Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes

“The war of all against all”

My friend Bill Dembski has a tremendously insightful piece up this morning: The War on 2 + 2 = 4.

Do yourself a favor and click on that link. It is medium-long read but chock-a-bloc with powerful insights and worth every moment of your attention.

Bill’s article got me to thinking. Materialists believe that all of existence is reducible to nothing more than matter in motion through space-time. Uber-materialist Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the DNA double helix) put it this way:

“You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

This worldview has consequences. One of those consequences is the realization that objective morality grounded in a transcendent moral order does not exist because there is no transcendent moral order. This means that terms like “good” and “evil” cannot possibly have any objective meaning.

But even materialists desire certain political outcomes and want to avoid others. And they describe the political outcomes they desire as “good.” What do they mean if “good” has no meaning? I did not say that materialists insist that “good” has no meaning. No, they insist that good has no objective meaning. Instead, they say “good” is determined subjectively. That is a fancy way of saying what you prefer (for whatever reason) is “good” for you and what I prefer (for whatever reason) is “good” for me, and there is no objective criterion by which to discern whether your version of “good” is superior to mine.

This means that if you and I disagree about the good, it is impossible to resolve our differences by appealing to a neutral moral principle like “justice,” because such principles are objectively meaningless in the same way “good” and “evil” are objectively meaningless. Well, how do we resolve our differences? Critical theory – which at its root is nothing more than applied materialist philosophy – teaches that power is the only arbiter of all differences. In other words, critical theory teaches that in a universe devoid of transcendent morality, there is only power and those who have it and those who don’t. And absolutely everything – the law, politics, education, economic activity, etc. – plays out in power relationships. This means that anyone who talks to you about “justice,” is not appealing to a neutral moral principle; they are using an inherently meaningless word to play the power game.

How does the “power is the only thing” philosophy play out in the political arena? Here is where the materialist rubber meets the road. The title of this post is Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes, a Latin phrase that means “The war of all against all.” This is, by definition, what materialist politics must necessarily devolve into. People with competing conceptions of the good (call them “tribes” for lack of a better term) must band together to fight the other tribes.

What happens when some people (such as the progressives) are engaged in the bellum omnium contra omnes while other people continue to insist that we can work out our differences by appealing to neutral moral principles (most conservatives hope this)? Well, we are seeing that very thing play out before our eyes in real time. My prediction is that the latter group will sooner or later come to the realization that there is literally no reasoning with the former group for the simple reason that materialists reject reason itself. Don’t believe me? Ask a Democrat if a man can become a woman merely by desiring to to be so? Bill’s article prompted me to trace the past and project the future of the process. This is what I came up with:

Past:

1.  Rational people respond with befuddlement. “They can’t be serious.”

2.  Rational people mock and scorn. “They are serious, but they are stupid.”

3.  Rational people recognize a serious cultural cancer. “Pitting everyone against each other in warring intersectional tribes is dangerous.”

4.  The targets of the progressive war (e.g., white working-class men) start sorting themselves into a resistance party (Trump has tapped into this).

Future:

5.  The polity becomes hyper-balkanized. Dividing the polity into antagonistic tribes is the inevitable logical consequence of the progressive project when the targets finally wake up and realize they need to band together to defend themselves from the onslaught.  I say this is in the future; it is already happening to some extent.

6. VIOLENCE ON A MASSIVE SCALE. If power is all that matters, compromise (indeed, even communication) becomes impossible, and fighting is the only thing left to do.