Trump and a Post-Truth World:

Before going off the deep end with this, which smacks of New Age ideology, consider another side of Wilber.
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In general, anything published by Shambala press is garbage from a serious philosophical point of view, but most people prefer garbage, and there's no accounting for taste when 42 is as good as it gets. New Age used to refer to a serious attempt to blend eastern and western philosophies, with Heraclitus being a good example of a very asian style western philosophy, but these days New Age has become just an alternative for "occult", with almost nobody using the original definition. Taoism is considered the meat and potatoes of asian philosophy, as simple as it gets, with philosophical Taoism being the simplest and most common variety popular in the west. If you don't comprehend philosophical Taoism to a significant degree, its easy to get confused fast. The Zen claim to mix Buddhism and Taoism, but not very well if you ask me, and they are certainly not your typical asian philosophy.

Scientific Pantheism is also garbage, just militant atheists attempting to convert the world as usual. Asian philosophy has only been studied seriously by western academics for about a century now, and the original academics studying it were all religious scholars, who often wildly misinterpreted everything. Only after about 1960 did the texts slowly start to get better. The best texts on the subject today are from about 1990 on, thanks to China opening themselves to scholars and the academic community making progress with archeology and whatnot.

Asian cultures are metaphorical, not metaphysical, and most westerners have no idea what that means, even though both words are clearly defined in any dictionary, because western languages are biased towards metaphysics, and attempt to define the metaphorical in metaphysical terms. Academics could not find their own asses with both hands, or linguistic analysis would have become among the first sciences to be seriously developed, instead of, waiting until just a century ago to seriously address the subject for the first time.

A paradox can be considered simultaneously to be a metaphor, both literally and figuratively self-contradictory. Western cultures insist that paradoxes don't exist in the real world, so they can't be literal, while asians just go cross-eyed. When is a joke no longer just a joke? Whenever nobody is laughing or it happens to have practical applications. Westerners insist that anything practical can't be a joke, because it violates dualistic logic and the principle of the excluded middle. Conservatives might say that the law is never joke, but they made it illegal to vote for Mickey Mouse, and that kind of thing makes the other half of the world go cross-eyed.

 

It gets a lot better than 42.

 

The troublesome thing about Wilber's thesis is that it incorporates faith in progress: The Greens are at the top of the ladder, the benighted Blues, Reds, etc., are 'unevolved". We mustn't hold it against them, since it's not their fault. I think there's some truth to this. Education and cosmopolitan contacts do help in broadening our perspectives and helping us overcome prejudices. And people who haven't experienced these benefits are obviously not going to be able to understand. And there's the dilemma. We know that racism, sexism, nativism, and homophobia are unjust and absurd, but people who are uneducated and locked in parochial environments are incapable of similar knowledge. What do we do? Try to educate the blue collar types? That would help. But would they be interested, if some are already making better money than teachers and college professors? Humor them, by letting policies toward race, gender, sexual orientation, etc,.remain as they are? Or forge ahead, and risk backlash?

I think it's true that the Greens have been insensitive and have overdone identity politics and political correctness to the point of making them an easy target for right wing elites who have vested interests in keeping things the way they are. Jordan Peterson and other right wing gurus have risen to prominence criticizing the goings on of the "postmodernist Marxists" who supposedly control our academic institutions. But that also is an exaggeration. Hillary was impolitic in her word choice when she said we could put half of Trump supporters into the "basket of deplorables". Not politically correct at all, but those who are racist, sexist, and homophobic really are deplorable, and there really do seem to be lots of them in the Trump camp and in these forums. While it's useful to be understanding of folks who have positions contrary to our own, not to be to critical of views bred of ignorance from folks who are educationally and culturally deprived, and not to push too vigorously for sweeping changes that strike us as progressive but the majority of Americans see as dangerously radical, it's important to recognized that racism, sexism, nativism, and homophobia really are evil, and that people like Trump who exploit them for political advantage are evil, as well. So where does Wilber's elaborate evolutionary model get us? Progress doesn't just evolve; it's something we have to fight for.

 

Trump was the first to use Twitter though.

Wont be until you get a dem President in office ( which wont be until 2024 )

That we will be able to gauge how much social media in itself is part of the problem

 

Nazi Germany is no model for progress, despite being the most scientifically advanced country on the planet at the time, while the Chinese are the oldest surviving civilization on the planet and invented steel and gunpowder hundreds of years before anyone else, but simply because they were desperate. The entire workaholic populations of Japan and the white US and EU have been imploding for decades faster than any other on the planet. Wilber is the last person I would ask for a sociology lesson or how to fight a war. Some 80% of people who call themselves moral, don't apply their morality to themselves, while the work ethics of Wall Street traders go up and down with the market. People raised in extended families or who regularly volunteer the use of their own two hands in service to their community, tend to live up their own moral standards and thrive better in the long run. Its really that simple, and you can argue it isn't all you like, but we are currently destroying the entire planet in the name of growth and progress.

My work is based on a 12,000 year old tradition, that encourages academics and anyone who wishes, to criticize their own corrupt institutions anonymously within the public domain, and encourages people to ignore the assholes and keep paying it forward. Civilization itself is simply unsustainable in the long run without fundamental changes, and the way to get there is by thinking totally outside the box, and actually looking for alternatives. From my point of view everything is alive and growing and has a will and a life of its own, including human awareness and consciousness themselves, and the issue is not which is better, but how to encourage them to grow in a healthy manner.

 

Philosophers drive me fucking nuts, because they almost never use the common dictionary or bother to even consult the empirical evidence to see if any exists. They just make shit up as they go along that fits what they've been taught is acceptable. I know perhaps a dozen or more Socratic philosophers, maybe several dozen Taoists, and quite a few others, and I always tell them the same thing, stop playing around with words and stop ignoring the evidence. It doesn't take a genius to see the self-evident truth, merely the heart and brains to admit you have no clue how to use language better.

Physicists give me the opposite problem, throwing around empirical evidence, and then playing with words as if they were interpreting magical runes. Give me a fucking break people. Learn how to share your fucking words. Linguistic analysis is not new, Game theory is not new, and all the empirical evidence clearly demonstrates that the English language has two grammars, one explicit and one vague, while conscious thought has already proven to emerge from our emotions, and grammar is related to the proximity of syntax within the brain. If you don't know what that means, I suggest learning how to ask fucking questions and do some fucking research. You really and truly, don't have to just make shit up.

If you believe in asian philosophy at all, then life is as much like a puzzle you assemble, and only make sense of later on. Assume the puzzle will interpret itself for you, and there may be no end of pieces to assemble repeatedly, to see how they all best fit together. When you cannot think of a way to assemble them better, assume it is your mortal fallibility, and not the truth itself which is the Face of God none may look upon and remember in all its glory. Keep going, because the minute you think you have the answer, you are wrong! Try! There is no try! Do or do not!

 

They are fucking organizing like chickens according to forty years of extensive studies, and around 80% of them do not apply their own morality to themselves, applying it sporadically to others. You don't need to romanticize fucking chickens and morality, when we already have evidence for metaethics and morality being two sides of the same coin. All the evidence says what they require is intimacy, living in larger extended families and using their own two hands in service to their community, and they thrive better in the long run and live up to their own moral stands, according to even the Evangelical Bana Group.

Again, academics are all too often assholes, who couldn't find their own ass with both hands. Nobody, and I mean nobody, was surprised to learn they organize like chickens, except academic philosophers and conservatives and militant fucking atheists, who play with words nonstop. They are all hypocrits, who refuse to share their words and play nice. They've booted me off every academic website imaginable, for merely pointing out what their own empirical evidence proves. They've also stolen 40 years of research from my computer, that was already in the public domain, because they are fucking chickenshit chickens who would gladly peck any number of people to death.

I sometimes tell people to study the humor of Groucho Marx, Gonzo the Muppet, and the Three Stooges, and take up raising chickens. Then you will comprehend the insanity known as modern academic philosophy. All modern philosophers do is invent new ways for lawyers to exploit the system and for physicists to make better toaster ovens and atomic bombs. Chomsky was wrong, wrong, wrong so get over it already!

 

I have waves of arguments going through my head right now. Here where I am in Indiana there are people who want to interpret the US constitution exactly as it was written. When they see ALL MEN they insist women are excluded by original intent of the framers. Then there is the old Confederate reasoning which says Blacks are 3/5 of a human, and Indians are to be dealt with by Congress … exclusively. So after reading what you have put out, I started to draw from Rolston Holmes's Environmental Ethics which says there may be situations in the state of nature where the evil, the bad, and the undesired could happen; but, it is up to us to assume a moral duty to protect the weak and those who need our help. People do that all the time, like when they help beached whales, or an elephant which had gotten stuck in mire. Under Trump's leadership, there have been several attacks on endangered and protected rare animals. His attacks on vulnerable humans are even more evil. He's is sending sick people back to Latin America to die. He sent a diabetic Christian to die alone in Iraq. So the way I see it is through the moral imperative. It's up to us to make the world better.

 

I'm seeing things here through the morality eye glasses. The Blue Collar and Deplorable need an example to follow, just like people took up care for the environment after Edward Abby wrote Monkey Wrench Gang. The Deplorables have been following Mike Pence & CO. And, he has assumed the position of lead bull with expertise. Sometimes there has to be a lead steer.

 

When were we ever in a "truth" world? Lies are as old as humanity.

 

Computers are making it easier to fool people every day, and within twenty years will be a million times more powerful than the human brain. Either people start sharing their words and playing nice, or they will be swept aside with the trash. The more bullshit people spout and believe, the easier they are to lie to. They will either learn to admit when they are ignorant, of be left behind.

 

We were, at least, collectively dedicated to the truth. I think that is what is meant. Trump tells so many lies it's just become the new normal way of doing business.

 

Well, at least humanity can divest itself for the most part since Trump is doing the bulk of the lying!

 

Lies are as old as humanity; however, I understand the title of this thread to mean Truth is a desired goal and quest for Truth is noble. Trump has gone to war with the Truth and used modern forms of disinformation to confuse voters as he dishes out insults to political opponents. Today he told a crowd in Minnesota that Biden got to be Vice President because he kissed Obama's ass. We Democrats can ask the same about Mike Pence.

 

Good Point!