Post a Comment On: Bruce Charlton's Notions

When it comes to understanding what is going on in world 'politics', then normal people take things one-dot-at-a-time. Generally, they analyze, often in extreme detail, media accounts of specific policies and changes - one dot at a time. They regard any attempt to make general sense of these dots - and what they imply about future dots, as wild speculation. When pushed to justify their stance - they will assert that this is a world where 'stuff happens' - either randomly, or due to mere chains of causation. There is therefore no real overall meaning to be found in current events, because there is no meaning to be had from reality.  
Yet (incoherently, but incoherence is not something they regard as a fault), normal people also believe that it is a mixture of common sense and duty to assume good hearts and good intentions among global and multi-national organizations and their leaders. Especially, the United Nations (and everything, and everybody to do with it - such as the World Health Organization) are not merely innately good; but the best and highest hope of humankind. Therefore, to the normal folk - the dot analyzers - it is nasty, stupid, and perhaps insane to impute bad motivations to the United Nations, European Union, major charities and NGOs; or, indeed to any organization that has a platitudinously-well-intentioned title. The dot-analyzers believe that - Globally, at The Top - the right individuals are in-charge; and the problem lies lower down with national leaders, parties, organizations and individuals who oppose the benign global agenda.  
Those who join-the-dots are the mainstream conspiracy theorists - the 'secular right'. They get their information from the mass media; but after this media has been filtered through the community of dot-joiners; and interpreted by a general assumption of the malign intent of rulers. They are bottom-up reasoners - starting with items of evidence and synthesizing theories.  This type of theory is materialist in nature; relating to the selfishness and hedonism of the rulers, and their sadistic desire to control, torment and kill the masses.   The units of thinking are still the dots - the policies, actions, failure to act etc. The arguments comprise an arrangement of these dots into meaningful patterns. The dot-joiners believe that the main problem is that the wrong individuals are in control; and they pin their hopes on replacing the malign individuals with well-intentioned persons - by means of a better 'system' of governance. 
Those who understand the world by inferred spiritual motivations begin with the spiritual assumption that evil is ultimately of spiritual origin and significance; and that global evil is the attempt to organize low level evil to attain supernatural strategic goals. Clearly, this is a top-down and religious view; because its origins lie outside of politics, and do not derive from the dots. 
(Inferring spiritual motivations was the method and perspective of almost everybody in the world, through almost all of human history - but in the modern West it is regarded as a very extreme from of insane evil. The dot-analyzers regard religiously-motivated persons who infer spiritual motivations as The Most Dangerous kind of subversives and saboteurs - since they often oppose the global agenda upon which all the dot-analyzers' hopes are pinned.)
The spiritual people believe that the main problem in the world is that too many individuals, and nearly all of the global, national and institutional leaders, are on the side of supernatural evil: they are motivated to pursue the goals of supernatural evil. (Supernatural evil is defined as such because it opposes deity.)Their hope for improving the world is that supernatural evil be acknowledged as real, recognized where it is at work, and opposed by those whose allegiance is to supernatural good. 
Each of these three perspectives can readily see that the other two ways of thinking are un-disprovable, 'circular-reasoning' - which is how modern people react to contact with metaphysical assumptions... ..."My metaphysical assumptions are true and proved by evidence; but your assumptions are irrational, un-disprovable, circular-reasoning"...  In fact; everybody's world view is based upon deep - ultimately primary - assumptions concerning the nature of reality. The task is to acknowledge this fact, recognize one's own assumptions as assumptions; and then make a conscious and responsible decision whether to endorse or reject them; to maintain or replace them.