The Critique of a Postmodern Trope continues...

“[Hayek produced] a terrific steam hammer in order to crack a nut—and then he does not crack it.”—Piero Sraffa’s critique of Friedrich von Hayek’s book “Prices and Production,” (1932).

The Fallacy of Equivocation between the terms Doubt and Skepticism 

Hicks completely missed the different types of skepticism. Skepticism can be a methodological technique to engage in doubt for testing hypotheses, and/or skepticism can be an attitude of doubt “toward all the beliefs of man, from sense experience to religious creeds”(Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, p.19, pdf.). Hicks’ initial look at Kant suggests skepticism in the first methodological sense, but then the book equivocates to the attitudinal sense of doubt, and then later creeps over into nihilism. Hicks states, “Kant’s point was deeper, arguing that in principle any conclusion reached by any of our faculties must necessarily not be about reality. Any form of cognition because it must operate a certain way, cannot put us in contact with reality”(Loc: 1130). And he writes, “Earlier skeptics had their negative conclusions, continued to conceive of truth as correspondence to reality”(Loc: 1163). So there are philosophers that are not pure skeptics such as Descartes. But yet, Hicks points to Kant as the archetypal skeptic. Kant is not the lone skeptical “all-destroyer”(Loc: 1157).

Kant understood his transcendental criticism of speculative metaphysics as necessary to avoid falling into harmful dogmatic philosophies motivated by mere philodoxy, or in Greek ϕιλόδοξος (ϕιλό-love; δοξος- belief), meaning love of belief, or opinion. Kant argues a critical philosophy is needed to avoid dogmatism.

”It is only by criticism that metaphysicians (and, as such, theologians too) can be saved from these controversies and from the consequent perversion of their doctrines. Criticism alone can strike a blow at the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which are universally injurious—as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous to the schools, but can scarcely pass over to the public (Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant, trans., Meiklejohn, 1781, p. 21)(pdf)."

Kant was not a theist in the traditional sense, but likely a non-theist for his goal in the Critique was to make room for faith whereas Hume was a faithless atheist because natural-scientific positivism forces him there—another difference between Kant and Hume that the generic term skepticism does not acknowledge. Hicks uses the label of skepticism, and other labels, in the most generic sense such as relativism. 

The Fallacy of Equivocation between Barroom Relativism with Relationalism 

And yet another Fallacy of Equivocation is committed with the term relativism which claims all judgments have no universal validity. Hicks wrote, “Hegelian dialectical reason also differs from Enlightenment reason by implying a strong relativism, against the universality of Enlightenment reason”(Loc: 1336). Hegel is categorized by philosophy as an absolute idealist---not as a relative idealist. Hegel is best known as the philosopher that affirmed universal reason as the necessary condition for freedom.  A relative idealist believes there are many interpretations of many different realities; and like a solipsist, think only their own experiences and thoughts are real with no objective standard by which to judge any one worldview as more real than another. Absolute idealists believe in one reality because there is only one mind. This is another case of equivocation of the concept relativistic idealism with absolute idealism.

Another version of relativism is the belief there is no absolute truth since the concept of truth itself is relative to space and time. The relativist’s flawed argument is the following: “It was once true that the capital of Brazil was Rio de Janeiro, but now it is false since the capital of Brazil today is Briazilia. Therefore, truth is not absolute, but relative to time.” In another example the relativist might argue, “’The light is above John’ is a true proposition; however, in a different location Y the proposition is false; therefore, truth is not absolute, but is relative to space.” The problem with these arguments is the relationships of space and time are omitted from the propositions themselves. It is true the capital of Brazil in 1960 was Rio de Janeiro, and it will always be true. And for today’s date, it will always be true that the capital of Brazil is Briazilia. There is no contradiction here as the relativists claim. That the light was above John at location X is true regardless of what new location Y he has moved to later. There are no sane philosophers that hold to this crude version of relativism--not Kant, Hegel, and certainly not Einstein. Hicks is confusing this un-sophisticated version of epistemological relativism (Loc: 1088) with relationalism. Relationalism, however, only holds that all elements of meaning in a given situation refer to other elements of meaning in a reciprocal historical interrelationship. Relationalism is a term coined by sociologist Karl Mannheim (Ideology and Utopia, 1936, Harvest books, p. 86).

The Fallacy of Ambiguity between the terms Kantian Idealism and Berkeleian Idealism

“Can this be called idealism? It is the very opposite of it!… This doctrine of mine doesn’t destroy the existence of the thing that appears, as genuine idealism does; it merely says that we can’t through our senses know the thing as it is in itself.”—Kant, “Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics,” p.21-22(pdf.).  

Kantian Transcendental Idealism is the critical science of the logically necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. The term “transcendental” is used by Kant to mean a priori, or before experience. For example, the pure forms of sensibility are space and time which are necessary a priori conditions to have sense experience (intuition) of any object of knowledge. Berkeleian idealism holds that “to be (exist) is to be perceived.” Kant absolutely did not hold this version of idealism, but instead confirmed the thing-in-itself which cannot itself be perceived (Ibid., p.77). Kant wrote, “the unconditioned does not lie in things as we know them, or as they are given to us, but in things as they are in themselves, beyond the range of our cognition”(Critique, p.15). Hicks’ use of the term idealism to describe Kant is very misleading because he again never goes beyond their generic meaning except to equivocate. Kant wrote (italics in original text):

"...it would be an unpardonable misunderstanding—almost a deliberate one—to say that my doctrine turns all the contents of the world of the senses into pure illusion."--Kant, Prolegomena, p. 22).

Post hoc Explication is Not Refutation

“Dispute the validity of a definition, and he is completely at a loss to find another. He has formed his mind on another’s; but the imitative faculty is not the productive”--Kant in Critique, p. 466.

The best counter-argument that directly refutes Hick’s epistemology is the second edition fifteen-paged Preface to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1782) then compare it with Hick’s chapter on ”Kant the Turning Point.” You can get a free preview of Hicks’ book online. Kant’s second edition preface to the Critique is aimed precisely at critics similar to Hicks who are often referred to by Kant as metaphysical dogmatists. Kant defined dogmatism as “… the dogmatic procedure of pure reason without previous criticism of its own powers….”(Critique, p. 22). These metaphysical dogmatists include the religious thinkers of his day who were stunned by Kant’s devastating refutation of the traditional proofs of the existence of a supreme being in the Critique, “Transcendental Logic: Second Division. Transcendental Dialectic: Introduction. I. Of Transcendental Illusory Appearance,” ([A:292-294; B:349-350], Ibid., p. 209).

Post hoc explication alone is not a refutation. However, Hicks refutes himself constantly. He makes a statement and then walks it back by reciting limited summative statements of Kant’s so called radical relativistic skepticism distantly scattered throughout the book without actually integrating them into his assessment of Kant. Throughout the entire book he makes academically obligatory boilerplate acknowledgements to some of Kant’s concepts as a post hoc camouflaged repair patch job, but then jumps out in the open to interject Maoist like anti-Kantian slogans. Bare assertion is not refutation. Hicks never engages Kant’s arguments, but only gives short-change summaries of Kant’s epistemology. Hicks noted that “Kant did not take all the steps down to postmodernism, but he did take the decisive one” (Loc: 1157). But, he then states, “Kant is a landmark…Kant went a step further and redefined truth on subjective grounds” (Loc: 1157). Kant’s landmark status is not for being an irrational subjective relativistic skeptic, but for other important reasons such as defeating all the traditional arguments for the existence of a supreme deity, and resolving the problem of the origin of knowledge, which hounded Rationalism and Idealism. Kant wrote to the religious dogmatists,

“These unavoidable problems of mere pure reason are God, freedom (of will), and immortality. The science which, with all its preliminaries, has for its especial object the solution of these problems is named metaphysics—a science which is at the very outset dogmatical, that is, it confidently takes upon itself the execution of this task without any previous investigation of the ability or inability of reason for such an undertaking”(Critique,[A:3-4; B: 4-8]). 

The Fallacy of Equivocation between the terms Real₁ and Reality₂

Take for example Kant’s concept of noumenon and phenomenon, which are the foundational concepts of Kantian epistemology. Hicks wrote after reviewing Kant,  “Abstracting from the above quotations yields the following. Metaphysically, postmodernism is anti-realist, holding that it is impossible to speak meaningfully about an independently existing reality”(Loc: 526).

"He has learned this or that philosophy and is merely a plaster cast of a living man."--Kant in Critique, p. 466. 

He only mentions the term noumenal, but doesn’t go into detail of what noumenon means. Kant’s epistemological dichotomy of appearance and reality is the foundation of Representational Epistemology: there is mediation between the thing-in-itself, and the thing as it appears to the observer—a distinction that can be traced back to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The thing-in-itself can only be known indirectly through appearances (phenomena) as experience, which is the domain of Reason.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Hick’s refuses to seriously examine the concept of noumenon that can be traced back to ancient Platonic epistemology.

For Plato, empirical observation was the lowest of all states of mind of which there are two: lowest level of knowledge is opinion Doxia (δόξα) “belief” as in orthodoxy, and the higher level is scientific knowledge (ἐπιστήμη, epistēmē) related etymologically to the “Epistles,” or letters, for example.

The lowest form of knowledge is opinion based on empirical image (εἰκών, icon), and observing biological life (ζωὴ, Zoa, or 'life' as in the word ‘Zoo’).

The higher levels of knowledge include mathematics (μαθηματικά, method) and the highest level of knowledge is of the Forms (ἀρχή, archetype). Only in the state of mind of Noesis (νόησις) meaning “understanding, concept, or notion” is there intelligibility of the invisible (Forms) as opposed to opinion, and belief based on visible empirical images.

The allegory of the cave found in Plato’s Republic (514a–520a) is about epistemological progress and transformation of human worldviews. Plato has Socrates describe to Glaucon, the brother of Plato, a story of a group of prisoners within a cave who are chained to a low wall for their entire lives while only facing the cave’s opposing wall which has moving shadows projected on it by firelight burning behind the prisoners. Persons behind and above the prisoners make sounds and move patterned shaped shadow images across the cave wall. This shadow-world of (εἰκασία) or “apprehension by images and shadows” is reality₁ for these chained prisoners who even give names to the shadows (see lecture: Dr. Harrison Kleiner lectures on Plato's Allegory of a Cave).

Socrates imagines what would happen if a prisoner were released to freely walk out of the cave. Socrates thought the prisoner may have to be forced away from the shadows of their reality₁, and would even try to kill the man that tried to release them. Reality₁ is the reality of the empirical images and shadows (Doxia). Plato is subtly drawing an analogy to Socrates as the man executed by the Athenian State for attempting to release its citizens from ignorance. As the freed slave walks out of the cave, they enter the sunlight. This walk to sunlight could be interpreted as religious and/or a historical-epistemological journey from mere Doxia, or belief, to Noesis,(νόησις), meaning understanding, concept, or notion.

What does the sun symbolically represent? The sun is “…the domain where truth and reality shine….”(508d). The cave’s firelight provided the shadow show and is historically interpreted allegorically as deceptive rhetoric, distorted politics, and sophistry posing as wisdom. The second light is the noumenal sunlight of ultimate reality₂. Interestingly, Plato described the human eye as “…the most sunlike of all the instruments of sense”(508b). However, he also said, “Neither vision itself nor its vehicle, which we call the eye, is identical with the sun”(508a). Socrates may be implying to himself there is mediation between the subject and object of knowledge. Plato seems to have recognized the meaning-bestowing activity of consciousness in shaping the objects of sense perception. This is typical of Plato to foreshadow an entire Western philosophical school of thought in one summary sentence. However, Hicks seems to have forgotten about Plato's hierarchy of knowledge when he wrote that Kant's, "...arguments based on the relativity and causality of perception, the identity of our sense organs is taken to be the enemy of awareness of reality”(Loc: 1102).

The cave firelight could also be interpreted ontologically as Nature itself. For the ancient Greeks, “phusis” (meaning “Nature,” or “physics”) characterize both Logos (Reason) and of what-is (all things). Nature gives what-is the ability to manifest itself, but does not show itself as the activity of manifesting” (see “Heidegger and the Greeks,” by Dr. Carol J. White, p.127)[Pdf].

We may interpret the Kantian term phenomenon as the reality₁ of the shadows, and noumenon as reality₂ of the thing-in-itself. The shadows are empirically real₁, but they are not reality₂. The categories of reason only apply validly to the shadow play reality₁; however, nothing can be said conditionally, or objectively about the noumenal reality₂ according to Kant: “…the unconditioned does not lie in things as we know them, or as they are given to us, but in things as they are in themselves, beyond the range of our cognition”(Critique, p.15). This heterogeneous division between, “cognition of things as phenomena, and of things in themselves”(Ibid., p.15) is known as the “Kantian Block.” Plato believed the forms are within the realm of intelligibility. Hegel’s objection to Kantian epistemology is that knowledge of the noumenal realm is possible, but only after human consciousness has traveled up the long suffering road of historical experience passing through the hierarchies of knowledge to the complete holistic Notion—or in Hegelian language—to Calvary. The “notion” could be interpreted to mean paradigm.

Hicks continually equivocates between the two meanings of reality throughout the book. To remain consistent Hicks could have written, ”Plato has no concept of objective reality! He only acknowledges the shadows within the cave!” For both Plato and Kant there is an epistemological noumenal sun. Hicks conveys an anti-Classical sense of reason by failing to clearly address the appearance and reality distinction in Western Representational Epistemology, and specifically Kantian Transcendental Idealism. Instead, he carefully avoids the noumenon concept, and endlessly repeats anti-realist anti-Kantian slogans. There are classic philosophical arguments critical of Kant’s concept of noumenon, but Hicks does not seem to know any of them.

For some philosophers the problem of knowledge is not that we cannot know reality₂, but that we can know reality₂ in so many ways.  

...to continue with lots more.

The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism

“…the whole system of reason finally leads to some point at which reason does not deny itself, does not abdicate, but transcends itself within itself. “- Paul Tillich

By chance I discovered a video, Critique of Stephen Hicks’ “Explaining Postmodernism,” which is a critique of the book “Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault,”(2010) authored by the writer Stephen R. C. Hicks who refers to himself as a Randian Objectivist. The video is well versed in Kantian epistemology and critiques Hicks’ attack on a philosophical school known as postmodernism. I want to go into greater detail than the video to give additional counter-arguments against Hicks’ understanding of postmodernism.

I never liked generalized philosophical labels such as Idealism, Libertarianism, Socialism, or Rationalism since there is nearly always some mixture of these views influencing a philosopher’s thinking with close analysis. These terms are useful as tools for topical organization, but are limited at a certain level of granularity especially while examining specific logical arguments of an intellectual tradition. The term and concept of postmodern seems particularly ambiguous and I have wanted to investigate this issue for sometime now because it is often used as an ad hominem truncheon in discussions today.

The Fallacy of Circular Reasoning:

The most important step of philosophical analysis is to methodologically define the term postmodern, which turns out to be a big problem for this book. Since Hicks is authoring a book on postmodernism the burden of proof is on him to define how this term is used. Hicks refers to postmodernism as “anti-realist,” “denies reason,” “subjective,” and “radical.” Early in his book Hicks wrote, “The term “post-modern” situates the movement historically and philosophically against modernism”(Loc: 546). In other words postmodernism is bad since the opposite, modernism, is good.

Hicks describes his methodology as, “…understanding what the movement sees itself as rejecting and moving beyond will be helpful in formulating a definition of postmodernism. The modern world has existed for several centuries, and after several centuries we have good sense of what modernism is”(Loc: 546). Defining any group by what they think of themselves might not be the best methodological approach anymore that judging the moral character of a person by what they say about themselves. Do we really have a good sense of what modernism is?

However, there is a second even more serious methodological problem by using how “the movement sees itself,” as a definition since we are faced with the problem of deciding which movement we will select as postmodern. Hicks already presupposes what postmodernism is otherwise how else could Hicks identify any group as a member of the movement! How can one recognize postmodernism independently of Hicks’ judgment?  It seems that the term postmodernism has no essence. Wittgenstein used the word “game” as an example of a concept that had no essential meaning. The word’s meaning is how it is used. Likewise, the meaning of postmodern is whatever Hicks points to since it has no essence. Omnium-gatherum as a methodology for collecting the particulars of a universal concept will not work if one does not already have a universal concept of postmodernism. So the reader must rely on Hicks to point at any particular group he declares as postmodern. This behavior suggests that Hicks has an unstated criterion for identifying postmodernism that precludes his identifying some group as postmodern. And, Hick consciously and unconsciously carries out this circularity through out the entire book.

The Fallacy of False Dilemma:

This problem of an essential definition gets worse for Hicks. His concept of postmodernism is extremely vague so that its scope of meaning can be expanded, or contracted by mere pointing depending on the effectiveness of any criticism. To better understand Hick’s use of the term postmodern-ism we can divide speculative philosophy into two general types of theories of knowledge: The realistic theory of knowledge and the idealistic theory of knowledge. In the realistic theory knowledge meaning is receiving. In the idealistic theory meaning is bestowing. Hicks names everything “objective” as realistic, and everything subjective is “postmodern.” The problem with this crypto-definition of postmodernism is that objective and subjective elements cross over into both philosophies of knowledge. Hicks uses an array of synonyms to describe the realistic epistemologies as the following:

Realistic: Modern, Enlightenment, rational, competent, universal, absolutist, individualistic, conservative, and objectively true.

On the other hand Hicks describe postmodernism with synonyms such as:

Idealistic: Non-realist, postmodern, anti-Enlightenment, anti-reason, incompetent, contingent, relativistic, collectivist, extremist, and subjective.

With this matrix of dialectical polarities Hicks can setup pre-constructed fallacies presented as false dilemmas, “Either P, or Q, and ~P, therefore Q.”

Or symbolically written: [(P v Q) * ~P ] ⊃ Q. 

“Either P, or Q” can be expressed as disjunctive propositions: “either accept Kantian relativism, or embrace objectivism; either accept postmodernism or embrace the Enlightenment; either embrace Objective truth or accept postmodern relativism.”

Interestingly, these false dilemmas can be rhetorically disguised giving the impression that an additional sound argument is being offered:

“Either not P, or not Q, and P; therefore not Q.”

Or symbolically written: [(~P v ~Q) * P] ⊃ ~Q

This expression can be disguised as “Either reject all truth with skeptical subjective Kantian relativism, or reject realism based on universal objective reason. Obviously, those who accept Kantian relativism are in fact rejecting Objective truth which realism is based.”

The argument’s fallacy is not that its disjunctive argument form is invalid—that is why it is called an Informal Fallacy, but that other disjuncts [(P v Q) v (R v S) v (Φ v ψ)] are excluded by definition, or oversight, or to logically force a false conclusion based on false disjunctive choices.

Objectivists mindlessly repeat this trope ad infinitum.

And yet another disguise for [(~P v ~Q) * P] ⊃ ~Q,

is the expression: [ P * (~Q v ~P) ] ⊃ ~Q

Which reads as,"For all those that accepted skepticism, they failed to understand the problem of knowledge as essentially rejecting objective science as the key to knowing reality, or avoiding relativism that denies the possibility of all knowledge. Consequently, they fell into relativism."

Now this sophistry is repeated over, and over again throughout the book. Just change Kant's name to Hegel, Kuhn, Heidegger, or whoever is associated with these philosophers for any reason. The author simply pours different content into the same form to reach the same distorted false conclusion.

The Insidious Metaphor Logical Fallacy: Φ

Hicks wrote, “Kant was the decisive break with the Enlightenment and the first major step toward postmodernism” (Loc: 1139). These synonyms are as ambiguous and misleading as the term postmodern itself. For example, the term “Enlightenment” has a positive meaning that is unconsciously imported through a metaphor influencing the reader’s thinking. Not everything that happened in the Enlightenment was Enlightening; not everything modern is good; nor was everything in the “Dark Ages” conceptually backwards; and the “Cold War” had millions of human casualties; and even “Realism” can be an idealist theory of knowledge subjectively biased. What Hicks referred to as the “Modern Era,” Kant and Hegel a history of errors. Even if the belief in objectivism is objective, then that belief provides no evidence whatsoever for the truth of objectivism. Beware of bare assertions based on insidious metaphors that unconsciously influence critical thinking.

The Fallacy of Ambiguity: ψ

Hick’s critique of postmodernism is based on the thesis that Kant’s epistemological skepticism is irrational. “Kant was thus different from previous skeptics and religious apologists…But earlier skeptics had never been as sweeping in their conclusions.”(Loc: 1130). If Hicks’ thesis is false, then the book’s entire philosophical narrative collapses.  Hicks wrote, “Thus, the argument runs, Kant should be placed in the pantheon of Enlightenment greats.[27] That is a mistake“ (Loc: 897). And again he writes, “His [Kant’s] philosophy is thus a forerunner of postmodernism’s strong anti-realist and anti-reason”(Loc: 1191). In another passage he writes, “Any thinker who concludes that in principle reason cannot know reality is not fundamentally an advocate of reason” (Loc:1130). This is just one of Hick’s shocking summary judgment of Kantian epistemology.

Hicks wrote, “Bacon, Descartes, and Locke are modern because of their philosophical naturalism, their profound confidence in reason, and especially in the case of Locke, and their individualism,” (Loc: 574). Hicks avoids any in-depth look at Locke and Descartes because they are counter-examples to his claims that Kant (1724-1804) is an extreme skeptic. Kant was a skeptical philosopher of the Enlightenment, but so was the Enlightenment philosopher Descartes (1576-1650) famous for emphasizing methodological doubt; and the empiricist David Hume (1711-1776) is the most famous Enlightenment skeptic of the Western World. Hicks claims “With Kant then, external reality thus drops almost totally out of the picture, and we are trapped inescapably in subjectivity—and that is why Kant is a landmark.” (Loc: 1157). Descartes most famous argument in the “Mediations” is “I think; therefore, I am,” which is a subjective argument. Would Descartes’ anchoring all knowledge in the subjectivity of “I think,” be as irrational as Kant? I believe Hicks has his philosophers mixed up, or his concept of postmodern is simply empty.

In fact, radical skepticism can be traced back all the way to ancient times such as the Greek philosopher Pyrrho (360 B.C.- 270 B.C.). “Pyrrhonism is credited with being the first Western school of philosophy to identify the problem of induction”(Wiki). Pyrrhonism dealt with the same problems of induction as the radical empiricist skeptic Hume. A strong current of skepticism can be found throughout the history of Western ideas.

Science today has fundamental questions going back to Isaac Newton (1642-1726) that are still unsolved today. Newton understood that the machine paradigm of nature and the absurd observable phenomena of interaction at a distance such as the non-physical interaction of gravity, or magnetic repulsion and attraction were scientific mysteries. During Newton’s era these phenomena were believed to be occult ideas yet modern scientific mechanical philosophy concluded that there could be no physical interaction without physical contact. Newton, Hume and Locke agreed that the scientific machine paradigm could not explain non-physical interaction. Newton wrote, “The notion of action at a distance is inconceivable. It’s so great an absurdity, I believe no man who has in philosophical matters that competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it…we concede we do not understand the phenomena of the material world….”(see Chomsky lecture, “The Machine, the Ghost, and the Limits of Understanding”). Newton’s conclusion is nothing works by machine principles—there are no machines!

The empiricist, John Locke (1632-1704), wrote further concerning these scientific mysteries:

“It being, in respect of our Notions, not much more remote from our Comprehension to conceive that God can, if he pleases, superadd to Matter a Faculty of Thinking, than that he should superadd to it another Substance, with a Faculty of Thinking; since we know not wherein Thinking consists, nor to what sort of Substance the Almighty has been pleased to give that Power, which cannot be in any created Being, but merely by the good pleasure and Bounty of the Creator” (Locke, John. 1823: The Works. Ed. by Thomas Tegg, London, IV.III.6).

Consequently, the “modern” scientists lowered the standard of scientific intelligibility by adopting the machine paradigm of nature regardless of the non-material interaction at a distance theoretical problem thereby reducing science to pragmatic object-manipulation. Pragmatism is the epistemological foundation for the denial of knowledge (Tillich). The history of modern science is the very opposite of Hicks’ thesis that modernism is the paradigm of realism. Hicks assumes modern scientific reasoning had no theoretical problems explaining reality. “Epistemologically having rejected the notion of an independently existing reality, postmodernism denies that reason or any other method is a means of acquiring objective knowledge of that reality” (Loc: 546). By ignoring the history of modern Western Science, Hicks’ concept of science is a philosophical caricature of scientism rendering him incapable to understanding the most fundamental ideas of Kantian epistemology.

And there are many more serious logical problems with this book’s thesis…to continue!

The Liminal Trickster

"Hermes...the divine trickster..the god of boundaries and the transgression of boundaries."--Walter Burkert

The carnival represents repressive de-sublimation of existential angst that is not a phobia meaning a fear of some object. Angst is a generalized anxiety that has no specific object, but still casts a shadow of fear over all existence. The Carnival is the opiate of oppressed people that dulls angst by redirecting psychic tension in another direction. The Latin noun “angor” (distantly related to German "angst") means strangulation in addition to anguish, torment, trouble, and, vexation. Langman interprets the Carnival as highly organized capitalist consumerism intended to de-sublimate aggression for channeling disenchantment away from the social status quo. The concept of the Carnival is cultural relative reality meaning Life could be organized in a different way: in this sense the carnival is artistically negative, or critical in Adorno’s definition of negative dialectics. Symbolically the Carnival is the ontology of a false situation.

Liminality is an important second dimension of the Carnival that is symbolized by the archetypal figure of the Trickster representing the liminal state of being between the sacred and the profane. “Liminality” comes from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold.” German scholar of Greek mythology, Walter Burkert, interprets the Trickster archetype as the boundary crosser in ludic playfulness having access to the re-creative power of life. Limbo (limbus) means in Latin, “edge or border.” The boundaries crossed include those of the social status quo. The Trickster (Greek Hermes, Roman Mercury, Native American Cherokee Coyote) mocks all authority. The divine messenger Hermes was the god of economic commerce; he invented lying; and would sometimes change the messages to and from the other Olympic gods to his own liking! Jungian psychologists consider Hermes the archetype of narcissistic disorders. Spiritual leaders are viewed by some cultures as Tricksters such as the Norse mischief-maker, Loki, who can shift shape and whose gender is variable, or ambiguous. The symbol of the Trickster often plays the role of a clown; however, the laughter and playfulness is actually sublimated hostility. Many native traditions held clowns and tricksters as essential to any contact with the sacred. “People could not pray until they had laughed, because laughter opens and frees from rigid preconception. Humans had to have tricksters within the most sacred ceremonies for fear that they forget the sacred comes through upset, reversal, surprise. The trickster in most native traditions is essential to creation, to birth” (Wiki: Byrd Gibbens, Professor of English at University of Arkansas at Little Rock; quoted epigraph in Napalm and Silly Putty by George Carlin, 2001).

French ethnographer, Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957), first coined the term “liminality” in his famous work, “The Rites of Passage,” (1909). Liminality is a special time during transition of social status, or new being such as engagement to marriage, death to burial, graduation to official award, youth to adulthood, outsider status to insider, or Pentecost. Gennep organized the anthropological liminal sequence pattern as 1.) Pre-liminal break with an old order; 2.) Liminal nameless disorientation and restructuring; 3.) and Post-liminal new being. These transitional phases are done in a strict sequence and completed by a Master of Ceremonies. The liminal phases are both destructive and constructive. Interestingly, Karl Jasper coined the term “Axial Age” as a time of radical change and collapse.

British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner (1920-1982) discovered Gennep’s study of rites of passage, but further develops his work “Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture” (1978) to encompass both the political and cultural realms by applying liminal states to the individual level, group level, and postmodern industrial society as a whole. Turner described the liminal as “bewixt and between” characterized by order reversal, uncertainty, fluidity, malleability, new possibilities, new perspective and scrutiny of culture. Any person or group not fully integrated into society is considered liminal such as undocumented refugees, persons in jury trial, teenagers, or transgender persons. A church congregation during worship is in liminal space. The relationship of psychologist to patient is liminal. Liminality is the revolt against the objective finality of defining human beings as some-“thing” since it is essential that consciousness is not objectified by the Other (Hegel). The participant’s personal agency is empathized by combining thought and action in ritual instruction. During the Post-liminal phase a “communitas” (John, Graham St., 2000, “Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance”), or community forms around the camaraderie of groups that share the same liminal experiences. Turner defines three types of communities that form post-liminal groups: 1.) Spontaneous-Ecstatic, 2.) Ideological-Utopian Obstructionist, and 3.) Normative Reformist. The nameless liminal phases are too intense to be a permanent state of being, but they are also dangerous because liminal periods can be subject to manipulation and distortion if there is no Master of Ceremonies.

Authentic subjective liminal experience can be replaced by inauthentic “Liminoid” experience (term coined by Turner) that has no transformative power, but only objectively performs nihilistic mimetic rivalry. Liminoid experience is the opiate of the people. Liminoid is spectacle that generates endless meaningless chatter. Liminoid experience is the trickster’s clown act devoid of the possibility of authentic identity formation and transformation consequently the person attempts to stay in a permanent state of liminality. 

Turner wrote “…for young people, liminality of this kind has become a permanent phenomenon...Postmodern Liminality,”(Kahane Reuven et al., The Origins of Postmodern Youth, 1997,New York, p. 31). The Liminoid suspension of time is not for real personal transformation, but an inauthentic escapism from endless tragedy through hedonistic consumption and narcissistic rivalry. Rock concerts, nightclubs, sports events seek to reproduce Liminoid experience in advanced industrial society by creating an in-between space outside the everyday cultural norms.

The symbolism of Arthur Fleck as the Joker is clear. Traditionally, adopted children are viewed as liminal since they are not with their natural parents, but are not parentless. Fleck smothered his mother, not his father: the reverse of Oedipus, an adoptee, who unknowingly killed his father at a crossroads (in-between). Fleck’s career is to provide hollow liminoid experiences which are in parallel to a downward destructive spiral of his unlived life overtaken by frenzied parasitic processing (Meaning Crisis: Ep. 13, Dr. Verveake, at 34 min.) in complete isolation. In an hypnogogic Jungian state Fleck is able to tap into archetypal images that he mimics in a desperate reach for some kind of intelligibility of being. However, Fleck’s carnival is one of unlimited demonic de-sublimation that attracts a spontaneous communitas of other persons since the Joker is King Carnival--the Trickster Himself. During a rage riot following a police shooting, a protester upheld a sign that read, “We are All Clowns,” to make clear the film is about class-based struggle and the reifying objectification of unique human beings whose lives must be lived.    

  

Liminal Dance

Carnivalesque Culture And ‘The Joker’ as a Narcissistic Social Character in Liminal Space

The Liminal Dance

“Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.”—Eric Fromm, Fear of Freedom, p. 158 (italics in original).

“Sacredness homes us against horror…the sense of losing touch with reality.”—The good Professor, Dr. John Vervaeke, in Sacredness: Horror, Music, and Symbol.

The purpose of this critical philosophical essay is to make the unintelligible intelligible by analytically applying two important concepts of the carnival and liminality to interpret the fictional character Arthur Fleck in the film “Joker”(2019). All mythological identities represent patterns in existence of some life principle or value. The conceptual lens of carnival and liminality allow us to grasp deeper patterns of cultural-historical meaning stored in this encoded fictional story of what at first appears to be the idiosyncratic neurosis of a criminally narcissistic character named Arthur. On one level “Joker” is meant to be an interpretive understanding of life in modern advanced industrial society today. Also, the Joker character can serve as a useful mnemonic tool to learn and retain many analytical concepts developed by various schools of thought in sociology, political economy, and psychology.

I will draw heavily from a 2000 essay written by Professor of Sociology, Lauren Langman, titled, “The ‘Carnival Character’ of the Present Age.” As a reference point, Langman’s essay was written before the 9/11/2001 terrorists attacks--nineteen years ago! He applies the concept of the European medieval Carnival as a symbol for privatized hedonism of modern industrial mass consumer society that provide endless Carnivalesque cultural spectacles resulting in “narcissistic character disorders,” and a false self based on consumer culture. [1] First, Langman understood the carnival concept as representing “cyberfeudalism” in a synthesis of modern technology and feudalism. Secondly, he argues that privatized hedonism is “a new mechanism of escape.” The carnival provided medieval people a space of liminal playfulness where the political and erotic combined in a controlled ritualized escape from their dominated damaged lives. Liminality is the key concept for understanding Arthur Fleck and his deviant Liminal Dance scenes. The paradigmatic Fleck persona can clarify and even further develop Langman’s analysis of consumer society using the important concepts of carnival and liminality. We will see Arthur Fleck metamorphose from a natural conformist, to unhappiness, to urban neurosis, and then to the demonic Joker. The narcissistic Arthur Fleck who transforms into the master criminal Joker began his life as a tortured unhappy child suffering from stunted maturity.

Surplus Repression and Repressive De-sublimation

There are additional concepts needed to understand the meaning of the carnival and liminality. Herbert Marcuse takes the term “repression” from Freudian instinct theory to mean “in the non-technical sense to designate both conscious and unconscious, external and internal processes of restraint, constraint, and suppression”(Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 1955, p. 35). Marcuse wanted to develop a theory to explain why revolutionary consciousness failed to emerge from the working class in capitalists societies, but instead turned to fascism. A key concept of the Marcusian critique is “sublimation” that describes the diversion of psychic energy derived from instinctual impulses--such as sexual desire or aggressive energy--into other creative activity. Freudian psychology views sublimation as a defense mechanism for the psyche. Herbert Marcuse also adopts this concept of “sublimation” from Freud, but instead uses the confusing synonym “Repressive De-sublimation.” Both of these terms mean the gratification, or release of instinctual drives directed, or redirected within the limits of the dominant social norms. “De-sublimation” would mean to release unacceptable impulses and drives without restraint. Marcuse also used the term “Surplus Repression” defined as the necessary societal repression and control needed in a capitalist mode of industrial production: “The difference between basic and surplus repression is an index of both unnecessary alienation and political domination…modern capitalism depends upon surplus needs, surplus labor, surplus repression, and surplus aggression for its very survival” (Herbert Schoolman, The Imaginary Witness: The Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse, New York University Press, 1984, p. 96). The union of psychoanalysis and politics was not received enthusiastically in the 1960s because of the rise of positivistic Operand Behaviorist Psychology in American academia.

One goal of The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory was to reconcile Freud and Marx in an attempt to understand socialization in modern capitalist society. Specifically, Eric Fromm was a Marxist Neo-Freudian Revisionist whose task was to understand how mass discontent of the working class is neutralized in capitalism. The Frankfurt School sought to use analytical social psychology as a tool to examine socio-economic structures and their effect on basic human instinctual drives under capitalism. Fromm believed conscious and unconscious aggression is diverted by purposeless rituals of pseudo-liberation and conformity by an ideological “culture industry”(Horkheimer). The culture industry suggests “…symbolic satisfaction to the masses, guiding their aggression into socially harmless channels” (Martin Jay, “The Dialectical Imagination: A history of the Frankfurt School And the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 by Martin Jay, Little, Brown & Company, Canada, 1973, p. 91). Interestingly, Eric Fromm was a very religious person coming from an Orthodox Jewish family. His favorite Old Testament books were Isaiah, Amos, and Hosea.

The Carnival as Repetition and Reversal 

of Time and Space

“My clown name was ‘Carnival.’ ”—Arthur Fleck

Time overcomes the category of Life as existence moves toward the inescapable sequence of birth to death—from growth to decay. This Life-process, Tillich notes, “cannot be reversed, but it can be repeated.” The circle is the Ancient Greek symbol for space because it represented the “circular motion of continuous repetition” which diminishes the power of time over Life, but the circle of the Law of Life and Death cannot be overcome in existence so that space always dominate Life (Theology of Culture, p. 31).

Philosophical critique is a kind of unmasking. The carnival as a festival can ultimately be traced back to medieval folk culture and their concern for not wasting food especially for perishables such as butter, milk, and meat. “Carnival” literally means in Latin “take away the meat.” The carnival festivals were held just before the season of Lent in March or February (Pre-Lent) when Christians fasted for 40 days in recognition of Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice and resurrection (Easter). After the fasting there would likely be food shortages so the festival goers would consume all the leftover perishable food including alcohol which was not perishable. This pragmatic aspect of the festival become more and more salient for dominated feudal people. Overtime the carnival ritual became a secular event throughout the world degrading into gluttony and sexual orgies even in contradiction to the local cultural norms. This contradiction is known in Christianity as the battle between Carnival and Lent. Religious rituals often become reified transforming symbols that refer to themselves as signs instead of pointing to the Holy that is the dimension of ultimate reality. Symbols are not identical to the Holy. Rather, symbols initiate participation with the Holy. All holy objects, doctrines, and rites are always in danger of becoming demonic. Tillich writes, “All idolatry is nothing else than the absolutizing of symbols of the Holy, and making them identical with the Holy itself (Theology of Culture, p. 60). Religious festival goers attended the carnival as a hedonistic orgy in anticipation of scarcity following Lent, which defeats the original purpose of the religious ritual.

“When, for example, the thing you are required to do is to walk, it is no use at all to make the most astonishing inventions in the way of the easiest carriages and to want to convey yourself in these when the task prescribed to you was...walking.”—Kierkegaard, “Attack Against Christendom,” (1854) p. 100.

The most interesting characteristic of the carnival festivals is the satirical ritual of social status role reversal. Participants wore bizarre masks, painted their faces, and constructed costumes with absurdly exaggerated noses, mouths, and other body parts. People would dress as the opposite sex. They believed in Apotropaic magic (from από- "away" and τρέπειν "to turn" away) to wart off evil influences. Obscene language was permitted even toward the ruling class engaging in gross and degrading acts that glorified the erotic, the profane, the vulgar, and bodily excreta. There were ritual fights, and in some countries Jewish people from ghettos were publicly humiliated by being forced to perform degrading acts. Senseless acts are sometimes committed publicly to uncover some conflict, or grievance. The carnival was meant to temporarily reverse the social hierarchy of power (reversal of space). The carnival was not total chaos, but rather organized repressive de-sublimation.

In Spain the carnival evolved to symbolize the battle between Good/Evil (Zoroasterism) and Light/Darkness (Manichaeism). During the Holy Week celebrations Spanish crowds would carry a grotesque twisted effigy of Jesus appearing as a Tragic/Comic figure to which people would direct insults and show complete disrespect. All the conflicts within the souls of humanity are symbolically represented in the sublimated grotesque deformed body of a crucified Christ. Severe psychological stress often sublimates into seemingly unrelated physical ailments (psychosomatic illness) such as a backache, or limp: they are the incarnations (from Latin “carno” literally meaning “meat”) of psychic contradictions. The purpose of the crowds’ insults toward the effigy of a clown like Christ is to reaffirm the Holy. Easter Season represents the serial events of Resurrection, Liminal state, and Rebirth. However, the carnival reverses this temporal order; “King Carnival,” Liminal state, and Death. Mircea Eliade wrote, “Any new year is a revival of time at its beginning, a repetition of the cosmogony”(The Myth of the Eternal Return, pdf., p. 54).

The ancient conflicts of life sometime reappear wearing new clothing making them unrecognizable to a newer generation. Arthur Fleck, whose last name refers to a meaningless speck, is a creature of the Carnival—the mask, and the involuntary laugh that represents his real sublimated emotions of anger, fear, and tragic sadness. Langman interprets the carnival as representing mass consumer culture designed as an escape mechanism from personal feelings of anxiety and powerlessness. A Carnivalesque culture is a “culture of amusement,” which functions as a method of domination to repressively de-sublimate feelings of discontent by redirecting them to some other controlled arena—such as a lifestyle completely based on consumption of industrial commodities. Consumer capitalism has developed a technical apparatus which enables it to enforce social conformity by simply organizing society in a way that repress certain desires, create false needs, delimits thinking, and ideologically manipulates language to construct a false self and reality. It is from a “consumer based selfhood” that narcissistic borderline personalities emerge in society. Arthur is the story of how managed repressive de-sublimation gradually resulted in unrestrained de-sublimation—or a crime spree.

“Every neurosis represents a moral problem. The failure to achieve maturity and integration of the whole personality is a moral problem.”—Eric Fromm, “Man for Himself,” pp. 225-226.

A lack of identity is Arthur’s most urgent existential problem that prevents him from communicating with others, or having meaningful relationships. He has no meaningful life narrative because he is unable to define an identity or intelligible world. He is out of attunement with everything around him. However, his meaning making cognitive abilities are still functioning until a series of increasingly devastating events wear down his resilience that give rise to parallel liminal transformative trances. The only narrative Fleck can construct is one of tragic cruelty which in the reverse realm of the carnival would be a comedy. In the film’s beginning, Arthur is a humorless introverted conformist at heart and even displays some heroic underdog characteristics. He is a clown for hire (wage laborer) that sometimes suffers stage fright. Wearing a costume and makeup is a job requirement that intensifies his lack of personhood and alienation: he entered an arena in which he lacks any of the skills needed for even minimal success. Fleck works as a nonsensical clown in a blurred anomic reality around unhappy dangerous people with a profound sense of insecurity. Arthur is existentially homeless. His sense of rootlessness expresses itself as a sublimated twisted disfigured thin body. At one point Fleck attempts to gain a self-determined identity by believing he is the illegitimate son of the wealthy Gotham mayoral candidate Thomas Wayne. Arthur is an overly enthusiastic fan of a well-known TV comedian, Murray Franklin, and attempts to gain a self-identity by mere association, but both efforts fail causing even greater psychological disintegration.[2] Arthur is a non-person with no sense of what is real or illusion which enables the movie viewing audience to vicariously participate in his feelings of alienation, moral ambiguity, existential confusion and uncertainty.

[1]Chris Hedges develops this critical theme of spectacle in his 2009 book, “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and The Triumph of Spectacle.” The first chapter is about his experience at a World Wrestling Entertainment tour—the same carnival business that Donald Trump had been involved for years.

[2] Fromm studied authoritarian personalities and identified three general personality types that form as defense mechanisms against feelings of anxiety, frustration, and powerlessness: A.) Authoritarian, B.) Destructive and, C.) Conformist. Fleck’s transformative evolution exemplified all three general character types at some point in the film.  Fromm also identified four more specific social character orientations classified as 1.) Submissive conformist orientation, 2.) Exploitative aggressive orientation of dynastic elites, 3.) Hoarding wealth-accumulating orientation, 4.) The Marketing self-selling managerial bureaucrat. With that said, Fleck does not really meet all the modern criteria of a narcissist.

…to continue as “The Liminal Trickster.”

Insomnia

The Struggle of the Olympic gods of Space with The God of Infinite Time

“The God of time is the God of history…He is the God who acts in history towards a final goal…the victory over the demonic powers represented as imperialistic nations….” —Tillich, Theology of Culture, pdf., p.37.

“Zeus the son of Cronos.”—Hesiod, Works and Days.

The Ancient Greek polytheistic gods of Olympus were appropriately lousy gods because they ruled over a lousy world—spatial existence is the closed realm of ubiquitous irrational undeserved tragedy in a never-ending “circle of genesis, and decay, greatness and self-destruction”(Ibid. p.32). In this sense, Greek polytheism was a realistic theology of human existence. The Olympic pantheon of gods ruled over a circular spatial cosmology wherein “space is tragic,” and god is a stranger. In post-lapsarian Christian ontology (The Fall of Man) humans are essentially connected to the divine, but are not strangers to God as in Deism—instead, human beings are alienated, or estranged while still possessing an embedded pre-existing inherent connection. The concept of time as circular prevented Ancient Greek thought from developing a philosophy of history. Space and time are the structures of all existence that can be thought of symbolically as the fundamental struggling forces that determine human life and history.

Mythos transmits insight in a narrative story form through a symbolically coded paradigm such as monotheism. Tillich launches an archaeological search to collect the ancient symbols of polytheism to contrast them with our overly familiar concept of theological monotheism. Mythic symbolism--just as with logical symbolism--gives access to deeper levels of existence that otherwise would be unintelligible. Tillich has an extensive typology of religions that include the different types of polytheism (see ST., Vol. I, p. 222). Universalistic polytheism holds that special divine beings, places, or forces populate the world, but still are not fixed entities or subjects of stories. They are only vague embodiments of universal animistic powers that are hidden yet manifests itself everywhere. Mythological polytheism placed divine power in individual ruling deities of a fixed character in mythic stories. These deities are self-related, and transcendent to their realm of control yet relate to other individual gods in conflict, and struggle in which they lie, cheat, steal, kidnap, and kill. These gods were like loud pugilistic neighbors that lived down the road. The polytheistic mythological gods create and battle over holy places. Later in history, these gods lost divine status and were taken less seriously by ancient people. The gods of Ancient Greece were themselves subject to the greater power of fate. Although a ruling god could overpower other demonic forces, any victory is only temporary as they are always under threat by other antagonistic tribal forces. These gods were not truly unconditional making them partly demonic (ST., Vol. I, p. 224). The same limited conditional gods compose Dualistic polytheism such as Zoroasterism (Light vs. Dark), and Manichaeism (Good vs. Evil) where holiness is placed in one realm and the demonic in another realm which really is a dualistic monotheism where each god is half limited by the other so that this ambiguity of what is holy leads to new typologies of monotheism seeking to find a resolution. Symbolically understood, monotheism is a conceptual gathering point of the multiple powers of Logos into a universal singularity. Heidegger’s analysis of the Greek word “Logos” found its original meaning as “gathering together, to collect, to order.”

Tillich interprets Olympic polytheism as pagan because it elevates a special space as ultimate in “value and dignity” so that the pagan god is bound to a place--but beside yet another antagonistic tribal place. Even death and Hell is a place. He concludes that the difference between polytheism and monotheism is “not a difference of number but of quality. Only if the one God is exclusively God, unconditioned and unlimited by anything other than Himself, is there a true monotheism, and only then is the power of space over time broken” (Theology of Culture, Paul Tillich, p. 32).

All human beings must have a place, or home to sustain their lives. Space has a natural predominance over the life processes of human existence. The “earth and soil” is worshiped for having vital intrinsic divine creative powers, but single groups attribute “divine honor,” or “ultimate honor,” to a particular space, which is then given ultimate unconditional adoration for its divine life-sustaining power. This sacred “earth and soil” also include other spatial concepts such as inborn native loyalty to “blood and race, clan, tribe, and family.”  However, space is limited for any one group so that “deification” of Space comes unlimited claims for Space in a will to power struggle against other nations for absolute supremacy. Tillich writes, “The god of the one country struggles with the god of the other country, for every spatial god is imperialistic by his very character of being a god. The law of mutual destruction, therefore, is the unavoidable fate of the powers of space” (Ibid. p.32). A cosmos without a telos (Goal, or Aim)--of directed time, of something creatively new, or a New Being--is instead superseded by demonic powers of the gods of space.  Extremist jingoistic state nationalism is collective political narcissism that deifies itself and space. Any god can be symbolically transformed into a god of war, but the polytheistic space gods where particularly susceptible to this fate because of people’s primordial relationship to soil and tribe. The gods of space eventually bring about the fall of a nation because they are necessarily unjust, unfree, idolatrous, and self-destructive. Tillich points to modern nationalism as a form of polytheism in modern life where space rules over time.

“The people of time in Synagogue and Church cannot avoid being persecuted because by their very existence, they break the claims of the gods of space who express themselves in will to power, imperialism, injustice, demonic enthusiasm, and tragic self-destruction”—Tillich, Theology of Culture, p. 39.

According to the Hebraic literary interpretation of the books Deutero-Isaiah, God is the God of time and history. History has a beginning and end during which the monotheistic God of time directs history toward a teleological goal. Time reaches for fulfillment in the universal Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of peace and justice. The gods of space destroyed the concept of “universal justice” as each polytheistic deity overpowered another in a series of endless imperialistic wars.[1] “Prophetic monotheism” proclaims the negation of national boundary wars by demanding the separation of God from all nations. The God of Abraham commanded that Abraham leave his homeland, and the false gods of blood and soil. Whenever the Hebraic God of the Old Testament is identified with the finite whether it is a golden calf or a city-god, a separation begins even if it means separating Himself from his chosen people (Ibid. p.35).

[1]Notice how the concept of monotheism contains within itself the negated concept of polytheism. Only by the internal contradictions of pagan polytheism does the universal concept of monotheism arise to overcome its division in a conceptually refined synthesized “One God” with an open universal teleological history and universal justice. Monotheism is the anti-symbol of polytheism. Hegel called this process of negation and retention, “determinate negation,” or Aufhebung (sublation).

In prophetic monotheism, God is the God of universal history that overcomes the divisions of people and even the division of language itself (Pentecost). In polytheism the pagan gods perished when their nations were defeated. Prophetic monotheism preached that the God of Abraham could destroy all nations--even allow His chosen people to be enslaved by all nations-- without destroying Himself so that “his quality as the god of justice enabled him to become the universal God” (Ibid.,11). This conception of a teleological God of history ended the dominance of polytheism. Tillich points out that it is not a coincidence Socrates, the Jews, and the early Christians were persecuted as atheists for not recognizing the polytheistic gods of space for they instead centered on “historical fulfillment and justice belong to the God who acts in time and through time, uniting the separated space of his universe in love”(Ibid., p. 38).

Amos 

“You cry with a loud voice to the nations: ‘This is our God, and there is none beside Him.’ "-- Hymn to Amos

The prophetic herdsman, Amos of Judah(755 B.C.), described in the Hebraic and Christian Old Testament would not identify himself as a professional prophet because they had no credibility from their past reputations of engaging in hubristic nationalism and ignoring crimes committed by the powerful. Judah is just west of the Dead Sea, but Amos preached in the Northern Kingdom of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II (781-741 B.C.) and had conquered Syria, Moab, along with Ammon. Amos is the prophet that proclaimed the coming collapse of the prosperous Kingdom of Israel due to its nationalistic idolatry and oppression of the poor. Amos was tortured by Amaziah, a priest of Bethel, then exiled and forbidden from prophesying against Israel. As a consequence of exile, Amos is the first known literary prophet to write down his prophetic warnings. Amos prophesied that there is one universal divine justice in history thereby reducing all nations and tribes to equal levels before a righteous divinity. Amos preached that all sacrificial ritual obligations of religious orthodoxy are not enough to make a righteous person, but instead calls for un-coerced intentional participatory worship. A nation is required by God to always want economic justice and condemn injustice everywhere to maintain a relationship with the divine.[2]

[2] Ethical thinking is inherently teleological in that the moral agent seeks to achieve the good by free will and right actions.

Because of Amos’ continued written criticism of Israel from exile the son of Bethel priest, Amaziah, traveled to Judah and murdered Amos—a familiar pattern.

“Synagogue and Church should be united in our age, in the struggle for the God of time against the gods of space.“—Tillich, Theology of Culture, p. 39.

The Amos pattern is familiar because we are all living it now. We are all torturable. Torture is now legal in the United States. Torture is an essential theme even in media entertainment. Through decades of legal maneuvering, ethical justifications, and actual practice American society has gradually undergone a mithridization of accepting torture as a justifiable practice.  American civil society has embraced an ethos of Machiavellian will to power employing pathological business practices, and given over to solipsistic narcissism. These are the “spirits,” or “mind” of the present local and global era.

Media is awash with torture imagery. Even family “entertainment” has evolved into the display of pseudo-torture sessions in “reality-based” television programming. In episode 309 of “Fear Factor” (original airdate, 3/3/2003) a woman is strapped into a chair while seven needles six inches in length are inserted under her skin (not the breasts, of course, since that would be obscene). Interestingly, the pseudo-torture session is performed in a “prison” setting with the leather strapped chair similar to an electric chair. In this case, acceptance for torturing human beings is won by presenting human suffering as a television “game” where the participants are "voluntary." This psychological categorization acts to suspend belief to override one’s natural repulsion of torturing another human being, and allows the message to reach its desensitized target audience. One would wonder what the ratings would be if a person was tortured against their will!

Researchers Dr. Agnes Nairn ,Christine Griffin, and Patricia Gaya Wicks in a project at the University of Bath started out studying the influence of brands on children from ages 7 to 11 were shocked to discovered that children had intense hatred for Barbie dolls and acted out simulated acts of torture on them “from scalping to decapitation, burning, breaking and even microwaving.” Dr. Nairn focused her study on this violent behavior which crossed age, and gender. The dolls were seen by the children as disposable and therefore could not be an object of empathy, or affection.

Research scientists have found signs of widespread hopelessness within the American population that include fascist right-wing factions that seek imposing general chaos as a method of destroying society in the hope something better will emerge. Political scientists Michael Bang Petersen, Mathias Osmundsen and Kevin Arceneaux studied 6,000 right-wing extremists in the US and Denmark and published their findings in a research paper titled, "A 'Need for Chaos' and the Sharing of Hostile Political Rumors in Advanced Democracies,” The participants were asked a series of test questions and reported: “24 percent, agreed that society should be burned to the ground, 40 percent agreed with the statement, “We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over.” Similarly, 40 percent agreed with the statement, “When it comes to our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking ‘just let them all burn.’”

Currently, all American media is saturated with billionaire financed propagandists attempting to jam the channels of communication with endless disinformation, sophistry, false narratives, conspiracies, censorship by omission, sexism, militaristic nationalism, fear, racism, and hate so that the weaker argument defeats the stronger argument. American Christians must be part of this struggle against the pagan gods of space.   

  

It's Only A Paper Moon

by 

Yip Harburg

"The theme endures because we’ve all had the experience of suddenly finding ourselves believing in something beautiful but flimsy. Our imagination can launch us skyward, but if we don’t return to earth we can lose ourselves. But coming down from a false heaven allows us to connect with our fellow travelers in a new, enlightened way. The road ahead will never be easy, but reality gives us the possibility of finding real happiness."-- Carrie Kilgore

It is only a paper moon

Sailing over a cardboard sea

But it wouldn't be make believe

If you believed in me

Yes, it's only a canvas sky

Hangin' over a cotton tree

But it wouldn't be make believe

If you believed in me

Without your love

It's a honky tonk parade

Without your love

It's a melody played in a penny arcade

It's a Barnum and Bailey world

Just as phony as it can be

But it wouldn't be make believe

If you believed in me