A Progressive Belief: Wisdom is Felt, Not Learned

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The unconscious logic supporting this belief goes like this, starting from the “Human beings are inherently and transcendentally noble” branch of the newthink worldview tree:

• Human beings are inherently and transcendentally noble.
• We need to strip away society and return to a natural state to uncover our inherent and transcendent nobility.
• The more natural, the more virtuous.
• Emoting is natural and therefore virtuous; thinking is unnatural and therefore unvirtuous.
• Wisdom is felt, not learned.

To newthinkers, emoting is natural and therefore virtuous; thinking is unnatural and therefore unvirtuous. Wisdom is felt, not learned.

…if seniors aren’t wiser than younger people, then why give them any deference? Under newthink, they’re really just wrinkly, cranky and unfashionable versions of everyone else.

Radical ramifications are created by this disrespect of traditional wisdom. They include the devaluation of older Americans: if seniors aren’t wiser than younger people, then why give them any deference? Under newthink, they’re really just wrinkly, cranky and unfashionable versions of everyone else. If the advantages of age aren’t appreciated, then the sizzle has to go to the young.

Newthink trash-cans tradition – another effect of this disrespect. If wisdom is felt, not learned, then tradition doesn’t really matter. The spoiled generation which grew up in the sixties looked at the blessings of American society and found them wanting. Western civilization and all its accomplishments were taken for granted. They could do it better.

Newthink’s disrespect of traditional wisdom is self-justifying. If traditional wisdom is worthless, then a new worldview is necessary. That opens the door for newthink.

A More Progressively Virtuous, Less Intelligent America

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Photo taken July 26, 2002 of American Boy Scouts sitting around a campfire ring at a week long summer camp. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

All educational systems indoctrinate their students into their worldview and attempt to shape them into virtuous members of their culture. The Boy Scout’s oath (“On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country…”) distilled traditional America’s cultural guidance to their youth. Bound by honor to a duty to God and country, children were taught to obey the law, help others, and stay strong, alert and morally straight. Americanism largely succeeded in its effort to inculcate those values.

Likewise, the progressive educational system functions very competently in its unconscious core function: the production of young newthinkers with a keen sense of progressive virtue, combined with limited knowledge and intellectual skill. It’s no accident that graduates have become increasingly ignorant as newthinkers have expropriated the American educational system. If progressive culture truly honored intellect, its students would emerge highly knowledgeable and intellectually proficient. Instead, our progressive educational system has led to declining intellectual performance. According to one large study only 31 percent of college graduates can read and extrapolate from a complex book.* As Mona Charen points out in her book Do-Gooders, the more time a child spends in America’s educational system, the worse he fares compared to students from around the world. Nine-year-old American kids score a little above the worldwide average, but the downward arc has begun: by 13 they’re below average, and by their later teenage years, they outrank students in only a few countries like Cyprus and South Africa.**

If progressive culture truly honored intellect, its students would emerge highly knowledgeable and intellectually proficient. Instead, our progressive educational system has led to declining intellectual performance.

This dumbing-down of America’s population is not a fluke, and it’s not only caused by an incompetent educational system. There are several unconscious newthink beliefs that contribute heavily to it. But the ones we’re focusing on now, the unconscious beliefs that “emoting is natural and therefore virtuous” and “thinking is unnatural and therefore unvirtuous,” have led to an increased social emphasis on feeling rather than thinking. Under newthink, a virtuous progressive should have feelings about things; having thoughts about them is secondary. Abstract thought – a salient and specifically human trait – has become the disreputable servant of feeling.

Because of the anti-intellectual nature of newthink, progressive America has less regard for rationality than traditional America. As its assorted character archetypes – from Modern Thugs to Beats – have grown in prevalence, their anti-intellectual timbre has influenced America, coarsening and stupefying it. Ours is a degenerate culture: the average American of 100 years ago could intellectually embarrass the average Jay-walking American of today. Nineteenth-century farmers went to school half as long as we do and the ones who did were more intellectually accomplished. Check out an 1800s textbook if you doubt it. Our great-grandfathers in their youth could have whupped us physically and intellectually.

* Paul E. Peterson, “Ticket to Nowhere,” Education Next, Spring 2003, Vol. 3, No. 2.

** Mona Charen, Do-Gooders, (New York: Sentinel, 2004), p. 198.

To Progressives, Emoting Tends to Be Perceived as Natural and Therefore Virtuous; Thinking Tends to Be Perceived as Unnatural and Therefore Unvirtuous.

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Let’s examine the next unconscious belief in this branch of the newthink worldview tree: Emoting is natural and therefore virtuous; thinking is unnatural and therefore unvirtuous.

The logic supporting this belief is as follows, starting from the “Human beings are inherently and transcendentally noble” branch:

The unconscious logic branching out of this belief is: Emoting is natural and therefore virtuous; thinking is unnatural and therefore unvirtuous. Additionally:

• It’s better to follow your feelings than to analyze things.
• Wisdom is felt, not learned.

The devout progressive intellect doesn’t seek truth; it rationalizes emotions.

The devout progressive intellect doesn’t seek truth; it rationalizes emotions. It’s analogous to neurotic rationalization: in the neurotic, the neurotic behavior or feeling exists and the mind is tasked to explain it, without regard to truth. For instance, a neurotic with a social anxiety disorder may develop negative opinions of people, which conveniently give him a reason to avoid uncomfortable social situations. In the same way, newthink’s beliefs exist due to unconscious processes and it is the job of progressive intellectualism to try to make them logical. The highly progressive Soviet Union produced libraries of Marxist literature full of elaborate and obscure theory with little connection to reality: the literature on Marx’s theory of monetary value is one example. This dynamic is at work today in the social sciences, the arts, and the popular culture. It’s not as prevalent in the physical sciences, which are fundamentally unfriendly to counterfeit theories, but the manipulation of physical data to support progressive theories is not unknown. In the climategate scandal, scientists from the University of East Anglia and elsewhere, among other things, cherry-picked data to create a graph showing a formidable but bogus warming trend in the late 20th century. Newthink perverts the traditional goal of science: to find the truth without regard to the emotional reactions to that truth. Newthink intellectualism tends to be rationalization, not explanation.

Contrary to their self-image of intellectual daring and fairness, progressives tend to be close-minded to anything that conflicts with their worldview. Their intellectual positions tend to be emotionally-based rationalizations which must be defended at all costs – not empirically-based ideas to be impartially changed when new evidence or arguments are presented.

Although all worldviews operate on both conscious and unconscious levels, newthink originated in emotions; Americanism originated in texts – the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. Traditional thought is more intellect-based; newthink is more unconscious, its consequences less thought through. This emotional reasoning, by the way, is why it can be so hard to reason with a progressive. Contrary to their self-image of intellectual daring and fairness, progressives tend to be close-minded to anything that conflicts with their worldview. Their intellectual positions tend to be emotionally-based rationalizations which must be defended at all costs – not empirically-based ideas to be impartially changed when new evidence or arguments are presented. Newthinkers tend to be emotional reasoners, not truth-seekers. It’s difficult to argue someone out of a feeling. To change a progressive’s mind, one must make them aware of their emotional attachments to the unconscious beliefs behind their intellectual position – not an easy task.

The Fusion of Nature and Virtue

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Under progressivism, nature and virtue fuse. To newthinkers, the more natural, the more virtuous.

The unconscious logic supporting this belief goes like this, starting from the “Human beings are inherently and transcendentally noble” branch of the newthink worldview tree:

Many entailments branch out of this particular belief. The unconscious logic is: The more natural, the more virtuous. Additionally:

• Emoting is natural and therefore virtuous; thinking is unnatural and therefore unvirtuous.
• Expressing yourself is natural and therefore virtuous; stoicism is unnatural and therefore unvirtuous.
• Sex is natural and therefore virtuous; sexual inhibitions or modesty are unnatural and therefore unvirtuous.
• A simple life is natural and therefore virtuous; a complex life is unnatural and therefore unvirtuous.
• Whole foods are natural and therefore virtuous; processed foods are unnatural and therefore unvirtuous.
• Holistic medicine is natural and therefore virtuous; traditional medicine is unnatural and therefore unvirtuous.
• The environment is natural and therefore virtuous; humanity’s physical presence is unnatural and therefore unvirtuous.
• Human will is unimportant in understanding human behavior. Human behavior can be completely understood through natural influences: genetics and environment.
• So-called primitive societies are closer to nature and therefore superior to our society. The social achievements and wisdom our society has gained since primitive times are therefore bogus.

…the ultimate expression of newthink’s nature/virtue conflation is the environmental movement.

Nature and “the environment” are synonymous, so the ultimate expression of newthink’s nature/virtue conflation is the environmental movement. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of the hippies headed back to the land clutching copies of Mother Earth News. As the hippie movement faded, many switched from the antiwar movement to the environment. Environmentalists as guardians of nature in progressive society perform a function psychologically analogous to soldiers as guardians of freedom in traditional American society – without the pesky bullets, bombs and dying part. Also analogous is the virtue attached to the environmentalist and the soldier. Like conspicuous worshipers in the temple, anyone associated with the green movement is touched by progressive virtue, which helps account for its current ubiquity in the media and the sanctimony with which its message is delivered.

Definitions: Political Correctness and Progressive Virtue

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Traditional America used good and evil to measure virtue. Newthink replaces them with progressive virtue and progressive non-virtue.

People need to feel virtuous. Therefore, all worldviews contain a system of measuring self-virtue. Traditional America used good and evil to measure virtue. Newthink replaces them with progressive virtue and progressive non-virtue. The name of newthink’s morality, political correctness, provides a language clue to this: correctness implies keeping score. What is being scored is one’s level of progressive virtue.

Here are some definitions:

political correctness n : progressive morality

progressive virtue n : 1 : conformity to a standard of political correctness 2 : moral merit as measured under the newthink worldview

politically correct (PC) adj : adhering to progressive morality

progressively virtuous (PV) adj : having progressive virtue –(antonym: progressively unvirtuous (unPV))

Let’s review. Political correctness = progressive morality. Progressive virtue = moral merit under the progressive worldview. Under newthink, the more one conforms to a standard of political correctness, the more progressive virtue one accrues. Please understand these concepts. There will be a test.

Growing in your faith series: Virtue

A Progressive Belief: Our Bodies are Inherently Noble

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While traditional Americans weren’t the prudes they are sometimes caricatured as, they did believe in personal modesty and privacy.

The unconscious logic supporting this belief goes like this, starting from the “Human beings are inherently and transcendentally noble” branch of the newthink worldview tree:

• Human beings are inherently and transcendentally noble.
• We need to strip away society and return to a natural state to uncover our inherent and transcendent nobility.
• Our bodies are inherently noble.

The sense that our bodies are inherently noble logically leads to the conviction that bodily modesty and privacy are unnatural anachronisms. The salient coarsening of American culture over the last 60 years arose from this unconscious belief.

The unconscious logic of this belief’s single entailment is: Our bodies are inherently noble. Additionally:

• Privacy and modesty are unnatural.

Worldviews at War

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Let’s step back a little and take a look at the big picture I am describing in theprogressiveworldview.com blog and in my book Newthink.

…what I am talking about is the usurpation of the traditional American worldview (which I call Americanism) by the progressive worldview (which I call newthink).

Not to spoil the ending, but what I am talking about is the usurpation of the traditional American worldview (which I call Americanism) by the progressive worldview (which I call newthink).

Worldviews exist broadly across geography and over history. They don’t just pop up like mushrooms. They evolve over time, with general themes modified by local variations. A really new worldview is an epochal development.

When two significantly different worldviews exist as geographic neighbors or contemporaneously in the same society, friction occurs. If the unconscious beliefs of a worldview posit the necessity of conversion or overthrow of societies with other worldviews, it creates an existential struggle for domination, such as the current worldview struggle between the Muslim world and all its neighbors.

Historically, the western civilization worldview with its Society is a Wilderness metaphor compelled its members to either convert (civilize) other societies or overthrow them. The western civilization worldview overthrew the barbaric worldview throughout the earth. Whether Huns, Goths, Vandals, Tartars, Visigoths, Vikings, Celts, Indians, Native Americans or African tribes, they were all seen by westerners as godless, primitive and inferior societies. Good civilized people felt it was their duty of to educate, convert and, if necessary, overthrow them.

Americanism emerged from the western civilization worldview and inherited its tenets of right-and-wrong from it. The main difference in the two worldviews was in Americanism’s government metaphor: Government is Fire. This metaphor shaped the American belief in the necessity of small government restrained by checks and balances, which exists for only a few essential functions such as defending the nation and protecting the individual rights of citizens. Although Americanism was not as radical a departure from the western civilization worldview as the latter was from Barbarism, it still required an overthrow – the American Revolution. In its wake, a separating ocean then provided Americanism room to grow.

World history for over a century has been dominated by newthink’s evolution and its encroachment upon other cultures and worldviews around the globe.

But what goes around comes around. Now newthink, a relatively new worldview which because of modern technology has quickly achieved worldwide scope, is carrying out its own cultural takeover. World history for over a century has been dominated by newthink’s evolution and its encroachment upon other cultures and worldviews around the globe. In Europe, its overthrow of the western civilization worldview is nearly complete. In America, its overthrow of Americanism is well under way. America’s 20th and 21st century history has largely been the story of newthink’s usurpation of the traditional American worldview.

Newthink is replacing Americanism. But this usurpation, while monumental, is nebulous, masked by its own mostly unconscious nature and the great technological change of our times. Thus, its logic is hidden. Newthink looms over us, its powerful dynamics buffet our world, but it is only dimly perceived and little understood. Traditional America may never see it clearly until it is beyond challenge.

Response to Dr. Wheeler’s Response to Me (Marc Clauson)

See? Told Ya So: The Boston Bomber

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In my March 21, 2013 blog post, I said, “Newthinkers sympathize with those who behave badly. Progressive sympathy often goes more to traditional evildoers than their victims because newthink tends to see traditional evildoers as damaged goods – inherently noble beings damaged or corrupted by society. They are tragic figures; the victims are just props in their drama.”

Now read this:

Sympathy for the Devil

Apparently there’s been a wave of sympathy and even attraction to Boston Bomber #2, despite the 8-year-old boy he (allegedly) killed and the scores he (allegedly) maimed. Why? Because progressives don’t generally recognize evil. It’s not part of their worldview. Instead they see dysfunction or oppression. When they are presented with an evil act, they unconsciously search for justifications. The justification usually involves seeing the evildoer as a victim or a freedom fighter. More on this later.

Why You Shouldn’t Want To Know Any More About The Boston Marathon Bombers

The Beats

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The belief that we need to return to a natural state generates an unconscious group rebellion against tradition. Newthinkers rebel, not because tradition is truly bad, but because they believe it ties them down or sullies their built-in grandeur. Newthink promotes the tossing of old values. For instance, it undermines a justification of the traditional liberal arts education – that it promotes wisdom – because the validity of traditional wisdom itself is questioned. Newthinkers unconsciously begin to suspect everything they’ve been taught because it leads them away from their innocence. So we enter what Dennis Prager calls “the age of stupidity.” Newthinkers unconsciously believe that if they could only unlearn what they’ve been taught, then true peace, happiness and wisdom would flow from the inherent and transcendent nobility within.

The false emotional association of fun and freedom with newthink, and of ordeal and restriction with Americanism, is newthink’s most powerful promotional force among youth. It created the Beat character archetype and fed progressivism’s various utopian movements.

The Beats:
Modern noble savages who “drop out” of society with the intention of living better and more simply. They unconsciously desire to regain their lost innocence, to uncover their inherent and transcendent nobility. They have a lack of social drive because of their conviction that traditional society only taints them. They prefer freer forms of thinking and expression because of their conviction that society confines them. They tend to purposely live more simply, with less and more primitive technology. Because they think society is corrupt, they are introspective, more interested in the interior world.

My baby-boom generation, led by Progressive Missionaries and Beats, barring a late-in-life redemption, may well be remembered as a generation of fools; our children, led by modern thugs, unless they can redeem themselves and change direction, may be remembered as a generation of thugs.

Much of the hippie movement of the 1960s and 1970s was powered by the Beat character archetype, as was the beatnik movement that preceded it, and the new age movement that followed it. The Beat character archetype also explains the progressive resonance with Buddhism, which contains similar themes regarding the need to unlearn old thinking patterns. All these social movements had strains running through them which extolled innocence and emphasized the necessity of rejecting one’s old beliefs and values.

Each generation, regardless of the worth of many of its members, is defined by its most active segment. My baby-boom generation, led by Progressive Missionaries and Beats, barring a late-in-life redemption, may well be remembered as a generation of fools; our children, led by modern thugs, unless they can redeem themselves and change direction, may be remembered as a generation of thugs.

A Progressive Belief: We need to strip away society and return to a natural state to uncover our inherent and transcendent nobility.

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The idea that people should return to a primitive state was foolish to those who had more experience with the boundaries of civilization. After spending millennia trying to get out of a primitive state, why would they want to return to it?

Traditional Americans didn’t typically believe that they were inherently noble. On the contrary, they believed that they were basically flawed or sinful, and therefore could only strive toward ideals, never fully reach them. The idea that people should return to a primitive state was foolish to those who had more experience with the boundaries of civilization. After spending millennia trying to get out of a primitive state, why would they want to return to it?

The unconscious logic supporting this belief goes like this, starting from the “Human beings are inherently and transcendentally noble” branch of the newthink worldview tree:

Human beings are inherently and transcendentally noble.
We need to strip away society and return to a natural state to uncover our inherent and transcendent nobility.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: a civilized man, but a person who questioned whether civilization was according to human nature. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The cognitive unconscious provides “tells” of a person’s worldview in their language. These language clues are little peeks behind the curtain of the unconscious mind. They hint at the metaphors guiding one’s thoughts. For instance, the common term “noble savage” is a language clue deriving from the “we need to strip away society and return to a natural state to uncover our inherent and transcendent nobility” belief. The phrase is associated with the 18th century French philosopher Rousseau (who never actually used it but did put forward the idea of the innate peacefulness and lack of vice of primitive man). It survives because it resonates with progressives, who carry the unconscious conviction of our inherent and transcendent nobility. To newthinkers, adult innocence, whether found in a faraway culture or in one’s own life, is a holy grail. Adult innocence is for them a pseudo-religious state, equivalent to a state of grace for Christians.

The unconscious logic branching out of this belief is:

Our bodies are inherently noble.
All so-called wisdom from the past is worthless.
Advanced culture obscures our inherent nobility.
The more natural, the more virtuous.
Children are more noble than adults because society hasn’t corrupted or damaged them as much yet.
Adults should strive to regain their lost innocence.
The future is perfectible. A transcendentally noble future is possible.

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