75% of US senators were members of frats. 10 out of the top 30 Fortune 100.
So when my dad says that I shouldn’t judge society by college life I beg to differ. Is there really such thing as pluralism in an individualistic society? I can join or found a political party, a church, a social club, an interest group, that promotes the ideas that and social values I believe in. And as an individual I can believe and live by my own set of values. There is no force or coercion to the extent of the Spanish Inquisition. That is true. I can found a religion with myself as God and proclaim that anyone who does not live by my new bible will be punished by God both in this life and afterwords. The FBI might keep a watch on me. But so long as I remained a harmless crank, I wouldn’t be legally stopped. So yes to that extent there is pluralism. But to the extent that I enter the marketplace. That I work for a boss, and get my necessities from this society, I must enter the monistic values system and play by its rules. It is true the push-button transaction of the internet have made it less personal, but the basic principle still remains. So in the end the only pluralism is the freedom of the Stoics. The mind is free though the body is in chairs. As both a slave and emperor, no one can control the thoughts inside my head. My external actions may conform to the hegemony, but my soul soars free. I once followed Stoicism. Although I suppose I was never a real Stoic. In that my concept of duty was not the duties of this historical society but of abstract Right.
Frat boys are excellent sociobiologists. There view of sexual relations is Roissyite. Females need to protect their eggs, men need to spread their sperm. Females have no need for men. Men have no need for women except for the pleasure of sex. Thus they will pursue. Sex is a zero-sum game. In which every copulation is the defeat for the egg and a victory for the sperm.
This is the ontological metaphysical view of being in 2010 USA. All else descends from this one source.
Everything I say, is entirely alone. Well so be it. I can only speak for myself. Maybe I’m wrong about everything but it is what I will follow.
It isn’t just evil and degenerate. A work like this strikes me as profoundly boring and pointless. Perhaps it is ennui that is worse than evil. The moment the mind rises above a brute level of sensual pleasure. This romance seems incredibly dull. But I seem to be the only one in the world who feels this way. So I suppose democracy rules that I’m wrong.
If I would submit to the Athenian mob, why not the libertine mob?
Aren’t all forms of government democratic in form? At least to the extent that a open state of civil war does not exist. The very act of not rebelling represents democracy. And not just democracy, direct democracy. In that all actions are votes, not just that of the ballot box. In that sense all historical governments have been direct democracies.
How like Gulliver I have become. I would prefer to live among the Houyhnhnms if I could. But if that is impossible. Then I wish to stay way from the Yahoos, and stay in the stable conversing with horses.
Of course my Houyhnhnms Republic was metaphysics. And so I have remained in metaphysics. It is a poor substitute for life, but better than the world as it is.
Nozick and David Friedman say it is human to not want to go into the experience machine. We need life to be real. We need interaction with other free-willed social beings. If you had two identical Good situations, I would agree Real is better than Unreal. I would even go as far as to say you might want a slightly worse Real situation over a better Unreal one. But I would not accept that Real life in all conditions is better than the experience machine. Or even nonexistence.
Where is this all going to lead? What can be done?
The world is all that is the case as Wittgenstein said. And it shall remain what it is. There is no escaping that. I don’t know if the past historical era, or the present one is Objectively right about what Existence means. But I was born into THIS historical era. I must accept its’ truth. The present determines the past far more so than it creates the future. Although while the Now remains present, it can write the future, although it in turn will surely itself be rewritten by the future. But since I live Now, both past and future are under its absolute dictatorship.
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