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It’s never been more important to know the truth than in the context of today! Freedom is on the line! But how good are the methods used to discern truth? Are they effective? Are they reliable? In this podcast we discuss 2 easy mistakes that many truth seekers fall into. They are super important because they affect our ability to achieve certainty and to pass on knowledge to others.
We must be able to scrutinise government policies, pandemics, climate emergency, terrorism, etc, and if we find them to be flawed or making false claims we must be able to explain why. We must rise to the challenge of being savvy and astute thinkers who can see through the propaganda! We need to know which ideas are false and which are true and we need to be certain of our conclusions.
The Traps – Mysticism and Emotions
All truth seekers face two potential traps. They can easily be tempted into considering faith and/or emotions as a means to knowing truth. Faith is what people are appealing to when they talk about “just knowing”. But reason is your ONLY guide to truth.
It is crucial for us truth seekers to understand the consequences of believing that faith and emotions can be guides in discerning truth.
- You can be hoodwinked or conned if you habitually believe on faith.
- You can be controlled by fear if you habitually believe according to how you feel.
- You will never achieve certainty beyond a reasonable doubt in what you know.
- You will be unable to demonstrate with any certainty what is true.
- YOU CANNOT DEFEND FREEDOM FROM THIS BASIS.
BEWARE OF FAITH
What is faith? It is belief in ideas when no reasons can be offered to substantiate them. It is the belief that reasons are unnecessary. Faith is the antithesis of reason.
If you accept something on faith you cannot possibly know why it is true. You cannot explain to others why it is true, you can only tell them its true. You can pass on ready made conclusions but you cannot pass on knowledge and understanding. This is no basis for any movement, never mind a truth movement!
If you accept ideas on faith you cannot achieve certainty. Certainty is a measure of how much evidence supports a claim or proposition. By definition you will have none.
If you accept ideas on faith you are relegated to the position of a child – of simply accepting what you are told, and doing what you are told.
BEWARE OF EMOTIONS
It is similar with emotions. Because ultimately faith is belief based on how you feel as well. When reason and logic are renounced all you left is your emotions.
When you accept that emotions are a means to know reality you avail yourself to emotional control. You can be manipulated into behaving a certain way through fear. Only when you hold reason as your sole means to gain knowledge can you know if a threat is genuine before you act on it.
Accepting ideas as true on the basis of faith or emotions leaves you without knowledge, only hearsay. You cannot rally troops and truth seeking foot soldiers without reasons. You cannot win against the globalists by holding up ideas you have no clue how to validate.
Reason – your only guide to knowledge
For a detailed explanation of why reason is your only guide to truth check out this post.
Freedom and truth have no chance until and unless people grasp that reason is their ONLY means to knowledge because adopting ideas without reasons – even if they are true – cannot be considered knowledge. You cannot pass on understanding without reasons. You cannot launch a crusade for freedom without truth on your side along with the reasons why. How will you persuade anyone to join your revolution if you have no reasons?
To find out more about emotions check out this post “Emotions – How do they Work?”
Ayn Rand was one of the best thinkers of all time. her contribution to humanity is still unrecognised because we are still like children.
Useful Web Sites: For your reference:
- https://atlassociety.org/
- https://www.aynrand.org/
- https://thecultureofreasoncenter.com/
- http://www.nathanielbranden.com/
Ayn Rand’s Novels:
Recommended Ayn Rand Non fiction:
- For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
- The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
- Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
- The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature
- Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
- Philosophy: Who Needs It
- The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought
The Post Modern World is more sorely lacking in existential truth than any other group of people in world history. Post modern reasoning devolved out of the French Revolution, and has only gotten worse. Unless you happened to have been conditioned to accept fallacious post modern reasoning, all that is needed to understand this is to read Foucault and Derrida.
The dreadful ignorance of people like Ayn Rand has only served to compound the problem. Because her starting premise was essentially the same as those of the french and european philosopers, everything that followed from her was sorely confused, and directed exclusively at people who were similarly confused.
The only possible escape for the peoples of the earth is to be found in the foundational premise of the American Revolution.
“All Men Created Equal In The Eyes Of God”.
Lacking absolute authority by which humanity can determine to value of “ANYTHING”, has delivered us this mess we are currently enduring.
If you have never read, or listened to, Professor Jordan Peterson; well, you are undoubtedly lacking a massive amount of context that could enlighten you a great deal.
….Epistomology is divided into two camps.
1. Western Realism, wherein “things” are distinctly separate from mind.
2. Eastern Idealism, wherein “things” and “Mind” are one and the same.
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Virtually all of european style education has discarded western realism, replacing it with the idealism of the east. And why would they not do that? It is the only way they could seat all authority within themselves, and from that, the material universe, including infinite human life, become irrelevant, unworthy of being maintained.
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The Ancient Greeks had no problem with “faith” as ms. Rand stumbled at. The Greeks understood that “faith” is built into every construct of the universe. No one can exist without faith. There are no exceptions.
Faith is something that the mind agrees upon, and the volatile self responds to.
Faith is an action, based upon a belief, that is kept in motion by confidence in that belief.
The Greeks did not doubt this. Faith was either going toward something, are backing away from it.
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The post modern world, because they have been swallowed by eastern idealism, are sorely lacking in the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, who did not deny existential reality.
Thank you for this comment. It is revealing and enlightening for me to see how back-to-front and up-side-down some people can be with their jumbled up and self-contradictory comments indicating a failure in logical thinking capacity. When I hear people with thoughts like this in their head, people who clearly cannot grasp that to have faith is to have no reasons and therefore no understanding, my conclusion that tyranny is coming is reinforced and underscored.
Knowing truth is knowing reality. But until people can grasp that existence exists and that consciousness is conscious there really is no hope of a rational conversation. And thus the downward slide into mayhem will continue. One lunatic idea will battle against another with no objective reality as the measure of truth.
Prepare yourselves accordingly people. The madness can only get worse before it dies of its own falseness.