Democrat Duck or Republican Rabbit

 “How can you be yourself when you are being blown in a million different directions you can’t control?” ― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
 

“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value
 

“Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.” ― Richard Feynman

 

 

Why we do not know the state of the union in March 2024

The SOTU is not an ontological problem, for, as any high school kid can tell you, "It is what it is." The problem is an epistemological problem — "How can we know what it is?" ... and an ethical problem — "Do we want to know what it is?" ... and we must understand both

• the methods we use in pursuit of truth and
• the motives we harbor, openly or secretly, that influence our pursuit.
  
  

Methods: Expecting Coherence without Comprehension

By definition, the "uni-verse" is not conflicted. It is only when we childishly erect boundaries around parts of its organic reality to formulate theories that appear to promise us the power of coherence [cause and effect] that we set ourselves up for disappointment. In the Engligtenment, John Locke explained how we might tap into the promise of power ... then his successor David Hume exposed it as thoughtless delusion. [More on Locke and Hume is helpful].

 

What Americans inevitably [but forever unknowingly] witness in the quadrannual SOTU addresses is Democrats and Republicans, in Lockean step, offering divergent promises of power based on the same facts. And, like slobbering dogs at the sound of the whistle, Americans launch themselves into the fray on one side or the other with the loyal ferocity that is only possible by anticipating the taste of half truths fermenting in the left brain.

However, the rare recalcitrant who can exercise the right Humean half of the brain can easily disabuse these dithering delusions on both sides with what AN Whitehead called "negative judgment [which] is the peak of mentality":

“When the method of [comparing] differences fails [to lead towards truth], factors which are constantly present may yet be observed under the influence of imaginative thought. Such thought supplies the differences which the direct observation lacks … [by] play[ing] with persistent elements in experience [and] with what in imagination is inconsistent with them.”

One “persistent element in experience” in both blue and red 2024 SOTU rhetoric is FIAT CREDIT and the DEBT TSUNAMI and PRICE INFLATION it culturally demands. Neither SOTU speaker last night mentioned this, because both accepted FIAT CREDIT as “constantly present”. And yet, with a little imagination, even a school child can understand the irreconcilable and destructive forces unleashed in an economy by “counterfeiting its common currency” which is what the US [via fiat credit] has done to the entire world since WWII. Is it any wonder the world is at war generating tsunamis of social unrest and suffering evidenced by floods of fleeing and drowning families?

Of course, much more than partisan duck-rabbit rhetoric is needed [and possible], including a proper diagnosis and a real solution, but a negative judgment of the SOTU addresses could begin with three simple statements that form the basis for a nonpartisan proposition.

1. “The truth itself is nothing else than how the … organic actualities of the world obtain adequate representation in the divine nature.” — AN Whitehead 1926
2. “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” — JM Keynes 1920
3. “[Due to] the constantly increasing amount of American money, in the form of both currency and credit, … the American dollar has lost … its availability to function as a store of value … [and] its previous acceptability as a uniform means of international exchange. … My thesis is that our legal system is undergoing changes similar to those that led to the devaluation of our money and for much the same reason.” — [Wichita’s own] GH Wormhoudt, c.1975

Motives: the sin of self-deception

However, a path to truth is not sufficient if the pilgrim does not travel it and this is neither an ontological nor an epistemological problem ... it is an ethical problem. I recently got this question from a friend grappling with 3 different responses to sound teaching about cultural failure.

"What do you think is worse?

• People who don’t pay attention, or dismiss a problem, because they haven’t got the time or skills to investigate, and find it reassuring to listen to experts who claim it’s not a problem, or that it is fixable, or that another problem is more urgent.
• People who work on a problem, and selfishly use rising concern to advance or embellish their careers, income, status, identity, worldview, or even votes by obscuring or denying it is anything other than a predicted and manageable situation using the latest technology which they can provide.
  
• People who work on a problem and realise technology won’t fix it but are willing to resort to authoritarianism as the way to do something significant about it (or, at least, to shift their anxiety and despair a bit by becoming aggressive)."

With knowledge comes responsibility. Indeed, merely the availability of knowledge brings responsibility:

"Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice." — AN Whitehead

What's your excuse for not knowing the state of the union ... in your family ... in your neighborhood ... in your country ... on your planet?