Ontological Shocks, Total Pyrrhonean Semioclasis and a Soul Set for Liberty

Written by Outis on August 12, 2023. Posted in Current News

I had undergone a similar ‘ontological shock’ as Mr. Malone describes the phenomenon for himself and Mr. Marik: thank you for the candor and for the concept. Mine, took place in two bangs, the second followed by several smaller after-bangs

My field was political science (go figure…) and, although not mainstream, my work fully respected the epistemological and methodological standards of argumentation officially established since the Enlightenment…

I believed deeply in the Western civilization built around the core value of liberty, and I aimed my lifelong work to be a contribution to it, and to engage in dialogue with the epitomes of the reflection on political matters since Plato onward…

The first ontological shock came in 2020/2021. I was in an utter state of disbelief when I saw the unfolding of the 2020 US election and what followed.

Corroborating countless accounts from all around the country and analyses which I could validate by my judgement, I soon came to the realization that without the collusion of large swathes of of the media apparatus and, worse, of the judicial apparatus, this electoral stunt could not have been pulled…

After this first domino had fallen, the path of inference lead to the fall of the next, and the next, and the next. The judicial power is the third power in the state, while the press (the media) is often considered as the forth power.

Once the judicial power goes corrupt, the entire theory of the separation of powers in the state, of the mechanism of checks and balances between them, that is to say, the foundations of the modern state, go bad – from within.

Once the press power goes corrupt, there is no force to keep government good from without. The road to tyranny is wide open. I thought then, ‘the entire political science, down to the first premises and foundations, ought to be re-made’.

But then, there came in quick succession the second, third and forth ontological shocks: covid, decarbonization/demethanization, zelenkysm and the accompanying fomentation of propaganda, censorship and criminalization of dissent and political opposition.

I don’t even mention elgebetism, transhumanism, migrationism, reversed racism and the like. They were around for a while, and I consider them either epiphenomena or diversions (elgebetism = oversexualization of politics). The ‘road to tyranny’ was not only just ‘open’, we were moving at full trotting speed along it.

All of these take place under the guise of ‘science’, in ways which had made of science a mockery and a shame. So, I asked myself, what else is false?

By the summer of 2022, I was fully engaged in what I called Total Pyrrhonean Semioclasis, the total demolition of previously held opinions (thank you Descartes, for laying your soul open for us; Meditations on First Philosophy): history (lifelong pleasure), evolution theory (the framework for my interdisciplinary work in political theory), cosmology (curious dilettante).

And, further down the rabbit hole, to the ultimate recesses, materialism, finiteness and telonomy. All these are discourses, which is to say, complex linguistic constructions (hence semio-clasis, the opposite of semiotic construction) with a performative intent (John L. Austin, how to do things with words).

After a life long love-affair with philo-sophy, excuse the pun, to my utter embarrassment, only now did I discover Pyrrhonism, which should be the basic mental frame of every civilized person (pyrrhonism is not your off-the-shelf skepticism, not another ‘doctrine’, but an art, an attitude, a discipline of the soul towards truth and the profession of opinions; if need be, I invite the reader to get acquainted, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kzZdps9PG4).

So, off the board went, without qualms or regret, things which framed everything I strove for my entire life and on account of which I entertained vague fantasies of ‘posterity’. It felt like truth and it felt like freedom and, more, it felt clean and healthy…

What will be the following ontological shock, is impossible to say, for no sane person can anticipate the content of the next episode of psychotics…

For a mind in the habit of thinking, used to the discipline of reasoning, conclusions are not hard to accept, you go where the facts and the logic lead you: a new tyranny is rising and is moving at cruising speed. More difficult is the problem what to _do with the conclusion_…

I can tell this much to the reader who will happen across these lines.

I had spent my entire life until my mid 20s in an Eastern European communist totalitarian regime. They will not succeed, this tyrannical version on steroids, aiming globally, with its ‘scientific’ justifications and its high tech armament of repression.

Large-scale ‘control’ is the pipe dream of the Machiavellians, and such control is not possible.

Machiavellians of all persuasions are sociopaths at their core. They believe in the infinite malleability and manipulability of the human mind. They believe that humans are born ‘tabula rasa’ and they can inscribe on their minds whatever designs of anthropogenesis and social engineering they hallucinate. These basic beliefs are false.

Following Dr. Malone’s soul searching, and equally from personal experience, the experience of a young professional cast long ago in a compulsory work place away from home, feverishly digging for understanding in the permitted but mostly irrelevant books, experience which framed the rest of my life (call it my formative existential crisis) —

I know these other basic beliefs, namely: that people distinguish innately between good and evil; that as a consequence the drive for liberty has precedence; that people independently come to find again and again the language of liberty – words, concepts, arguments; that they can summon the grit to withstand tyranny within, and that, sooner or later, they will find the courage and the means to oppose it.

Whether you believe in natural instinct, in God or in the soul, this is the ineradicable truth about human nature. And, if you cannot believe any of the above but still resist Machiavelianism, then at least tell yourself that these are the beliefs worth having: at least you will not feel despondent, dejected, forlorn and powerless.

Heck, even mathematics is founded on basic beliefs (axioms), so you must believe in something, isn’t it?

And here is another rationale, this time, learned ‘cold’: control congeals life, energy, creativity. Control makes things brittle and brittle things break easily (see also Taleb on antifragility). Tyranny is self destructive.

It originates in malice, in spite, it grows by negative-sum games, and these all are eating away and finally take down the agents. Tyranny is the cancer of social life.

Even though the new tyranny will not succeed, it can produce a lot of damage – suffering, destruction, death, it may take a long time to meet its appointed time with Ananke, and it may become full blown before we, the older generation, are dead.

But, heck, nobody leaves this place alive so, how we live, what we think, say and do, makes all the difference. The difference which may be the only big thing at stake.

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