I study ideologies like an entomologist studies bugs. I keep running across the same thing over and over again where humans look like a special kind of p-zombie. I won't summarize what a p-zombie is so go look at the link if you don't know what I'm talking about.
I basically see over and over again this thing where people are unable to see through the eyes of others, philosophically speaking. Apparently the human theory of mind does not extend to being able to see through the ideologies of other people. My mother developed paranoid schizophrenia when I was seven and then I was adopted by Scientologists. First, to survive, I had to play along with my mother's schizophrenia. Then to survive I had to play along with my adoptive parents Scientology. The transition from playing along with one to playing along with the other came naturally to me since I already had prior experience. This means that my whole childhood was marked by viewing adults as insane.
So I know a thing or two about immersing myself in the viewpoint of others, and what I know is that other people are completely incapable of immersing themselves in the viewpoints of others. Humans are a kind of philosophical zombie that cannot model the consciousness of other people. Women are even worse in this regard, not better, because they live through their emotions and because their pussy power means they don't have to understand the minds of men. In a society with equal rights, (which is to say a society where women have sexual power over men, a society of unequal need), the female ability to understand the male mind atrophies. A muscle is only as strong as it is used. A society of luxury becomes fat and delusional. Since I've been forced to develop and use the muscle of seeing through the eyes of others, and since that immersive empathy is so extreme it extends to understanding their comprehensive ideological worldview, this muscle has never atrophied for me. I don't think I'm better than you, but I do have an ability most people never develop.
I can almost perfectly play the part of any zealot, in any context or cult, and have used this to hang with all kinds of people from various walks of life and all kinds of crazy ideologies just because I wanted to learn and see what it was about.
Humans are entertaining.
And it's entertaining to go undercover and see the madness from the inside. And what I can tell you is that people are a kind of philosophical zombie. They lack the ability to consider that other people have entire world views and viewpoints and convictions completely opposed to their own. Thinking that the other guy is evil is the oldest and stupidest cognitive bias. Everyone believes that it's good versus evil but really it's evil versus evil because everyone is evil and everyone thinks they are good. Seriously, you are evil, I am evil, we're all evil, and we all believe sincerely that we are the good guys. This right here is original sin. The Bible describes humans as being blameless in the Garden of Eden. It says they fell because they ate from the tree of knowledge and knew good from evil. This is paradoxical unless you interpret it to mean that they knew the illusion of good and evil. Satan tempted them not into knowledge but into illusion. Satan tempted them into a political illusion, that they were good and others were evil.
Humans have never stopped seeing this illusion.
So I think we're all demons in hell, and I think being a demon means having the conviction that you're the good guy while your opponents are the bad guy. This is why the worst are filled with conviction. This is why hell is everyone tormenting each other, why hell is other people.
No this is not some centrist cop out but actually what I believe. This is actually how I see you and the world. I have my own viewpoint and you can see it on display all over this blog but it's like coffee with cream, every entry in this blog has a little bit of pandering cream for the human most receptive to the message. The level of cream has decreased over time and these days I'm serving it mostly black. This is less angry and less satisfying for the reader and less pandering all at the same time.
All of this ties in with humans converting their needs into moral imperatives that others must obey. A child says "it's not fair, you gave me one cookie today but two cookies yesterday" so the child appeals to your fairness in order to satisfy its appetite. Remember that this is how all political morals work, they appeal to some sort of higher moral value in order to satisfy an appetite.
Someone wants your money so they say that you owe reparations. Someone else wants your body so they say it's transphobic to refuse to have sex with trans women. Another wants to humiliate you in a sporting competition so they say it's transphobic if you don't let them compete against women. Someone else wants to inhibit young women from stealing their husband so they say that he's a predator and she is sexually harassed.
They say God wills it but they really just want your land. They say don't be anti-semitic but they really just want you to support their genocidal war. They say we're a nation of immigrants but they really just want to escape their own race.
Humans convert their appetites into moral injunctions that you must follow. Then they deceive themselves into thinking that they are good and everyone who opposes them is evil. You owe me two cookies and if you don't give them to me you are my enemy.
That's original sin, that's its technical construction. That's why the world is fallen. There are levels of philosophical zombies and we are only one level up from completely unaware because we are unaware of ourselves, unaware of our own self deception. And why wouldn't we be? Why would evolution ever create a being that was perfectly self aware? Better to be self deceiving enough to serve its own interests.
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