Ask modern people to describe the indispensable components of an ideal society or civilization. I guarantee you that most would check off unity and altruism as essential characteristics, regardless of what part of the political spectrum they identify with.
The self-identified leftist liberal types would employ words like diversity and inclusivity to describe their idea of unity and terms like social justice and equality/equity to outline their vision of people living for the sake of others.
Those on the right would portray unity as culture, class, nation, or race and altruism as the duty to self-sacrifice to conserve and preserve cultural, class-based, national, or racial unity.
It doesn’t take more than a cursory glance to understand that both conceptualizations and the countless others along the political spectrum are variations of the same theme. Both fail to properly or fully address the spiritual foundation underpinning the material reality of societies and civilizations.
From 2020 to 2022, the world got a little taste of what a so-called ideal society or civilization founded on unity and altruism would look like and be like. The dreaded birdemic plague provided the world unity and altruism – the two components nearly all modern people yearn for.
The severe measures implemented in the name of keeping everyone safe from everyone else integrated everyone into an unprecedented display of unity while the peck campaign granted people the opportunity to do something selfless for the benefit of others and the world. Freedom, agency, and rights were trampled and cast aside to answer the call for unity and altruism.
People who envision ideal societies and civilizations through the prism of unity and altruism unavoidably favor establishing societal or civilizational despotism over the individual. Put another way, people who allow political/social spectrums to dominate their thinking inescapably aspire to some form of totalitarianism because their thinking is ineluctably mired in positivism, which considers theism and metaphysics null and void.
A conceptualization of reality that renounces theism and metaphysics has no use for individuals, motivation, choice, agency, rights, or freedom. The individual exists only to serve the collective, and the focal point of the collective is society, something Auguste Comte makes explicitly clear in his The Catechism of Positivist Religion. (I know; the irony, right? Reject all religion and then write a catechism.) Anyway,
Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all. Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such a notion always rests on individuality.
We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, and to our contemporaries. These obligations then increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service. … Any human right is therefore as absurd as immoral.
Since there are no divine rights anymore, this concept must therefore disappear completely as related only to the preliminary regime and totally inconsistent with the final state where there are only duties based on functions.
Comte’s last point about the much-vaunted final state, where only duties based on functions exist, is disturbing and revealing. We certainly got a sample of what that might look like during the birdemic, didn’t we?
Comte is also famous for uttering the following: “But now, I, August Comte, have discovered the truth. Therefore, there is no longer any need for freedom of thought or freedom of the press. I want to rule and to organize the whole country.”
In the end, all positivism comes down to the desire to rule. Mandate unity and altruism for all and use that as the foundation of truth through which one accesses power. Once power has been secured, banish all freedom of thought, and focus entirely on ruling the unified, selfless masses in the name of truth.
Thankfully, theism and metaphysics are not null and void. God exists. Creation exists. You and I exist, which means we still have freedom, agency, and choice, but we must want and exercise these to enjoy them.
The self-identified leftist liberal types would employ words like diversity and inclusivity to describe their idea of unity and terms like social justice and equality/equity to outline their vision of people living for the sake of others.
Those on the right would portray unity as culture, class, nation, or race and altruism as the duty to self-sacrifice to conserve and preserve cultural, class-based, national, or racial unity.
It doesn’t take more than a cursory glance to understand that both conceptualizations and the countless others along the political spectrum are variations of the same theme. Both fail to properly or fully address the spiritual foundation underpinning the material reality of societies and civilizations.
From 2020 to 2022, the world got a little taste of what a so-called ideal society or civilization founded on unity and altruism would look like and be like. The dreaded birdemic plague provided the world unity and altruism – the two components nearly all modern people yearn for.
The severe measures implemented in the name of keeping everyone safe from everyone else integrated everyone into an unprecedented display of unity while the peck campaign granted people the opportunity to do something selfless for the benefit of others and the world. Freedom, agency, and rights were trampled and cast aside to answer the call for unity and altruism.
People who envision ideal societies and civilizations through the prism of unity and altruism unavoidably favor establishing societal or civilizational despotism over the individual. Put another way, people who allow political/social spectrums to dominate their thinking inescapably aspire to some form of totalitarianism because their thinking is ineluctably mired in positivism, which considers theism and metaphysics null and void.
A conceptualization of reality that renounces theism and metaphysics has no use for individuals, motivation, choice, agency, rights, or freedom. The individual exists only to serve the collective, and the focal point of the collective is society, something Auguste Comte makes explicitly clear in his The Catechism of Positivist Religion. (I know; the irony, right? Reject all religion and then write a catechism.) Anyway,
Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all. Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such a notion always rests on individuality.
We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, and to our contemporaries. These obligations then increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service. … Any human right is therefore as absurd as immoral.
Since there are no divine rights anymore, this concept must therefore disappear completely as related only to the preliminary regime and totally inconsistent with the final state where there are only duties based on functions.
Comte’s last point about the much-vaunted final state, where only duties based on functions exist, is disturbing and revealing. We certainly got a sample of what that might look like during the birdemic, didn’t we?
Comte is also famous for uttering the following: “But now, I, August Comte, have discovered the truth. Therefore, there is no longer any need for freedom of thought or freedom of the press. I want to rule and to organize the whole country.”
In the end, all positivism comes down to the desire to rule. Mandate unity and altruism for all and use that as the foundation of truth through which one accesses power. Once power has been secured, banish all freedom of thought, and focus entirely on ruling the unified, selfless masses in the name of truth.
Thankfully, theism and metaphysics are not null and void. God exists. Creation exists. You and I exist, which means we still have freedom, agency, and choice, but we must want and exercise these to enjoy them.
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