Blind Spot

The subject at hand is a bit hard to articulate. Hard to articulate because it is counterintuitive. Counterintuitive because, against all our struggle loosing from the traps of liberal supremacy, we still find it hard not to believe they understand what they mean, that they have thought things through fully. That they know well of what they speak. After all aren’t they the inheritors of the Enlightenment? Isn’t what they hold held in the pure light of reason, having rebelled against the superstitions of faith? Truth is they seldom have reasoned justification, but their confidence throws our attention, protecting the content of their positions from scrutiny. Sure we can easily disprove their arguments at their conclusion manifested in failed policy; the reductio ad absurdum of social practice. But pointing out these failures will only appeal to the pragmatic mind. The Left does not insist on success to confirm the veracity of their positions. Their success is not necessary to confirm righteousness; right action rooted in right intent. They are content with 10% success and happy to blame the moral lethargy of the greater society for the lack of the remaining 90 –the rub being that 100% of society is transformed to affect these meager successes. Yet this very disposition reveals the slippery moral premise at the heart of their confidence. We will attempt to tie this serpent down and poke a stick into it.

It has been said elsewhere that the Left functions as a cult. It is not really interested in reason, or in liberal discourse, though it claims both of these virtues to itself. In truth it wants no part of conversing with opponents, and simply quarantines enemies. Labeling satanic anything it considers authoritarian or that insists on bringing the conversation back to nagging facts. Facts set limits to utopian vision. And Progs must not let anything set limits to the progressive gospel of liberating all marginal people and giving each a place in the sun at the centre of society. As written above, it enacts this mission with single-minded zeal; without a shred of doubt in the necessity of the endeavour. Progs act to elevate the marginalized, simultaneously destroying ‘systems of oppression’ in conviction to the moral obviousness of these efforts which would make a medieval pope blush. Victims of Prog objectives are themselves oppressors. Because the revolutionary’s intent to abolish victimhood is from a pure heart, error is impossible. If people are hurt, it is from their own selfishness or lack of commitment to the overarching precepts of Social Justice Warrior Brand™ social justice. The theoretical causes of the victimization they put forward for any oppressed group or individual are necessarily the true causes because as liberators they alone can make plain the tangled web of oppression. Because of the purity of their hearts and the righteous intent of their will they are above question the best, yeah the only judges of how society functions and how it will be educated into a social paradise if only stubborn reactionaries would not be so selfish, hanging onto their mean old ideas. “Praise the void though,’ We shall overcome’.”

That sums up the disposition fairly well. But we are left with a great uncertainty, what is the source of this conviction? What is its ground? It is at once present, and elusive. Obvious, yet unnamed. Personally I have smacked up against it as if against a wall. And though it gave a concussion, I could not quite tell what it was constructed from. It may well be that it is made of nothing –nothing tangible or provable. That is it is not built from data or sound reason, certainly nothing as stolid as tradition, but is constructed purely from will. Yet, not a positive will, that is, not a position. Rather an opposition. In opposition to the past, in opposition to nature [A], authority, God and anything that came before it started reinventing the world last week. But as it is not based on proof it is based entirely on faith. Progs cannot recognize this though. They are incapable of faith, or so they flatter themselves. Belief is for God people, and there is no God. This lack of belief has set them free from all the categories that Theists were and are subject to. Removing God from consideration grants the Secular Progressive infallible insight into the personal and social condition of the human community. This single act of intellect also imbues the Prog Brahman with creative insight into the best design for society and how to best advise all and everyone on how to live the most fulfilling life. They are really quite something.

The funny thing is denying the efficacy of the category ‘God’ does not logically grant any special power. For if God does not exist then God never existed. God never had influence. So whatever the God-believing people were doing before was not affected by God. They were just doing what people do, while attributing ‘God’ as the source of their political and social will. It is difficult to imagine a non-superstitious reading that would support the notion that merely believing in a non-existent God (in a world where no Gods exists) could radically alter the believer’s categories of perception. `God`is merely shorthand for macro social-psychological principles. More so, it is impossible to understand why denying God’s existence, in such a world, should grant the denier any special powers of perception de facto. In a world without God there is no metaphysical advantage in either believing or denying the existence of God. That is, simply denying the existence or efficacy of God cannot invoke the strong moral confidence of the contemporary Secular Progressive. This confidence is in truth a conceit; an unproven merit. Logic and reason from evidence is all any Western school of thought has to make its case.

I hope it is clear that this is not an argument for the existence of God. It is rather a start of a consideration into the roots of Progressive chauvinism. This societal transfer to non-belief provides a kind of origin myth for secularists, and as with all faith systems it imbues the holder with special powers of insight and social organization. Yet, these people are utterly blind to their state of belief. There is nothing in Secular Atheism or Agnosticism that makes the holder immune from the same pitfalls that Theists and believers of any kind have. Ask them, though, to see things this way and they will rail against the challenge to the untarnished superlatively of their perceptions as tenaciously as any fundamentalist. But unlike the most fundie of fundies, they are unaware of their faith as faith. This is the most dangerously myopic disposition of Leftists; they are utterly blind to their own subjectivity; uncomprehending that they are really doing nothing new in the world. But in denying this fact, they act with more violent self-assurance than the most believing believers.

[A] I once had dedicated Progressive friend tell me quite proudly that, “We now do things that are against nature”.

Image: Cultural Marxism #2, digital collage, by William Scott