Liberalism isn't innate. It is based upon a series of psychotechnologies.
One such psychotechnology was Agape; this psychotechnology allowed us to see each other as ONE. This gave rise to the individual at the center of Western philosophy.
With the death of God (demise of religion's value structure hold) it caused a dramatic shift in our value systems; a meaning crisis.
We have so-called leftist progressive liberals, acting and behaving illiberal and authoritarian. They simply do not possess the required psychotechnologies to see or behave liberally.
With the death of God they have lost the psychotechnolgies which were imperative to the creation of liberalism. They instead seek to group based on skin colour (racism), sex (sexism), etc (a default setting based on heuristics of the brain). This default setting is something which through the psychotechnologies of liberalism we overcame.
The downstream effects of illiberal thinking are easy to see. Without the concept of the sovereign individual (the oneness), tribalistic groups are formed. This leads to major cognitive processing errors, or more so, puts us back to default settings. The illiberal progressives cannot separate the person from the idea (this is innate thinking for humans, but is overcome by liberalism through psychotechnologies).
A professor from Harvard was fired because he worked on Harvey Weinstein's legal defence team. This shows that even the supposed "elites" of society lack the basic psychotechnologies of liberalism. They do not see individuals as sovereign beings who have equal rights under the law (to maintain fairness and justice within the system) and therefore require defence, nor can they separate the Harvard professors job as a Weinstein defence lawyer from him as a person. To them Weinstein = Bad therefore everything that touches Weinstein = Bad. This is a guilt via association of ideas and people.
Through lacking the basic pyschotechnologies the illiberals fail on these two things when discussing/arguing/debating.
- Know the subject you are talking about, and know what the other person is talking about (ask as many questions as necessary)
- Be charitable to the other person and do not interpret their words in bad faith (just so you can utilize shame mechanics to attack the person rather than the idea)
If they cannot separate the person from the ideas, they cannot converse. That person is seen as hostile/enemy/something to be destroyed, just like the idea they don't like. Trump Derangement Syndrome is a downstream effect of this (Orange Man Bad).
Negotiation and compromise cannot be achieved with people who see you as being on another team (non-oneness). Such as no compromise towards Brexiteers from Progressive Remainers in the last few years.
This then leads to downstream effects of nihilism in a response to this great churning, such as the artificial construct of the culture war to reflect the mood of domicide and the rise of authoritarian illiberalism. When we put the group before the individual, we end up carrying out ideas to their final solution via a cascade of downstream effects, such as the unwinding of the legal system via the removal of the sovereign individual construct or a self-censorious populace in response to shame mechanisms which don't separate ideas from individuals.
@RiskDebonair
Irish Writer, Poet, & Lover