Timothy Birdnow

"Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations"

Frederich Nietzsche

"we now have a situation in which everybody's listening to people who already agree with them and are further and further reinforcing their own realities to the neglect of a common reality that allows us to have a healthy debate"

Barack Obama 4/24/17

http://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/news/a44738/president-obama-university-of-chicago-transcri

Barack Hussein Obama has returned from his Society Island soirée ready to take on the world, and the former President gave a speech in which he yet again trashed his political opponents for refusing to accept the scripted talking points issued by the mainstream media. Mr. Obama, who has made "common facts" his crusade of late, tore into the divisions of opinion that splinter the modern landscape. This isn't the first time, either; in his farewell address to the nation Mr. Obama railed against the alternative media:

http://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news/president-barack-obama-to-give-farewell-speech-in-chicago

"For too many of us, it's become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or college campuses or places of worship or our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. The rise of naked partisanship, increasing economic and regional stratification, the splintering of our media into a channel for every taste - all this makes this great sorting seem natural, even inevitable. And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we accept only information, whether true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that's out there."

So now Obama has become the champion of objective truth over relativism. Strange; it is the Progressive Left that has championed moral and cultural relativism for decades, and has promoted the very thing Mr. Obama is complaining about now, namely, the balkanization of society via multiculturalism.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has this to say about Multiculturalism:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/multiculturalism/

"While the term has come to encompass a variety of prescriptive claims, it is fair to say that proponents of multiculturalism reject the ideal of the "melting pot” in which members of minority groups are expected to assimilate into the dominant culture in favor of an ideal in which members of minority groups can maintain their distinctive collective identities and practices."

And yet Obama and the other liberals who have foisted this balkanizing influence on America now complain at their own success; having marginalized conservatives and white Christian people, they are angry that said group refuses to endure the domination of Progressive culture. They want it both ways; allow any minority group to exercise their own cultural and moral authority in any way they choose but demand obedience from the majority. And we ARE the majority; only 24% of the populace self identifies as liberal. http://www.gallup.com/poll/180452/liberals-record-trail-conservatives.aspx

Multiculturalism has always been closely tied to the concept of Moral and cultural relativism. We should embrace all cultures, we have been told repeatedly, because all are equally valid, and our view of reality is inextricably tied to our point of view.

That was the argument of Protagoras (circa 450 B.C.) who stated:

"The measure of ‘truth’ is the viewpoint of the man himself"

Plato soundly destroyed this argument as a thing cannot be the proof of itself, and if a man's reality is dependent on his viewpoint then this very argument has no concrete reality. And so matters stood until the 19th Century when Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) came along to deny the ability of Man to perceive reality. Kant wasn't a relativist but believed we can only know things through our limited senses and that a higher reality was completely beyond our grasp. Enter the Germans. Indeed, most bad ideas have sprung from Germany, and Relativism is no exception. Nietzsche was at the core of this, arguing against rationality which he thought was unknowable. Actually, Nietzsche made a great case for religion, but having leapt from the precipice of a failed reason alone he refused to grasp the cliff on the other side and plummeted into the bottomless pit. His embrace of nihilism led to his ultimate insanity and death, yet Germany embraced much of his thinking and in the end it was his moral relativism that gave us the Third Reich. When one disdains Reason and disparages God he has no choice but to create his own - and that generally means placing himself on the throne. That is at the roots of modern Progressivism.

Quantum mechanics gave Relativism a big leg up, as The Copenhagen Interpretation http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec15.html said that the observer is the vital component to "collapsing the wavefront" and determining the observed position of subatomic particles. (their actual position is a probability.) Actually, Niels Bohr argued it went further, and that the macro world was subject to the phenomenon as well. This led Edwin Schrödinger to create his famous cat in the box experiment,https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/schrodinger%27s_cat.htm not to simply explain Copenhagen but to criticize it. But the Copenhagen people simply said "exactly!" and that was that. Needless to say, the "reality is subjective" mantra got a big push forward by Quantum physics in the minds of those who did not understand it.

And Sigmund Freud, perverted father of liberal libertinism, was soundly in the relativist camp. Freud argued that God was nothing but an infantile desire for a father figure, which means there is no objective moral code.

But it was in the Progressive invented science of anthropology that relativism really took off. Franz Boas and his protégé' Margaret Mead had a profound impact on the thinking of the Progressive era, as did Ruth Benedict. All argued for the moral equality of every culture. That a cultural practice may make sense but is reprehensible seemed to elude them. Slavery makes eminent good sense in a society with limited resources, but it is morally depraved. Cannibalism expands your food supply and thus makes a certain amount of sense, but it likewise is a depravity and a disease vector.

I find it quite interesting to note that anthropologist Richard A. Shweder of Osama’s very own University of Chicago continues to promote deep cultural relativism.

So what's the point? Simply that the intellectual engines of modern liberals is intertwined with a denial of a concrete reality but rather a vision of a society splintered and divided into compartmentalized reality. Why does this fable exist in their minds? Because, like Lucifer (the being Osama’s hero Saul Alinsky dedicated his book Rules for Radicals to) the Left seeks to make themselves gods.

Doubt that? What is "transgenderism" other than a complete denial of reality? It is a simple refusal to accept that God made them male or female, to insist on the right to decide this ourselves. It is precisely what Nietzsche meant by the Superman, the self-willed. It is the sin of the Devil himself, an act of sorcery.

There are so many other examples of this; feminism, for example, seeks to overthrow the nature of male and female. Socialism seeks to overthrow the laws of economics. Gay marriage attacks the very heart of marriage and family, redefining it in strange and damaging ways. Liberals promote every sort of alternative religion because it helps to break down the traditional moral codes and beliefs of our culture. They ignore our laws and Constitution because they want no check on their power and authority to determine the meaning of reality. In schools liberals teach children there are no right or wrong answers.

In short, they demand the right to determine the nature of reality. That is the sin of sorcery.

And Barack Obama promoted all of these things and more when he was president, so it is not just a little disingenuous of him to be angry at our "different facts". The reality is that the Left has been using alternative facts for decades now, promoting strange and novel ideas as "settled science". Global Warming, for instance, has not a shred of scientific proof (with no planetary warming since 1998, at least) and yet we are told it's settled and need to accept the liberal prescriptions. Climate science continually fakes data and we are told WE are the problem! Liberals promote such preposterous claims as 25% of college women will be raped on campus, http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/article/Sexual-Assault-Statistics-and-Myths or that Muslims are the victims of racial violence in America, or that there are constant microaggressions against people of color by a racist America. Mike Brown was murdered by a racist for walking while black. The list goes on and on.

Meanwhile the left-wing media simply spikes stories it doesn't like. For example, it took Matt Drudge to report on Monica Lewinsky back in the Clinton era, and the media completely ignored Hillary's multiple felonious violations during the last campaign.

Reality is what THEY determine it to be! But Barack Obama wants us to have common facts, yessiree.

In the end Barack Obama is a false god, the visible manifestation of the Progressive belief that Man is the measure of all things. False gods to not like to be contradicted.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:19 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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