What's Left Over? The Rationalist-Materialists

A quotation from the 2014 collection The Blooming of Madness 51, by Florida poet Christopher Poindexter. Image Source: pinterest.

A simple way to understand the philosophical crisis raised by technology is to ask yourself the question: 'What's left over?' This is a shorthand I devised, and partly borrowed from the sci-fi writer, Philip K. Dick (1928-1982).

Dick predicted the impact of simulated realities on our consciousness. Aware that simulations would soon be indistinguishable from organic beings and authentic objects, he kept trying to hit bedrock and finally concluded in his 1980 short story, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." This can be a maxim for testing your own views and those of others regarding the mind and its relationship to reality, especially when it comes to the meaning of creation (whether one sees God as Creator or humans as creators) and created objects like technology.

My previous post introduced the hypothesis that how people view technology may be grounded in rationalist-materialism, materialism, or in anti-materialism. Today, I will start with the rationalist-materialists; two subsequent posts will discuss the materialists and the anti-materialists.

To define what I mean by those systems of thought, I asked 'What's left over?' after one removes complex narratives and beliefs about reality in each case. That is, what core attitudes are we talking about when everything else is stripped away? My answers vastly oversimplify different philosophies about the mind and matter, and avoid formal academic definitions; nevertheless, I hope they will clarify our current conundrum as technological simulacra become harder to control.

Believe Them or Not: The Red-Pilled Anti-Materialists

Notre-Dame Cathedral burned in Paris on 15 April 2019. Image Source: Ian Langsdon, EPA-EFE via MSN.

There are people on the Internet who are so red-pilled that they will shock today's greatest skeptics. They are more red-pilled than your average Black Pill. They are profoundly alienated from the mainstream and most would call them crazy and paranoid. Yet these rogues are significant because they could develop a future mainstream paradigm, if it isn't suppressed first. Red Pill leaders herald an online movement which will change the way we understand everything.

Red Pills are sometimes associated with right wing politics, but are not mainstream conservatives. In 2015, The Telegraph dismissed red-pilled rumours that late Tory PM of the UK, Edward Heath, was a child abuser. Image Source: The Telegraph.

What do they stand for? The mainstream condemns Red Pills as anti-social and anti-political: hackers, bloggers, vloggers, anarchists, libertarians, conservatives, the deplorables, the downtrodden, the impoverished, the religious, the deluded, the uneducated, the unintelligent. But are these anti-rationalists really anti-rational? Are they stupid, uncultured consumers of 'Fake News' and Deep Fakes, who will ruin democracy with their racist populist fascism? I would argue that scaremongering and stereotyping obscure the trend. What is actually unfolding is a battle between materialism (the mainstream) and anti-materialism (the red-pilled Underground). 

It is odd that Oxford, a hub in the world's power structure, is also producing leaders of the Underground. Two such latter figures are Dr. Joseph P. Farrell and Dr. Katherine Horton. Highly intelligent, they produce nuanced conspiracy theories that are as deeply researched as they are terrifying. If you look at them as advanced anti-materialists rather than as conspiracy theorists, their Oxford background makes more sense.

That said, their views are so incredible that they could be paid agents of disinformation, dispatched by the establishment to discredit Internet dissenters. And if not Farrell and Horton, then others with similar fringe opinions may be controlled opposition.

My post here offers only opening remarks on the shift which Horton and Farrell represent, to be analyzed in future posts. My aim in discussing these matters is not to support or deride Red Pills or their opponents. Rather, I mean to analyze the mainstream as a materialist movement and the Underground in terms of anti-materialism, without being sidetracked by inflammatory language which distorts how we usually consider these questions.

Stop 007 - Who I am (7 December 2016). Video Source: Youtube.