Interpretation In An Age of Explanatory Collapse
Truth? What’s that?
The most obvious answer is that Truth is a word. Like the word God. Before God is anything it’s a word and words come from human beings, not God.
You can say that words come from God, including the word God, and Truth.
And from there you can say that God is Truth. You can then say that, since God isn’t here at the moment, you are going to speak for him, or her, or it, or whatever. If you can get enough people to believe you, or anyone, and respond accordingly, that is to say, in a way you consider to be appropriate, you will have successfully controlled their behavior. In other words, you will have successfully controlled them. For now at least.
But is what you are saying about God and Truth, and those you now control, true? Of course not! Why not? Because there is no truth. There’s just us and our interpretations. And what do we interpret? We interpret the world.
A world, of course, which includes us. We interpret ourselves and each other. And we often get it wrong - very wrong, like when people introduce unrealities and metaphysical pseudo-entities into their explanations of the world that they then call The Truth, so they can then use that truth to justify killing anyone and everyone who refuses to obey them.
So, the more we know about Interpretation in general and our own interpretations in particular, the better off we'll be. At least that's the point of view taken here. A good place to start would be accepting an obvious fact.
We Live In An Interpreted World
So, if there’s no truth, what is there? There’s Reality. What proof do we have that we live in Reality? Well, since proof is what happens in the real world, and since the real world includes us, the real world is proof we live in Reality. Obviously, this seems to be going nowhere and maybe it is, but maybe it isn’t. How can we tell that we exist and are living in Reality?
Leaving that deadly question aside, I can start by saying that I am not offering The Truth, and I don’t expect to be believed. So, in this case, when words are involved, the only way we can tell that we are indeed alive and living in Reality is to test the words we use to see if they are reliable.
And by reliable is meant, appropriate in our judgment. And by appropriate in our judgment could mean that our words have predictive value. The point is we don’t have to reinvent Reality to convince ourselves that we exist.
Of course, there is an even bigger point that we’ll get to in a moment.
But when it comes to Reality, let other people argue whether the world is there or not, or whether we exist or not. Whether the world is there or not, it might as well be. And whether we are here or not, we might as well be.
One thing is for certain. I am here writing this and you are there reading it.
The time is different, and so is the space, and the experience, or interpretation. But the reality is the same, we are here and we are alive.
And to live is to respond, and to interpret is to explain. And that is all that I am offering to you here, an explanation. It’s all that I, or anyone, can offer.
Of course, whether it is useful to you or not is for you to decide. The other even bigger point that concerns us is What connects language to the world?
Actually, that would be a great question in a Philosophy 101 exam, which is exactly why you won’t ever see it at any university anywhere in the Western world today. Anyway, what is the answer to the question, What connects language to the world? And the answer, of course, is behavior. And the word behavior as it is being used here simply means People Doing Things.
And what behavior makes us different from every other species? The behavior that makes human beings different from every other species is verbal behavior, which is species-specific, as the professionals might say.
Note: Or as the professionals might have said, since they're not behaving very professionally these days, or scientifically. They're behaving politically, to the detriment of science, and not just science, but to knowledge itself, since science is the model of knowing. Idiots! The only group worse are the gullible dumbshits who believe them. "Trust the science." Right. Trust this!
And what is the source of that behavior? The source of that behavior is randomness of response. And what do we do with that behavior? We create Language, which functions by coordinating behavior.
Why does that behavior need to be controlled? Because of the brain's primary attribute - randomness of response. And since Language is not enough, verbal behavior inevitably becomes, must become, Explanation, and Explanation functions by organizing our transactions with the world.
Without Explanation human beings can not live, not at this point in our development, at least not for long, and certainly not very well. That Language is tied to the World by Behavior is why there is no Truth.
I'll be more specific so that we may have the situation clearly before us.
It is exactly because verbal behavior, itself a response to the human brain's primary attribute of randomness, can only be tied to the world by human nonverbal behavior (by People Doing Things) that human beings will never find The Truth about anything - ever. And by Truth, as the word is being used here, is meant anything perfect, final and absolute. Of course, this fact is not likely to get people to stop using the word Truth in this way, nor should it stop any of us from using it to refer to something factual, that is, to a single fact, or group of facts, or to something we judge to be accurate, relevant, and useful, in our attempts to understand ourselves and the world, not just so we can adapt to both, but make them adapt to us, if we can.
How could any human attempt to adapt ever be absolute, perfect, and final?
Well, it can't, of course. And the fact that it can't explains our need for continuous learning, change, and growth, not to mention creativity and innovation, all of which function, not only as our most important modes of adaptation, but the means by which we enhance the quality of our lives.
Learning, change, and growth, keep us alive and make life worth living.
There is no problem in using the word Truth as long as we know what we are doing. But an acceptance of the fact that nothing human beings do can ever be perfect, final, or absolute, can do much to increase our awareness of the relationship between language, behavior, and the world, while also alerting us to the dangers of using the word Truth as an absolute.
And danger is the right word. After all, how often in human history has the word Truth - as an absolute - been used to justify wholesale slaughter?
The relationship between language, behavior, and the world. That, and the fact that there isn't now, never was, and never will be an absolute Truth, is what they should be teaching and learning in the universities today (and not just the universities), instead of listening to the platform bawlers of Identity Politics tell us ad nauseum who is a racist, sexist, anti-semitic, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic (I’m almost finished), nativist, and using that Truth to justify their violence and satisfy their lust for power. It's time to say No! to the intellectual and moral insanity of Identity Politics!
Truth Is An Atavism
"So far, so good. But, so what? What does any of this have to do with Truth and Interpretation in an Age of Explanatory Collapse? More importantly, what does any of this have to do with me? And what is “Explanatory Collapse” anyway? And how does an explanation collapse.”
Ok, ok. Hold your horses Mr. Rash and Curious. Let’s slow it down.
In the first place, as I said, I’m not offering The Truth, just an interpretation, which, like it or not, is all any of us can offer. If someone calls their interpretation The Truth they’re not being truthful, they’re being dogmatic.
Their dogmatism is more a confession than anything else, and a warning. Though it’s unlikely that they will ever get around to seeing it that way.
In the second place, this is just a short essay. For something more check out the rest of the PRC Writings and Latest. For now, let’s get back to your questions, you asked some good ones. The Truth part of your first question I’ve already answered. As to the second part, What does any of this have to do with - Interpretation in an Age of Explanatory Collapse?
Well, the whole point of this relatively brief entry is to direct attention to our use, or misuse, of the word Truth, and the fact that what we’re really talking about is our interpretation of the world. Put baldly, the point is to direct attention to the fact that We Live In An Interpreted World.
We do not live in a world in which The Truth exists and is the sole property of a hostile elite. However, we do live in a world in which a hostile elite is now using its interpretation of the world - that they modestly refer to as The Truth - to control our behavior and is, to a considerable extent, succeeding.
But, as the saying goes, nothing fails like success, especially theirs. Since, as I said earlier, proof is what happens in the real world, for proof of the hostile elite’s enormous success, ie; spectacular failure, well, just look around.
And now we’re back to why we living in an Age of Explanatory Collapse.
We are living in an Age of Explanatory Collapse because our use of the word Truth has finally reached its limit. The fact is, Truth is an atavism.
In fact, it would be even more appropriate to say that Truth is the atavism.
The hope here is that a radical acceptance of this obvious fact will help to make the human race more modest and less muderous.
The Paradox of The Hostile Elite
We live at a time when life is more complex and unpredictable than ever before. We also live at a time when we have more precise knowledge about ourselves and the world we live in than ever before in human history. That’s quantity and quality of knowledge. Whatever it is we call The Truth is, in fact, just an interpretation and explanation, nothing more.
Life is possible without The Truth, obviously, since so many people use the word it can hardly mean the same thing, though sameness of meaning is the dream of all weak-minded people (or utopianists and fanatics - same thing), which is exactly why they are extremely dangerous whenever they get into positions of power, like they are now, hence their name the hostile elite (and of course the hostile elite's paid proxies and useful idiots).
Note: Of course, sameness of meaning is essential in terms of communication (common and complex) and certainly in education. What I am refering to above is sameness of meaning made absolute by an elite that uses that fixed meaning to tyrannize over large groups of people.
Make no mistake about it, their hostility is with Reality, it’s just projected on us. The elite are making the world pay for the fact that they don’t like Reality. In fact, they hate it. They’re not called the hostile elite for nothing.
The paradox of the hostile elite is that the greater their power, the more they try to hide, the more they try to hide, the easier it is to see what they are hiding, and just how weak they are. And what are they hiding? The evidence of their many crimes. They are hiding the facts that if exposed would undermine their power. Hence their need for Hate Speech Laws, which are not designed to fight hate, but to protect the hostile elite's power.
A power based on the pretzel logic of meglomania, hatred, and scapegoating.
Scapegoating - Trauma - Explanatory Collapse - Recovery
In any event, life is possible without The Truth, it is impossible without Explanation, for human beings anyway. A fact easily proven. Just turn that fact, or interpretation, into a theory and test it in the real world. How?
By trying to live without Explanation. Good luck! You’re going to need it!
But, by all means, don’t take my word for it. Just take my interpretation, turn it into a theory and test it in the real world. When you’ve done that let me know how it went. I’d love to hear your explanation.
As to the question, How does an Explanation Collapse? That’s easy.
Since an explanation is useful only if it is open-ended and unresolved in both directions, that of theory and data, to collapse an explanation one only needs to close it off from both directions and Viola! Of course, it might not happen all at once, and usually doesn’t. Some explanations - that one could argue have done a lot of damage - have lasted a very long time indeed.
Things like Christianity and Communism come irresistably to mind.
But times have changed and Christianity is not only a high-level abstraction and by no means all bad, it’s also an easy target. In fact, Christianity is the only Abrahamic religion that carries the seeds of its own transcendence.
That’s why when given the choice so many people have left the Church, as I did when I was seven. And I left because when I turned seven in September 1968 I was told by my oldest sister that seven was the age of reason and that I should start thinking for myself. So I did. Not that I wasn't already.
That I often did a bad job of it is beside the point, or entirely the point, since the reasons for that are worth going into, though not here, at least not in detail. But we can touch on them. The fact is I started to think for myself and immediately became the family scapegoat. Not that I wasn't already.
Ironically, the sister in question became a Christian fanatic and soon after lost her reason, and her mind - not because of her religion, but because of her fanaticism. Also, and not at all coincidentally, she eagerly participated in the family scapegoating of the very brother she had just instructed to think for himself. How evangelic of her. But what she did pales in comparison to what another sibling was gulty of. The cowardly violence and insane hatred of one of my older brothers is a perfect symbolization of the political Left, as my oldest sister's weakness and stupidity is of the Christian Right. The rest of the siblings leaned more in the direction of the older brother, and a younger sister, as they were the Golden Children, since with eight children our family was big enough to have two. But only one scapegoat.
Anyway, so I was told to think for myself, which I did, and still do, though admittedly much better now than I was able to in the past, as a result of recovery and going No Contact. The result today is that those two siblings, and not just those two, could never do to me today what they did then. Not because I own a gun or have a black belt. I don't have either, but because I am reasonably competent at self-defense, because I am far more competent at value ascription, that is, at ascribing value to myself and others.
I value myself today in a way I never could then, and I never could then, and for a long time, because I wasn't loved by my mother. In fact, just the opposite. The only way to describe my mother's behavior toward me would be hatred. She denied the reality that I was of any value as a human being, let alone as her son, and she did to me when I was a child, and she made sure my brothers and sisters knew it, and they did and, true to type, responded accordingly. The older brother Golden Child, an overt narcissist, was the most violent and hateful one in the family. The younger sister Golden Child, an incurable phoney, was the covert narcissist. Both had the full support of the Flying Monkeys and Family Mind Guard (though, of course, all were there to protect the narrative). A fact that says everything anyone would ever want to know about my mother. She was evil to her core.
Nothing about my mother, my brothers and sisters, and even in some cases their friends and their spouses, in relation to the scapegoat, could ever be confused with reason or accountability. It took me years, decades, to free myself from what was essentially a protracted soul murder. In short, it took a lifetime to free myself of them. But I did it! And I'm never going back.
The Consequences of Scapegoating
Being scapegoated has consequences, in the way one thinks in general, and about themselves in particular. The choice-making ability itself is damaged as a result. Not to mention the fact that, since the sense of value and identity are shattered, and the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses are broken, the scapegoat becomes incompetent in value ascription and self-defense. This explains the relentless self-abandonment and self-betrayal. In other words, this explains why you continue to do to yourself what they did to you.
All of which taken together are what make scapegoating so hideous and cruel. But if that isn't bad enough, in cases like mine, physical abuse is added to the psychological, emotional, and social abuse, added, but never accounted for. Scapegoaters aren't exactly known for their accountability.
In any event, my oldest sister, though the only "real" Christian in the family, was far from being the only fanatic, not by a long shot. Besides, the whole world can criticize Christianity in general, and Christian fanatics in particular. And the other two Abrahamic religions? Not a chance. Not now anyway. Why is that? Because they’re perfect, or because they’re powerful?
Speaking of deadly questions. Anyway, moving right along…
In fact, and speaking of fanaticism and tyranny, scapegoating, like Identity Politics, and the other two Abrahamic religions, is itself a mode of fanaticism, of tyranny. This would explain why Identity Politics is not only scapegoating all white people, but is itself entirely scapegoat-dependent.
Scapegoating whites is what keeps the many groups within Identity Politics from turning into a circular firing squad. In other words, antiwhite hatred, or scapegoating whites (same thing) has become the crazy glue needed to hold Identity Politics together. Because nothing else seems to work. Given its complete control over all of the major social institutions of the Western world today a more tenuous hold on poower would be hard to imagine.
Instead of being lectured about the systemic racism of an unreal White Supremacy, we should be talking about the systemic scapegoating of a very real, incompetent, and hostile elite, and that elite's threat to human survival.
Note: Naturally, the incompetence and hosility go together and explain the threat.
Connecting The Dots
And scapegoating provides us with the perfect link to connect all that has been discussed in this entry. Because the Scapegoater-Scapegoat Template (Scapegoat - Gaslight - Exile) found in the Family can easily be extended to the World, or, as the utopianists used to say, The Global Village. Not realizing that the smaller the world gets the easier it is to see its defects. This would also explain the need of Identity Politics to censor Reality.
The connection between the Family and the World is found in the fact that the scapegoaters of both live in a block universe where Explanation itself is closed off from both directions, top to bottom, theory and data. And life, it will be remembered, is impossible without Explanation. And if our explanations function best by being open-ended and unresolved from top to bottom then to close them off is to kill life, which is what tyranny does.
Speaking of which, as the Family Scapegoat, I was told by family and friends that I was the problem and to go get help. So I did, and found out about my them, all of them, not just me. Of course! What did they think was going to happen? Well, they didn't know, because they didn't think at all, because they didn't care. They never did. Of course! That's the whole point.
Not surprisingly, though they continued to judge me, as harshly and as unfairly as ever (and like "experts"), after telling me that I was the problem and to go get help, they never once asked me, So, Paul, how’s the help going? And they never will, for obvious reasons. Poor them.
From all of this it couldn't be more obvious that the more an explanation is used for control, the more it needs to be open-ended. Correspondingly, to the extent an explanation is closed, collapse is guaranteed. The bright spot here is that when the scapegoat's trauma leads to explanatory collapse, that is, to the collapse of the explanation of the social system that scapegoated them, an explanation the system called The Truth, the door to recovery opens, and with it an invitation to a life of continuous learning, change, and growth, exactly because all explanations are open-ended and unresolved.
When that happens, for the first time ever, we are truly free and healthy, for what is one without the other? And the act of freeing ourselves is what makes us healthy. And what are we freeing ourselves from? We are freeing ourselves from the two-fold consequence of scapegoating, insanity and evil.
If insanity is the denial of Reality and evil the denial of Value, scapegoating is insane and evil because it denies the Reality of the scapegoat's Value.
That's why Scapegoat Recovery is about restoring one's sanity and sense of value. It's also why Recovery = Freedom. Freedom from the scapegoaters.
Q: What's the difference between the Scapegoat and their Scapegoaters?
A: The Scapegoat Gets Better! That is, if they get themselves into some kind of recovery and stay there long enough to go No Contact!
Concluding Remarks
We are living in an Age of Explanatory Collapse for many reasons, too many to go into here. But certainly one of them, arguably the main reason, is because at a time when we have more precise knowledge about ourselves, quantity and quality, at a time when we need that knowledge to turn into explanations that are open-ended and unresolved, but reliable enough to be used for the purpose of human adaptation, the hostile elite is imposing by force a block universe, a Super Tyranny, that aggressively forbids any and all feedback and correction, the two-fold source of human adaptability.
And, not surprisingly, they are calling their Super Tyranny - The Truth.
Put bluntly, the hostile elite is the real cancer of the human race. Which means that treason against the hostile elite is loyalty to humanity.
The hostile elite has put the human race between the sword and the wall where the choices are between survival or extinction. It very well may be.
Strong words! And I mean them. Are they true? Is anything of what I’ve written today, or ever, true? But that is the wrong question. As I have said many times in general and in this entry in particular, I have not pretended to offer the truth. What I have offered is an interpretation. I’ve simply related some basic facts to a contemporary reality, and my own personal history, because after years of lonely suffering, at times so intense it felt like a giant hand was squeezing my heart and head, I am finally free and in love. And the only way out is through, and the only way through for those who have suffered in life is to not want to aboslish suffering, but to embrace it!
Be that as it may, whether what’s offered here is reliable or not is for the reader to decide. Perhaps while deciding the reader will keep in mind that to choose it so live, and the incentive for choosing to live in an Interpreted World is that in that world we are free to choose, we have freedom of choice.
In an Interpreted World we are truly alive!
The alternative is the Super Tyranny of a hostile elite where there is no freedom, no choice, and no life, just blind obedience to a hostile elite, whether that elite is found in a family, culture, country, or civilization.
Comments