Relativism on the Couch with Dr Pat (III)

In an aside Dr Pat states - and this is a serious, but well-known allegation - that "academics of the left are desperate to "prove" these assertions and give them a scientific seal of approval ...".

This has been going on for years, while the political and ideological elites bend and relativize any given that happens to be in their way. If the outcome is made to fit the theory, it is obvious we can no longer speak of scientific method. But this is what is brought up as the summit of reason, man as his own New God against the dark forces of religion and faith that are out to stop his further advancement as Enlightenment's supremo in his tracks. As adding insult to injury society is paying for the very "scientific research" that seeks to undermine it. It's like the Chinese communist party sending the family of the people's enemy the bill for the bullet.

But back to the couch: we pick up Dr Pat's narrative in her post on the 29th January where she states, she is often reminded of her paranoid patients, who are effortlessly able to dismiss or explain away the facts that don't fit their conspiracy theories: "If you get too assertive in pointing out ... (the) facts, you find yourself ... fully integrated into the theory. For the paranoid, the case is closed ... The political left has been utilizing the same psychological strategies ... all combined to dissuade those on the political left from pursuing a course of intellectual honesty and/or emotional insight".

Tough stuff, but it does explain some of the fallacies we talked about here in the PMF-list and it rings an entire carillon of alarm bells: the immaturity, the confusion of reality with myth (PMF #6. Confusing fact with opinion), the "frustration" of the impossibility to "debate or argue" a subject (PMF #9. The Intolerance of tolerance and why it is no longer fun to have a debate), reality and truth are merely subjective constructs anyway (this is relativism's most important dogma and core-belief), "any evidence you present ... is some one's "opinion" and ... their opinions are as good as anyone else's ... such a position should logically disqualify their position to begin with, but of course, it doesn't ... they will then usually proceed directly to the usual ad hominem attacks. Q.E.D." [sic] (this is of course Greg Koukl's Passive-Assertive Tolerance Trick). It is striking indeed how philosophical analyses and psychology come independently to the same conclusion!

Dr Pat's analysis comes full circle with the assertion that "their (other) myths about the Iraq war ... have become inextricably entwined and inseparable from their most sacred ideological beliefs ... of the evil of George Bush, Republicans and America ... to acknowledge even the slightest possibility that ... (they) are warped would threaten their entire ideology - and thus the image of themselves ... as caring and compassionate ... in contrast to the members of the political right who are always described as "hate-filled";

and

"when the consequences of confronting truth and reality are personally unpleasant ... exactly what psychological denial seeks to avoid ... as long as they can hate and vilify George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and all those evil Republicans and Lieberman Democrats out there; and as long as they can pretend that the objects of their hate are the real cause of any problem; then they don't have to deal with the external reality of Islamofascist terror, or face the truth about their own unacknowledged and pathological internal reality. They can continue to cling to the holy, neo socialist faith, newly risen from the ashes of the 20th century; and delude themselves into thinking that they are wonderful, caring, loving and reality-based people".

Fear is a powerful mover, and this is what terrorists are playing on. But here's the good news: fear is subjective! The classical Greek hero Theseus and other ancients of our culture we are so keen on to throw away, have taught us that the only way to deal with fear, is to pump up courage, confront it head on, and nuke it. These are times that we have nothing to fear, but fear itself [3]... so take position in front of a large mirror, stick your thumbs in your ears, while waiving your fingers forward and backward and start jumping up and down in a steady cadence, yelling BBBBRRRRrrrrrrr!!! as loud as you can, to the bogeyman ...

Those of you with a strong stomach that care to know how the patient is reacting to all this analyzing of Dr Pat's, feast your eyes and ears on the comment section of said post of the 29th January!

In the next post we shall see how Ann Coulter gets her way and Relativism, like Liberalism, proves to be a real, Godless faith with missionaries and all, putting Jehovah's Witnesses to shame when it comes to proselytizing (which I would advice against doing in some cultures that relativists hold to be identical to the West's).