Reach a consensus, reach across the aisle, compromise. Those phrases are shades of the Hegelian Dialectic, a Marxist technique that erodes adherence to our principles.
This type of headline is so common today we come to expect as normal thinking. It’s not. It’s a method of control, the Hegelian Dialectic at work.
We have discussed on many occasions our heritage of Natural Law, or what O describes as a bridge out of darkness to a better existence, a better fulfillment of human destiny in a grander plan. While some say America is the culmination of Western civilization, it can be argued that much of the concept of liberty, civil law and rights is amalgamation of British society, with the influence of Iroquois Nation and belief in a higher power.
Germany and France had a far more collectivist and violent path during the late 18th and 19th centuries, their traditions are different as well as a prevailing mindset regarding freedom of thought.
Upheaval Of Europe Shaped German Thought
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel
What was handed over to us by the Founding Fathers because of their belief in a Divine nature involved in the creation of man, was not left to common French and German Europeans who were to be lead by near totalitarian rulers. To get man back to his natural state religion had to be replaced, the week changed to 10 days, on and on.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel became one of the 19th Century’s leading thinkers, and shaped the way that many in Western society looked at freedom of expression, politics and history. Hegel lived in the post Enlightenment era, with the struggles of the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars and Empire. Hegel’s philosophy echoed this concept of upheaval, and he believed in the nature was in a continual state of change, and the mind was tasked with sorting out truths, and constructing new paradigms of thought born from continual skepticism. To Hegel freedom and reason are historical achievements, not a given. Basically this is at odds with the concept of Natural Law.
Hegelian Dialectic: Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis or The Unity of Opposites
According to Hegel, there is a duality that exists between thought and the real world, and the job of reason is to overcome this through logic, spirit and nature. This process sorts out attributes to define what the mind experiences. This process, ever on going, leads to a unity between what is encountered and what the mind perceives as reality. An example is temperature: the concept of temperature comes out of the distinction of what is “hot” and what is “cold”. The range of opposites , knowing what hot feels like and what cold feels like gives rise to temperature. Or, temperature is the synthesis of the distinguishing the contradictions of hot (thesis) and cold (antithesis).
Note that the following references are from the Marxists themselves, taken from Marxist.org
This was a break from Aristotle’s Principle of Logical Identity and traditional western thinking of categorizing elements or attributes that would define and object. Aristotle’s concept was simple deductive argument: A is A, and not Non-A.
Hegel wanted to blend, making a formalized logical representation not possible. And that’s where the danger begins, you have to “experience” the unity, there are no simple principles of teaching this.
Hegel’s different way of thinking has become known as dialectical thinking. What makes dialectical thinking so difficult to explain is that it can only be seen in practice. It is not a “method” or a set of principles, like Aristotle’s, which can be simply stated and then applied to whatever subject-matter one chooses.
To Hegel the constant flux of matter and ideas is the primary driver of history, a constant dance between thesis, antithesis and a synthesis, then the synthesis can be thought of as a new thesis and the cycle is repeated again. No absolutes. No constants.
One more point regarding Aristotle. With Aristotle’s logic, things are concrete, contradiction is an indication that there is an error. In other words the synthesis uses a double negative:
In classical logic, this double negation (“A is not non-A”) would simply reinstate the original thesis. The synthesis does not do this. It has “overcome and preserved” (or sublated) the stages of the thesis and antithesis to emerge as a higher rational unity.
Can you see how this dialectical thinking can give rise to cognitive dissonance, since everything is in flux, and a higher rational unity can always be achieved with resolving conflicting information into a totality?
Here is another summary from another professed Marxist.
https://dashthered.medium.com/marxism-for-normal-people-dialectical-materialism-deb5034685a4
So, says Hegel, if you want to understand a larger idea (for example, the idea of temperature), then you need to understand the concepts of “hot” and “cold” and their relationship (or more specifically, their contradiction), in order to properly grasp the idea of temperature. So in this way, contradictionis sort of a unity of opposites — two things that oppose and conflict with one another, but also require one another in order to exist, at least until a substantial change in their relationship occurs that fundamentally alters both.
The unity of opposites – contradiction is within all things. Since all things are matter, all things are in flux.
Karl Marx Adopts Then Adapts This Thinking
Marx studied Hegel, and saw an opportunity where his country man failed. Apply the dialectic to not ideals, but only to history and “material”. That is, don’t sit on the sidelines pondering temperature and the unity of opposites and the quest for totality. Apply this new found logic to a process of discovery as it applies to human production, the class struggles and the ever progressing state of
Many times a philosophy has confusing terms, leading the formation of a elite class who “understands” the ideas at fundamental level and must do the thinking for the rest of followers, acolytes or even citizens. The Pythagoreans were a cult, and only a very few of the initiated had full knowledge of the theorems that we teach our kids today. The same holds true for Marxism.
There is a lure to Marxism, as Marx created many terms like Dialectical Materialism and Metaphysical Materialism to form the semblance of a scientific method for assessing history and projecting a way to lead people to a better future state. Hegel claimed that ideas arose from the dialectic, and that the world was an imperfect representation of those ideas. Marx turned this on it’s head:
So how does one learn about the world? Simple, by looking at it. By observing it, investigating it, interacting with it, and observing the changes upon it. You might have heard the strange cryptic phrase uttered by the most fervent Marxists, “the eternal science of Marxism-Leninism.” But now you can begin to see how and why this claim is actually upheld by Marxists as correctly being science.
According to Marx, the flux of matter meant all things changed, all the times, and it was necessary to find contradiction to help facilitate that change. To Marx A is A didn’t matter because it was going to be different, and since the most important ideals were the struggle of the classes, contradiction is merely a tool to advance a cause. Marx acknowledged that the proletariat could not rise themselves, they needed to be educated to accomplish the final Utopia. Top down control by a select few philosopher kings until the proletariat could take over.
What About Someone Who Is Suffering From Severed Conscience?
Cognitive dissonance is one of the many symptoms of Severed Conscience. Look at what we laid out and it’s easy to see that Severed Conscience is a training ground for collectivist manipulation, where over stimulation just results in confusion, then some leading figure like AOC, Andrew Tate or Elon Musk can easily do the thinking for the followers. It’s no accident that Twitter uses the concept of following, you are taking visual cues from their timelines. Keep someone triggered and you get someone who will be down with a cause just out of a sense of belonging.
The Places Where Three Roads Meet
Combating this effect is something we do naturally, but we are being conditioned to give this up and outsource our thinking.
The Trivium is the traditional method, think of it as a ground up approach to building a person whose mind is not for rent. Like Tom Sawyer and Thomas Jefferson.