How can people believe in a system that is anti-existence?

Earl writes:

You’re great at explaining liberalism as a (dare I say coherent) system. But systems of any kind throughout nature are usually developed to cope with reality and rational forces. They observe the laws of nature very strictly, or give rise to laws themselves. Systems are usually rational. How then does liberalism make sense? Liberalism is suicidal, self-loathing, reality-denying, irrational chaos. It is an attack on the existence of existence.

It seems only white people enthusiastically support the self-annihilatory aspect of liberalism. Why? Have whites developed some genetic mutation that will cause them to self-destruct?

LA replies:

Earl is absolutely right that liberalism is an attack on the existence of existence. I can’t reply right now, but his question is so powerful and to the point that wanted to post it now. We’ll get back to it later.

LA continues:

However, here’s quick answer to Earl’s question that just came to me. I’ve often said that liberalism, proceeding from its ideal of perfect equality, blocks out all the vast sectors of reality that contradict that ideal—sex differences, racial differences, black violence, the tyrannical agenda of Islam, the objective moral good, the conditions for the creation of wealth, and on and on. Well, since liberalism at its core consists of blocking out reality, it is no surprise that liberals also block out the fact that by blocking out reality, they are assuring the destruction of their own civilization.

- end of initial entry -

December 11, 8:00 p.m.

Kristor writes:

As for Earl’s question, I think it’s because, not believing in God, liberals are naturally terrified, and seek with all their might to control risk and escape uncertainty. But eliminating risk and uncertainty from life entails eliminating adventure; in the limit, it entails eliminating the adventure of life itself.

We discussed this here. You wrote:

(1) Liberals, being non-believing relativists, think that real knowledge is impossible [see note]; (2) therefore the world is both forever unintelligible to them and forever uncertain to them (a symptom of which is that they’re always being “shocked” by entirely predictable and lawful events); (3) to escape from the alienation that results from unintelligibility and from the powerlessness that results from uncertainty, the liberals must make the world intelligible and certain. They do this by acquiring ever greater control over the world. The planned society is both certain and knowable.

Further, as you suggest, this entire operation fits the pattern of gnosticism. To liberals, as to gnostics, the real world is variously senseless, meaningless, random, weird, off-putting, alienating, false, and malevolent. (As I said the other day, for Randians and liberals, normality is evil). To end the alienation, they must take control of the world and reconstruct it into a new world of which they are the masters and gods, controlling all, knowing all. They end their alienation by becoming themselves the all-powerful embodiment of all truth—again, a classic gnostic operation.

Kristor continues:

I’ve been re-reading the thread I just linked and quoted. Boy, was it fun. Later on, I said something that directly responds to Earl’s question:

In general, then, the liberal drive to freeze things in some ideal condition, so as to eliminate the uncertainties they might otherwise generate, entails killing them. The fixity liberals desire is rigor mortis. When the liberal social policy is completely implemented, there will be no society left. There will remain only a relatively small number of isolated individuals. But even then, their certainty will not be complete. Suicide is only way they will be able to perfect their certainty.

Death is the only way a creature can make itself perfectly safe from death and pain.

December 12

D. Edwards writes:

I’ve taken Kristor’s comment and I ade a slight adjustment:

In general, then, Islam’s drive to freeze things in some ideal condition, so as to eliminate the uncertainties they might otherwise generate, entails killing them. The fixity Islam desire is rigor mortis. When the Islam social policy is completely implemented, there will be no society left. There will remain only a relatively small number of isolated individuals. But even then, their certainty will not be complete. Suicide is only way they will be able to perfect their certainty.

Death is the only way a creature can make itself perfectly safe from death and pain.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 11, 2012 01:17 PM | Send