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101 Dogma-Shattering Remarks From Two Of The Most Relentless Nonconformists In Human History

[If this subject-matter appeals to you, this might as well. Spinoza was an inspiration.]

Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) are two of the most radical thinkers of all time. 

They don’t have everything in common — though they’re not totally dissimilar either—and yet if there’s one thing they do both possess, it’s this: an unsettling power to obliterate preconceived notions and unquestioned dogmas — the safe, secure beliefs that most humans hold.

Nietzsche, who’s fairly well-known, is the philosopher you can never quite dismiss — no matter how much you might wish to dismiss him. Over a century after his death, Nietzsche still has an almost uncanny ability to turn a worldview upside-down, with the abruptness of a bone-snap, via a single bludgeoning remark.

Baruch Spinoza, upon the other hand (Baruch is Dutch for “Benito,” from the Latin “Benedict,” meaning “blessed”), isn’t nearly as well-known. Yet at his best, he’s every bit as heterodox and as fulguratingly brilliant as Nietzsche, with an equal or even superior power to slash entire belief-systems in one fell guillotine-swoop. 

This is the total testament to the power of ideas.

Upon his first reading of Spinoza, Nietzsche wrote: 

“I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: that I should have turned to him just now, was inspired by ‘instinct.’ Not only is his over-tendency like min — namely to make all knowledge the most powerful affect — but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself. This most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters.”

Even today, the words of both men still contain enough live-wire voltage to electrify every bodily nerve. Their ideas — as wildly controversial now as they ever were — are unequivocally at odds with the status-quo. 

Off-the-mark or on it, both men were incontrovertibly freethinkers, in the purest sense of the word, and this is no small thing: the independent mind, with the strength and confidence to think for itself, is always a virtue.

Thus, however you ultimately regard either of them, please pay respect to their independence of thought, which, in any place or era, requires a great act of courage — courage continually exerted — because the colossal ocean of conformity and the cult-like mentality of the mob threatens forever to drown out the one who would dare think for herself. 

Here are 101 unapologetic, unsympathetic remarks from the men themselves. Some of these remarks you will perhaps agree with. Others you will perhaps resist. Pay closest attention to the latter — because these are almost certainly the ones which most challenge your own:

The superstitious know how to reproach people for their vices better than they know how to teach them virtues, and they strive not to guide people by reason, but to restrain them by fear; so that they flee the evil rather than love virtues. Such people aim only to make others as wretched as they themselves are, so it is no wonder that they are generally burdensome and hateful to the rest of humanity. — Spinoza

Superstition is founded on ignorance. — Spinoza

Everyone by a supreme law of nature is master of his own thoughts. — Spinoza

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past. — Spinoza

Peace is not the absence of war, but rather a virtue that springs from a state of mind: a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice. — Spinoza

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love. — Spinoza

I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion; because it is only in relation to the human mind and our imaginations that things can be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused. — Spinoza

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. — Spinoza

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them. — Spinoza

Apply yourself with real energy to serious work. — Spinoza

I call him free who is led solely by reason. — Spinoza

Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare. — Spinoza

Will and intellect are one and the same thing. — Spinoza

The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished. — Spinoza

Don’t cry and don’t rage. Understand. — Spinoza

The vain and vainglorious love the company of parasites or flatterers and hate the company of those of noble spirit. — Spinoza

Rarely do people live by the guidance of reason but instead are generally disposed to envy and disdain. — Spinoza

Knowledge of evil is inadequate knowledge, without a counter knowledge of the good. — Spinoza

The real slave lives under the sway of pleasure and can neither see nor do what is for their own good. — Spinoza

Vice will exist so long as people exist. — Spinoza

We are so constituted by nature that we are ready to believe what we hope and reluctant to believe what we fear. — Spinoza

Reason alone asserts its claim to the realm of truth. — Spinoza

Reason is a faculty for the integration of knowledge that human beings possess. — Spinoza

Truth is the apprehension of reality. — Spinoza

Truth more than anything else has the power to effect a close union between different sentiments and dispositions. — Spinoza

People under the guidance of reason seek nothing for themselves that they would not desire for the rest of humanity. — Spinoza

I am at a loss to understand the reasoning whereby it is considered that chance and necessity are not contraries. — Spinoza

A thing does not cease to be true merely because it is not accepted by many. — Spinoza

The investigation of Nature in general is philosophy. — Spinoza

In demonstrating the truths of Nature, does not truth reveal its own self? — Spinoza

Reason is in reality the light of the mind, without which the mind sees nothing but dreams and fantasies. — Spinoza

Truth becomes a casualty when in trials attention is paid not to justice or truth but to the extent of anything other. — Spinoza

Freedom is of the first importance in fostering the sciences and the arts.– Spinoza

Everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostility or servility when despotic power is in the hands of one or few. — Spinoza

Emotional distress and unhappiness have their origin mostly in excessive love toward a thing which is subject to considerable instability. — Spinoza

Healthy people take solitary tranquil pleasure in existence and thus enjoy a better life than those who live merely to avoid death. — Spinoza

When one is prey to her emotions, she is not her own master. — Spinoza

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue. — Spinoza

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason. — Spinoza

The effort to make everyone else approve what we love or hate is, in truth, a kind of warped ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking. — Spinoza

The wise are richest in not greedily pursuing riches at the expense of everything else. — Spinoza

If we could live by reason as much as we are led by blind desire, all would order their lives wisely in being by reason led. — Spinoza

Evil is that which hinders a person’s capacity to perfect reason and to enjoy a rational life. — Spinoza

People possess nothing more excellent than understanding, and can suffer no greater punishment than their folly. — Spinoza

The majority of people are quite incapable of distracting their minds from thinking upon any other goods besides sensual pleasure or riches. — Spinoza

Desires and aims that arises from reason cannot be excessive.– Spinoza

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is. — Spinoza

Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented. — Spinoza

Don’t be astonished at new ideas — for it’s well known that a thing doesn’t cease to be true merely because it’s not accepted by many. — Spinoza

Insofar as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity. — Spinoza

Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself. — Spinoza

Nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts, but on the contrary, because we delight in it, we are therefore able to restrain them. — Spinoza

Excessive pride, or self-abasement, indicates excessive weakness of spirit. — Spinoza

Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, yet can on the other hand be destroyed by love. — Spinoza

Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love, and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it. — Spinoza

Minds are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility. — Spinoza

Self-preservation is the fundamental foundation of virtue. — Spinoza

Ignorance of truth and true-causes makes for total confusion. — Spinoza

Conduct that brings about harmony is that which is related to justice and equity. — Spinoza

The better part of us is in harmony with the order of the whole of Nature. — Spinoza

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love. — Spinoza

Love is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause. — Spinoza

Love agrees with reason if its cause is not merely physical beauty but especially freedom of the spirit. — Spinoza

Devotion is love toward one at whom we wonder. — Spinoza

Most people parade their own ideas as God’s word, mainly to compel others to think like them under religious pretexts. — Spinoza

The mind of God is all the mentality that is scattered over space and time, the diffused consciousness that animates the world. — Spinoza

Outside Nature, there is and can be no thing and no being. — Spinoza

A miracle — either contrary to Nature or above Nature — is mere absurdity. — Spinoza

Nothing exists from whose nature an effect does not follow. — Spinoza

Everyone should be allowed freedom of judgment and the right to interpret the basic tenets of their faith as they and they alone think fit. — Spinoza

The eternal part of the mind is the intellect, through which alone we are said to be active. — Spinoza

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace. — Spinoza

Only free people are truly grateful to one another. — Spinoza

The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation. — Spinoza

When all decisions are made by a few people who have only themselves to please, freedom and the common good are lost. — Spinoza

The mind is passive only to the extent that it has inadequate or confused ideas. — Spinoza

The ultimate aim of just government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all possible security. In fact the true aim of government is liberty. — Spinoza

All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. — Spinoza

He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it. — Spinoza

Those who take an oath by law will avoid perjury more if they swear by the welfare & freedom of the state instead of by God. — Spinoza

A society will be more secure, stable & less exposed to fortune, which is founded & governed mainly by people of wisdom. — Spinoza

Those who cannot manage themselves and their private affairs will far less be capable of caring for the public interest. — Spinoza

In adversity, there is no counsel so foolish, absurd, or vain which people will not follow. — Spinoza

An entire people will never transfer its rights to a few people or to one person if they can reach agreement among themselves. — Spinoza

Friedrich Nietzsche

I counsel you, my friends: Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. — Nietzsche 

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the way in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us. — Nietzsche

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. — Nietzsche

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight. — Nietzsche

When a hundred humans stand together, each of them loses their minds and gets another one. — Nietzsche

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment. — Nietzsche

A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies .– Nietzsche

The state is the coldest of all cold monsters who bites with stolen teeth. — Nietzsche.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell. — Nietzsche 

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy. –Nietzsche 

The Kingdom of Heaven is a condition of the heart — not something that comes upon the earth or after death. — Nietzsche

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad. — Nietzsche 

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. — Nietzsche 

No victor believes in chance. — Nietzsche 

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies. — Nietzsche

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. — Nietzsche

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. — Nietzsche

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. — Nietzsche

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, is what makes someone a friend. — Nietzsche 

The most common lie is that which one tells himself; lying to others is relatively an exception. — Nietzsche

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Fascinating Facts, Curious Quotations

“The fact is, I did not eat every day during that period of my life.”

Said the surrealist Andre Breton, explaining the possible provenance of some of his strange and early literature.

Sergei Yesenin (1895-1925) was a Russian lyric poet who, at age 30, hung himself. Vladimir Mayakovsky, his contemporary and also a Russian poet, angrily and in print condemned Sergei Yesenin for his “cowardly” suicide. Five year before he, Mayakovsky, then shot himself.

The earliest hints of evolutionary theory can be found in Anaximander, Sixth Century, BC.

“A damned good poet and a fair critic; but he can kiss my ass as a man.”

Said Ernest Hemingway of T.S. Eliot.

“We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant.”

Said the Ex Muslim Wafa Sultan, correctly.

John Keats pronounced his own name with such a thick cockney accent that his friend Leigh Hunt nicknamed him “Junkets.”

Junkets evidently being the way “John Keats” sounded coming out of John Keats’s own mouth.

The “Wicked Bible,” from London, 1632, omitted the word not from the 7th Commandment:

Thou shalt commit adultery.

The first priest was the first rogue who crossed paths with the first fool.

Said Voltaire.

Man is the only animal that knows he must die.

Said Voltaire.

A man may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

Said Samuel Butler.

Death is not an event in life; we do not live to experience death.

Echoed Wittgenstein.

The English writer Anthony Burgess — most famous for his novella A Clockwork Orange, which Stanley Kubrick subsequently made into a movie — had eyesight so poor that he once accidentally walked into a bank in Stratford-on-Avon and ordered a drink!

Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down.

Said Lord Byron.

“The Shakespeare of the lunatic asylum” an early French critic called Dostoevsky.

The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon;
Where gott’st thou that goose look?

Wrote Shakespeare in Act 5, Scene III of Macbeth.

“Now, friend, what means thy change of countenance?”

Substituted one William Davenant, in a hacked-up version which nevertheless played for nearly a century.

Strabo’s Geography, dated 7 B.C., states that the world is round and that one could reach India by sailing westward from Spain….

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Definition of Philosophy

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The definition of philosophy — judging, at least, from very nearly every philosophical dictionary on the planet — has confounded philosophers for centuries, the concept being “too large,” it is sometimes said, to properly capture in concise fashion. Yet at the same time, in all branches of philosophy, minutia is cataloged to complete weariness.

This fake problem is nothing more than skepticism and its little bitch postmodernism running amok again. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, for instance, a thoroughly postmodern compilation, says this:

“Some readers might be surprised to find that there is no entry simply on philosophy itself. This is partly because no short definition will do.”

That statement — and all others like it — is flatly false.

Philosophy is the science of rudiments and foundations: it is the study of fundamentals.

A philosophy is an organized system of ideas and arguments.

Etymologically, the word, as you know, comes from the Greek term philia (meaning love) or philos (meaning friend or lover); and sophia (meaning wisdom).

A fellow by the name of Diogenes Laertius claims that the term “philosopher” was coined by Pythagoras, in place of the word “sophist,” which meant “wise man.” But Diogenes Laertius was squirrelly, and his Pythagorean claim is dubious.

Oxford — evidently not as equivocal as Cambridge — defines philosophy thus:

“The investigation of the most general and abstract features of the world and the categories with which we think, in order to lay bare their foundations and presuppositions.”

Not bad, not bad. Better still, however, is Penguin’s philosophy dictionary, which says that philosophy “studies the most fundamental and general concepts and principles involved in thought, action, and reality.”

And yet the best of them all comes not from a philosophical dictionary, exactly, but from a man named Désiré-Félicien-François-Joseph Mercier — a.k.a. Cardinal Mercier — the late nineteenth-century thinker, who spoke well when he spoke thus:

“[Philosophy] does not profess to be a particularized science [but] ranks above them, dealing in an ultimate fashion with their respective objects, inquiring into their connexions and relations of these connexions.”

Philosophy, Mercier continues, “deserves above all to be called the most general science” (A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy).

Lexically, here’s all one really needs to know:

Philosophy comes first, and last. Philosophy is the alpha and the omega. It is the most fundamental science because it studies the foundations of all subsequent knowledge, and that is why all the other sciences depend upon it: because knowledge forms a hierarchy.

For humans, to live is to think.

Philosophy provides an ultimate context — a gauge — for human knowledge. It systematizes the proper methods by which we are able to know.

And that is the definition of philosophy.

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Political Theory: Theory of Government

Political theory is the theory of government. It is a sub-branch of ethics, and economics, in turn, is a sub-branch of politics.

Ethics — the science of human action — precedes politics because politics is the science of human action in societies, and societies are composed only of individuals. For this reason, the individual has hierarchical primacy.

Capitalism, socialism, communism, anarchy — these are all a species of the genus ethics, as is any specific political theory.

Governments, properly defined, are the body politic that have the power to make and implement the laws of the land, and humans are the only species who possess them. But what ultimately gives rise to these political bodies, and do we really need them at all? If so, why?

Some 40,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens sapiens first emerged, we existed exclusively in bands and small tribes.

A band is the smallest of societies, consisting of five to seventy-five people, all of whom are related either by birth or marriage.

Tribes, the next size up, consist of hundreds of people, not all of whom are related, although everyone is known by everyone else.

It is for this reason that conflicts in band and tribal life are resolved without the need of government. Indeed, it’s a well-established fact among anthropologists that governments do not exist in societies of this size.

As Jared Diamond appositely explains it in his otherwise overrated Guns, Germs, and Steel:

“Those ties of relationships binding all tribal members make police, laws, and other conflict-resolving institutions of larger societies unnecessary, since any two villagers getting into an argument will share kin, who apply pressure on them to keep it from becoming violent.”

Homo sapiens lived for approximately 40,000 years in just such non-governmental societies.

Around 5,500 BC, however, chiefdoms arose.

Chiefdoms are one size up from tribes but still smaller than nations.

These societies have populations that number in the thousands or even tens of thousands, whereas nations consist of fifty thousand people or more.

It is at the stage of chiefdoms that the necessity of government begins; for when populations increase to this size, the potential for conflict and disorder increases proportionally.

And here we get a glimpse of government’s primary function: to protect against conflict.

As long as the potential for conflict exists among humans, the need for protection and adjudication exists as well.

“With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them…. Part of the solution to that problem was for one person, the chief, to exercise a monopoly on the right to use force” (Ibid, p. 273).

The legal use of force is the defining characteristic of government.

It is also the fundamental difference between governmental action and private action.

In the words of Auberon Herbert, speaking over 100 years ago:

Nobody has the moral right to seek his own advantage by force. That is the one unalterable, inviolable condition of a true society. Whether we are many, or whether we are few, we must learn only to use the weapons of reason, discussion, and persuasion…. As long as men are willing to make use of force for their own ends, or to make use of fraud, which is only force in disguise, wearing a mask, and evading our consent, just as force with violence openly disregards it – so long we must use force to restrain force. That is the one and only one right employment of force … force in the defense of the plain simple rights of property, public or private, in a world, of all the rights of self-ownership – force used defensively against force used aggressively (Auberon Herbert, The Principles of Voluntaryism, 1897).

Among individuals, the initiation of force is illegal, whether the force is directly used, as in rape, or indirectly used, as in extortion (a crucial distinction, incidentally, which Mr. Herbert notes in his fraud-is-force-in-disguise example above).

People can only infringe upon the rights of other people by means of (direct or indirect) force.

In this sense, government is an institution whose function is to protect the individual against the initiation of force.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson: “The legitimate functions of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others” (Notes on the State of Virginia).

Around the same time that Thomas Jefferson was writing those words, another articulate fellow by the name of Wilhelm von Humboldt independently came to an almost identical conclusion:

Any State interference in private affairs, where there is no reference to violence done to individual rights, should be absolutely condemned…. To provide for the security of its citizens, the state must prohibit or restrict such actions, relating directly to the agents only, as imply in their consequences the infringement of others’ rights, or encroach on their freedom of property without their consent or against their will…. Beyond this every limitation of personal freedom lies outside the limits of state action (Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, 1791).

What professor Jared Diamond incorrectly refers to as government’s “right to use force” (governments do not, strictly speaking, possess rights but only permissions) is a sentiment that has been stated more succinctly many times by Enlightenment thinkers, such as the best theoreticians among our Constitutional framers; but it was perhaps expressed most eloquently by the fiery political philosopher Isabel Paterson:

Government is solely an instrument or mechanism of appropriation, prohibition, compulsion, and extinction; in the nature of things it can be nothing else, and can operate to no other end…. Seen in this light, government is so horrific – and its actual operations in the past have been so horrible at times – that there is some excuse for a failure to realize its necessity (Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine, 1943).

If, however, government only becomes necessary when societies reach the size of chiefdoms or beyond, what precipitated this sudden population leap, when for 40,000 years — by far the majority of our short history — human growth had remained relatively static?

Why, in other words, do we not still exist in bands and tribes, without the need of government?

The answer, it turns out, is food.

“We have seen that large or dense populations arise only under conditions of food production.… All states nourish their citizens by means of food production” (Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel).

When survival is made easier, populations increase. When populations increase, societies become more complex. When food production increases, mankind increases, societies become increasingly complex, and governments become necessary to maintain order. So it is with increased food production that the science of economics is born.

At root, economics is indeed the science of production and exchange.

Money, in the form of currency, is nothing more, or less, than a symbol of production — an invaluable one, to be sure, since money simplifies so drastically the process of exchange.

It also creates the possibility to store and save over long time periods and makes usury possible, which in turn creates more wealth. This is a crux because it illustrates the deep connection between politics and economics.

Thus, increased food production equals increased population equals increased production equals more people equals more societal complexity, and so on, reciprocally.

This is the process whereby societies develop the need for government.

This is why the fact of government is inescapable.

Whatever a society’s original size, smaller ones only make that initial leap to larger by producing more food.

(If they don’t make it, they are absorbed either by the actual use of force or by its mere threat, by the societies that do produce more food. For this reason, bands and tribes have become all but obsolete today, with a few Amazonian and New Guinean exceptions, most of which are also being swiftly amalgamated.)

Thereafter, in order for that society to flourish, it must now continue to produce food, but it must also efficiently manage its size increase, with all that ensuing complexity. Countless societies have foundered at this stage, as they still do today (see, for example, present day Yugoslavia, or Turkey, or Russia).

Advancements in irrigation, the domestication of animals, the introduction of fertilizers and pesticides, these things begin to make societies complex, because they increase food production. But with this added complexity come new challenges:

To thrive, these societies must sort out and solve a host of additional problems, ranging from mass uprisings, to increasing economic developments, to internecine warfare, to the threat of governmental takeovers, to crime and punishment, to many, many other things as well.

In the final analysis, then, we can say that governments are unique to humans because humans are the only conceptual species. We produce our food, we build our homes, we create our medicine, we extract our energy, and we deal with one another not as animals, by brute force, but as humans, by agreement.

Trade is the natural drive of the conceptual mind.

So that at this point, our world without government would collapse into chaos — until, that is, the strongest faction seized control, forcefully, you can be sure, and then laid down its own version of order (see present day Somalia).

Who would stop them?

Other warring factions?

In the end, however necessary government may be, please never forget this:

“In its best state, government is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one” (Thomas Paine, Common Sense).

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force. Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

Government, in short, is inherently dangerous because it holds exclusive power over the people.

The task, then, is not necessarily to do away with government altogether but rather to limit government in the extreme: to build a government which protects its citizens without, at the same time, creating oppression of any kind, including taxation to the point of plunder under that mythical guise of a “right” to redistribute your money – which is the symbol of your work.

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A Clam Without A Shell

A reader writes:

Dear RayHarvey: I have heard that a clam without a shell grows into a huge phallic-looking creature that would horrify and intimidate people who are not usually horrified or intimidated. Can you verify? If true, is this reaction indicative of an underlying psycho-sexual issue and is it in any way related to aversion to Tom Jones?

Thanks,

ShyButIntrigued

Dear ShyButIntrigued: I’m afraid it’s true. The clam you reference is called a Geoduck clam — pronounced “gooey-duck,” not “gee-oh-duck.” The Geoduck clam is a species of Panope generosa, a large saltwater clam native to the northern Pacific coasts of Canada and the United States. These clams sometimes live in excess of 100 years, residing limp and large deep, deep within the moist sand of ocean beaches.

They are very difficult to catch, but when you find yourself with one in hand, they as often as not become rigid, and ejaculate a viscous discharge that smells not unpleasantly of the ocean salt.

These remarkable creatures feed on smaller sea creatures, and, despite their peculiar appearance and their elusive quality, they are dug up and shipped to China, whereupon they are cooked and eaten with relish, like so many hotdogs.

The name “Geoduck” — pronounced, I repeat, “gooey-duck” — ostensibly has its origins in a Native American pidgin, called Chinook, and comes from the Chinook word for “to penetrate deeply.” Coincidentally enough, this word has penetrated the English language (albeit rather flaccidly) and has indeed, like the bivalve itself, found a curious kinship with the bearded clam.

As for Tom Jones, the answer is an emphatic No; it is not indicative of any underlying psycho-sexual issues — please don’t worry about that — and the only way I can explain the curious cross-connection you make is by something like this:

Yeah, baby, yeah!

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Metaphysics: Theory of Everything

Reality is existence, and existence is everything. Every theory of everything must start there.

There’s existence, and there’s essence. These two things are separate but not separable.

In the language of Thomas Aquinas, esse (or essence) is identity: To be, in other words, is to be something.

The conclusion is inescapable because (as Aristotle noted) the only alternative to that which exists is that which does not exist. But that which does not exist doesn’t exist.

“There is no nothing,” said Victor Hugo.

Nothing, by definition, is not something.

The only alternative to reality, therefore, is unreality, which, as the very word implies, is not real — i.e. which isn’t.

These principles form the fundamental laws of metaphysics — metaphysics being the study of ultimate reality (meta for “beyond” and physics for “physical reality”).

New-Age pseudo-philosophy has unfortunately bastardized and perverted the term metaphysics, but please don’t be duped. Nothing is more important than metaphysics. It is the highest part of philosophy, the part from which all others derive, the science of “being as being.”

The universe (paraphrasing Thomas Aquinas) is the sum of everything that exists. That’s what the universe is. That’s not what it may be, and that’s not what some people might think. That’s what the universe actually is.

The universe is everything. There can thus not be “the possibility of many universes,” as many modern physicists would have us believe.

Nor is there anything “beyond the universe”:

If something exists, it is by definition part of the universe.

If it does not exist, it does not exist.

Metaphysically, the fact of existence is the peg upon which the entirety of human knowledge hangs.

Without it, knowledge degenerates into a buccal-fecal carnival of solipsism, skepticism, postmodernism, and relativism.

The proper defense of independent reality is as follows:

Any attempt to deny existence refutes itself at the outset, because even the barest, most laconic denial of existence implies some kind of existence.

Quoting the man Dante called “the master of him who knows”:

“Why a thing is itself” is a meaningless inquiry, for the fact or existence of the thing must already be evident … but the fact that a thing is itself is the single reason and the single cause to be given to all such questions as “why is man man” or “the musician musical” (Aristotle, Metaphysics 7.16.1041a15-18).

And again:

He who examines the most general features of existence, must investigate also the principles of reasoning. For he who gets the best grasp of his respective subject will be most able to discuss its basic principles. So that he who gets the best grasp of existing things qua existing must be able to discuss the basic principles of all existence; and he is the philosopher. And the most certain principle of all is that about which it is impossible to be mistaken… It is clear, then, that such a principle is the most certain of all and we can state it thus: “It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to belong and not belong to the same thing at the same time and in the same respect” (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1005b12-20).

In support of which, his pupil, Thomas Aquinas, added this:

Nature is what we call everything that can in anyway be captured by the intellect, for a thing is not intelligible except through its definition and essence…. All around us are existing things. They are certainly different, but they all exist.

Metaphysically, then, the facts are these:

Existence is everything.

There is no nothing.

Existence is reality.

Reality is what’s real.

Nature is reality.

The universe is everything.

Nature is the universe.

There is no “super-nature.”

All else proceeds from that.

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Logical Fallacies

A reader writes:

Dear Ray: I’ve always been told it’s better to be shot at and missed than shit at and hit. While getting shit on obviously does suck, getting shot at means someone doesn’t like you enough to want to shoot at you in the first place. So is it really better?

Scatman

Dear Scatman: I’m afraid your question contains a logical fallacy which I cannot let pass by without at least partially fleshing out. But that doesn’t make it a total waste. You, sir, have committed the fallacy of insufficient feculence — not nearly as egregious as, for example, equivocating on the critical issue of pulling out.

I pray, sir, that this doesn’t sound like a load of crap to you, and please don’t cut me off before we finish our business here, but you simply cannot reasonably infer that “getting shot at [and missed] means that someone doesn’t like you enough to want to shoot at you in the first place.” That’s just BS. It’s also hasty. And only an adversary epistemology advocates haste. In fact, the person shooting at you may very much want to put a slug in your guts, but he may just be a bad shot — for instance, because he has no stool upon which to rest his gun, or perhaps there’s too much movement in other ways.

In any case, the answer to your loaded question is unequivocal: it is indeed far better to be shot at and missed. And that’s no shit.

Follow up question:

Dear Ray: I read your response to Scatman, and I thought it was rock-solid advice. So I thought I’d write in with a question of my own, along somewhat similar lines:

Is it OK to put Germ X (or Purell) on my anus?

Red Button

Dear Red Button: Man, what is with you assholes? Your question is ambiguous — another logical fallacy. The answer depends upon what you mean by “OK.” If by “OK” you mean peculiar, then, yes, it is definitely “OK.” And if by “OK” you mean potentially pathophobic, misophobic, or otherwise inordinately concerned with personal hygiene, then, yes, it is definitely “OK.” But if by “OK” you mean perfectly safe, we run aground.

You see, ethyl alcohol, which is what these hand sanitizers use to kill germs, has indeed been known to cause problems: namely, the problem of pruritus, which, like writing a symphony (according to Brahms), “is no joke.” Pruritus is a rare side-effect, however, and so I imagine that your anus (insofar as I’m able to imagine your anus at all, which isn’t, thank heavens, much) will probably be, as you say, “OK.” If you do go that route, though, Ray recommends using an aloe-vitamin-e-moisturizing variety of sanitizer, thereby killing two birds with one stone. Why not?

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Proof Of God?

A reader writes:

Dear Harvey Ray: Is there proof of God? Can science prove that God doesn’t exist?

Signed,

Hopelessly Devoted

Dear Hopelessly Devoted: No, science cannot. In fact, nothing can. Yet we can be certain that God doesn’t exist — by virtue of the very nature of proof.

The meaning of proof precludes proving something for which there is no evidence.

God is primarily of metaphysical and ethical import. Proof, on the other hand, is epistemological.

Proof is an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that admits no alternative.

Proof, by definition, requires evidence. Indeed, proof is evidence.

For this reason, the attempt to prove something for which there is no evidence is a contradiction in terms. The philosophy of science presupposes this principle, but historically, up to the present day, it’s been poorly defended.

You’ve no doubt heard the platitude: “You can’t prove a negative.”

The reason this statement contains a kernel of truth is that proof requires data, as opposed to an absence of data. And that is why the burden of proof falls upon the person making the claim.

If, for example, you claim that little green men exist inside the human brain, and that these green men are responsible, through an intricate process of lever-pulling, for human consciousness, it is you who must prove this — by providing data — and not us who must disprove it.

What you’re really referring to in your excellent question is a thing epistemologists call evidentialism, or the law of the arbitrary.

If the onus of proof were on me, for instance, to prove that these little green men didn’t exist, what, may I ask, do you think that would entail?

I’ll tell you:

Among other things, it would entail that anyone could say whatever he wanted about anything, regardless of data, and I’d have to spend the rest of my life trying to prove him wrong without any data, while he sat back and fabricated more arbitrary claims. And, indeed, many people do just that.

Fortunately for the human race, this is not how the reasoning process actually works.

The proper response to these claims is simply to dismiss them categorically for what they actually are: neither true nor false, but whimsical — that is, arbitrary — until some hard evidence is put forth. But the evidence must come first, before the claim.

That is what you must always remember.

Evidence constitutes proof.

Merely claiming does not constitute evidence; that’s too easy.

Thus, if you claim God or if you claim green men, it is you, not me, who must produce the data.

Epistemologically, there’s no significant difference between green men, God, the Great Spirit, or, for that matter, Grendel.

Which is why for the mystically inclined, fideism is the best bet, although fideism too runs spectacularly aground, but in other ways, less epistemolgic, perhaps, but clearly more dramatic.

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Global Warming

Politically, global warming and climate change have little if anything to do with climate science, and the fact that this subject has become such an overwhelming political issue is a fine testament to how poorly the world understands the legitimate functions of government, and why those functions are legitimate.

Indeed, it turns out that the whole anthropogenic global warming (AGW) position can be easily defused without any reference to science at all, because the error, at root, is epistemological.

The truth about global warming which many don’t want to hear is that it’s become so polarized only because it’s turned political. The essentials of the subject have thereby been swallowed up in a murky ocean of misinformation, equivocation, and propaganda.

Let us start by defining terms:

Statism is concentrated state authority; it refers to a government that believes it has legitimate power to any extent over individual rights and freedom of trade.

Opposition to laissez-faire capitalism derives in part from ethics, but even more fundamentally from the science of epistemology.

Ethically the fundamental political question is this: are humans free by nature?

The answer to that depends upon the answer to an even deeper question: why (if at all) are humans free by nature?

And the answer to that is epistemologic.

The human brain – to address the latter query first – is individuated and rational by nature; because of this, man by nature possesses the faculty of choice.

Rationality is choice.

And choice presupposes the freedom to choose. This is the locus of the inseparable, indivisible link between reason and rights. Ultimately it is only the individual who can exercise the power of volition, or not. Government bureaus cannot. The state cannot. The collective cannot. Only the individuals who make up these entities.

If humans did not possess the faculty of choice, humans would be neither moral nor immoral but amoral, just as animals for this very reason are amoral.

But human action is chosen.

This, then, is what finally gives rise to the fact of human freedom as an epistemological necessity.

It’s also what it means to say that humans are free by nature: we are born with a cognitive faculty that gives us the power of choice; since this faculty is the primary method by which we thrive and keep ourselves alive, we must (therefore) be left free to exercise that faculty — and leave others likewise free.

This is a form of contractarianism.

Please note that this is not just some esoteric theory on how human freedom could conceivably be defended: the rights of each individual are demonstrably rooted in man’s cognitive quiddity – and for this precise reason, human freedom without an accurate and thorough understanding of man’s epistemologic nature can never be fully understood.
Or defended.

In the words of Samuel Adams:

“Rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.”

And Claude Fredrich Bastiat:

“For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? … Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor, and by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources.”

It is precisely the lack of epistemological grounding that has made rights and therefore human freedom vulnerable throughout all of history.

The evolution of the human brain created rights; it happened at the exact moment when this same evolution created a rational animal called a human being – which is to say, when nature created the capacity of free will.

Philosophy, then, being the most general science, unifies facts from all disciplines into an indivisible whole.

Thus, without proper philosophical underpinnings, scientific facts, no matter how airtight they are, remain unincorporated.

It is this point that provides us with the real and final connection between global warming and individual rights; for the provenance of rights, including private property rights and the freedom to trade that property, is found ultimately in man’s freedom of will, and it is only statist politics – also known as coercive government – that can with impunity negate the individual’s natural rights.

It does so through force, either directly (as in physical expropriation or imprisonment), or indirectly (as in compulsory taxation or fines).

The statist politics that the AGW position explicitly calls for are in this way antithetical to the methods by which the human brain and the human species properly functions and flourishes.

That is the fundamental argument against statism, in any of its multifarious guises. It is a foolproof argument, and it is the first and strongest line of defense: because each and every individual is free by nature, we are free to, in Adam Smith’s words, “truck, barter, and exchange.”

But there’s much more to it than this.

It must first of all never be forgotten that the philosophy of science is only a species of philosophy proper.

This has crucial ramifications.

Science is the systematic gathering of data through observation and reason.

Science is built upon knowledge, and knowledge is built upon reason.

Reason derives from the nature of the human mind, for man is the rational animal.

Epistemology – one of the two main branches of philosophy – is the science of knowledge.
Epistemology, therefore, studies the nature of reason.

In this way, all science is hierarchically dependent upon epistemology.

In the realm of human conviction, there exists at any given time only three primary alternatives: possible, probable, and certain.

Possible is when some evidence exists, but not much.

Probable is when a lot of evidence exists, but not all.

Certain is when the evidence is so overwhelming that no other conclusion is possible.

Obviously, then, what constitutes possible, probable, or certain is the amount of evidence and the context of knowledge within which that evidence is found.

To conclude certain, or even “over 99 percent certain,” to quote James Hansen of NASA, requires a sufficient knowledge of all relevant data and all potentially relevant data.

This is as true in a scientific laboratory as it is in a court of law.

It means that nothing – the complexity of clouds, for instance, or aerosols, deep ocean currents, cosmic rays, sun spots, et cetera – nothing is poorly understood, or insufficiently understood.

It means that the science has culminated to such a degree that our knowledge of it is complete or near-complete – so much so, at any rate, that there is essentially very little left to learn.

It means that because the evidence is so great, the conclusion admits no doubt.

It means, moreover, that the data-gathering process is not biased or influenced in any way by anything extracurricular, like activism.

Such is the nature of certainty.

From an epistemological standpoint, certainty means absolute.

And yet it’s many of these same AGW scientists who, today, under the insidious influence of postmodernism, assure us that there are no absolutes in science – “science doesn’t deal in truth, but only likelihood,” to quote another NASA scientist, Gavin Schmidt.

Truth is only relative, you see.

Quantum physics and thermodynamics have “proven” that the only certainty is that nothing is certain; definitions are purely a question of semantics; a unified philosophy is “circular reasoning” (or, at best, “system-building”); all moral law and all social law is subjective and unprovable.

The mind, in short, cannot know anything for certain. Yet AGW is virtually certain.
These are all epistemological assertions.

Syllogistically, the entire anthropogenic global warming position can be recapitulated in this way:

Global warming is man-made. Man is ruled by governments. Therefore, government bureaus, centralized planning committees, and more laws are the only solution.

In philosophy, this is called a non-sequitur.

It does not follow.

It’s far too hasty.

Please read Chapter 15 of my book to find out why.

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The Difference Between a Cynic and a Skeptic

Antisthenes
The difference between the cynic and the skeptic is the difference between epistemology and ethics. It is the difference between brain and body.

Skepticism is an epistemological word. Cynicism is ethical.

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with morality.

The Greek word skopein – from which the English word scope derives – means “to observe, aim at, examine.” It is related to the Greek skeptesthai, which means “to look out.” Skepsis and skeptikos are also both Greek and mean “to look; to enquire; to aim.” Those are the etymological roots of the word sceptic.

Sceptic – or, if you’re in the United States, skeptic, the difference being purely one of form and not substance – has its origins in the Ancient Greek thinkers who developed arguments which purport to show that knowledge is either impossible (Academic Scepticism) or that there is never sufficient data to tell if knowledge is possible (Pyrrhonian Scepticism).

Academic Scepticism rejects certainty but accepts degrees of probability. In this sense, Academic Scepticism anticipates elements of present-day quantum theory. The Academic Sceptics rejected certainty on the grounds that our senses (from which all knowledge ultimately derives) are unreliable and reason therefore is unreliable since, say the Academic Sceptics, we can find no guaranteed standard by which to gauge whether our convictions are true. This claim rests upon the notion that humans can never know anything that is absolutely false.

The roots of Academic Scepticism are found in Socrates famous apothegm: “All I know is that I know nothing.” The word “Academic” in “Academic Scepticism” refers to Plato’s Academy, third century B.C.

At around this same time, a fellow by the name of Pyrrho of Elis (c.360-275 B.C.), who was connected with the Methodic School of Medicine in Alexandria, founded a school, which soon came to be known as Pyrrhonian Scepticism. Pyrrho’s followers – most notably a loyal student named Timon (c.315-225 B.C.) – were called Pyrrhonists. None of Pyrrho’s actual writings have survived, and the theoretical formulation of his philosophy comes mainly from a man named Aenesidemus (c.100-40 B.C.).

The essential difference between these two schools of Ancient Greek scepticism is this:

The Pyrrhonists regarded even the claim “I know only that I know nothing” as claiming too much knowledge. There’s even a legend that Pyrrho himself refused to make a definitive judgment of knowledge even if “chariots were about to strike him dead,” and his students purportedly rescued him a number of different times because he refused to make commitments.

Pyrrho of Elis
To this day the term Pyrrhonist is synonymous with the term sceptic, which is also synonymous with the term agnostic (a meaning “without”; gnosis meaning “knowledge”).

It’s perhaps worth pointing out as well that the word agnostic in this context was, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, coined by Thomas Henry Huxley, in the spring of 1869, at a party, in which there was reportedly “much licking and sucking.” According to R. H. Hutton, who was there: “Huxley took it from St. Paul’s mention of the altar to ‘the Unknown God.’”

In truth, however, the word agnostic was most likely first used by a woman named Isabel Arundell, in a letter to Huxley. Huxley stole it from and gave her no credit.

The Oxford English Dictionary (Unabridged, 2004) lists four meanings of the term sceptic, which are as follows:

1. one who, like Pyrrho and his followers in Greek antiquity, doubts the possibility of real knowledge of any kind; one who holds that there are no adequate grounds for certainty. Example: “I am apt to think there never yet has really been such a monster in the world as a sceptic” (Tucker, 1768).

2. one who doubts the validity of what claims to be knowledge … popularly, one who maintains a doubting attitude with reference to some particular question or statement; one who is habitually inclined to doubt rather than to believe any assertion or apparent fact that comes before him. Example: “If every sceptic in Theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion” (Samuel Johnson, 1779).

3. one who doubts without absolutely denying the truth of the Christian religion or important party of it; loosely, an unbeliever in Christianity. Example: “In listening to the arguments of a sceptic, you are breathing a poisonous air” (R.B. Girdlestone, 1863).

4. occasionally, from its etymological sense: a truth seeker; an inquirer who has not yet arrived at definite conclusions. Example: “A sceptic, then, is one who shades his eyes in order to look steadfastly at a thing.” (M.D. Conway, 1870).

The anthropogenic global warming debate has catapulted this latter definition to the forefront, yet many purists, who know the philosophical roots of the word scepticism, are not always comfortable using it in this way — mainly because it’s so at odds with the philosophical meaning of the term. Scepticism has over 2,000 years of heavy philosophical baggage, and to call yourself a sceptic in the philosophical sense entails much more than one “who shades his eyes in order to look steadfastly at a thing.”

Language, however, as everyone knows, is a living, breathing organism which will and properly should evolve, and it would be very bad to say that sceptic in this latter sense is incorrect. And yet there is another word, more precise and less laden: Evidentialism.

True scepticism — which is to say, agnosticism, which is to say, Pyrrhonism — rejects the possibility of all knowledge, and yet it is precisely this that the scientist seeks, and finds: knowledge. What is knowledge?

Knowledge is the apprehension of reality based upon observation and reason; reason is the uniquely human faculty of awareness, the apparatus of identification, differentiation, and incorporation. Knowledge is truth, and truth is the accurate identification of reality. Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus. Truth is the equation of thing and intellect.

For example, when the child grasps that 1 unit combined with 2 other units makes a total of 3 units, that child has discovered a truth. She has gained knowledge. The philosophical sceptic rejects this elementary fact.

The philosophical sceptic is defined by three words: “I don’t know.”

The scientific sceptic, on the other hand, is defined by rational inquiry — someone who investigates with a disposition to be persuaded and yet does not (in the words of perhaps the most famous sceptical inquirer of them all) “insensibly twist facts to fit theories, instead of twisting theories to fit facts.”

A cynic, on the other hand, is someone who doesn’t believe goodness is possible.

Cynicism is a moral concept, not epistemologic.

The word originated with a Greek fellow by the name of Antisthenes (not to be confused with Antihistamines, which are something else), who was once a student of Socrates.

Antisthenes had a notorious contempt for human merit and human pleasure, and that is why to this day the word cynic denotes a sneer.

The cynic rejects goodness; the skeptic rejects knowledge.

Both words, it should also be noted, do, however, have one very important thing in common: from a philosophical standpoint, they’re each stupendously incorrect.

This article first appeared, in slightly different form, at Dr. Jennifer Marohasy’s website.

The comments there are well worth reading.

Antisthenes

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A Brief History Of Environmentalism

Environmentalism has so thoroughly permeated world culture that the saving-the-planet rhetoric is accepted even by those who don’t really regard themselves as dyed-in-the-skein environmentalists. It is taught as holy writ in public schools, and it’s espoused by poets, priests, and politicians alike.

This monstrous ideology would, given the first opportunity, destroy humankind, a fact of which the leaders of this movement make no secret.

It is therefore of great importance to expose this ideology for what it actually is: a neo-Marxist philosophy that masquerades as something benevolent and life-affirming, but which in reality explicitly calls for humans to be subordinated to nature, via an elite bureau of centralized planners who, as you would suspect, are the ones that get to decide for the rest of us how we must live.

It was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who first began propounding the immanent-goodness-of-nature-untouched-by-man ideology. Rousseau also deplored “the corrupting influence of reason, culture, and civilization.” In fact, Rousseau, like many of our current politicians, also preached economic egalitarianism and tribal democracy, the “collective will,” and the primacy of the group over the individual. In a great many ways, Rousseau is the founder of present-day environmentalism.

His so-called Eden Premise was picked up by all the pantheists and transcendentalists, such as Henry David Thoreau (who at least was very much pro-limited-government, coining the famous phrase: “That government governs best which governs least.”); John Muir (founder of Sierra Club), Aldo Leopold (who helped found the Wilderness Society), and of course the propagandist Rachel Carson.

When, in 1860, Thoreau wrote that forests untouched by humans grow toward “the greatest regularity and harmony,” he inadvertently changed the life of a biologist named George Perkins Marsh, who in 1864 wrote a book called Man and Nature. In this extraordinarily influential book, George Marsh also tried to convince us that, absent humans, mother nature and her processes work in perfect harmony:

“Man” (said Marsh) “is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discord…. [Humans] are brute destroyers … [Humans] destroy the balance which nature had established.”

“But” (he continued) “nature avenges herself upon the intruder, [bringing humans] deprivation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction.”

Just as Thoreau influenced George Marsh, so George Marsh influenced a man named Gifford Pinchot, and also a man named John Muir.

Gifford Pinchot was a utilitarian who loathed private ownership of natural resources. He was also the first chief of the United States Forest Service under Republican President Theodore Roosevelt.

Gifford Pinchot was a collectivist who believed in sacrificing individuals and their property for the sake of “the greatest number.”

It was in large part because of Pinchot that the United States’ federal government increased its land holdings dramatically, so that today over one third of America is owned by the federal government — which holdings comprise over half of America’s known resources, including “a third of our oil, over 40 percent of salable timber and natural gas, and most of the nation’s coal, copper, silver, asbestos, lead, and other minerals.”

In his excellent account of American environmentalism, Philip Shabecoff says this:

“Pinchot wanted the forests managed for their usefulness, not for their beauty… He was not interested in preserving the natural landscape for its own sake.”

At the very least, Pinchot, a conservationist, was, however, still semi pro-human.

John Muir, on the other hand, Pinchot’s nemesis, was not pro-human. In fact, he was the diametric opposite.

It was John Muir, a Scottish immigrant, who introduced misanthropy into the environmental pseudo-philosophy, which misanthropy reigns supreme to this very day.

“How narrow we selfish, conceited creatures are in our sympathies!” said John Muir, who said astonishingly racist things against the Indians of Yosemite Valley. “How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation! Well, I have precious little sympathy for the selfish propriety of civilized man, and if a war of races should occur between the wild beasts and Lord Man, I would be tempted to sympathize with the bears.”

From John Muir, it was only a short step to one Ernst Haeckel (1834 – 1919), a German zoologist, who told us that individuals don’t actually exist. Human individuals do not possess an individual consciousness, he said, because humans are only a part of a greater whole, and 1866 Haeckel coined that fated term “ecology,” which he defined as “the whole science of the relations of the organism to the environment.”

It was an Oxford botanist named A. G. Tansley who, in 1935, introduced the word “ecosystem.”

According to this same Tansley, individual entities don’t exist but are merely part of “the basic units of nature on the face of the earth.”

Aldo Leopold’s wildly popular Sand County Almanac was published in 1948. It preached “the pyramid of life,” and in order to preserve this pyramid, Leopold told us that federal governments must “enlarge the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals [which] changes the role of Homo Sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it.”

A Norwegian named Arne Naess (1913 – 2009) also believed that human individuals don’t actually exist. Only ecosystems do. It was Naess who first argued that the “shallow ecology,” as he called it, “of mainstream conservation groups” benefits humans too much. Thus, Naess began calling for “deep ecology” — i.e. “biospheric egalitarianism with the equal right [of all things] to live and blossom.”

These are just a small handful of the phrases and catchphrases that have now frozen into secular dogma, and which Rachel Carson, with her puerile pen, brought to the mewling masses. Her book Silent Spring opens like this:

There once was a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchard where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall morning… The town is almost devoid of robins and starlings; chickadees have not been present for two years, and this year the cardinals are gone too… ‘Will they ever come back?’ the children ask, and I do not have the answer.

This was published in 1962. Almost fifty years later, robins, starlings, and chickadees continue to flourish, as they always have.

Most sane people see through this sort of pablum like a fishnet. It’s the insane people who have swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

The rest, of course, is history.