Masters and Slaves

Warning: This post is going to be harsh and offensive.  If you're disinterested in raw emotions coupled with stinging invectives, stop reading now.  If you can keep a dispassionate view and recognise this entry as what it is--an explosion of stressful feelings not directed at anyone in particular--then keep reading.

Who are the masters among us?

They seem to be those who manipulate and weasel their way into positions of power, thinking themselves suited for directing the lives of others.  They seem to be curdled souls tortured by unresolved psychological issues, who, in a sadistic twist, see fit to inflict their misery on others.  They seem to be the kinds of people who trip a macabre dance through the web of society, warts covering their eyes, and pestilential ideals burning the light of their days.  They seem to be the man or woman who thinks nothing of passing a regulation, bill, or expectation that indentures others to false pretenses, moral dissonance, and self-abasement.

Who are the slaves among us?

These passive souls lack the courage to block the passage of those who would purposefully dominate them.  They can't--sometimes won't-- see their own personal sovereignty as a human being, a member of the natural world.  They kowtow to the masters for fear of  being ruled too harshly; as if by cowering blindly under a self-proclaimed dominator their life will go easier for them; as if by denying the freedom inherent to their existence they will be able to gain the approval of those who seat themselves in places of authority.  They are willlingly blind, purposefully silent, self-abnegating, falsely humble, arrogantly immoral about their own self-worth, given to humourless self-deprecation, and easy to turn against their own kind.  They are sickly, weak, tepid personalities forced ever deeper into their own concentric shells by the force of their own untamed illusions and the violent machinations of those who presume the place of a master.

But the master doesn't need to be a maniacal fuckwit stamping about the earth in some sophisticated temper-tantrum; he doesn't have to be the person who gains his titular superiority by seeing how many people he can manipulate into bending over.  He can give those things up for a more reasonable, more mindful way of being.  He can change his negative self-limitations into positive self-sovereignty.

Similarly, the slave doesn't have to be a slave.  The alternative is blindingly simple: he can choose to be free.  He can shed his snake-oiled false humility, straighten his shoulders and recognise that he belongs: he belongs inherently to a class of creatures that have a unique freedom.  Why should anyone, let alone a slave, limit himself by his own preconceptions of useless servility?  Why serve something "greater" while touting the contradictory message that you are "unique"?  Doesn't that uniqueness assume the greater?  Doesn't being unique mean, definitionally, that you are greater?  What can be greater than the singular essence of your unique self?  There has never been a you before you, and there never will be another you after you: that makes you the "greatest," doesn't it?


If you fit the abject cowardliness of the modern slave, if you understand that your limitations are self-imposed (e.g., you can't do such-and-such because you haven't gone to university to get your letters), if you're the person who sneers at mainstream social impositions (e.g., getting an English degree to prove you can refer to others who write well), then bloody-well get off your ass and start doing it!  You don't need to modify your desires, your ambitions, your passions, to fit anyone else's expectations of how you should be.  Stop listening to the message of the masters, the slave-drivers.  See your uniqueness as your evidence of your sovereignty.

If the fact that no-one else is you doesn't convince you that you are, definitively, "the greatest," then you will always be the slave, the milquetoast personality that aspires to mediocrity, that lives under the bar as if it was a roof instead of raising it or removing it; if you cannot break free of the master-slave mentality that so predominates our cultural mechanisms, if you cannot declare your own personal freedom and sovereignty, then you are a slave and you will be ruled.  You will be ruled by the same self-limiting assholes that have made it profitable to thrive off of your weakness, your lack of creativity, your refusal to be a self-actuating personality.

Your uniqueness is proof of your greatness; it is the evidence of your personal sovereignty.  Stop feasting on the blandishments of mediocrity, of commonplace social expectations.  Start self-directing, self-dictating.  In essense, start being rationally selfish.  Or to put it less controversially, don't be afraid of self-referencing decisions: you are not required to sacrifice your personhood for the predeterminations of others who are no more fit to rule you than a camel is to play a guitar.  Be free.  Rule yourself.

Rational Warrant: A Critique, P. I

An argument for belief in God attempts to establish credible evidence for a divine overseer orchestrating, or being aback of, the universe.  The direction of all argumentation concerning God's existence is to start with what we do know and extrapolate outward to the best possible conclusion concerning things we don't know. 

For example, the Cosmological Argument proposes that from matter we can extrapolate that there must have been a designer because all of what is, is contingent (i.e., dependent on other material things).  That everything material is contingent necessitates that there must have been one non-contingent, or wholly independent beginning to everything else.  This wholly independent thing is often referred to as "God."

From the example of the Cosmological Argument, it can be seen that the argument progresses from what is known (the existence and characteristics of the material world) to what is unknown (God).  A note on that point: by 'God as an unknown', I simply mean that the argument itself does not prove the existence of a super-being so much as it illustrates a logical correlation; namely, that the material world seems to exist in such a way that it must have derived its existence from a point not dependent on it.  However, correlation is not causality, so the Cosmological Argument cannot be used as a proof proper for God's existence; it can, however, be used as a reduction to a possible conclusion; a "rational warrant", as it were.

Which brings us to the point of this article: I do not consider rational warrant to be anything more than begging the question (circular reasoning), or a cheap rhetorical trick that ends in relativism.

First, anyone reasoning along the lines of a classic proof such as the Cosmological Argument already has in mind the inevitable conclusion, which is fine if you are attempting to defend the cosmological proposition for God.  As a friend recently reminded me, all debate happens that way: the opposing sides know what their conclusions are, and they argue accordingly toward those conclusions.  But notice that the conclusions are already assumed.  Philosophically speaking then, arguments for and against the existence of God already assume the conclusion to the proofs they offer.  This is wholesale question-begging: X is true, this is how X is true, therefore X is true; or, God is real, the cosmological argument shows that, therefore God is real.

Now, as my friend stated, and I agreed, such reasoning is fine in a debate setting because it would be a little improper to go into a debate not knowing your position on the resolution.  However, for a philosophical proof and a didactic aide, such reasoning only gives a person logical permission to assume a plausible conclusion; that is, "rational warrant."  And rational warrant, is not proof.  Rational warrant cannot firm up the link between correlation and causality, therefore it is not conclusive proof.  Rational warrant is only a fancy way of giving yourself permission to believe a given plausibility clause when the hard work of reasoning through a syllogism is over.

That brings us to my second point: "rational warrant" is a cheap rhetorical trick.  Suppose I was to say to you, "there is a 900 lbs. hungry tiger in the next room," and you realised there was no door between you and the hungry tiger.  You would suddenly have a swell of emotions that correlate to your inward ideas of a hungry tiger, what that tiger is capable of doing to a person, and your own need for safety.  You would, in fact, have what Kant described as a noumenal experience.

Even before you encountered the hungry tiger, you would start experiencing that tiger as if it were real, and as if your life were in danger because of it.  Then you would take whatever measures you had to to ensure your personal safety.  All very logical, and all quite appreciable.  However, you still haven't received any proof of a hungry tiger in the next room, so you have effectively believed my proposition that "there is a 900 lbs. hungry tiger in the next room" because it was reasonable for you to believe me (at least for the purpose of this illustration!).  In effect, you had "rational warrant" to believe my claim.

Now let's say that two days later, you learned that I was just tricking you.  You would be right to be irritated, but you would also recognise the falsity of your "rationally warranted" beliefs concerning the 900 lbs. tiger.  And this is where the notion of "rational warrant" really breaks down: simply reasoning to a plausible conclusion is not proof, and that's all "rational warrant" is: reasoning to a plausible conclusion.  It is a stylised flash of rhetoric that gives a veneer of reason to a belief-claim.

Because "rational warrant" is a catch-phrase or byword indicating the right of every person to believe whatever they'd like based on their subjective experience of a thing, or a proposition, it reduces even further to relativism.  That is, the notion that what I believe is just as true and valid as what you believe, even if we disagree.  Objective reality (A is A) is thrown out the window, so to speak, in favour of a solipsistic encounter with the world.  Which is fine if you're a solipsist, but for those of us who don't simply assimilate external realities into our self-projections on the world, the relativism of "rational warrant" simply doesn't supply a useful tool to interacting with the world.

The idea of "rational warrant", as I recently learned, can only apply to those beliefs which are actually true.  In effect, this means that a vast majority of beliefs held through history have not been rationally warranted.  But that can only be known in retrospect because once a belief is shown to be false, it is no longer rationally warranted, and it can only be shown to be false after people have already believed a certain belief and thought themselves rationally warranted in doing so -- that was a mouthful, I know.

So for a believing Christian, say, they would consider their beliefs "rationally warranted" because they are able to determine correlations between what they experience (mysticism),  the contingencies in nature, and what they already assume about supernatural realities (e.g., that God exists).  Oddly though, a believing Christian would disagree with the beliefs derived of a Muslim experience, and visa versa, even though they may agree on a good number of things, too.  And both the Christians and the Muslims would be "rationally warranted" for both their agreements and disagreements surrounding their particular metaphysic.

Given the clash between competing belief systems, how can "rational warrant" be rationally claimed?  Simple answer: it cannot.  As I stated before, it is a cheap rhetorical trick used to prop-up the arguments of one set of beliefs, sometimes in the face of a competing set of beliefs.  And if competing beliefs cannot both be true (see: law of non-contradiction), then anyone claiming rational warrant for their beliefs has also to claim a relativistic mindset concerning reality.

In part II, I will discuss how a relativistic mindset toward reality not only denies reality but also reduces belief-sets (e.g., Christianity, Islam, religion in general) to agnosticism.

***Thank-you to AgnosticInnocence for the picture.***