Adam Smith on "In a nation distracted by faction..."

"In a nation distracted by faction, there are, no doubt, always a few, though commonly but a very few, who preserve their judgment untainted by the general contagion. They seldom amount to more than, here and there, a solitary individual, without any influence, excluded, by his own candour, from the confidence of either party, and who, though he may be one of the wisest, is necessarily, upon that very account, one of the most insignificant men in the society. All such people are held in contempt and derision, frequently in detestation, by the furious zealots of both parties. A true party-man hates and despises candour; and, in reality, there is no vice which could so effectually disqualify him for the trade of a party-man as that single virtue. The real, revered, and impartial spectator, therefore, is, upon no occasion, at a greater distance than amidst the violence and rage of contending parties. To them, it may be said, that such a spectator scarce exists any where in the universe. [...] Of all the corrupters of moral sentiments, therefore, faction and fanaticism have always been by far the greatest."
Adam Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments 1759 Part III Chap. III end.

Further reading: Adam Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments
Michael Eldred  Social Ontology of Whoness.

Positivism Pete

You are a hard man,
slammed the door shut.
Single-mindedly fixated on power,
with an unquenchable thirst for it,
you closed off any alternative path
— seemingly.

Your vassals are steadfastly loyal,
blindly loyal.
They applaud you for your efficiency,
your effectiveness,
your productiveness,
your practical mindedness,
your wealth of knowledge,
your endless progress.
They identify with you
as their Lord,
their God.

Is there yet a turning ahead?
Is there still a slither of light
from underneath the closed doorway?
A subtle difference of shade?

Who sees it?
Are they the wayward ones?
Wrongheadedly,
perversely,
heading froward
on the path of progress?

You know how to clear them away,
ride over them.
You know how to seduce
with promises of power,
of status,
to keep your vassals loyal,
those vassals who delude themselves
that they are free.

But do the wayward ones
yet point the way forward
by walking fromward
to hazard a fresh start?

Do they find the key to reopen
the passage to freedom
you smugly thought
to have sealed off
once and for all?

Gedanken im Kopf

Marsmensch A an Marsmensch B nach der Rückkehr As zum Mars von der Erdbeobachtungsstation, die sich versteckt auf der fernen Seite des Erdmonds befindet:
A: "...Und diese Erdlinge glauben in allem Ernst, daß sie Gedanken im Kopf haben."
B (schmunzelnd): "Wirklich?!"
A: "Ja, wirklich!"
B: "Kaum zu glauben!"
A: "Sie hatten einmal ein großes Genie namens Einstein oder so ähnlich. Nach seinem Tod (ja, Erdlinge tun so was wie 'sterben') haben diese Erdlinge das Gehirn aus dem Schädel dieses Einsteins entfernt, es in kleine Teile zerschnitten und es u.a. mit Metallspitzen elektrisch traktiert, um die große Denkkraft zu entdecken, die nach ihrem Glauben im Gehirn angesiedelt ist."
B krümmt sich vor Lachen auf dem Marsboden.
A: "Und hier kommt das Beste: sie basteln sogar an Maschinen, die nach ihrem Glauben künstliche Intelligenz erzeugen sollen."
Lautes Lachen beidseits.

#Metoo

Neulich in den vermischten Kurzmeldungen gelesen: 

In einer Pressekonferenz erklärte ein Polizeibeamter, "Laut Augenzeugenberichten wurde am letzten Freitag um circa 18:15 im Nahverkehrszug Nr. 1832 eine Person mit weiblichem Hintergrund durch einen mittelgroßen, braunhaarigen Täter im vorderen Primärgenitalbereich angefaßt."

Grammatical barbarism

It has come to the attention of the government that grammatical barbarism has been seeping into the English language for centuries — and they are doing something about it! They have appointed a committee of distinguished scholars at the National Academy. A series of measures have been taken to stop the mental rot. "These sort of things are barbaric," said one committee member. "All the data is pointing to the decay, but the media is stubbornly ignoring it. This amounts to gross negligence on its part." Each member of the committee are concerned with the lax attitude toward grammatical correctness pervasive today. "I am familiar with someone that doesn't know the difference between singular and plural," commented another committee member. "From various forums we know that hardly anyone still knows about the plural and singular endings of Latin words, as if a highly infectious bacteria was being spread. As for Greek endings, nobody has a criteria any longer for telling whether a word is singular or plural." He went on, "One professor who we are acquainted with cannot distinguish between nominative and accusative case and hides his embarrassment by exclusively using 'that' as the relative pronoun for both things and people! This isn't just a matter between you and I, but needs to be made public. Social media is probably the most effective way to halt this downward spiral."

Philoblues: Degenerating Mind Blues

A scrappy philoblues to make us all feel bluesy bad. Click:

Degenerating Mind Blues

Ontological and grammatical degeneration

Any self-respecting liberal humanist soundly rejects the objectification of people. Why? Because each of us is supposed to be a subject endowed with self-consciousness and a selfhood and personhood imbued with a dignity demanding respect from others.

The language of both the everyday and of science, however, tells a contradictorily opposed story. No one has any qualms about talking of the 'inner self' located somewhere 'deep' inside. For neuroscience it is axiomatic (but nevertheless empirically non-verifiable) that the mind is located individually in each individual head, specifically, in a physical organ, the brain. (How we could ever 'be of one mind' thereby becomes a total mystery.) Neuroscientists, among other scientists, are awarded Nobel Prizes for their research into the cognitive capacities of the brain. That quintessential dimension of time, namely, memory, is supposed to be located like a storage bin in the limbic lobe of the brain, and this is supposed to have been scientifically verified and proven. The crude ontological presupposition in this is that time itself can somehow be spatialized into a where. But what is time itself? Who possesses the temerity to put (putatively) empirically-based, scientific truth into question? Anyone doing so is exposed to ridicule and is ignored as some kind of perverse 'philosophical speculator'.

Nonetheless, philosophically it is entirely visible for those willing to interrogate obviousness that, ontologically speaking, the slide from endowing human being with a whoness demanding respect to a whatness open to objective scientific investigation has long since been consummated. No ethics is capable of cleaning up this ontological mess, simply because ethics does not think ontologically; it is ontologically defenceless.

One less conspicuous symptom of ontological degeneration is the degeneration in grammar itself. What is well said is well thought, and vice versa. Grammatical degeneration can be noticed everywhere, in particular, in the growing inability of native English speakers to distinguish grammatically between singular and plural. The Brits, especially, cannot help but turn singular nouns into so-called collective nouns (e.g 'The government are...') or lack of apposition between noun and very (e.g. 'A series of experiments have shown...'). The Americans have forgotten the plural endings of Latinate nouns such as 'data', 'media', 'phenomena', 'criteria', etc., resulting in such abominations as 'mediums' for the new plural of the singularized 'media'.

Another symptom is the widespread, today almost ubiquitous, use of 'that' as the personal relative pronoun of choice, which, happily, serves also as a conjunction. The advantage of 'that' as personal relative pronoun is manifest since, by replacing that fussy personal relative pronoun, 'who', it obviates having to distinguish between 'who' (nominative) and 'whom' (accusative), which English speakers have been confused about for centuries. With the all-purpose relative pronoun 'that' for both whats and whos, the tiresome cognitive effort of distinguishing between 'who' and 'whom' is eluded once and for all, and the human being itself becomes finally — and apparently irrevocably — a 'that', i.e. a 'what', subject to scientific investigation, statistical registration, state subjugation, media manipulation, advertisement targeting, and so on.

Who notices this in our consummately thoughtless times?

Further reading: Social Ontology of Whoness.