazi/eugenicists (https://canadianpatriot.org/2021/05/09/for-victory-day-its-time-to-think-about-finally-winning-wwii/)or anyone is dependent on the quality, the personal integrity and empathetic abilitiy of the people. We need societies of honest, kind, reliable, caring, rational, and humble people if we are ever going to create the more beautiful world that every heart longs for.
I know from living in a small intentional eco-community (chambalabamba.org), that we can only succeed by having people with noble characteristics. One person lacking these, can undermine and destroy the community. The same holds for the macrocosm, the whole world.
And thus there is the existential conundrum: We need a just and caring society to create just and caring people and we need just and caring people to create a just and caring society. Oh, how can we do this? Maybe, just start doing it, but first we must restructure from vertical to horizontal and rid ourselves of the tyrannous grip of the controllers by organizing on a global scale, by using encrypted apps, by invitation only, like element/matrix.
We bring the world to a standstill once again but this time we inform as many as we can to stock up on food and necessities for at least 3 months. The indigenous did it in Ecuador recently with the STOP for 18 days. The truckers did it in Canada. And we demand restructuring ALL governments from vertical to horizontal. And we begin.
First however, people need to be informed about what is horizontal governance (link above), and why it is necessary as explained in the Confessions of an Economic Hitman (linked above). We don't need leaders who promote war and militarism, and vaccine mandates that are unnecessary, dangerous, tyrannical, and don't work, that is, that perpetrate crimes against humanity. Or to be constantly propagandized with false information to manufacture our false beliefs, in order to manipulate us.
People can begin being activists by sharing this vision and these 2 videos
Excellent piece and idea. That's why they set about renaming everything in the nineties during that first wave of leftist pantymelt political correctness and have accelerated their efforts the past decade. One aside...the statistical probability of a non portly women joining any group in the states must be down to 18% after the five point BMI increase post lockdown to an already 67% obese or overweight demographic. which means the adjectives petite, athletic or skinny are the only ones needed now for deviation. How's that for sad truth?
You point to one of most depressing realities of life in contemporary America. Still, I can't stop myself from mentioning such unflattering details - even if nonspecific, they are fairly reliable indicators for comorbid clusters of unhealthy beliefs.
True. The body fuels the mind. It becomes extremely pronounced on trips there from Poland about every 24 months. Beyond culture shock.
Remember, Me Time. All about Me. Me TV ?
Pushing narcissistic BS
Iβve always thought of my way of thinking - this way of thinking that you have described - as objectivism. Either way, the defining characteristic of such a thinker will always be his willingness to lay bare the working of his mind.
I appreciate what you said and the intention in your decision to use objectivism. I think his word is better, because it describes, if you will, the objective of the activity. The etymology of the word objective leaves me feeling a little cold. Truth does exist, and with it comes a rush of human meaning. Objectivism seems to activate rational brain organization, which is also certainly needed, but alas, probably not enough.
Indeed. The other reason is that objectivism is taken, as the label for Ayn Rand's version of libertarianism.
Objectivism is obviously fraught with Randian associations and misconceptions. Think of me then as a transcendental objectivist or objective transcendentalist who sees transcendence as an objective aspect of reality.
Aside for the objectivist label being spoken for a century ago by Ayn Rand, an -ism implies an ideology; avoiding that is precisely the goal.
Objectivism done right is experience before thought.
"For words are wise menβs counters; they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools"
Are the ideologues just not that smart? Thinkingthat words are βmagicβ and they canβt worry about two things at the same time? (Electric cars are charged by the coal plant? Whaaaa?!?!)
My experience is that many of them are highly intelligent. If anything, the nuance and complexity of ideology makes it an effective trap for the unwary intellect.
Intelligence is generally defined as the ability to learn, not a guarantee they learn anything useful. The old expression, "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" Is an observation that a lot of smart people don't do anything useful with their intelligence. Wisdom is probably a better characterization than intelligence. I've never met a leftist with much wisdom.
Word.
There's a correlation between IQ and income, but it breaks down over a certain threshold beyond which making money ceases to be very interesting.
The wise are even less likely to be rich.
A friend once suggested that "intelligence" probably derives from "inter" ("between") and "legere" (to read), in other words to read between the lines, to make valid inferences from limited knowledge. Sounds about right to me.
Learning something and regurgitating it is the definition of intelligence, but progress is made by creative innovation. That's sort of the reading between the lines metaphor, where we learn some things and adapt them to problems not specific to what was learned. The ability to develop useful conclusions or capabilities based on what was previously learned seems to be the more important function of intelligence.
I don't think that's the definition of intelligence at all. Intellect does indeed involve the ability to assimilate new data, but it also involves pattern recognition, and a capacity to creatively solve novel problems.
Yes, the dictionaries define it as ability to learn. But that's not very practical. It would be like being intelligent enough to memorize the dictionary. Not enough to be functional. Lots of different kinds of mental ability. Problem solving is a different kind of cognition, probably the most important. We need a better word to describe how well intelligence is used. Effectigence maybe. Some call it street smarts. But I know lots of certified smart people with impressive credentials that I wouldn't trust to sweep my floors.
I think the correlated but independent psychometric variable of "need for cognition" confers the intellectual wariness required to avoid such traps.
I think I know what you mean by that, but would you be willing to elaborate?
Absolutely! I'll let wikipedia provide a base definition of NFC:
"The need for cognition (NFC), in psychology, is a personality variable reflecting the extent to which individuals are inclined towards effortful cognitive activities."
In the modern information environment, and with the current array of social incentives around academia that you have highlighted so well, those with low NFC and high IQ are preferentially selected for positions of power and influence. These types have no problem engaging with the intellectual cul-de-sacs of postmodernism and critical theory to get the grade or publish the paper. They also aren't chagrined by the need to stay within the Overton window, even when that window doesn't encompass anything true or accurate (as assessed using an appropriate epistemological framework).
On the other hand, those with high NFC find it very difficult to accept this bullshit and "go along to get along". It isn't moral superiority, as in some superior commitment to accuracy and truth that causes this in my conception. I believe it to be biologically determined and places one at very high risk of wash out, cancellation, or some combination thereof.
For the low NFC high IQ individual, getting stuck in these traps is a feature, not a bug. They revel in the comfort provided by a framework that shields them from the criticism of those with both high NFC and high verbal intelligence. People with high IQ and low accuracy motivation are terribly frustrating to me. They have the capacity, they just don't have the desire to engage in the cognitive effort required to pursue truth, so they end up using their intelligence to justify their pursuit of their other, sometimes nefarious, subjective desires while mired in intellectual "traps" that effectively safeguard their self-delusion. I think the combo of this phenotype and the various types of psychopaths constitute the bulk of our opposition in this fight.
Thanks for the engagement!
That's an interesting perspective. Framing it as a need rather than an ability for cognition makes it sound like 'well we just can't help ourselves, we're drawn to it', which ... is probably true. For some of us participating in obvious lies exhibits a disgust reflex every bit as powerful as consuming rotten food.
My only complaint about the concept is in the nomenclature. 'Need for Cognition' is incredibly vague, as is the definition involving 'effortful cognitive activity''. It seems to dance around the core of the distinction, unless I'm missing something. Learning the intricacies of a bullshit intellectual system can be quite cognitively demanding ... often more so than operating with a more accurate system. Compare, for instance, the difficult of calculating planetary positions on the sky using the Ptolemaic system with its epicycles inside of epicycles, with the much easier calculations that can be performed using Kepler's laws.
It is vague, but useful and best appreciated by reading the section on it in Robert Cialdini's textbook on Social Psychology. I'll see if I can dig it up to share if you're interested. You are getting at an important limitation of the concept if taken in isolation, but something I didn't include is that NFC is also highly associated with accuracy motivation. Cognitive motivation gets complex, and accuracy motivation can be influenced heavily by environment, but I think one of the main factors that tends to determine intrinsic accuracy motivation is NFC. This could also be related to personality and ego. People with high NFC tend to enjoy debate and discussion right? Everyone likes winning right? Even in the absence of debate, I think almost everyone enjoys being right. It is a lot easier to win arguments if the beliefs you internalize are accurate. You will be right more often if you are preoccupied with accuracy. With respect to your comment, your high accuracy motivation immediately identifies a key limitation to the position I outlined. You wouldn't want to internalize this concept without ensuring that the glaring issue you identified is resolved satisfactorily. If you did, it might leave you vulnerable to your ideological enemies. Fuck that. Meta-cognition can get a little recursive, so I'll just say that since internalizing this paradigm about 15 years ago it has been my experience that those I perceive to be high NFC also tend to be concomitantly motivated by accuracy. This is perhaps just the logical consequence of Pavlovian conditioning within a mind compelled to, for example, argue with itself iteratively. I have a borderline pathological accuracy motivation. I prefer accurate insults over inaccurate compliments, for example. I attribute the development of this condition to high NFC. I get especially frustrated with inaccurate insults, I can't stand the inaccuracy, but it is impossible to convince anyone that I'm not just butt-hurt at being insulted. You ever experience anything like that?
I wonder if the need-for-cognition (NFC) combined with a need for truth/accuracy that you describe isn't simply the manifestation of a right-hemisphere dominant orientation, as described in this article? A left-hemisphere dominant (LHD) person may have a high IQ and perform well on discrete tasks that are divorced from a broader reality (e.g., standardized tests, academic papers in the humanities, office politics, etc), maybe even performing better than a right-hemisphere dominant (RHD) person, because the LHD person isn't distracted by the "bigger picture." LHD people don't stop to ask, "What's the point of all this?" Asking and seeking an answer to that question takes time and mental energy. Instead of expending that time and energy on justifying the activity dujour in terms of something of real value within a larger context, the LHD is happy to spend that time doing the thing to reductio ad absurdum extremes.
Currently, the subset of LHD people with a high IQ are the ones dominating certain areas of society because they're unencumbered by the need to justify their activities and commitments in terms of a bigger picture. The RHD person cares about whether the cognitive activity ultimately means anything real, while the LHD person is content to pursue the cognitive activity for its own sake, even if it is completely artificial. Anyway, your comment was interesting, but I wonder if the concepts of NFC and need for accuracy are describing anything different than the existing concepts of high IQ with a right-hemisphere dominant orientation? I'm quickly out of my depths on this topic, so I could very well just be missing a real distinction you're making.
That's a good point, but I think NFC is still a useful phenomenon to consider. I think the logical implication of having high NFC is that you will be predisposed to be RHB dominant because there is more fertile ground in pontificating about the big picture rather than some very specific model. I'll need to dig up the section on it that I read in a social psychology textbook and share it somewhere, the wiki article doesn't do it justice. I do think you're onto something in that high NFC folks will end up being more RHB dominant, but even people low in NFC can be RHB dominant as long as they aren't provided incentives for LHB dominance (i.e. the school system).
I knew an old Jewish woman from New York, and she was a classic βprogressive. βThe problem with most progressives is they want to see movement and they mistake it for true progress. Anything that develops which is not in comport with the true nature of Man is in no way progress. This woman tried to find ways to use systems to bring people together to solve problems. She was head and shoulders above the others in the class known as progressives.
One important thing that is also misunderstood is how little ideological beliefs matter. The notion that people behave the way they do because of their beliefs, and thus to change their behaviour you must first change their beliefs does not have a whole lot of empirical support. Certainly it happens sometimes, but the more usual direction is the other way -- I behave the way I do because I want to or because I must, and I therefore shop around for the beliefs to justify it.
For example -- many people become Vegetarians or Marxists or Musicians because they think that it will make them attractive to cute members of the appropriate sex (who already profess these beliefs). Later they will assert that it was the theory that convinced them. Others join groups because it gives them the right to hate people they already wanted to hate, or were already hating -- including themselves. The theory tells them why these people deserve it. 'I'm in it for the violence and the looting' doesn't get mentioned a lot, as if this sort of thing is 'unthinkable'. But many people do indeed make a hobby of such things. Academics have a problem with this, and search for deeper pyschological, economic, or sociological reasons for such behaviour in people while they mostly are not looking for similar reasons behind socially acceptable hobbies. 'I play boardgames because it is fun and I want to' is good enough for most people for most of the time.
The base instincts certainly lead many people into ideological thinking, but without the ideology no one would become a vegan. Looked at from a memetic perspective, ideologies are essentially memeplexes that hijack biological drives.
Alitheology... reminds me a bit of ichthyology... I think I need to hear it pronounced a few times :D
I like this idea a lot. I am not sure I am 100% on the inapplicability of ideology to our sort, but I find this argument pretty damned compelling. I need to reread this once I have more sleep and less sickness making my head fuzzy. Names are important.
I don't know that I would say Marxism came out of liberalism. I am not entirely certain how I would draw that lineage, but I am pretty sure even in the US liberalism still meant freedom and essentially capitalism when Marx was writing. I am too muzzy to figure that out right now, though.
I'd argue Marxism is something of a perversion of liberalism, and probably an inevitable one. Worth remembering that when liberalism first emerged it conceived itself as explicitly in opposition to the established political and religious order, a revolutionary force whose goal was the emancipation of man from the bondage of superstition and unearned, hereditary class privilege. Instead, liberalism would establish a rational order based on science, logic, and humanitarian ethical principles. For all that it sees itself as an opposing force to the bourgeois social order created by liberalism, Marxism's self-conception is almost identical.
Yes, but the liberal project could as much be framed as rejecting a current and dysfunctional ideology and attempting to build either a better ideology or rejecting ideology in general (depending on how much one wants to run with your thesis here.) In a sense, liberalism was to free men from the oppression of other men, while Marxism seems to promise freeing men from the oppression of reality.
I think I would put Rousseau as the illegitimate father of Marxism, but Rousseau is such a dumpster fire it is hard to really pin it to him. Both writers did entirely neglect their real kids, so there's that. Same guy, totally.
>the liberal project could as much be framed as rejecting a current and dysfunctional ideology and attempting to build either a better ideology or rejecting ideology in general
Which, aside from the rejection of ideology, is exactly what Marxism claims to do.
> In a sense, liberalism was to free men from the oppression of other men, while Marxism seems to promise freeing men from the oppression of reality
I think that's exactly correct. Really just a subtle shift in emphasis.
The danger with any ideology, really, is that it can be taken to insane extremes. What's good in one era can become the source of unspeakable evil in the next.
You are essentially correct. Marxism is an alternative form of classical Ricardian economics and substitutes the wellbeing of the working classes for that of the rentier class.
Liberalism itself is just a hodgepodge of ideas blended together in the 19thc. The best liberal thinkers preceded liberalism by many generations. As a rule, I prefer to differentiate between liberal practice (respect for property rights and a bias towards toleration) which flourished in 18th c England and liberalism (the mouldy ideology of nervous, twitchy, social theorists, social engineers, do-gooders and crap-artists).
Marxism and liberalism alike belong to world that disappeared more than a century ago. The bourgeois social order (entrepreneurial capitalism and a bourgeoisie with substantial personal/familial capital and independence from the state) expired in Europe in WW1 and in North American not long after. Welfare-capitalism (New Deal etc) kept a mock-bourgeoisie on life support long enough to conclude the Cold War. Now the kleptocrats and globalists are euthanasing the 'middle-class' and attempt ting to stabilise oligarchy with technocratic pretensions. This is why Marxism and liberalism seem so silly: they are simply archaic.
I love this article, and will do my best to incorporate your new nomenclature for where many people across a broad spectrum of core beliefs now find themselves into my everyday thoughts and speech.
My earnest hope is that this wil spread, for I think itβs very likely that we alitheologists must find ways of uniting together in local groups to find means and ways of getting through the trials that almost assuredly lie ahead.
And I see in the comments warnings about falling into a trap with what I just said.
I will continue to ponder my thoughts and appreciate the different takes on what such a label can/could mean. Thanks to all.
An excellent thesis which should explode a few ideological heads, but will get a conformational head nod from those who can handle a truth.
The history of the Branch-Covidian Crusades is so eloquently encapsulated in the perambulating run-on sentence. I will add that to my list of quotable literature.
I generally abhor run-on sentences, holding to the motto Grammatik Macht Frei. On this occasion it seemed appropriate for effect, however; glad you appreciated it.
As to Branch Covidian Crusade, I'm stealing that.
I love it. Alitheology, as you describe, certainly seems to encapsulate the essence of what we are trying to do - articulate what we see to be true (in reality, as opposed to theoretically) by observing the 'whole', in the full context of whatever it is we are observing.
I'm writing right now about our love for the machine model, a metaphor so embedded into our psyche we find it near impossible to not see everything through this limitation. The alitheologue however, would not first come with a model, and then make an observation of an object, in isolation, with the goal of fitting that observations into the model to make sense of it (yet this is what happens all the time in 'science'). Rather the alitheologue see the object in its context for what it is (a right hemisphere specialty requiring appreciation of the whole, relationships and the indeterminate). And if a metaphor is required, which it almost certainly will, then it comes AFTER the observation.
Anyway - thanks for the word - count me in as part of the alitheology camp!
They actually does raise an interesting epistemological question: whether a given phenomenon can be seen as thing-in-itself and thing-in-nature absent any model at all. A word, after all, is a kind of model, being of necessity an abstraction. Without attaching a word to a concept, it is much harder to recognize.
As you say, it's all about the order of operations. Let the perception come first, then the model; and flicker one's attention back and forth between object and context, model and world, in order to avoid getting stuck in the the model.
Looking forward to the new post!
Yes we can't divorce ourselves from words (abstractions as you say) and to describe phenomena, process, requires words and often metaphor - but let's do that without putting the cart before the horse, so to speak - as you say, the perception first, then the model. And even then, the model should be held lightly.
Imagine if we did this with say... our understanding of the immune system!
[A press release today from OzSAGE was warning of the dangers of believing that people who have had COVID have a lasting immunity - which they say is completely false. A perfect example of ideology completely superseding any semblance of reality.]
I wish I could be surprised that a government agency was happily ignoring centuries of accumulated medical knowledge in favor of their ideological narrative, but, nope, that's not surprising anymore. π€‘π
Really really fabulous! A very nice neologism. It is completely needed. Iβm reading a book right now, called βKrivda.β Krivda is a Russian word that means a bent or crooked truth. Itβs useful in that it describes much of our modern narrative discourse, and in fact the discourse from the time of the ancients. The author is attempting to identify the differences between what she calls the Godtrix and the matrix.
Alitheology Is certainly the subject she is pursuing. If you havenβt read the book, I canβt recommend it yet as I am still reading it. But it starts out with a very strong thesis, and the particulars of her life fill out itβs epistemological value. Thank you John Carter
Sounds like an intriguing work. ΠΡΠΈΠ²Π΄Π° in particular is also a useful concept to have in one's lexicon.
I just wanted to challenge one of your premises. βCovid: The Musicalβ didnβt seem to spread, per se, so much as It seemed to pop up in select locales. Denis Rancourt has done the analysis that best supports the idea of non-spread.
I'm not gonna push back on that.
Plus can we make alethiometers like Lyra had? Iβm getting to work right away
Would be pretty sweet.
take back reality, a life time goal.
"They ground their view of the world in their ideas. The sane alternative is to ground one's ideas in one's view of the world." That nails it. Excellent essay! (Like everything else on here!)
Thank you!
If We Could Escape the Control of the Controllers: A Vision
We could make a world that benefits everyone including the environment. Let me share a vision, not a blueprint. Each continent would have its super quantum computer with AI to sort out the needs and offerings (services, goods, and resources) of every village and city minute by minute. This could be coordinated on a world scale. It would be managed horizontally with no central authority. It could also be used as a repository for all innovations.
There would be an agreed upon social contract that guarantees human rights, perhaps similar to the United Nations Charter, which unfortunately, is not currently followed. The platform for organizing would be horizontal governance, which is extremely transparent, autonomous, and virtually incorruptible, politicians and lobbyists would not exist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wywMhg604W8).
The world would be confederated under the social contract, for the purpose of collaboration and cooperation.
The aim would be to create social environments where everyone flourishes. Where the needs that all humans share would be most easily met. A world of caring, of unconditional love for everyone and respect for the environment.
There would be no militarization.
It takes one generation for people to be acculturized (look at Germany). If there is a healthy, just, and caring culture, there would be a healthy, just, and caring people. A society, if not controlled (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btF6nKHo2i0) by psychopaths, narcissists, nazi/eugenicists (https://canadianpatriot.org/2021/05/09/for-victory-day-its-time-to-think-about-finally-winning-wwii/)or anyone is dependent on the quality, the personal integrity and empathetic abilitiy of the people. We need societies of honest, kind, reliable, caring, rational, and humble people if we are ever going to create the more beautiful world that every heart longs for.
I know from living in a small intentional eco-community (chambalabamba.org), that we can only succeed by having people with noble characteristics. One person lacking these, can undermine and destroy the community. The same holds for the macrocosm, the whole world.
And thus there is the existential conundrum: We need a just and caring society to create just and caring people and we need just and caring people to create a just and caring society. Oh, how can we do this? Maybe, just start doing it, but first we must restructure from vertical to horizontal and rid ourselves of the tyrannous grip of the controllers by organizing on a global scale, by using encrypted apps, by invitation only, like element/matrix.
We bring the world to a standstill once again but this time we inform as many as we can to stock up on food and necessities for at least 3 months. The indigenous did it in Ecuador recently with the STOP for 18 days. The truckers did it in Canada. And we demand restructuring ALL governments from vertical to horizontal. And we begin.
First however, people need to be informed about what is horizontal governance (link above), and why it is necessary as explained in the Confessions of an Economic Hitman (linked above). We don't need leaders who promote war and militarism, and vaccine mandates that are unnecessary, dangerous, tyrannical, and don't work, that is, that perpetrate crimes against humanity. Or to be constantly propagandized with false information to manufacture our false beliefs, in order to manipulate us.
People can begin being activists by sharing this vision and these 2 videos
A most useful concept!
You've upgraded both my lexicon and maps of this world.
Thank you!