That's quite presumptuous, I think my reading is pretty straightforward. — goremand

I think today's culture is generally antagonistic to the idea of spiritual authority. Let's consider it from the perspective of philosophy rather than any kind of religious apologetics. I think the underlying idea is something often found in ancient and pre-modern philosophy in the respect shown to the philosophical greats, as Hadot describes under the heading of sages. In fact, sagacity is a rare quality, comprising a kind of holistic vision. The sages are those who have realised that kind of insight, and who are able to convey it to others. I mean, the Western metaphysical tradition, beginning with Parmenides, has various such figures.

there is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge that is purified and kindled afresh by... studies when it has been destroyed and blinded by our ordinary pursuits, a faculty whose preservation outweighs ten thousand eyes; for only by it is reality beheld. Those who share this faith will think your words superlatively true. But those who have and have had no inkling of it will naturally think them all moonshine. For they can see no other benefit from such pursuits worth mentioning. — Plato, The Republic

Geese cackle. They also attack. I don't know that any individual attack is appropriate. But we may most-of-us be under a positive obligation to cackle, as long and as much and as loud as needed - calling for truth, calling out the lies. — tim wood

Depressingly, I feel that hordes of attack geese will not prevail against the might of a corrupted American military-industrial-political complex. (Maybe we could fly into the engines......)

But the old saying that if you give them enough rope, they'll hang themselves has not applied. Here, if you give them enough rope, it's us who hang... — Tom Storm

The point about demagogues is precisely that they turn democracy against itself for their own advantage. That is DJT's MO. If you look at the Wikipedia entry on demagogues, he ticks all the boxes (although the crowd-edited wikipedia has the good sense not to include him as an example.)

I think Conze makes it very clear: insight can not be transmitted or taught to people who lack it — goremand

That was an excerpt. The entire essay is Buddhist Philosophy and Its European Parallels, Philosophy East and West, 1963. Aside from Conze, the principle of monastic lineage in Buddhism and other spiritual traditions assumes the transmission of insight. Which is not to say that every student will be capable of it, or even interested in it. I think you're very much viewing it through the lens of the rejection of dogmatic Christianity and its 'blind faith' - if it sounds like an appeal to religious insight, then what else could it be, right?

Incidentally, another excerpt from that source:

That (i.e. 'sciential philosophy' a.k.a. 'scientism') has the following features: [1] Natural science, particularly that dealing with inorganic matter, has a cognitive value, tells us about the actual structure of the universe, and provides the other branches of knowledge with an ideal standard in that they are the more "scientific" the more they are capable of mathematical formulation and the more they rely on repeatable and publicly verified observations. [2] Man is the highest of beings known to science, and his power and convenience should be promoted at all costs. [3] Spiritual and magical forces cannot influence events, and life after death may be disregarded, because it is unproven by scientific methods. [4] In consequence, "life" means "man's" life in this world, and the task is to ameliorate this life by a social "technique" in harmony with the "welfare" or "will" of "the people." Buddhists must view all these tenets with the utmost distaste.

Have you ever read Phenomenology of Perception? — Joshs

Tried, and failed. Too long and too hard. But I've picked up quite a bit from Thompson et al, and from some of his briefer essays.

A person close to me just brought up how they fear for themselves, being trans, as they questioned how hospitable the country will now be towards them given the rhetoric Trump spouts. — substantivalism

Probably not very. It is cited as a factor in the following detailed analysis from the New York Times (gift link).

Let’s Not Lose Sight of Who Trump Is

I really think that the importance of the transgender issue was underappreciated by the Democrats. They simply thought it was the latest civil rights issue when the actual policy was really crazy and offensive to working class voters. — Frances Fukayama

He is talking about wise men with a "rare faculty" whose teachings are based on authority, not personal understanding. — goremand

Or in insight. That was, for instance, the basis of the Buddha's authority - one which was never imposed on others, unlike the tendency in Roman Christianity. Max Weber's distinction between charismatic leadership and traditional authority is relevant here.

I have expressed before the idea that the role of philosophy is to 'take you to the border' - the border of what can be said, explained, expressed in words. Of course the influence of Zen Buddhism is perceptible in that, but the same intuition is expressed in other philosophers.

Those insights are communicated to the student by the teacher. As well as what is learned by their deportment and presence. Of course it's radically un-PC for liberal democracy, I do understand that. That's why I said I'm not going to die on a hill for it.

A further quote from the Hadot entry:

For Hadot, famously, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (PWL 84). Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done (Nussbaum 1996, 353-4; Cooper 2010).

Anxieties, indeed.

It's yet another field where we the plebs must defer to the experts, like we already do with scientists, doctors, lawyers etc. — goremand

It would be bleak if you take such a bleak view. If you were a piano student, presumably you would select a teacher who was an expert in teaching piano, and you would admire and hope to emulate excellent pianists. Of course there are natural virtuosos but even they usually have teachers to bring forth their innate ability

I would say that there is no such thing as a presuppositionless philosophy. If philosophy begins with questioning, it is also the case that to question is to already have in mind the matter about which one is inquiring. — Joshs

I agree that philosophy begins with a problem or with questions that need to be asked. I suppose amongst the problematics of Platonism was the nature of knowledge, the good, the true, the beautiful, the just, and such large and difficult-to-define questions. But also notice the significance of aporia in those dialogues - questions which can't be answered and for which no easy solution presents itself. One could argue that aporetic questions themselves invite a kind of epochē, a sense of not knowing (and knowing one doesn't know, as opposed to further speculations and conceptual proliferation.)

Returning to epochē, scholars have noted the relationship between Pyrrho and India. Compare this brief snippet from Indian philosophy which is germane to the point:

Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them.

This mode is called emptiness because it's empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in.

I think that opens up a mode of being which is focussed on paying close attention to what is actually so. As distinct from the construction of elaborate theories based largely on abstractions. Which leads to

the observation that this discourse appears to allow endless recursion? — J

Today's philosophy inheres in a tangled web of concepts and symbolic values, requiring considerable training in intellectual history. Of course stories, world-views, 'the metaphors we live by' serve a purpose, they're an inextricable part of our constitution as social creatures. But lived truth, the immediate awareness of what is so, is of a different order. I think the basis of philosophy as 'love~wisdom' has to be oriented around a kind of direct and vivid awareness.

I feel your pain, like half of America and about 90% of Australia, I'm vastly dissappointed by the re-election of DJT, although I will stop posting about it as it serves no purpose other than sounding off. But one of the very many regrettable things about it is that it bakes his mendacity in to the highest levels of public discourse. He's said he's going to purge the bureuacracy of those who have expressed critical opinions about him and the January 6th atrocity, and so on.

Us ordinary citizens can't do a lot about that, of course, but the only antidote to lies is truth and the hope that others will heed it.

He only seems obscurantist because you don’t understand him — Joshs

I understand what I've read about him, and of him.

In any case, I stand by the initial point - that the absence of presuppositions is what was intended by epochē, both in Husserl and in the original skeptics.

Probably not obscurantist enough for him to blather about.

Isn't there a relationship between not entertaining presuppositions, and the epochē of ancient skepticism, revived by Husserl? Recall that ancient and Pyrrhonian skepticism differed from modern skepticism by simply 'withholding assent from that which is not evident' and strictly attending to the quality of phenomena as they appear.

(...) true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents.
— Wayfarer

I have to ask, is this what you yourself believe? — goremand

I wouldn't 'die on a hill' defending it, and I recognise that it is something often exploited by the unscrupulous to exploit the gullible, but I do. As the snippet from Pierre Hadot notes, it is also associated with ancient philosophy where the figure of the Sage personified philosophical wisdom.

What theory of consciousness allows the statement "you could be conscious even without an external world" to be true? — Brenner T

Franklin Merrell-Wolff was an American mystic and esoteric philosopher. After formal education in philosophy and mathematics at Stanford and Harvard, Wolff devoted himself to the goal of transcending the normal limits of human consciousness. Franklin Merrell-Wolff’s philosophy of consciousness centers on the idea of "Consciousness without an object," a term he coined to describe a fundamental state of awareness that transcends the ordinary subject-object duality of experience. In Merrell-Wolff’s view, this state represents the pure essence of consciousness, existing independently of any perceptual content, thoughts, or objects to be aware of. It is an experience of pure awareness or self-luminous being, which is foundational and inherently beyond the usual categories of mind and matter.

Merrell-Wolff asserts that this "Consciousness-without-an-object" is the ground of all experience and cannot be fully grasped through intellectual or sensory means. It is instead encountered in a state he describes as "introception," a kind of direct, non-dual awareness that bypasses the conventional processes of thinking and perceiving. In this state, distinctions such as self and other, subject and object, dissolve, leaving only a unified consciousness that Merrell-Wolff equates with a transcendent reality or "unconditioned consciousness."

For Merrell-Wolff, this pure consciousness is not merely an abstract concept but a living, experiential reality that one can realize through spiritual practice. He views it as the ultimate truth or reality, which can be known intuitively rather than through discursive reasoning. His philosophy therefore emphasizes inner transformation and the cultivation of a contemplative awareness that opens one to the experience of this unconditioned consciousness, which he describes as a state of profound peace, freedom, and insight beyond ordinary knowledge.

This is essentially the same as what is conveyed by the yogic term 'nirvikalpa samadhi' which is from Sanskrit, where "nir-" means "without" or "devoid of," and "vikalpa" comes from vi- (a prefix indicating separation or distinction) and kalpa (which can mean "concept," "imagination," or "idea"). Thus, nirvikalpa literally translates to "without concepts" or "free from thought and distinctions." Samadhi refers to a state of meditative absorption or unity. Taken together, nirvikalpa samadhi refers to a state of consciousness in which there are no mental modifications, distinctions, or conceptualizations—only undivided, absolute awareness.

I get it, but one might want to consider the fact that even bacteria are aware of their existence. How else could they discriminate between cell population densities, good and bad environments, or how to protect themselves against antibiotics etc. Awareness of existence seems pretty ubiquitous among organisms, not only fashionable primates who can talk. — jkop

There’s a germ of truth in that but amoeba aren’t aware that they’re aware. The burden of self awareness only begins to appear with much more highly developed organisms.

I think the crucial, and depressing, point is that the voters don’t think it matters, and/or they don’t believe these things about Trump. Polls show even disapproval of the Jan 6th outrage became muted over the intervening years. The point is, it has been clear from day 1 that many people swallow Trump’s lies wholesale, which is why he puts so much effort into denigrating the media. Fox audiences believe Trump over the NY TImes and WaPo. If the electorate mainly comprised those readers Trump would have been walloped.

From biology to philosophy isn’t a lateral move, on this view; we’re going up the ladder a rung, looking down on our previous viewpoint from a higher and more perspicuous and more general one. And, completing the picture, once we’re at the philosophy level, there are no more rungs. — J

I will sometimes argue that there is such a thing as the philosophical ascent, generally understood as moving from a state of ignorance to insight or enlightenment. And also that there are degrees of knowledge, the 'analogy of the Divided Line' in the Republic being a paradigm for that.

A couple of sources which make the idea of higher knowledge explicit:

The "perennial philosophy" is in this context defined as a doctrine which holds (1 )that as far as worth-while knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; (2) that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; and (3) that the wise men of old have found a wisdom which is true, although it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality through the Prajñāpāramitā of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, and so on; and (4) that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents. — Edward Conze

The Sage was the living embodiment of wisdom, “the highest activity human beings can engage in . . . which is linked intimately to the excellence and virtue of the soul” (WAP 220). Across the schools, Socrates himself was agreed to have been perhaps the only living exemplification of such a figure (his avowed agnoia notwithstanding). Pyrrho and Epicurus were also accorded this elevated status in their respective schools, just as Sextius and Cato were deemed sages by Seneca, and Plotinus by Porphyry. Yet more important than documenting the lives of historical philosophers (although this was another ancient literary genre) was the idea of the Sage as “transcendent norm.” The aim, by picturing such figures, was to give “an idealized description of the specifics of the way of life” that was characteristic of the each of the different schools. — About Pierre Hadot, IEP

OK, ‘heated’, not ‘violent’. Which it undoubtedly is.

And just to clarify,what do you mean by tolerance and inclusivity have gone to far? — Swanty

I gave an example that I thought illustrates some of the issues, which was apparently interpreted by yourself as 'discriminatory against Muslims', although it wasn't intended as such.

The fact that you react so violently at the mere mention kind of illustrates the point at issue.

So what's the problem with religious people not wanting to be forced to display a pride flag?
Aren't conservatives Christians of the same mindset? — Swanty

Sure! 100%. I really do understand the issues that conservatives have with many aspects of modern culture and society. One of the questions in the OP is whether the principles of tolerance and inclusiveness have gone 'too far'. I put case that up as an example of those kinds of tensions. My post was not at all intended as discriminatory against Muslims.

India stills has an unofficial caste system, where there is a caste considered so worthless that they are untouchable. — Bob Ross

India has also absorbed and practices Western style democracy, it's often noted that it's the 'world's largest democracy.' No doubt there are many social activists and movements who campaign against caste barriers.

Ask yourself your motivation for that and what info leads you to believe migrants are extremely in their interpretation of Islam? — Swanty

Your question is inappropriately parsed. In any case I wasn't referring to 'most Muslims'. I said there is sometimes a tension between Islamic principles and Western liberal values. I gave the example of Hamtramck Michigan where a council mainly comprising Muslim members banned the Pride Flag. My point was mainly to address the question of tolerance, and what it means to tolerate an attitude that is itself not committed to tolerance.

Why are you asking me for enlightenment when you already presumptously claimed to know about Islam and what migrants face? — Swanty

I made a remark about a particular situation in North America, that I thought illustrates the tension between liberalism and Islam, and that it must be a tough conflict for refugee advocates to handle. So, tell me in what respect I am mistaken, I'm always open to correction.

Have you heard of Sufism wayfarer,and how many Muslims have you interacted with to draw your incorrect conclusions? — Swanty

Please enlighten me. What conclusion did I draw that was wrong?

China is a totalitarian regime; harvests the organs of North Korean defectors to sell in the market; uses North Korean defector females as sex slaves; bans free speech; bans freedom of religion; has concentration camps; helps recapture North Korean defectors; … need I go on? — Bob Ross

I do see your point.

I did actually watch the 2024 movie Civil War the other week. But no, I don't actually see out-and-out armed conflict in the US. I think the real threats are more likely debt defaults, banking system collapses, environmental catasrophe, that kind of thing, for which there are many plausible scenarios. But that's for another thread.

Although I did note Peter Hartcher's OP on the outcome in the US Election thread.

Not for nothing is Afghanistan called 'the graveyard of empires'.

I wonder if these kinds of historical parallels really are an accurate portrayal of this moment. I've said this often, and of course there is endless blather about Trump, but I think the single, biggest social factor in his rise is television (and the various new media it has given rise to). Modern entertainment media is so incredibly vivid and real-looking that I honestly think a lot of people can't differentiate reality from illusion at all; they honestly believe that existence is a movie. And Donald Trump is a kind of fantasy figure in that world. After all it's widely acknowledged that the TV show The Apprentice was a major factor in keeping his business and image alive after many business failures. And that show was all fantasy: the opulent suites where the show was set were presented as being Trump's but in reality, they had to be built by the network because the actual offices were pretty dingey. So Trump's never-ending refrain of 'Fake News' is more descriptive of him than of any actual media (with the exceptions of those media trying to be part of his fantasy world). Trump is the demagogue that modern media enabled, allowing tens of millions to vicariously inhabit his fantasy, rich man's world, while thumbing his nose at the Government and the law. As I said, with this victory, all of his Big Lies will now become part of the fabric of US culture. It's extremely warped, and it will have consequences, when the sets come tumbling down and reality barges in. But that won't be in the form of electoral defeat so much as the catastrophic consequences of greed, hatred and delusion.

But then you realized this is trouble: a core democratic value is tolerance.

Which is fine, you thought, except people take it too far, allow themselves to be paralyzed by a mamby-pamby cultural relativism. — Srap Tasmaner

There can be a troubling contradiction in extending the value of liberal tolerance to those who don't necessarily support or understand the liberal attitudes that fostered it.

Case in point is the difficulties faced by Islamic migrants and refugees coming to Western cultures. Islam doesn't recognise the separation of church and state, and in theory at least, can only support Shariah law. At the same time, refugee support groups and activists do all they can to support Islamic refugees, even despite this tension. But this can have difficult consequences when Islamic conservatism conflicts with Western libertarianism. The town of Hamtramck, Michigan, made headlines in 2023 for being the first US city with a majority Muslim council. Great joy amongst supporters of cultural diversity. But one of the first things they did was to ban displays of LGBT flags on public property on the grounds that homosexuality is forbidden in Islamic law. (I wonder how Green Left activists who are strident in defense of both refugee and LGBT rights manage to reconcile this conflict.)

Then from the right, there's considerable hostility towards liberalism on different grounds, for example Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed. But it's on the far right that you also find the most virulent forms of white supremacy, which also undermines liberalism and is far from representing the best of Western culture in my opinion. The invocation of Nazi symbolism by these groups is far from coincidental in my view.

(On an old forum, far far away, there was an exceptionally annoying poster who's entire shtick was the internet meme that Beethoven was actually African or had descended from an African progenitor. By suggesting Beethoven was Black, the meme challenges the exclusivity of European high culture and disrupts the narrative that classical music is solely the legacy of white Europeans. The Green Left have many of these kinds of dubious memes.)

I suppose what excarbates all of this is the absence of any kind of common cultural ground, any sense that 'what unites us is more important than what divides us', as Obama used to say. But then, conservatives would say that this is because Western culture destroyed its own heritage by undermining Judeo Christian values, and that in the absence of any sense of revealed truth, there can only ever be a kaleidoscope of opinions.

//but then, the way Biblical religion is constituted was bound to engender fragmentation, as it was divisive from its inception. It's a real can of worms. Perhaps it is a problem with ideologies of all kinds.//

For those who are upset at my rhetoric (and perhaps the lens by which I am analyzing this), I challenge you to try to justify, in your response to this OP, e.g., why Western, democratic values should not be forcibly imposed on obviously degenerate, inferior societies at least in principle—like Talibanian Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, China, India, etc — Bob Ross

I agree with some aspects of your OP but I think it's framed in a somewhat inflammatory way. I agree with you, for example, that the European liberal tradition (in the broad sense) and its associated values are valuable and worth preserving. The Taliban and some of the other failed states are not really examples of alternative political systems, but the failure of politics altogether. But lumping China and India in with that - both of which have considerably longer histories of civilisation than does Europe - veers pretty close to out-and-out racism.

I'm with you in opposing the reflexive denigration of both liberalism and Western cultural values, but I think it could be approached in a far more nuanced way. (Also agree with the above that Trump/MAGA is a serious internal threat to liberalism.)

Well, glad we came to some understanding, although I wouldn't want to leave it with the tacit understanding that philosophies other the scientifically-mediated type are merely personal or subjective.

Yes, I do wonder how much of factor fantasy is in all of this. I think Trump lives in a fantasy world of his own making. He plainly believes whatever he likes, and has all the apparent trappings. I've stood under Trump Tower in Chicago, and it really does convey astounding wealth and power. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny, of course, because in reality Trump has many business failures, and started out, not with the million that his Dad bequeathed him, but 400 million. But any kind of scrutiny applied to Trump, he simply denies and lies, and the projects all his weaknesses onto those who accuse him. And now the electorate has validated all of that.

when a country deliberately rejects decency, truth, democratic values and good governance, the problem is not a candidate, a party, the media or a feckless attorney general. Democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires a virtuous people devoted to democratic ideals. Whether we can recover the habits of mind — what we used to call civic virtue — will be the challenge of the next four years and beyond. — Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post

Personally, I doubt it. I feel a grave crisis is imminent, but we'll see.

I think you're saying that limiting our perspectives (our world views) to objective facts is too limiting; it leads to rejecting some philosophies that can be valuable. — Relativist

Sure, I'd go along with that. But it's the tip of a large iceberg!

What I infer is that you are defending or promoting world-views which do not depend exclusively on objective facts. Am I right? — Relativist

I'll go back to your first response to this thread:

This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth - wayfarer.

I don't understand this. Truth is not subjective, although there are truths about subjective things. Objective truth: "The universe exists". Truth about something subjective: "The images of the 'Pillars of Creation' produced by the Webb telescope are beautiful". — Relativist

I will try again to re-state the idea. Another way to explain it is to observe that reality contains both the observer and the observed - the subject who observes, and the object of observation. Reality is the totality of that, the total situation of human existence. And philosophy seeks to find reason and meaning in that context.

The objective sciences by contrast begin with an act of exclusion. They narrow the focus to only and precisely those elements of experience which can be measured and quantified with exactitude. That is the point of the Thomas Nagel passage I quoted here, a 'mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them'. So this means that even if science considers everything on every scale, from the sub-atomic to the cosmological, already there's an implicit perspective, it considers all of those matters in those terms. So you're asking, what other 'terms' are there? To which the answer is, practically the whole of philosophy other than science. Ancient and pre-modern philosophy, Eastern philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology. There are many. But if they are looked at through the perspective of 'what is "objectively true" in what they say', then most of what they say will be missed.

I'm going to try to become more indifferent to US politics as it tends to dominate the news, and I have become too concerned with it. My family gets annoyed with me 'shouting at the television'.

But I will note that the Trump phenomenon has normalised mendacity. It is indisputable that Trump lies continuously, about matters large and small, some of which concern issues of extreme national and global importance.

But with this victory, these lies have now become normalised - for example, the lie that Trump's many indictments were based on 'weaponising' politics and politicisation of the Department of Justice. The lie that the January 6th insurrection was anything other than a vile assault on democracy and law and order. All of this is now going to become normalised in public discourse.

There's a term, I think it's associated with Marxist philosophy, although I'm not highly familiar with it - 'false consciousness'. This is what I think the whole Trump phenomenon crystallises in the electorate. An entire national identity that has lies as part of its identity. It can't be good.

You noted that science cannot discover God. I agree 100%. My question is: is God discoverable through some alternative, objective means? What about other aspects of reality that are beyond the reach of science ? — Relativist

There are domains other than that of objective fact. I will only say that Armstrong's style of philosophy is to assume that science provides the only valid perspective.

This conclusion seems to imply that a conscious "God" that arose before all of creation is impossible because a) he would have nothing to perceive and thus have no content of thought or qualia, and ii) he would have no mechanism to perceive or sense. — Brenner T

Welcome aboard.

As we're discussing Berkeley, a limerick known to generations of philosophy of students ought to be mentioned:

"There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."

Reply:

"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by,
Yours faithfully,
God."


I don't know if the absence of there being anything to perceive would be necessarily a hindrance for God, although there are tropes that the reason anything exists at all, was because He experienced a sense of incompleteness without there being something other than Him to contemplate. (There is an early Buddhist text which presents an idea like this by way of satirising the idea of a personal God.)

Secondly, quite what 'conscious' means in this context is far from obvious. Many of the aspects of our own consciousness are, in fact, unconscious, as 20th c psychology has shown, in that we can't necessarily be introspectively or directly aware of them, while they still comprise the basis on which our conscious experience is founded. So there is no reason to presume that, were a Divine Intelligence to be real, that the kind of consciousness it possesses would be like that of humans (although hopefully there is some kind of commonality.) Isn't it the case that a conscious intelligence can be self-aware even in the absence of any external stimuli? Consciousness is something that knows of its own being even in the absence of stimuli. As René Descartes said, even if all belief in an external world is suspended, one will still retain a sense of one's own being, 'cogito ergo sum'.

There's a lot more I might say, because, as it happens, I'm generally an advocate for philosphical idealism, but it's a deep topic, so I'll leave it at that for now.

If George Washington was the father of America’s democracy, Donald Trump is its undertaker

George Washington notably declared American democracy to be “an experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people”.

The American people are now abandoning it as a failed experiment.

In word and in deed, Donald Trump for years has made plain that he does not respect the results of elections, unless he is winning.

Yet most American voters, in full knowledge, cast their ballots for him in this election.

In case anyone had forgotten his autocratic instinct, Trump issued a reminder just two days before election day.

He has never accepted the outcome of the 2020 election, fomented a riot to try to stay in the White House, and on Sunday said that “I shouldn’t have left” it.

Seven in 10 Americans understood the risk, telling CNN pollsters last week that they didn’t expect Trump would concede defeat if he lost. Yet most voters willingly handed him power.

If Washington was the father of America’s democracy, Trump has auditioned to be its undertaker and is now positioned to duly deliver.

He didn’t have to seize power. America, the modern world’s greatest champion of democracy for the past eight decades, has lost faith in its calling.

That is the true uniqueness of this election – not the candidates, not the policies, not the pageantry. They matter. And, in a democratic system, the power holders and their policies can be replaced, renewed, reviewed.

But in an autocracy, an absolute leader is not interested in being replaced nor his policies reviewed. The great advantage of democracy is not that it produces the best possible government but the bloodless removal of a bad one, as Karl Popper said.

Trump has made clear, over and again, that, if given power, he will not surrender it. As he said to an audience this year, vote for him “just this time, you won’t have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more”.

When Joe Biden took power, he said he would try to save American democracy.

“From the very beginning, nothing has been guaranteed about democracy in America,” he said in 2022. “Every generation has had to defend it, protect it, preserve it, choose it.”

Until now. Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, failed.

Democracy has been in retreat on planet Earth since the “democratic recession” took hold at the time of the global financial crisis 16 years ago. Only 24 full democracies survive among the world’s 200 nations, according to The Economist’s Democracy Index.

And now the centrepiece of the system, the hub of a network of democratic allies embracing more than 40 nations, has collapsed in on itself.

American democracy was hollowed out by a failure of its promise to its people. Most Americans believe that their country is riddled with corruption, most believe that government serves the elites and not the people, and “nearly half of all voters are sceptical that the American experiment in self-governance is working”, to summarise a New York Times poll published last month.

And now they have delivered the death sentence to the system they feel betrayed them.

Not because they expect Trump to actually fix a broken system. In her landmark work, The Politics of Resentment, political scientist Katherine Cramer described how she took regular part in a wide range of community groups in her home state of Wisconsin, one of the swing states in deciding elections and part of the great swath of left-behind, fly-over America.

When Kramer asks groups of Trump supporters how they expect he will improve their lives, they are surprised at the question, she reports. They don’t expect Trump to be the vehicle for their improvement but for their disenchantment and anger.

When Trump said last year “for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution”, he spoke for those voters. They have given up on their system, feeling abandoned by smug big-city elites, but have confidence in Trump to offend the elites and damage their system.

The US, the nation that kept liberty alive in the face of a fearsome axis of autocracies eight decades ago, seems to be losing confidence that it’s worth the effort.

Will Trump’s America be prepared to confront the rising partnership of autocracies in their fast-forming new front – Xi Jinping’s China, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the ayatollahs’ Iran and
Kim Jong-un’s North Korea?

It must be in question. A former Trump national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, explained why Trump prefers the world’s worst dictators to America’s traditional allies. It’s part of “his struggle for self-worth”. If he’s accepted by so-called strongmen, “he might convince others, and especially himself, that he was strong”.

Benjamin Franklin said that America was “a republic, if you can keep it”. He might be surprised to know that, in the end, it just gave democracy away. — Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald

When did Musk become a right-wing cartoon? — Tom Storm

Around the time he bought Twitter.

I've gotten a very profound Buddhist text book by a scholarly Bhikkhu, recommended by our friend @boundless. I am going to take refuge in this book, now that these dreadful events have happened in America, to take my mind off what is going on over there.

Isn't Trump just another celebrity, virtue signalling, identity policies wanker (albeit of the right)? — Tom Storm

who happens to now be the most powerful man in the world. The Republicans now control the White House, Senate and House. Forget about environmental policies and climate targets. Forget about all the lawsuits and indictments he was facing, he'll walk away scot free. It's a disastrous outcome.