Realism vs. Idealism

One builds opinions, morals, ideals by exploring and understanding the real; the other begins with the ideal and attempts to incorporate reality into it.

Realism, based on an indifferent, threatening world, seems harsh and brutal to the idealist who has adopted his ideology as a way of coping with threatening indifference of the world.

The first draws inspiration and power from the experienced world; the second must indoctrinate, proselytize, organize masses to create an alternate reality within which the ‘errors’ of the real world can be “corrected”; it is rebellious against reality, but given that reality is faceless and indifferent it turns against those who represent it, or worship and understand it, calling them ‘fascists’, ‘nazis’, ;brutes’, ‘objectivists’ or whatever insults those who cannot turn away from nature and natural order.
Idealism does becomes like a religion, because Abrahamism, the only triad that can be called ‘religion’, is dogma founded on ideology that contradicts reality.
From this religious ideology many secular forms have emerges, such as Marxism.
Spengler called Communism the granddaughter of Christianity.
Abrahamism is nihilism given a linguistic form - occult , obscurantism. Religions of the book, by the book, for the book.

Secularization of nihilism follows as ana adaptation to increasing human awareness. It renames the same concepts and alters the contexts and the packaging.

The implications are obvious but I feel like I must state things clearly, in this day and age of declining intelligence and increasing autism.
The romantic ideologists must reduce reality to another ideology because their own ideology has minimal connections to reality. A form of enforcing parity where they feel weak and vulnerable.
And by making ti all ideological they imply that all is subjective, and convert philosophy to political discourse and , more importantly, to marketing standards, i.e., which ideology feels the best, is most popular, because it appeals to the masses; because ti, like any other product, offers something positive, useful to as many people as possible.
Supply/Demand.

Chomsky explored how politics can manufacture consent, well in Marxist/Capitalist contexts one can also manufacture demand so as to then supply it.

‘intelligence’ is not a static feature that can be evaluated according to a finite set of standards. rather generally speaking it is an organism’s ability to successfully navigate and use the environment that it’s in, which can be quite different than past environments. so you’d not assess the quality of organism x’s intelligence (who lives in the year 2386) with organism’s y’s intelligence (who lived in 1873). an example of this is the results of ‘raven’s test’, which deals with visual analysis intelligence. a significant increase in these scores have been observed in the 20th century, an age with exceedingly more visual media than the prior centuries. the point here is that because environments stimulate differently, intelligence develops accordingly, as as a result, certain capacities can also be lost without that lose being detrimental to the organism.

now i know this is shocking to you because it means you can’t use shifts in intelligence as some evidence for the decline of western civilization. and that’s gotta suck, i’m sure.

imagine a future in which many of the mental/cognitive capacities are greatly reduced because so much of the environment no longer demands their function. a world in which a shitload of stuff is automated, for instance. can you necessarily say that this is a ‘decline’ in human evolution? decline compared to what? the age of tunic wearing sword wielding real men who brushed their teeth with a pine tree branch? well yeah, of course, but only if these people needed to be able to wield swords and figure out a novel way to clean their teeth. but that’s the thing; they no longer need to do that, so those particular kinds of abilities and features of intelligence can not be used as something against which to measure the efficacy of more modern intelligence.

Ha…you have a straw man and you burn it bright.
No, declining intelligence is part of my world-view.
No stressors, no challenges, leads to atrophy.
intelligence is not a given. It is a potential, that gradually atrophies.

Nothing you can ever say will ever shock or surprise me.
You’re clueless about me and my views…and this post exposes how clueless you are.

To become objective you must set aside personal prejudices, desires, beliefs, preferences, and start from the bottom/up.
Difficult….when ego, and the survival instinct - fight/flight - intervene to emotionally corrupt judgments.

The easiest thing to do is surrender to them ans to the consequences - survival of the fittest.
More difficult is to become objective…a philosopher.

i don’t doubt it, because you’d have to understand what i’m saying first. if you did, the surprise would be at how confused you are… not necessarily at how smart i am. i mean this shit is pretty simple, homes.

yeah, and i just explained why and how. you’re problem is you have this immutable idea about what constitutes the quality of intelligence because you have fixed in your head a vision of a particular historical stage at which a specific kind of ‘ideal’ people had a specific kind of ‘ideal’ intelligence in a specific kind of ‘ideal’ environment.

lol, here’s a thought experiment for you. you travel into the future to the year 3013 and observe people and environments so bizarre you’da never thunk it would become like this. and yet here they are, plodding along like any other stage in history. how do you say ‘this is worse’ than the world you pointed at in 2019? half of em can’t even do math beyond basic addition/subtraction/division, etc. and don’t even know who the fuck shakespeare is, and yet these folks have developed renewable energy resources and haven’t fought a war in over three hundred years. which part about their civilization do you look at and say ‘this is why they are worse’?

the point is, you gotta ask them, not your ancestors, not spengler or yockey, for an evaluation of their progress/problems.

I’m here to learn.

I appreciate the ‘genius’ of the ‘dunker’, and of the cRapper.
I just place it lower on my scale of worthy of emulation.
Aristocracy means you can appreciate a kangaroo’s jumping genius, the brilliance of a bird’s nest building…and so on.

Tell me more about what I think.

you mean the future is better than the past?
Does intelligence rise over time?
In my imaginary worlds I can build floating cities where I am emperor serviced by multiple women…and you my butler.

I have a specific definition of intelligence.
But you never read…so I reciprocate.

So, their subjective understanding of their own intelligence is to be taken for granted?
Like your declarations, you mean?
If I ask you if you understand yourself, you will say…that’s right.

Funny how I never worshiped Yockey or Spengler like you worshiped Nietzsche, and now Stirner.
Just alternative voices to the common bullshit. A whisper of truth in the screaming lies.

You project…you’ve got talent with evasion.
The force of nil is strong with you, middle-aged Padawan.
Makes you resistant to all immediate external influences…drawing sustenance from gooogle.

okay sure, i’ll buy that. but you’ve never started at the bottom. you start somewhere in the middle so you can avoid the nihilism that is the bottom, that is the foundation, for proper philosophy. the ‘objective truth’, insofar as we are able to examine what indubitable knowledge is available to us most immediately and without first tampering with it philosophically, is that the world is in a certain way and that it ought not be any other way or for any particular reason. but what you do, for example, is find a little fact or two and then draw all kinds of conjectures and inferences from them as you attempt to build an ‘ought’ from what is… e.g., survival of the fittest, therefore history ought to be this way. no, it ‘ought’ not be any way. you wedge that ‘ought’ in there, not the world. so you’ve not started at the bottom at all, and in a sense, haven’t been faced with the burden of creating values out of a perfectly purposeless world devoid of ultimate meaning.

you really can’t feel the weight of philosophy on your shoulders unless you’re at the bottom, unless you’re a nihilist. otherwise you’re an intellectual contingency that’s merely adopted some pre-fabricated frame of mind and world-view that begins in the middle somewhere complete with its own set of philosophical biases and prejudices. lol, most skeptics are just as soft as the theologians. them niggas didn’t start at the bottom either.

To ridicule an idea the simpleton projects into it his own understanding, reducing it to a level that is even beneath his own simplicity.
Example:
To contradict race-realism the common simpleton reduces it to a skin pigmentation, and then ridicules his own understanding of it.
To ridicule Jewish influence over the US the simpleton reduces it to an absurdity, such as “Jews rule the world” and then laughs at it as if he were laughing at the idea, not his own understanding of it.

The power of the nil.
Use absolutes to demand them or declare them, so as to dismiss an idea you cannot otherwise dismiss.
Reinventing the idea into an absurdity makes it easy to reject.

When I say “bottom” I mean physis - empiricism.
Then you work upward, towards Idealism, and downward to dig up a foundation, called Metaphysis.
In fact the “bottom” is the middle.
From nature towards ideology, and down into the metaphysical.

Like building a house.

Starting from the ground and then integrating pre-existing philosophy, if possible, into the structure.
Physis is the standard - Nature, observable, testable, falsifiable reality.

There are some nuances to the above.

Kant differentiated between Empirical Realism versus Transcendental Realism.

The empirical idealist or transcendental realist assumes there is something “real” out there but he is unable to realize it except for what is perceived by the brain from waves emitted from that “real” thing-in-itself out there.
Why one is an empirical idealist is because one is interacting merely with sense data in one’s mind and not the real-empirical-thing.

Meanwhile, the empirical realist engages and interacts with real things within [external and internal] reality objectively.

The empirical idealist is also the Philosophical Realist;

Note, the Philosophical anti-Realism comes in many forms.
Kant’s view is that of empirical realism which I agree.
Other Philosophical anti-Realism views are the various forms of idealism, e.g. Berkeley’s subjective idealism, Platonism, etc. which I do not agree with.

I begin with aesthetics. So, you might say I’m an empirical realist.
The ‘object’ is an interpretation of fluctuating energies exhibiting a pattern.
There are energies with no pattern which are interpreted as darkness - also complex patterns are interpreted thusly, producing the confusion about what ‘chaos’ means.
For me chaos means ‘randomness’, the opposite of order.

The external world is independent from how the mind interprets it, but this makes an accurate interpretation more crucial to survival.

Currently erroneous interpretations are being sheltered from natural culling, for different reasons. Mostly because the promotion of poor judgments, and of superstition, makes a population more malleable to political and marketing manipulation and exploitation.

I’m a philosophical realist.
The mystical I associate with chaos and complexity - not to be confused as being the same.
Reality cannot be entirely known, but only interpreted sufficiently to promote survival and understanding.
Sometimes survival is inhibited by understanding, and promoted by superstition and mysticism. This is why it takes a particular kind of psychology to be a philosopher. A mind that places clarity and understanding above survival.

Nihilism projects mental abstractions into reality - absolutes - so as to ‘correct’ their absence. If they were to exist, outside their minds, existence would be negated. This is why I say that nihilism, the concept, is part of nihilism, the paradigm.
Nihilism is an expression of itself, and an inversion of reality.
In fact, the absence of absolutes, such as a one-god, universal morality and so on, is a positive because it is existence.
Nihilism is always idealistic, using semiology to ‘correct’ the real. This kind of idealism begins with the solution and then attempts to justify and validate it over time.
A realist, like myself, begins with the perceived and works towards establishing an ideology based on the experienced and perceived - cross referenced with other minds, and continuously validated against reality.
This establishes a higher probability, not a certainty.

Addiction is to the body what obsession is to the mind.

Being controversial is a way of standing out from the uniformity of the herd.
It can be faked.
Yet, to avoid being controversial in times of popular deceit would necessitate parroting convectional lies without exposing them.

What did Orwell say?

He who controls how words are defined or understood, controls how the past is interpreted, affecting the present and determining the future.

But nature does not care for human contrivances.
Every so often a reality check sweeps the lies away.

Uh, Aegean is Satyr, right?

Or, perhaps, he has brought Lyssa back to life? :wink:

Idealism is how one wants reality to be whereas realism is how it actually is
These are but two points on the same spectrum albeit ones at opposite ends

Idealism can be dangerous because of the consequences of applying it to reality which is why it should be avoided as much as possible
Instead I use observation as the foundation for understanding reality as best as I can because it is the basis of all scientific knowledge

I am a pragmatist and observation is entirely compatible with it and so is retained because of its usefulness
And the same is true of intersubjectivity and evidence and falsification for they result in greater knowledge

A philosophical world view must not contradict the scientific one and so ideally should not be rooted in either metaphysics or unfalsifiability
I do not think there is any meaning to existence but as that cannot be determined by science then it can only be an opinion and nothing else
And so I find meaning to my own life that again is rooted in pragmatism because doing nothing is not good for ones mental or physical health
That meaning is knowledge acquisition : I want to learn as much as I can and because of pragmatism it is something I can do very easily and consistently

I avoid philosophical dogmatism as much as possible because there is no way of knowing what is true outside of science and mathematics
I do not believe in God but I cannot be absolutely certain he does not exist in some form or other so I let that be
I am almost certain that death is eternal but yet again I cannot be absolutely certain so I let that one be as well
I avoid absolute opinions as they do not occupy the same epistemological status as facts and also because mind is always in flux anyway

On a psychological level I find detachment to be the natural default position because it is the least imposing of any mental state
I know I am truly insignificant in the grand scheme of things compared to the timespan of known existence so simply accept this
This may sound very suspiciously like nihilism but it is just as much a statement of fact as a philosophical position if not more so
And awareness of ones own insignificance is actually very positive since it is an excellent antidote against egotism and narcissism

Looking from a Gods Eye perspective my existence has zero consequence but from my own mind dependent perspective it is everything that there is
These two positions are just different points on the same spectrum so both should be equally acknowledged with zero preference for either of them

When the Sun goes red giant in another five billion years or so Earth will either be a fireball orbiting it or else completely atomised and zero trace of us will remain
So all that we have achieved as a species both collectively and individually will then disappear for all of time - this is not nihilistic but merely the nature of reality
So acknowledging it is therefore the only right and proper thing to do and is far better than the metaphysical idealism of the absolute otherwise known as religion

And idealism can built self-referential, yet self-consistent, alternate realities, by using words and symbols, in romantic, appealing, insinuating forms…similar to how a fArtist can paint an image that is meaningless and useless, but that allows the observer to project whatever he desires into tis convoluted synthesis.
Nihilistic idealism is impotent outside minds and so it is entirely political, and necessitates followers and converts that believe ni tis meaningless drivel.

Using prose and obscurantism and poetics, it seduces the mind with innuendoes and triggering words.
It is a form of psychological manipulation, becoming common in politics and marketing.
Brainwashing.
Words referring to concepts can also be connected to disturbing imagery so inhibit the mind from exploring them.
Philosophy has become that.
Nonsense piled on nonsense, insinuating implying and saying nothing.

Abrahamism is still alive and well in its new secular form.
See how the one-god has become the universe, and absoluter order, ro oneness.
See how words can be defined out of existence or defined in ways that makes them absurd and easily laughed at…like free-will, love, value, morality…race, sex…etc.

Surreptitious75 wrote

Are determinists more ego driven than free will enthusiasts?

If I say that you may not be as insignificant as you think for your existence has caused many things to transpire, I wouldn’t be lying would I? And would that make me more of a determinist by thinking this way?

But you would never find out your significance for it would be impossible to retrace. Could have been one smile/kind gesture or one frown/mean act that set off a reaction or occurrence of more magnitude than you would ever have imagined, from something as simple as timing.

Yes, strikingly these so-called humble ones, harbour a secret insecurity which makes them prone to believe in absolutes, feeling power through association.
What can be more arrogant than Christian belief in an after-life and in a god that gives a shit about their petty lives?
What can be more arrogant than to absolve one’s self of all responsibility, and imply that you are a universal agency of inevitability?
Like claiming you are god’s chosen, the determinist believes that nothing he or she can ever do or say can ever be wrong, because it is part of a universal plan, an order, an inevitability he could not have changed.
So, he never has to change because he can never make a mistake.
His/Her life is fated. He or she could not have lived any other life.
It’s comforting.

So the only determinism there is is in the past? But what is determined to have occurred in the past cannot be extrapolated upon to reveal its complete interconnectivity beyond the conscious you, your memory. The present and future are open to choices via free will. Sorry for getting off topic.

Realists take responsibility, idealists don’t. Do you think that there are more realists in the political right?