Thursday 1 December 2011

Why there are no more truth-seekers

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John C Wright explains in a mini essay too good to be lost in the comments section of his posting.

http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/11/on-what-we-lost/

Wright is following-up on a prior commenter who says: A man who believes his wife faithful, and later finds that it is not so, has presumably lost some joy; it does not follow that he ought not to have learned the truth. And if, in the ensuing divorce, he also loses a shrewish mother-in-law and a horde of impecunious cousins, I would hesitate to call him wrong if he says that he is better off, even if a bit sadder.

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Wright's reply includes the following:


In this particular case the “wife” is a metaphor for the truth and the love of it that animated philosophers and saints of the past days whom we moderns now despise with malice.

That malice is the opposite of the humble yet manly sternness of character needed to follow the truth whereso it may lead, despite all costs. "

Hence, one cannot seek the truth despite all costs if one believes the malicious modern doctrine that “truth” is either scientific data hence meaningless or else is arbitrary personal opinion hence meaningless.

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There is no such thing as a Socrates who flatters the mob to save his life; there is no such thing as a Prometheus who cringes to Jove and obeys, leaving man to suffer as beasts in the dark.

Likewise, one cannot seriously speak of seeking the truth despite all costs when the ‘truth’ sought is but the only truth is that there is no truth: that man is an animal, and animals are machines, and cosmos is matter in motion, the human thoughts (all but one’s own, conveniently) are the passive epiphenomena of an ill-tuned instrument called the brain.

When all human thought for all eons sees truth, beauty, and goodness in the cosmos, the so called truthseekers of the modern truth dismiss this as lens aberration.

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What is really being sought, in the narrow and empty darkness of the modern mind, is not truth but comfort. It is a transparent self-justification meant only to flatter one’s ego, to call oneself the creator of a private reality and the legislator of a private moral code: It allows one’s guilty conscience the false but comforting believe that no evil and no omission committed will ever be paid for.

http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/11/on-what-we-lost/


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Once philosophers, scientists, and then pretty much all modern intellectuals had swallowed the nonsense that humble yet manly sternness of character needed to follow the truth whereso it may lead, despite all costs led to the only truth is that there is no truth: that man is an animal, and animals are machines, and cosmos is matter in motion... then that was an end to philsophy, science and reason.

then the door was wide-open to invasion from lies in service of expediency; and - my goodness - didn't they just come stampeding in!

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