It represents an update of the Philosophy page at The Slog…..with especial reference to the “events” of the last four years.

Intolerant belief systems are the enemy of compassion

My philosophy is that all decent human beings should reject all intolerant doctrines – be they religious, ideological, or a combination of both.

Not censor, ban or otherwise oppress them. Simply reject them as models of thinking.

If you want to be a commentator people respect, then this is my abiding rule :

‘Commitment to an ideology means putting power-objectives before Truth: you can’t be an ideologue and tell Truth unto Power’

This is non-negotiable.

The reasoning behind this is based on the clear evidence available suggesting that intolerant doctrines oppress citizens, glorify rigid thinking, justify lawless power, encourage violence and hinder both artistic and scientific development.

Instead of opening minds, catechisms close ranks.

To take examples from recent modern history:During the 1920s and 1930s, the USSR regularly doctored all photography and documentation that included disgraced leaders, purged military officials and records of planning failures.

After 1934, the Nazi State orchestrated the mass burning of all books on political, ethnic and social sciences and philosophy that questioned the régime’s Weltanschauung.

In the book 1984, Winston Smith’s job is to destroy all old news that the dictator Big Brother thinks might contradict his State narrative. George Orwell wrote the novel in 1948. Almost everything in it is now being adopted by ideologues:Antifa in particular and the American Left in general would like to move, hide, deface or destroy every statue recording the almost universal nature of alternatives to its ideology.

This is true of Soviets, Nazis, self-styled liberals, Islamics, Socialists, neoliberals, radical feminists, globalists, monetarists and neoconservative geopoliticians.The one feature they all have in common is putting belief systems before citizen fulfilment.They are the real enemies of individual development, open-minded philosophy, and the study of social anthropology as a means of improving the human condition.

Intolerant religious, sovereign, bloc, corporate and economic cultures close minds, close ranks, and open hostilities. Their first concern is to gain and retain power. Their last concern is the potential of the individual.

They pervert language in order to hide this, by the misappropriation of words like liberal, progressive, reformed, correct and settled.

We live in a time of acute human crisis: the fearmongering around Brexit, Skripal, Covid 19 megahype, BLM, Let’s Get China & now ‘the Second Wave’ has reached a stage where most people would put up with anything rather than go through more turmoil. That has Germany in 1933 written all over the wall in large letters.

But this is the challenge for every honest observer…..How to reverse the quadrophonic attack on empiricism, and reinstate people’s shit-from-sugar synapses. And how to do it without using techniques that would represent a threat to the individual liberty one’s trying to preserve. It’s pure Catch22 at times.

I want to thank all of you – from the latest followers to the Praetorian Guard that date back to 2008 and beyond – for sticking with me through thick fog and thin gruel.

We can still win this War between honest human endeavour and mendacious megalomaniacs.

Stick with it.

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