| Author | Message | | Von Curtis | | Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 4:12 am Post subject: Scientific totalitarianism |
| Heavy going article , interesting bits through it
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Articles/Scientific_Totalitarianism.htm
The Faustian Face of Modern Science: Understanding the Epistemological Foundations of Scientific Totalitarianism
When extended beyond its legitimate fields of application, science becomes a rigid template to which even the most complex of entities, like man, must conform. The scientific outlook acknowledges no moral master. It gives no assent to moral or esthetic judgments. In the words of B.F. Skinner, it "de-homunculizes" man, a being that was originally "defended by the literatures of freedom and dignity.
By the time Luther's ideas were codified in the Augsburg Confession, nominalism was already beginning to co-opt Christianity. Nominalism's rejection of a knowable God harmonized with the superstitious notions of the time. Misunderstanding the troubles that beset them, many peasants made the anthropic attribution of the Black Death to God's will. Following this baseless assumption to its logical conclusion, many surmised that God was neither merciful nor knowable. Such inferences clearly overlooked the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which represented the ultimate act of grace on God's part. Nevertheless, the superstitious populace were beginning to accept the new portrayal of God as an indifferent deistic spirit. Nominalism merely edified such beliefs. Invariably, nominalism would seduce those who would eventually convert to Protestantism.
Suddenly, Christianity was infused with materialism and radical empiricism. There was an occult character to both of these philosophical positions. Radical empiricism rejects causality, thereby abolishing any epistemological certainty and reducing reality to a holograph that can be potentially manipulated through the "sorcery" of science. Materialism emphasizes the primacy of matter, inferring that the physical universe is a veritable golem that created itself. Despite their clearly anti-theistic nature, these ideas began to insinuate themselves within Christianity.
The spiritual elements that remained embedded in Christianity assumed more of a Gnostic character, depicting the physical body as an impediment to man's knowledge of God and venerating death as a welcome release from a corporeal prison. Gradually, a Hegelian synthesis between spiritualism and materialism was occurring. The result was a paganized Christianity, which hardly promised the abundant life offered by its Savior.
In the context of governance, science invariably becomes an oppressor. The scientifically regimented state must jettison the concepts of freedom and dignity because they defy quantification. G.K. Chesterton elaborates on the folly of applying the scientific method to governance:
The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen --- that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics. Vaccination, in its hundred years of experiment, has been disputed almost as much as baptism in its approximate two thousand. But it seems quite natural to our politicians to enforce vaccination; and it would seem to them madness to enforce baptism.
In the scientifically regimented state, the citizen becomes little more than an amalgam of behavioral repertoires whose every thought, feeling, and idea is the product of external stimuli. From the scientistic vantage point, the populace's motivations can be calculated and systematized, thereby allowing those few conditioners who are accountable to no moral master to develop economic and technological stimuli that can produce the desired patterns of mass behavior. Such a societal model is known as a Technocracy, which Frank Fischer defines as follows: "Technocracy, in classical political terms, refers to a system of governance in which technically trained experts rule by virtue of their specialized knowledge and position in dominant political and economic institutions" (17).
Aldous Huxley also posited such a societal model, which he dubbed a "scientific dictatorship":
The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles, and mysteries. Under a scientific dictatorship, education will really work with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.
This societal model is exemplified by Henri de Saint-Simon's physiological interpretation of the state, which extrapolated radical empiricism to "the altogether new field of social relations." Adherents of Saint-Simon's philosophy contended that "the key to diagnosing and curing the ills of humanity lay in an objective understanding of the physiological realities that lay behind all thinking and feeling" (Billington 212). Following this physiological interpretation of governance to its logical ends, Saint-Simon developed the precursor to Marx's "scientific socialism":
Believing that the scientific method should be applied to the body of society as well as to the individual body, Saint-Simon proceeded to analyze society in terms of its physiological components: classes. He never conceived of economic classes in the Marxian sense, but his functional class analysis prepared the way for Marx. (213)
Interestingly enough, the manifesto was dedicated to the British Royal Society, which was, arguably, a Masonic institution:
Virtually all the Royal Society's founding members were Freemasons. One could reasonably argue that the Royal Society itself, at least in its inception, was a Masonic institution - derived, through Andrea's Christian Unions, from the "invisible Rosicrucian brotherhood.
Modern science views matter as the primary substance that constitutes the fabric of the physical universe. In turn, modern science views the ontological confines of the physical universe as the totality of reality. Thus, he who has mastered matter through the gnosis of science has mastered reality itself. Reality becomes a malleable lump of clay to be molded by the omnipotent fingers of the scientific adept. Of course, such an adept would qualify as a deity.
The rise of Science as a cosmological mythology in the 1500's set up a struggle with the prevailing metaphysical doctrine of Christian theology, which... has never been resolved as a cultural discourse. At its core, the conflict centers around the usurpation of god-like powers by man. Armed with such supernatural abilities, humans can manipulate and alter life in ways that are reserved by Nature/God. The first cultural myth encapsulating the is conflict was, of course, the Faust legend, in which a medical doctor (i.e., scientist) sold his soul to Mephistopheles (i.e., the Devil) in exchange for knowledge and power belonging to God.
Fischer synopsizes Bacon's "Utopian concepts":
For Bacon, the defining feature of history was rapidly becoming the rise and growth of science and technology. Where Plato had envisioned a society governed by "philosopher kings," men who could perceive the "forms" of social justice, Bacon sought a technical elite who would rule in the name of efficiency and technical order. Indeed, Bacon's purpose in The New Atlantis was to replace the philosopher with the research scientist as the ruler of the utopian future, New Atlantis was a pure technocratic society.
when the modern revolutionary tangibly enacts his Utopian vision, it automatically qualifies as a dystopian nightmare for others. Promises of unlimited freedom begin to fade as the apotheosized State confiscates the citizenry’s wealth in the name of socioeconomic egalitarianism and imprisons dissidents. In the name of facilitating evolution, a theory that the orthodoxy of science has deemed infallible, those members of the human species who fail to meet the arbitrarily established standards of biological and genetic purity are expunged through eugenical regimentation. Fanatical as they are in their scientism, modern revolutionaries view man himself as a quantifiable entity. The irreducible complexity of humanity is overlooked as man is gradually transformed into a paint-by-numbers schematic. Society, by extension, is also considered a quantifiable entity. Thus, modern revolutionaries work to install their own bowdlerized form of democracy: the democracy of “experts.” By virtue of their own purported scientific and technical expertise, these policy professionals calculate and systematize the motivations of the populace and develop economic and technological stimuli that can produce the desired patterns of mass behavior.
Ultimately, the final victim of scientific totalitarianism is the human soul. Man, from the scientistic vantage point, is little more than amalgam of behavioral repertoires. He is a tabula rasa whose value depends entirely upon the final portrait rendered by the brush strokes of his “enlightened” conditioners. If he cannot or does not conform to the paint-by-numbers template of the “experts,” he is deemed a product of retrograde evolution. Because man’s soul defies quantification, the content of his character is appropriated absolutely no currency in the scientistic Weltanschauung. Again, it is indeed ironic that, in their hopes of apotheosizing the human species, modern revolutionaries devalue man. This is the Faustian face of modern science: the inhuman human race. | |  | | Von Curtis | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
