In Plato’s Laches there is an exchange between two interculors regarding the virtue of courage. This was also repeated in Meno, for those keeping score, but with a different set of characters. Laches, whose ideas link up with his Athenian heritage, and Socrates, the godfather of rationalism, who insists Laches isn’t really knowledgeable about the true nature of courage. Both men inquire to each other’s questions, Socrates believes Laches cannot understand true knowledge without essentially putting his original stance on the matter to task. But what if not only Laches was unable to entertain other ideas (it comes from a quote that is often attributed to Aristotle, but was rather a commentary on his Nicomachean Ethics) and was even devoted to his idea of courage that he rather kill Socrates prematurely than ever think otherwise? A lot of people find blind devotion to any concept a very simple-minded preposition, but why should we not question the very fact of questioning?
For starters, we wouldn’t be able to reach a position in time where I would be typing this very article, on this very computer, at this very time. Conversely, a lot of people who are blindly devoted to a belief, especially in great numbers, tend to stick together, observe strict rules, and often end up outpacing and outlasting the ones who dared to think. Now, I don’t necessarily “believe” or “think” its wrong to seek knowledge, quite the contrary. However, it gets to a point when there is nothing left to dissect, nothing left to critique, nothing left but the hollow husk where mankind once stood. And so, we are forced to begin again, as if history is one giant looping megalith like Oswald Spengler described in Decline and to a lesser extent in Man And Technics, that maybe, just maybe, we have gone too far as a species.
I think the problem of knowledge versus true opinions is that many philosophers saw "the thing itself" as unknowable, as even if an opinion was true, there was always a barrier to true belief. Hence it follows, for true belief, which I know there is a semantical difference between 'belief' and 'opinion', if the latter was to become the former there would have to be some kind of penetration towards "the thing itself" to be sure of one's stance on any subject. opinion are merely unverified beliefs, that a person may hold but not necessarily would, for a lack of a better term, 'die for', unlike opinions, beliefs require a certain kind of devotion, so while its an opinion, it can easily be dissuaded into other opinion, where as if Laches actually believed what he was saying, it would be harder to convince him of alternative knowledge, since the "thing itself" pokes itself through the phenomenal filter and makes itself more noticeable to Laches. however I've always kind of felt that knowledge was always banished to outside the consciousness and can never be retrieved by even the most patient of metaphysicians, unless the level of devotion to the idea negates all other possible alternatives.
That's why radical Islam is so effective in militarizing against its detractors, why you can’t convince your local evangelical that there is anything that Zion does in a negative manner, why you can never convince Afro-Americans that their backwards interpretation of how history actually unfolded is wrong, or why you cannot convince a pragmatist that what useful, in fact, might be harmful. Or convince a robber baron that making profits off “suckers” is morally wrong. I mean could go all day, but there’s a reason these people are successful at replicating their gene pool and those who try to make sure everything is fair. One might say, oh well they’re Machiavellians, they ignore rules. But no, quite the contrary. They have rules. A very specific set of rules. They’re just not concerned with niceties like fairness and justice. Sometimes devotion to an idea is much better than simply entertaining it as a joke, irony-poisoned and all like intellectuals of the past century and a half. its time to get serious.
For starters, we wouldn’t be able to reach a position in time where I would be typing this very article, on this very computer, at this very time. Conversely, a lot of people who are blindly devoted to a belief, especially in great numbers, tend to stick together, observe strict rules, and often end up outpacing and outlasting the ones who dared to think. Now, I don’t necessarily “believe” or “think” its wrong to seek knowledge, quite the contrary. However, it gets to a point when there is nothing left to dissect, nothing left to critique, nothing left but the hollow husk where mankind once stood. And so, we are forced to begin again, as if history is one giant looping megalith like Oswald Spengler described in Decline and to a lesser extent in Man And Technics, that maybe, just maybe, we have gone too far as a species.
I think the problem of knowledge versus true opinions is that many philosophers saw "the thing itself" as unknowable, as even if an opinion was true, there was always a barrier to true belief. Hence it follows, for true belief, which I know there is a semantical difference between 'belief' and 'opinion', if the latter was to become the former there would have to be some kind of penetration towards "the thing itself" to be sure of one's stance on any subject. opinion are merely unverified beliefs, that a person may hold but not necessarily would, for a lack of a better term, 'die for', unlike opinions, beliefs require a certain kind of devotion, so while its an opinion, it can easily be dissuaded into other opinion, where as if Laches actually believed what he was saying, it would be harder to convince him of alternative knowledge, since the "thing itself" pokes itself through the phenomenal filter and makes itself more noticeable to Laches. however I've always kind of felt that knowledge was always banished to outside the consciousness and can never be retrieved by even the most patient of metaphysicians, unless the level of devotion to the idea negates all other possible alternatives.
That's why radical Islam is so effective in militarizing against its detractors, why you can’t convince your local evangelical that there is anything that Zion does in a negative manner, why you can never convince Afro-Americans that their backwards interpretation of how history actually unfolded is wrong, or why you cannot convince a pragmatist that what useful, in fact, might be harmful. Or convince a robber baron that making profits off “suckers” is morally wrong. I mean could go all day, but there’s a reason these people are successful at replicating their gene pool and those who try to make sure everything is fair. One might say, oh well they’re Machiavellians, they ignore rules. But no, quite the contrary. They have rules. A very specific set of rules. They’re just not concerned with niceties like fairness and justice. Sometimes devotion to an idea is much better than simply entertaining it as a joke, irony-poisoned and all like intellectuals of the past century and a half. its time to get serious.
