Posted on 12/31/2020 12:06:00 PM PST by MtnClimber
Many of the greatest horrors of the history of humanity owe their occurrence solely to the establishment and social enforcement of a false reality. With gratitude to the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper and his important 1970 essay “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” for the term and idea, we can refer to these alternative realities as ideological pseudo-realities.
Pseudo-realities, being false and unreal, will always generate tragedy and evil on a scale that is at least proportional to the reach of their grip on power—which is their chief interest—whether social, cultural, economic, political, or (particularly) a combination of several or all of these. So important to the development and tragedies of societies are these pseudo-realities when they arise and take root that it is worth outlining their basic properties and structure so that they can be identified and properly resisted before they result in sociopolitical calamities—up to and including war, genocide, and even civilizational collapse, all of which can take many millions of lives and can ruin many millions more in the vain pursuit of a fiction whose believers are, or are made, sufficiently intolerant.
The Nature of Pseudo-realities Pseudo-realities are, simply put, false constructions of reality. It is hopefully obvious that among the features of pseudo-realities is that they must present a plausible but deliberately wrong understanding of reality. They are cult “realities” in the sense that they are the way that members of cults experience and interpret the world—both social and material—around them. We should immediately recognize that these deliberately incorrect interpretations of reality serve two related functions. First, they are meant to mold the world to accommodate small proportions of people who suffer pathological limitations on their abilities to cope with reality as it is. Second, they are designed to replace all other analyses and motivations with power, which these essentially or functionally psychopathic individuals will contort and deform to their permanent advantage so long as their pseudo-real regime can last.
Pseudo-realities are always social fictions, which, in light of the above, means political fictions. That is, they are maintained not because they are true, in the sense that they correspond to reality, either material or human, but because a sufficient quantity of people in the society they attack either believe them or refuse to challenge them. This implies that pseudo-realities are linguistic phenomena above all else, and where power-granting linguistic distortions are present, it is likely that they are there to create and prop up some pseudo-reality. This also means that they require power, coercion, manipulation, and eventually force to keep them in place.
>>We should never underestimate how psychologically weakening and damaging it is to be forced to treat as true something that is not true...
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
— Frontpage Interview with Dr. Theodore Dalrymple: Our Culture, What’s Left Of It interviewed by Jamie Glazov [August 31, 2005]
Here's the problem: when a person agrees to 'agree with a lie' - they have three choices: 1. They can know they're being forced to repeat a lie but still reject the lie internally. 2. They can reject the lie until they're broken by the process of evil. Or 3. They can convince themselves the lie is true and join with the thugs control freaking other citizens.
s not true...
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
— Frontpage Interview with Dr. Theodore Dalrymple: Our Culture, What’s Left Of It interviewed by Jamie Glazov [August 31, 2005]
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Brilliant. We never get articles and opinion pieces like this anymore because everyone is too politically correct aka fake “woke” even those who are supposed to be on our side.
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Some may argue that MAGA is a utopian notion in its own right, and that the Ten Commandments are totalitarian. In my experience normal people do not think or speak along the lines published here, this being a type of gnosis that purports to outdo the others. Also, it would have been beneficial to see specific examples of abusive rhetoric and sophistry employed in the interest of pseudo-realities.
“Knowledge puffs up. Love builds up.”
Bookmarking for tomorrow’s must-reads.
Good illustrations for this article.
Thanks for the post!!
That was an interesting piece! I posted it a while ago. I am surprised that people are still commenting on it every few weeks.
“It’s real simple - there are some people born into the world who end up craving power and control over others the way normal people crave oxygen - they become Democrats and ultimately, as we are seeing, would-be dictators......”
This article addresses that:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3920426/posts
BTTT
For later.
L
You mention genders, please allow me to detail what was taught about the words gender and sex in the fifties. I entered public school first grade in 1950. We were taught from an early age that there are two SEXES, male and female. We were taught that there are THREE, YES THREE, GENDERS. The three genders we were taught were masculine, feminine and neuter but gender only applied to WORDS, YES WORDS, pronouns to be exact. She, her, hers are examples of feminine pronouns, he, his, him are examples of masculine pronouns and they, them, those, these, their are examples of NEUTER pronouns. I am 76 and I cannot take seriously the current absurdity about gender. No one seems to speak the language I learned as a child and which was known as English at that time.
Kipling is magnificent, if I could remember all that was written by Poe and Kipling I would be an educated man.
With all the anti-white hatred I race relations in a huge setback. And it could lead to attempted genocide as some of the black liberation theology crowd claim they want.
I really think “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” could easily be the anthem of conservatism.
It should be the anthem of conservatism.
An article I posted from JAMES LINDSAY’s website, NEW DISCOURSES, back in December. He has a large amount of material there. I did not immediately put his Youtube interview together with his website.
Ping.
The wokeism, racism and genderism has gone bonkers this year. I need to re-read this entire article to remind myself about all of the ways these false realities influence society.
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