Cereal Box Psychology form an Armchair (mousepad) Philosopher

It is a perfectly valid standpoint, and a common one, that humanity as a whole is good and possesses innate dignity, and flowing from that, certain provisions are rightfully demanded of those of greater fortune or aptitude for those without. Many presume that food, water, shelter, education, and health care are universally deserved for no reason beyond being human, and even if some do not carefully buttress this presumption, there are still nonetheless those who can effectively support it. The greater question is whether any given individual should see himself as personally entitled to any such provision. The only honorable answer is denial.

Forgetting entirely about to what others are entitled, do you ever feel justified in taking any help that someone did not freely offer you of his own volition? How could you? Your hunger does not render the other’s plenty any more yours. Fine, perhaps the fact that there is an inequality of wealth in existence transfers some of that wealth from the rich to society as a whole, but it does not transfer it to you personally. Any societal concerns for the greater common good do not come into play when one of the entities benefiting from a provision is you. It is one thing to say that one should sacrifice himself for society or a group of indistinct but needy individuals; it is quite another to say he must sacrifice himself for you.

Conscripted, involuntary contribution for your own needs or desires is thus always a coercive action that has absolutely no justice, but what of that is of the other party’s own volition? While there is certainly nothing emphatically wrong with receiving aid from others, it must be done so honestly and without the shadow of a misdirected intention. Think of any of the times you sweet talked, spun, or otherwise finagled an issue into your advantage. That is no more than manipulation, and even if it is not explicitly evil, let alone illegal, it is under no circumstances good. The only thing one gains through tactful manipulation is that which one does not rationally deserve, if not literally “rationally”, than “rationally” as in accordance with the other’s true beliefs, desires and true volition.

The only sequitur solution to this quagmire is the willingness of one to partially destroy the advantages one may naturally receive for reasons beyond his talent alone. Do not sweet talk; do not schmooze. The truth of your statements should be enough, as otherwise the other is only hurting himself by failing to accept whichever proposition you have portrayed. Since we all will inevitably believe our own position or importance is greater than reality, true honesty forces us away from where our words could put us with minimal difficulty. If given five options, the only moral option is the second best. Your assumption should be that the best is not that which you deserve.

To be truly pretentious is to believe that any smooth talking is entirely unnecessary, as one’s merits will ultimately overcome another’s biases. It is a degree of faith to assume that humanity generally values that which is good, but it is far more a testament of faith in yourself that anyone who does not willfully accept your abilities or judgment deserves to be without them.

I am genuinely confused by the populace’s widespread misappropriation of pretentiousness as a negative. Too much self-importance, it is believed, is nothing more than a sign of a sanctimonious, selfish disregard of the beliefs of others and a dishonest, inaccurate judgment of the credit or favor to which one is entitled. This is not only patently false, but ironically pretentious as well. To make any reasoned judgment, flawed or unflawed, is an inevitably pretentious action. Pretentiousness is not dishonest or inaccurate, and to suggest so is extremely dishonest, inaccurate, and hypocritical.

What is a judgment? A statement that you know the truth. Yet, one cannot make any such statement without implicitly making a statement on literally everything else in the world. Our views -our judgments- are predicated upon certain base presumptions that probably do have an ultimate truth to them, but are seemingly impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Our aesthetic choices, our political views, and even our most trivial tastes are all inexorably controlled by our answers to broad questions such as the existence of the divine, the rationality of humanity, and natural law. If two people precisely agree on such encompassing concepts, they will very likely agree on the specifics they imply. Even if their views differ just slightly even on just of those, however, it is remarkably unlikely that they will practically agree on very much at all. It is the margins and specifics of issues we fervently debate, but those are no more than the symptoms of our disagreement in more important, yet far less openly, discussed areas of contention. They are avoided not because they are any less truly believed, but because they are much more difficult to prove. These are the bases on which we form any judgment whatsoever, and as such are open to discussion irrespective of how strongly one believes in one direction or another.

What do we in reality do when we choose to make one of those all-encompassing judgments? We are saying that, even if we can’t walk up to someone on the street who is normally a rational human being who disagrees with you on this one point no matter how effectively you argue it, is wrong. If it really was that self-evident and banal, it would never gather such a following. By making any judgment at all that isn’t previously universally agreed upon, we ultimately say we are smarter and more rational than anyone else who has ever lived, without ever being able to prove anyone of our assertions beyond reasonable doubt. That is, as I’ve said, ludicrously pretentious. Everyone implicitly believes this, even if they do not openly admit it. It is literally impossible to judge, reason, think, or live, without that presumption of self-worth, which is always impossibly wrong. Not to live pretentiously, that being to treat the living world agnostically, is a retreat to solipsism, one wherein you may as well end your life, as you can assume you are nothing more than a brain in a glass jar manipulated and tortured. Does it truly make sense to any rational mind that it is better to live philosophically paralyzed?

Centuries before time began, one caveman hit another with a stick in a playful, jocular manner. He sheepishly smiled and turned back to his huntering/gathering. Unfortunately, irony had yet to be invented and the other screamed in a vengeful pronouncement of hatred and betrayal and murdered his friend. We are reliving this same Sisyphean cycle by reacting to facetiousness with aggression, fatuousness with imperceptive simplicity, and the non-sequitur with outright dismission. Until the world can move past its preconceived notions of what is true and what is false, we may never come to understand each other on anything beyond a paradigm of naïveté. Perhaps differing layers of how true an assertion may be is best expressed solely by the connivances of differing layers of sarcasm mixed with self-indulgent self-awareness. Perhaps saying so is another layer of sarcasm mixed with self-indulgent self-awareness.

About ten minutes before time began, dictionary.com defined irony as “(esp. in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion,” which was very prescient of them since neither the English language nor the internet had been invented yet. We must try to incorporate this aggressive, accurate foresightedness as we rationally convey our meaningless lives with meaning. As we all know, the universe is no more than an enormous ticking clock, its gears and parts representing the everyday activities of our lives which we may foresee as easily as we see our true love in our mind’s eye. The gears of time may be deciphered, understood, and mastered to allow us to stroll through our limited earthly time as accountants, fast food cashiers, and drug dealers to the outermost reaches of our abilities. It should be noted, of course, that never once does this analogical timekeeping instrument of the universe tock, however much it effectively ticks. Only with this in mind can we spearhead tribulations in the robustness demanded by our collective knowledge of the tickness –tickicity, if I may- of the world.

Pretentiousness demands that you find your own truth. According to urbandictionary.com, truth is, “Something which would probably upset a great many of people if it were known and made public.” The editors on that site are an angsty group of fourteen year olds that have little to do beyond contribute and listen to linkin park; who cares. If you now ask me why I mentioned it at all, you missed the entire point of the preceding paragraphs. The world is confusing and chaotic, and however much we may believe we grasp its intricacies and what is true and right, we neither have any right to believe that to be incontrovertibly sure nor should we actively ever coerce our values on others. Hence, what is truth; what is love; and always drink your Ovalitine with a large scoop of Chemical P for a balanced breakfast.

“Shock Humor”, by nature, is an act of relative pretension. One must honestly feel an unnaturally strong degree of self-worship to attempt to force aside another’s sensibilities by way of an argument hardly more subtle and inoffensive than starkly plating a dead baby in front of a guest, running into the kitchen, and laughing hysterically within the palm of one’s own hand. That is not to say that this specific brand of humor does not have its time and its place, but the relative meaning and constructiveness of such ridicule must be carefully weighed against masturbatorial, grimace-inducing smugness that is scarcely becoming of a user of Pretentiousness.

The most infamous level of shock humor is that which attempts to portray the preconceived notions of the preponderance of humanity as innately misguided. For example, a joke that relies solely on the spilling of blood or base sexual perversion as a means of forcing out a giggle does not proclaim the gospel of pretty much anything beyond that cheap giggle. Unless it somehow acts tacitly as a means to an end, this usage is scarcely anything more than an embezzlement of pretentiousness to advocate the abstinence of judgment it by nature contradicts. While in totality it may give us a laugh if executed effectively, one should never consider it a philosophically reasoned depiction of the human experience.

The second level is somewhat less common, but far worse. Rather than actually coming to grips with what those holding another set of values believe and challenging that, it degrades them. If one is truly pretentious, such an action is flaccidly stupid. Either one’s arguments are fundamentally more logical than the other party’s and deserve to be hastily flaunted, or the other party’s point of view deserves no further consideration. There is never any justification or rational desire to satirize and humiliate those of another perspective, as that is to say that one’s own argument cannot stand on its own two feet and must be buttressed by the coercive, irrelevant words of its believer.

The rare level of shock humor that falls in line squarely with acceptance of pretentiousness is the satire of the way in which people commonly perceive and reason with the world. It does not war against one particular value set or another, but it attacks the shallowness to which many entertain the essential questions of the world, persistent logical fallacies, and other similar incongruities. Such humor indirectly exposes the flaws and missteps of the other without blindly oppressing values and beliefs. Pretentiousness dictates that those missteps are the true root of disagreement and regrettable viewpoints, and thusly have legitimate cause to be harshly punished through observational application of those notions to more sharply apparent inconsistencies.

There are few more magical moments than when two polar philosophical opposites are browbeaten into making the precisely same argument. However much we build our viewpoints up, there will seemingly always be someone who can rip us apart if we stand there and rationally debate them. Of course, “rationally debate” is a notion scarcely to be taken lightly, as that requires a total detachment from fleeting emotion, or in other words, not to be human. No matter what we read, what we ponder, or how deep our analysis goes, ultimately the realizations upon which we arrive have been tread, retread, disproven, reproven, forgotten, lost, found, and reconsidered a few thousand times before we have ever been born.

This is only to say how unbelievable it is for anyone professing any view, value, or belief to scowl and curse the other side in totality for being misinformed and ignorant. Chances are neither understands the nuance, the analysis, and the honesty to which the path-forging originators took when forming these means of debate. You may fly in any popular or semi-popular direction and chances are that even if you cannot rationally defend your position, there is someone out there who can.

That can be comforting, but should it? The contemporary suburban liberalized teen feels free to scoff at religion, traditional values, and the blind ignoramuses who live judged, restricted dead lives before a deader god, but if he is ever actually challenged as to why he feels so free to cast aside shamelessly those beliefs he does not try to understand, he can retreat to the writings 0f Nietzsche or some modern academic intellectual rather than coming to grips with the a contrary point of view. Is that any different than the Middle-American Evangelist Christian who belligerently does not care one way or another how some hedonist atheist comes to their beliefs, and will make a point to scoff at how they could refuse the love of their God, and can numbly cite Aquinas or Luther to make the finer parts of their arguments for them? There is a tightly sewn line of irrationality holding the fabric of either pattern together. That thread is prejudice.

“Prejudice” is bandied about as some infinite evil eternally imprisoning our society from peace and rendering it in an endless cycle of injustice. This prejudice is generally nowadays no more than literally skin deep, if you excuse the politically incorrect pun, as however harmful the residual sins of our forefathers run, they only govern interactions among human beings. The prejudice that abides within every one of us every day, insulating us from clear sight or truth, is the bias of opinions, and that which governs our souls. It is the refusal to honestly grapple with even those opinions most diametrically opposed to your own with consideration only lending to whichever is of the greatest rationality. It is searching, instead of wallowing cowardly in the works of those whose opinions you share, to go out of your way to do everything you can to disprove yourself. It is to place the relative merits of Hinduism, Blood and Soil Conservativism, Islam, the Mormons, and Shinto on equal footing, and truly to ask yourself not just why you dislike those accepting those ideologies, the consequences of doing so, and why it does not elegantly congeal to your presumed world paradigm, but how on its own merits it supersedes your null philosophical hypothesis. Your responsibility as a human being is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt those very issues that by nature are impossible to prove to such a degree. If your view does not stand the test the counterarguments of a literate, expert Hindu priest, a literate, expert Southern conservative, a literate, expert faithful Muslim, a literate, expert liberal Westerner, or a literate, expert fisherman living on the southern coast of Japan, what is the point of claiming that view as the truth? And if you have looked upon anyone of those listed with a half-eye roll as impossible to be expert and literate, you are already distastefully biased. You do not have the right to your own opinion until you not only know the other side of the argument, but to foresee it, to empathize with it, and ultimately to beat it without a scent of smarmy presumption.

Many are familiar with the slanderous accusation that application of turgid prose to five dollar bills will morph Lincoln’s portrait to the visage of Andrew Jackson, in turn quadrupling the value and threatening the American economy. In reality, any currency will simply change to its equivalent value in pesos at standard exchange rates.

I don’t know what either “pretentious” or “irony” means. My inscrutability has no purpose whatsoever. I am a vapid and defensive pedant who substitutes circularity for substance.

~ by davenewworld on October 9, 2008.