Trump isn't benign - he does evil things.

Just had a productive discussion with Ronen on Twitter where he brought out further thoughts on Trump from me and so had me question my understanding of him doing evil things. I paste those thoughts (which I slightly summarised on Twitter) below.

‪‪You’re right in that it would be very difficult for Trump to recognise intellectual quality. But the intellectual turmoil you mention is the intellectual code doing its battle. Trump is at the forefront on the wrong side of that battle! Evil is when a lower form of evolution is being used to destroy a higher form. Trump is evil because he actively destroys and threatens existing intellectual institutions and the value of truth.

You’re arguing here for the amount of ‘choice’ Trump actually has. And I agree he cannot see much intellectual quality due to possibly bad education and upbringing. So to continue that - does his ‘choice’ merely reflect on the failures of education and lack of morality within our intellectual culture and that’s what’s to blame here?

But I don’t think this matters as we know Trump has a fully functioning brain and he should know better. Yes it’s harder for him to recognise intellectual quality but it’s assumed that as a member of a democratic culture he at least understands and appreciates the value of truth. When he continually lies to increase his own social standing and questions the value of whole institutions of truth - this is Trump being evil. He should and does know better than to do this but he doesn’t care. It’s all about him. #Immoral #intellectoversociety

I think a beautiful thing the Metaphysics of Quality does is bring out modern issues within our culture ‬and shows that they're not just benign events on the world stage but show morality actively at work between giant levels of evolution. And these conflicts don't just happen at a national or international level but on a personal level as well. It's daily decisions that take folks in the right or wrong direction. This metaphysical understanding of the experience we call life is beautiful, interesting and moral!

The Metaphysics Of Quality supports Bernie Sanders

With polls showing Hillary Clinton as the likely Democratic nominee it is important to note at this point in history that Bernie Sanders is the candidate most supported by the Metaphysics Of Quality.

Compared to his opponents Bernie has consistently stood on the side of what made sense intellectually despite what was culturally expedient. While intellectual stubbornness is not always a clear sign of intellectual correctness, since he was a young academic protesting against the civil rights movement, Bernie has continually been on the right side of history.

This consistency is perfectly demonstrated in his rhetoric around income inequality. As he said in the 1970’s:

“A handful of people own almost everything … and almost everybody owns nothing. A handful of people make the decisions and the vast majority of people have virtually no control over their lives.. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the vast majority in the middle are having a harder and harder time,”

And on his 2016 campaign website:

“America now has more wealth and income inequality than any major developed country on earth, and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is wider than at any time since the 1920s.. There is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of one percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.”

The time is right for the United States to make some difficult, drastic, changes with so many problems facing the nation in this new century. Rightly, or wrongly, the way that change works in western democracies is a revolution of freedom against old rituals – and boy are some of the problems facing the United States old. Problems which include a crumbling infrastructure, student debt that’s skyrocketing, bad money influencing elections, a failed war on drugs, unsustainable wages, changing demographics, race inequality, expensive healthcare, and an unstable middle east.

Bernie has consistently spoken about each of these issues and how he will fix them. His logical consistency and correctness is supported by intellectual morality. Many of his new policies are dramatic enough that they would drastically change the country toward a better direction.

The right thing to do then, metaphysically, is to support Bernie in his 2016 campaign to become president.

Glenn Greenwald on Journalism and Values

Glenn Greenwald is a great journalist. Why? Because his view of journalism; that it’s firstly meant to act as a check to power, is a good one. Without journalists informing the public about what their elected officials are doing; there are closed doors and an environment which is conductive to abuse. The role of journalism as the fourth estate is that it tempers that power by making actions made in its name public and thus open to being held to account.

But it’s not just his view of journalism as a check on power which is good. He also understands, in line with the Metaphysics of Quality, that it’s impossible for anyone to hold an objective, value free viewpoint. As Pirsig writes in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

“The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. He has to care! This is an ability about which formal traditional scientific method has nothing to say. It’s long past time to take a closer look at this qualitative preselection of facts which has seemed so scrupulously ignored by those who make so much of these facts after they are ‘observed.'”

In fact, Glenn articulates that it’s this value free viewpoint that modern day journalists cling to as a defense whenever they saddle up next to those in power and stenographically transcribe what they say. They claim that they’re being ‘objective’ but really they’re just transcribing what the powerful wants us to hear rather than doing their job and looking out for those things which are valuable for the public to know regardless of what those in power say.

Along these lines, recently Greenwald had a fascinating exchange with the New York Times Bill Keller in which he summarised his view on modern journalism and the role of the NYT thus:

“My view of journalism absolutely requires both fairness and rigorous adherence to facts. But I think those values are promoted by being honest about one’s perspectives and subjective assumptions rather than donning a voice-of-god, view-from-nowhere tone that falsely implies that journalists reside above the normal viewpoints and faction-loyalties that plague the non-journalist and the dreaded “activist.”

Embedded in The New York Times’s institutional perspective and reporting methodologies are all sorts of quite debatable and subjective political and cultural assumptions about the world. And with some noble exceptions, The Times, by design or otherwise, has long served the interests of the same set of elite and powerful factions. Its reporting is no less “activist,” subjective or opinion-driven than the new media voices it sometimes condescendingly scorns.”

The discussion is centred around the new media venture of which Greenwald is starting with Pierre Omidyar. It should be interesting to see what form it takes. But I recommend the whole exchange as it’s a great intellectual discussion between a prominent modern day journalist in that of Keller and one of the more adversarial journalists of our times in Greenwald.