Transcript:
The truth in all of the “isms.” So, before I get accused of being a post-modernist – which I’m not – I’d like to explain the goal of this video. What I’m going to be doing in this video is I’m going to be taking a bunch of “isms” and I’m going to attempt to sort of the extract the truth from within these different “isms.”
And the goal of this is to exemplify the following point: Truth, as we know it, or often, don’t know it, is infinite and rich and as such, it cannot be attained or exhausted in one particular “ism.” And so the sort of dogmatic view that there is one “ism” that can hold the entirety of truth is false. Now this may sound like a sort of pluralistic, relativist, post-moderist view. It’s not. Because the goal is not to say that all isms are equally valid or true or legitimate, but rather to say that it is our job in our quest for truth to find a larger truth paradigm that can encompass the truth within the ostensibly rival “isms.” And so that’s the goal of this video, alright, so I’m going to begin with the first “ism.”
Hegelianism. Hegelianism. You know, Hegel, so the philosopher. The idea is, well he says a lot of things. One thing I think I agree with him is his view of the collective as its own sort of entity rather than a sum of its parts. Where Hegel goes wrong is he jumps from that to, like, worshipping the state and it’s like *confused face*. No to worshipping the state, but yes the collective has its own intrinsic value.
Objectivism. Ayn Rand’s books were probably the only books I’ve ever read that made me physically nauseous. A friend of mine calls objectivism “ideological selfishness.” I think that’s a good way to put it. Um, I mean I guess the core truth in it is sort of similar to capitalism, so… it’s true that there’s a legitimacy for the individual to fulfill his own desires.
Capitalism. The truth in capitalism is that – I’m not sure about this one. I think there’s like a fundamental idea that capitalism is built on an attempt to make man self-made and responsible for his destiny and the self is sort of central. I don’t know how much that actually works. On the other hand we have imperialist wars, indigenous exterminations, and basically, essentially modern feudalism, being enslaved to our bosses.
To be continued…
