Walla Walla Bing Bang

In the 47-page essay that makes up the first third of her short book For The New Intellectual, Ayn Rand makes much use of two archetypal terms coined by Nathaniel Branden. Two kinds of human, one a figure of force and the other a figure of faith.

For a completely slanted (and often vitriolic) summary of the history of philosophy, FTNI is an interesting read. It was with good reason that a friend of mine once remarked, "Miss Rand should always be read with one eyebrow permanently raised." But even if it's not much good for anything else, the essay makes great use of the two archetypes played against each other, and against mankind. The rubric used lends a compelling perspective to certain cultural trends, both throughout history and in the present.

So, the archetypes. The first is called Atilla. This is the psychological symbol of blunt might, of violence as the solution to all problems, of destruction of one's enemies as an ideal. The second is called the Witch Doctor. This is the human who eschews reality, who retreats "into his emotions, into visions of some mystic realm where his wishes enjoy a supernatural power unlimited by the absolute of nature." They might seem like polar opposites, but Rand plays them as two sides of the same coin. Both are interested in forcing reality to conform to their desires; and while Atilla strives for physical conquest, the Witch Doctor seeks to rule the soul. The muscle of Atilla can take purpose from the values of the Witch Doctor, and in turn the Witch Doctor gains protection from and power over "any recalcitrant who may choose to challenge his authority." Rand plays both as the enemies of reason, and as proponents of the precept that wishes are superior to reality.

From page 17:

Since the clash [between reality and wishes] is constant, the Witch Doctor's solution is to believe that what he perceives is another, "higher" reality―where his wishes are omnipotent, where contradictions are possible and A is non-A, where his assertions, which are false on earth, become true and aquire the status of a "superior" truth which he perceived by means of a special faculty denied to other, "inferior," beings. The only validation of his consciousness he can obtain on earth is the belief and the obedience of others, when they accept his "truth" as superior to their own perception of reality. While Atilla extorts their obedience by means of a club, the Witch Doctor obtains it by means of a much more powerful weapon: he pre-empts the field of morality.

There is no way to turn morality into a weapon of enslavement except by divorcing it from man's reason and from the goals of his own existence. There is no way to degrade man's life on earth except by the lethal opposition of the moral and the practical. Morality is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions; when it is set to oppose his own life and mind, it makes him turn against himself and blindly act as the tool of his own destruction. There is no way to make a human being accept the role of a sacrificial animal except by destroying his self-esteem. There is no way to destroy his self-esteem except by making him reject his own consciousness. There is no way to make him reject his own consciousness except by convincing him of its impotence.

The damnation of this earth as a realm where nothing is possible to man but pain, disaster and defeat, a realm inferior to another, "higher," reality; the damnation of all values, enjoyment, achievement and success on earth as a proof of depravity; the damnation of man's mind as a source of pride, and the damnation of reason as a "limited," deceptive, unreliable, impotent faculty, incapable of perceiving the "real" reality and the "true" truth; the split of man in two, setting his consciousness (his soul) against his body, and his moral values against his own interest; the damnation of man's nature, body and self as evil; the commandment of self-sacrifice, renunciation, suffering, obedience, humility and faith, as the good; the damnation of life and the worship of death, with the promise of rewards beyond the grave―these are the necessary tenets of the Witch Doctor's view of existence, as they have been in every variant of Witch Doctor philosophy throughout the course of mankind's history.

The secret of the Witch Doctor's power lies in the fact that man needs an integrated view of life, a philosophy, whether he is aware of his need or not―and whenever, through ignorance, cowardice, or mental sloth, men choose not to be aware of it, their chronic sense of guilt, uncertainty and terror makes them feel that the Witch Doctor's philosophy is true.

In contemplating such forceful rhetoric, I think of our culture and the tag-team of the Religious Right and the Republican party over the past couple decades. It isn't a perfect match for Rand's perspective in the early 1960's, but in some ways it fits remarkably well. Perhaps where I differ from Rand's formulation is in my questioning of whether the two archetypical characters must necessarily be joined as a team. To wit: what happens if Atilla and the Witch Doctor are no longer able to get along?

My current hypothesis is that, should the tag-team continue to be stressed by Giuliani's leading in most polls, and should the stress be maximized if/when Giuliani wins the nomination, and if that were to result in the evangelical/fundamentalist "base" of the conservative party actually refusing to vote for Giuliani because of their myopic view of a few social issues, we will see two things happen. One, the Democratic candidate will win the White House; and two, the tag-team of religious conservatives and the Republican party will be (permanently?) damaged, perhaps dissolved. If our culture and our discourse and our politics can all three step together into the 21st Century to join the rest of Western civilization, the modern Republican party might only remain relevant to the extent that it marginalizes the evangelical/fundamentalist block that it has so long courted. We may very well be staring at the cusp of a political and cultural shift as it is about to happen, with the result being that we finally escape some of the ancient social taboos that we've so long been shackled to.

Blog Against Theocracy

So the next couple days are Blog Against Theocracy weekend. There's a neat website called First Freedom First (which has lots of interesting information, a great petition you can sign in seconds, and some pretty neat t-shirts), which is how I found out about the blogswarm.

I've touched on a few subjects related to this in some past posts. I mentioned neo-Fundamentalism and religiously-based discrimination back in October, and religious bigotry's presence in the voting booth back in November. And last August on my other blog, I wrote about separation of church and state in the public school system.


But in celebration of Blog Against Theocracy weekend, I thought I'd take a different approach. It seems to me that the general issue here (theocracy = bad; separation of church and state = good) is pretty obvious, and should be almost automatically agreed upon by all reasonable people. I mean, you don't hear almost any Americans, Christian or not, Republican or not, defending the wonderfulness of concepts like militant Islam or Sharia law. When we, as a culture, look out on the world and see laws or cultural rules that have no basis at all outside of faith-based religious commitment, we don't think twice about the inherent idiocy and intrinsic unfairness of such systems. For example, we do not hesitate to question and criticize the severe oppression of women, up to and including rigid (and often violently enforced) dress codes (such as Taliban-mandated Burqas) and barbaric punishment, reminiscent of the Old Testament and the Inquisitions, for breaking the rules.

When it comes right down to it, in our culture 100% of us seem to agree that religious discrimination is wrong, while a full half of us then turn around and embrace it fully when it agrees with our own religiosity. How does this, in so many of our minds, not trip the breaker of intellectual consistency? How can so many in our nation affirm that theocratic public policy is wrong in other cultures and religions, while gladly (and hypocritically) embracing it in their own?

One of the great things about our country is that people are free, within certain constraints of course, to believe what they want. So if a person wants to have a view of certain topics (such as politics in general, or homosexuality in particular) that is decided solely by their religious faith, they can. But another one of the great things about our country is that just because you have a religious belief about a certain subject, that doesn't mean that I have to believe it too. And it is this, precisely, that seems to be the trouble lately. An astonishing number of people in our country seem to have come to believe that their religious faith is, all by itself, a good enough reason to make rules and laws that discriminate against and deny the rights of others. Somehow the idea that a religious opinion only shared by some should then be forced on all others (others that perhaps prefer to have opinions that are informed by more than faith-based commitment to ancient religion) has avoided the criticism it so richly deserves, in a startling amount of our population.

So the question becomes, why? If we as a culture want to make laws that declare something wrong and illegal, like rape or fraud, for example, we should be able to give many sound reasons why. Not surprisingly, we find that this is exactly what we have done. Grand theft auto is not illegal because a minority religious viewpoint desires it to be. It's illegal because we, as a society, have used our reasoning minds to figure out what things we don't want people to be doing, with the general principle of freedom in mind to constrain us. We allow individuals to pursue their individual freedom and happiness, up to the point where such pursuit would infringe on the rights of other individuals. What this means is that if a group of religious people, small or large, wants there to be a certain law, they must be expected to give sound reasons why. In the absence of good reasons and in the presence of statements like "I just believe" or "my holy book says," it should be exquisitely clear that theocratic rules that discriminate against others based on nothing but religious conviction should be dismissed as worthless. No Christian would want to be told how to live their life based on the faith of a different religion. It is high time that our society leaves theocracy and religious bigotry behind us, back in the dark ages where it belongs.

(If you would also like to participate in Blog Against Theocracy weekend, click on over to the home page to find out what to do and how to let them know you're involved in the blogswarm.)

"Quixotic Quotes"...not for the faint of heart.

ID (intelligent design) is not creationism, and can be perfectly compatible with evolution. This is why we're asking schools to teach the "evidence against evolution". [click]

We're not creationists, except for those of us who are, but the rest of us won't confirm that we're not. But if you call us creationists, we'll complain to no end. [click]

ID is a widely accepted theory in the scientific community. Just last year, over 100 scientists signed a statement which does not support ID, but does say that they are "skeptical" of Darwinism. The opinions of tens of thousands of other scientists don't count, because they're all biased. [click]

Mainstream scientists dare not disagree with the monolithic block that is Darwinian orthodoxy. However, here are a number of mainstream scientists who disagree with each other on some issues, which means that they can't agree on anything. [click]

Darwinists are driven by religious and ideological motivations. But since we've removed the picture of God and the phrase "Cultural Renewal" from our website, everyone knows this isn't true of us. [click]

Absolutely everything wrong in society is caused by dogmatic Darwinian atheistic materialists. Including stereotyping, demonizing, and scapegoating. [click]

Since the peppered moth case has been proven problematic, natural selection is disproven. The other 1,582 studies of natural selection in the wild, as well as the numerous laboratory studies, don't count. [click]

And peppered moths don't rest on tree trunks. The actual datasets of moths found in natural positions in the wild, off but also on trunks, are irrelevant because researchers have captured thousands of moths over the years in their moth traps, and not once has a moth in a trap been found on a tree trunk. [click]

As demonstrated above, moths don't rest on tree trunks, which means that the photographs showing the contrasting conspicuousness of moths on tree trunks found in textbooks are FRAUDS. All the other staged animal photos in textbooks are however unobjectionable. [click]