No Substantive Facts Without Consciousness

If one assumes materialism proves only materialism, one will be biased against all evidence that is not quantifiable in materialism. If one assumes immeasurable aspects of consciousness abide, on par with, or possibly superior to, materialism, then one finds "evidence" in qualities of inner experience. However, these are not facts; they are only truisms. They are given their force of "truth" by assumptions, based on first assumptions ... by consciousness. The lights for "convincing" will not come from exterior facts, but from interior intuitions. Even were civilizaton to acquire capacity to nurture artificial intelligence for being expressed through machines, such expressions of self awareness may well intuit their own connections with higher values and purposefulness. Regardless, as to persons such as Horowitz and others, I am more concerned with how their beliefs may be consistently illustrated in their actions than I am with whether their attempts to achieve philosophical consistency may encounter glitches.

To my lights, it would be hard to believe in higher values without believing in a reconciling, higher purpose. The only reconciling value or higher purpose I have intuited is this: Consciousness, having no choice but to abide, seeks to comfort and entertain itself by availing communications of understandings and empathetic appreciations of sacrifice. In that respect, there abides continuous striving towards decent civilization, i.e., a City of God. As that vision becomes imprinted and associated with genes, genomes thus expressed may eventually become children of a City of God, such that no power on earth will subjugate the essential quality of that genotype.

However, one cannot very well pursue happiness without developing some intuitive skill for detecting where, when, and how to insulate oneself from those things, forces, and personages that would seek to burn through it. Insofar as one cannot very well measure the quality of evil, one needs to learn how to intuit and mark its likely whereabouts. One needs to learn how to separate wheat from chaff and friend from foe. One needs to learn what leads others into evil: That is the contriving and uniting in order to reduce the freedom and dignity of other pursuers of a City of God, to force from them what one does not earn for oneself.

Necessarily, leaders of youth tend to lead them either (1) to respect the right of those who are generally able to look out for themselves to be left alone by the government, or (2) to dupe the most easily misled to help control all. The 1st choice empowers those who pursue a City of God. The 2nd choice empowers those who pursue the temporary advantages of packs in a jungle. Wolves and hyenas are not interested in their prey's pursuit of a City of God.  Societies that fall to the 2nd choice tend to be those whose citizens are most self-satisfied, complacent, mis-directed, mis-educated, divided, and corrupt. Thus, leaders tend either (1) to respect the dignity of others, or (2) to believe in, and value, little more than themselves. The distinguishing characteristic is NOT necessarily religion, although there are sects of many religions that conflate charity with the re-distribution of other people's money.



Complications arise when those of the first type mis-idealize their principles, as if a principle of respecting the dignity of others should encompass respecting the dignity of those who respect few apart from themselves. For one to tolerate those who will not tolerate himself is to tolerate his own demise. Yet, that kind of confusion and ignorance is now everywhere. Corruption and ignorance of sustainable principles are riding rampant, throughout America and the world.

 

 

A society can easily pass to a point of conversion, from first respecting the dignity of others to second presuming a right to foist upon them what is best in the eyes of the foisters. It becomes very difficult to reverse the process. It's hard to collectivize people for the purpose of gaining or restoring freedom. Washington was that rarest of leaders. Unless we expect easily to find another Washington, it would be best to captain the ship of state far from points that mark the bounds of no return. Those points are found at such markers as open borders, jaw dropping tolerance, and fantastically disproportionate notions about what can be gained by forced redistirbution. Such is the lesson about which most college profs are blind and dumb. And therein marks the danger.

What government ought to be doing is simply getting out of the way, by doing only that which is needed in order best to facilitate free associations and free enterprise. The problem is that people get voted into power by appealing to base interests, by promising undeliverable, unsustainable, ponzi, free benefits. When society fails to enforce its borders and to ensure its members are educated to love freedom, freedom becomes self destructing. Freedom is not free! There is no freedom without enlightened law. Freedom requires sustained commitment among an inspired citizenry. Now, however, we are swamped with a morally corrupt, free-entitlement-minded citizenry, that has not the least notion or regard for what it takes to sustain a free and decent society. The mask is off, and this must now be faced down. This term. Because the Union is swamped with corrupt idiocy, freedom-loving States must re-assert rights to regional pacts. Otherwise, forces of fascism and despotism will re-assert traditional hegemony over human dignity by continuing to swamp us with useful dupes, who have no stars to guide them apart from cries for instant gratification. The Tea Party will either enjoy its finest hour, or it will whimper out and follow entitlement dupes into the plantation of collectivizing fascists. We must speak muscular truth to spitting, crying idiocy.

Quality that accompanies the presentation of a substantive thing relates to how the thing is appreciable to a perspective of consciousness, in ways beyond measure, as being worthy (value) for various purposes, whether they are practical or not. Quantity that accompanies the presentation of a substantive thing relates to how the thing is appreciable to a perspective of consciousness, in ways that are measurable, as being practical (price) for various purposes, whether they are worthy or not.

If the whole of our universe were nothing more than a flux of mathematics and equations, predestined and predefined from its origination, then, limited to that relation, our unfolding would be of little more meaning or import than a mindless Truism (like Rand’s “1 is 1"). We would not experience “Facts” made separate in any quality for themselves, but only truisms, all derivative of, and merely variations of, one original, encompassing, unifying, synchronizing, limiting fact. However, each of us has inside information to the contrary. That is, we "know" we are not mindless, nor without capacity for guiding and attaching meaning to our several experiences of unfolding facts. We know we have Will to apprehend, summon, define, and commission such facts as suit the unfolding parameters that are availed us for expressing our freedom. Thus, there are substantive and Quantitative “facts,” but they are of a Quality that is not independent of a Field of consciousness, which Field makes potent enough Perspectives of consciousness to accompany and attach to every expression of substance. There are no substantive facts that are more than truisms, unless they are tied to facts inter-functioning with consciousness at some level.