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The Church of Progress is Collapsing
Many are wondering why leftists and progressives are now on board with the most egregious forms of government tyranny, mass-censorship of any political opinions that don't 100% parrot their narrative, stasi-like spying/snitching on one's own neighbor in response to the Chinavirus/WuFlu Panicdemic, ect.
I think the answer is quite simple. The "Church of Progress" has been in a state of memetic collapse for the past several years and its most ardent and faith believers are collectively going mental because of this. They will believe whatever insane nonsense their corporate media and academic priests feed them.
Basically, humans on average are not all that intelligent; most people can't really think for themselves, and thus they need simplistic narratives to explain the universe to them. And when the narrative a person has spent their life believing in is suddenly exposed as being full of plot holes, contradictions, and inconsistencies, the believer will realize this on a subconscious level, yet on the conscious level they will do everything they can to rationalize away all the chinks in the memetic armor of the belief system in question. This battle between the conscious and subconscious minds will elicit a state of cognitive dissonance and cause the conflict person to behave in all sorts of irrational ways.
Psychologically speaking, the Church of Progress is simply a non-theistic form of Christianity; it's Protestant fundamentalism stripped of its theistic and supernatural pretenses. And this has been the de-facto religion of the contemporary liberal culture of the affluent Western world, since at leas the end of the second World War. It's doctrinal pillars are:
(1) Belief in linear history as a progression from an ultra-barbaric and superstitious past,
(2) Belief in scientific and technological progress as the primary method by which it's possible to eliminate all of humanity's ills and blemishes and thus usher in a technological utopia.
(3) The elimination of any and all other modes of thought or belief which might get in the way of the above objective.
(4) A totally materialist and empiricist worldview, despite the fact that the CoP's core doctrines did not emerge by means empirical inquiry or epistemology, but rather the mere conjecture-based opinions of various intellectuals making declarations on what is and isn't reality based on their own subjective opinions.
(5) Universalist pretensions and aspirations. According to this doctrine, there is "one humanity" which includes all members of the homo sapiens sapiens species on this planet; this can be further subdivided into two main groupings: (a) Good human beings, and (b) Problematic human beings. The former are humans who believe in [or at least publically signal their compliance] all the above doctrines, and the latter are non-believers in the above doctrines; landing oneself in the non-believer camp can happen by merely challenging or being skeptical toward just one or two tenets of the above doctrines.
(6) A belief [often unstated or unacknowledged] that there is no higher human aspiration than the experience of hedonic-type pleasure. And thus the deference to utilitarian logic on what exactly constitutes good and bad according to this worldview.
And since the exposure of the reality than more and more technology and technological gizmos indeed does not make the human condition more tolerable, and the mass-proliferation of Social Just Warrior cultists (c. about 2014-2015), the subsequent election of Donald Trump, and the exposure of liberal and left-leaning politicians and being ultra-corrupt and inimical to the founding principles of the USA, it's become painfully apparent to anyone who isn't totally brainwashed that so-called "Progress" is an empty ideology, and one that has become increasingly divorced from objective reality. Really, any system of ideas that excessive conflicts with nature, is one that is not long for this world.
I think the answer is quite simple. The "Church of Progress" has been in a state of memetic collapse for the past several years and its most ardent and faith believers are collectively going mental because of this. They will believe whatever insane nonsense their corporate media and academic priests feed them.
Basically, humans on average are not all that intelligent; most people can't really think for themselves, and thus they need simplistic narratives to explain the universe to them. And when the narrative a person has spent their life believing in is suddenly exposed as being full of plot holes, contradictions, and inconsistencies, the believer will realize this on a subconscious level, yet on the conscious level they will do everything they can to rationalize away all the chinks in the memetic armor of the belief system in question. This battle between the conscious and subconscious minds will elicit a state of cognitive dissonance and cause the conflict person to behave in all sorts of irrational ways.
Psychologically speaking, the Church of Progress is simply a non-theistic form of Christianity; it's Protestant fundamentalism stripped of its theistic and supernatural pretenses. And this has been the de-facto religion of the contemporary liberal culture of the affluent Western world, since at leas the end of the second World War. It's doctrinal pillars are:
(1) Belief in linear history as a progression from an ultra-barbaric and superstitious past,
(2) Belief in scientific and technological progress as the primary method by which it's possible to eliminate all of humanity's ills and blemishes and thus usher in a technological utopia.
(3) The elimination of any and all other modes of thought or belief which might get in the way of the above objective.
(4) A totally materialist and empiricist worldview, despite the fact that the CoP's core doctrines did not emerge by means empirical inquiry or epistemology, but rather the mere conjecture-based opinions of various intellectuals making declarations on what is and isn't reality based on their own subjective opinions.
(5) Universalist pretensions and aspirations. According to this doctrine, there is "one humanity" which includes all members of the homo sapiens sapiens species on this planet; this can be further subdivided into two main groupings: (a) Good human beings, and (b) Problematic human beings. The former are humans who believe in [or at least publically signal their compliance] all the above doctrines, and the latter are non-believers in the above doctrines; landing oneself in the non-believer camp can happen by merely challenging or being skeptical toward just one or two tenets of the above doctrines.
(6) A belief [often unstated or unacknowledged] that there is no higher human aspiration than the experience of hedonic-type pleasure. And thus the deference to utilitarian logic on what exactly constitutes good and bad according to this worldview.
And since the exposure of the reality than more and more technology and technological gizmos indeed does not make the human condition more tolerable, and the mass-proliferation of Social Just Warrior cultists (c. about 2014-2015), the subsequent election of Donald Trump, and the exposure of liberal and left-leaning politicians and being ultra-corrupt and inimical to the founding principles of the USA, it's become painfully apparent to anyone who isn't totally brainwashed that so-called "Progress" is an empty ideology, and one that has become increasingly divorced from objective reality. Really, any system of ideas that excessive conflicts with nature, is one that is not long for this world.
no subject
No totalitarian system (administration + worldview) has ever failed in this world w/o military defeat (or an uprising against what's perceived as foreign rule that amounts to military defeat; e.g. Eastern Europe, nineteen eighties).
The Soviet Union was widely perceived to be an exception only to reemerge as Soviet "Pax Russica" Union lite.
The SJW ideology is nowhere to go until it is (for a reason right or wrong) widely identified as foreign rule.
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So long as SW is only safe for a layman, it's kitchen talk.
In the year 1980 there was barely a single committed Communist in the USSR (maybe a few "back to Lenin" ones in the underground), yet the country stayed a one-party rule for ten more years.
Maybe the second Trump term would heal the center left a little bit by demonstrating that denial doesn't work.
no subject
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The SJW mind is not a random aberration but an evolution of the civil rights consensus of the 1960es which stays largely unchallenged. As long as it's that way, there would be a push for "SJW with a human face", largely missing the point (there were no mass executions in the 1980es USSR in the name of the Party anymore, nor there are today in the US in the name of equality of outcomes).
Had the hard-line party not attempted a failed coup in August 1991, for the fear of losing ground, we'd have the same unchallenged Socialist consensus in Russia (possibly represented by a spectrum of Socialist parties) all the way until today. Following the analogy, the SJW mob has to commit a crime against social peace that's widely attributed to the heart and essence of it, not to random crazy people in the streets. So far, as I am following the Antifa violence, they are getting a pass.
no subject
Really, any system of ideas that
excessive conflicts with nature,
is one that is not long for this world.
Technically, AD 1917 - 1991 might not be “long,” depending on your standards, but it was certainly long enough for those who experienced Soviet Communism, regardless of which end of the rifle they faced. And that was not the only religion to replace reality with Revealed Truth, swallow whole, as directed. There are those who would argue that organized Christianity was organized crime against humanity, and that went on for a thousand years!
no subject
I largely agree that that organized Christianity was organized crime against humanity, but its practical, sacramental forms were infused with just enough Natural Law correspondences that the system could provide people with a semi-coherent sense of meaning and purpose. Once Protestantism came long, the whole thing was revealed for what it was. After the Reformation, sects/churches would come and go and each one was largely a reflection of the specific time and place it arose and existed in.