By Francois Tremblay 

Negation as Social Damage

All forms of negation and unbelief are signs of social damage. The fact that atheism and anarchism exist at all shows that most of us are memetically sick as epistemic agents.

This may seem rather self-refuting, given that I am an atheist and an anarchist. Am I saying that I am damaged? To a certain extent, yes. We are all brain damaged by virtue of having been raised in the fantastic cage. Simply calling oneself an atheist or an an anarchist demonstrates that one is still its prisoner, even if the belief is gone. Granted, the best of us got rid of our reactivity and are only prisoners insofar as we are prisoners of the behaviour of others, but we are prisoners nevertheless.

Atheists constantly waste time trying to explain to believers that “atheism” is a simple negation and does not entail any positive claims. This is, of course, correct. They also explain that “atheism” only exists at all because of prevalent beliefs, and that it is really as trivial as “aleprechaunism”. This is also correct. But the inexorable conclusion is that “atheism” is a reactionary position. One is an atheist because one starts from the religious framework, and rejects it.

The same thing is true about “anarchy”. When seen from outside the cage, the idea that a monopoly of force is undesirable is a foregone conclusion. There should be no need for “anarchy” any more than there is need for “astarvationism” or “amurderism”. “Anarchy” really only exists because our world suffers under the burden of the democratic nation-states- i.e. because of extensive and profound damage.

The fact that these negations exist, therefore, is the sign of a sick society, although of course not as sick as a society so repressed that these negations cannot even be allowed to be expressed. In fact, I think one can measure the progress of a society by how much apathy we observe in it. As Hoffer states in The True Believer, the opposite of a fanatic Christian is not a fanatic atheist, but rather apathy. Fanaticism begets fanaticism. I think you will observe that the societies where there is the most virulent belief, will also tend to create the most virulent unbelief. The best societies are those where apathy reigns. And indeed, from an individualist standpoint, an intelligent sort of apathy is the most desirable outcome.

Part of the fantastic cage is the remnant of an evil belief system long after it’s gone. Negative racism, for instance, may have fallen out of favour in the general population, but it has given birth to cultural supremacism, positive racism, and a host of other conceptual evils, which will continue to exist for a long time. When Christianity dissapears from public view, it will still leave behind destructive ways of thinking, such as the “immaterial soul”, command-based morality, and sexual repression. It is these hidden moral premises that we are really fighting against, not an organized system of thought per se.

Now, if we imagine there is such a thing as a perfectly sane individual, which is to say someone who resides wholly outside of the fantastic cage (say, an individual from another, saner civilization), we can imagine that such an individual would have no understanding of what “religion”, “atheism”, “state” or “anarchy” are. Such an individual would simply look around himself at what actually exists. He would observe a lot of material entities and processes, and a lot of individuals acting of their own will, but he would not observe any collective or any “immaterial”. He would be an individualist materialist simply because he would see no reason to be otherwise- he would not even know what the terms mean. When confronted by any belief system, he would completely fail to grasp them.

At the same time, I don’t want to minimize the importance of active unbelief as a first step away from social damage, insofar as we understand it solely on that basis. It is an essential first step, as long as it is kept free from underlying collectivist beliefs. Unfortunately, many people still look for a collectivist crutch in order to prop up their nascent individualism. Ideologies like humanism, liberalism or anarcho-syndicalism (TV “anarchists”) are treasonous and pure nonsense.

All that unbelief means, in the end, is a lifting of the burden of our ideological masters- the end of the submission to their values. Unbelief is a foot in the door of reality. Nothing more, nothing less.

From Check Your Premises

by Sean Prophet

This outline is a work in progress.

ONTOLOGY

1. PHILOSOPHY
1. Subjective/objective
2. Causality/observation/empiricism
3. Relativism vs. methodical discovery
4. Negative proof
2. NATURAL/SUPERNATURAL
1. How would you measure or observe supernatural? Everything is natural
2. Various cosmological models – shouldn’t talk about implications until much more is understood (even the smartest physicists barely understand this stuff, not cocktail-party ready discussion) Big Bang, String Theory, Theory of Everything, Everything Forever, Quantum physics, Dark Matter.
3. Even if the universe is finite, or there are many of them, we don’t know how or if you can get outside time or space. For all practical purposes, it is infinite. (e.g. 100,000 years just to get across our galaxy): If  matter ends up being all ‘energy’, it’s still energy with structure. If there end up being many dimensions, we still live in this one. Better to learn the laws of matter than pretend you’re not subject to them.
4. What’s the rush to understand big questions? Simply watch and wait. Leave what’s undiscovered alone. Don’t make up stuff about it. Understanding the boundary between known/unknown is very important.
3. RELIGION
1. Anthropological response to death
2. Ritual
3. Scripture
4. Myths. Tension between irreconcilable opposites, divine resolution. Patterned after human struggle with death. Deus ex machina.
5. Power structure absent government, but strong secular government eliminates the need. Old structures don’t want to let go of power.
6. Revelation vs. Discovery
7. Since religion is a human created subjective enterprise, it has no compatibility with or relevance to science.
4. PURPOSE/MEANING
1. Teleological argument, waged based on uncomfortability with apparent lack of purpose for universe.
2. Beyond physical evolution—we don’t know.
3. Might not have any at all, so make your own.
4. Anthropic principle.

CONSCIOUSNESS

1. DUALISM
1. Matter/Spirit
2. Mind/Body
2. PRECEDENCE
1. Consciousness
2. Matter
3. WILL
1. Subconscious/Unconscious
2. Genetic Determinism
3. Reptilian brain
4. Shadow
4. PSYCHOLOGY
1. Beliefs
2. Truth vs. Result
3. Cognitive Dissonance
5. SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
1. Loss of spatial localization – feeling of oneness of everything
2. Dreams/sleep paralysis
3. Enhanced Arousal/Quiescence
4. Can be brought about by many types of ritual, not simply religious
5. Not different than some types of drug use

POLITICS

1. ETHICS
1. Equality, the biggest lie. None of us are equal.
2. Fairness, another whopper.
3. What matters is that rules are consistent, not arbitrarily changed over time to benefit one group or another. Legal framework must be independent of individual or group meddling. Impartiality.
4. Powerful will always dominate. How can we best mitigate the severity of domination, with minimum consequences to the individual.
5. Deception is endemic to human race, especially in mating. Goes back at least 100,000 years, if not to pre-hominid species. Animals hide food, engage in sexual deception, mimic other species to trick prey, change color, etc.
6. Social contract. People don’t sign one. It’s implicit, and not everyone agrees. So you have the free-rider problem.
7. Biggest ethical problem is free-rider. Externalities are the basis of resource over-depletion, pollution, lack of medical care, etc.
8. Getting control of externalities would allow the market to be truly free. Every ethical problem with trade has to do with unpaid externalities. Would eliminate need for activism. Would eliminate need for consumers to inject morality into purchasing (fair-trade, etc.) Would eliminate energy choice as a moral concern. Who cares how big a car someone drives, or if they waste electricity if it’s renewable and all externalities are paid Control of externalities is the only proper way of drawing healthy boundaries between individuals, corporations, the state, and the environment.
2. ISMS – the bad
1. Relativism – refuge for intellectual scoundrels--public enemy No.1
2. Utilitarianism
3. Altruism
4. Collectivism/Communism
5. Consumerism–doesn’t really exist—see externalities
6. Narcissism
3. ISMS – the useful
1. Individualism
2. Objectivism
3. Capitalism
4. Libertarianism
5. Existentialism
4. EXTREME – ISMS
1. Fundamentalism
2. Fascism
5. CULTURE
1. Rights vs. Duty
2. Objective measures of culture relative to universal human needs.
3. Psychological origins of culture wars: Jealousy, desire to control other people's success, enjoyment. Misery loves company—controlling belief systems naturally make people unhappy, but they feel their suffering is for a good cause. But they secretly wish they didn’t have to suffer. So it becomes very important to them to make sure no one else is “getting away” with anything, i.e. suffering less. Projection: In extremely patriarchal cultures where women are treated as property, men project their sexual urges onto the women. Hence the veils, burqas or other image control devices are used to prevent men from seeing the reflection of their own sexuality. Repressed shadow.