“Thereupon there came into being and spread far and wide throughout the world that doctrine of rationalism or naturalism, — utterly opposed to the Christian religion, since this is of supernatural origin, — which spares no effort to bring it about that Christ, who alone is our Lord and Saviour, is shut out from the minds of people and the moral life of nations. Thus they would establish what they call the rule of simple reason or nature. The abandonment and rejection of the Christian religion, and the denial of God and his Christ, has plunged the minds of many into the abyss of pantheism, materialism and atheism, and the consequence is that they strive to destroy rational nature itself, to deny any criterion of what is right and just, and to overthrow the very foundations of human society.” – The Vatican Council, 1870

Rebellion is intrinsically an act of normative reason. Subjects, citizens, children, employees, slaves and subordinates rebel against authority for reasons of what they believe ought to be.

Is that an act of reason or just pride?

Leary had that Weatherman phase but Comrade Cleaver in Algeria fixed his wagon. When he came back with E.O. Wilson-influenced genetic castes and High Frontiers on his mind, leftoids rejected him.

This may lead to sovereignty absolutely not being conserved, but them’s the breaks.

“for since the arc of the universe is long but bends towards justice, there is no insurrection so noble, good, or right that its full consequences are not eventually disorderly AKA bad.”

How conveinient. There’s something familiar about this argument as well.

Well let’s spread the bad around then, hence do our worst.

It’s quite been done to us.

Lay down in degradation and ruin while we very slowly kill you with bankruptcy, drugs, porn, crime, a truly comprehensive ruin –or you’re evil.

Hmm. Well. Let’s be Evil then.

In the way I suspect (albeit only suspect!) you mean, no – reason is not from G-d. Certainly the more man reasons – ceteris paribus – the less he likely acts well. Reasoning to some degree is unfortunately inevitable, given the universal degradation of humanity rendered by the original use of reason that led Eve to eat that apple. Man, in other words, is not immortal.

Prior to elaboration here are two quotes from a certain Joseph de Maistre:

“Human reason left to its own resources is completely incapable not only of creating but also of conserving any religious or political association, because it can only give rise to disputes and because, to conduct himself well, man needs beliefs, not problems. His cradle should be surrounded by dogmas; and, when his reason awakes, all his opinions should be given, at least all those relating to his conduct. Nothing is more vital to him than prejudices. Let us not take this word in bad part. It does not necessarily signify false ideas, but only, in the strict sense of the word, any opinions adopted without examination. Now, these kinds of opinion are essential to man; they are the real basis of his happiness and the palladium of empires. Without them, there can be neither religion, morality, nor government. There should be a state religion just as there is a state political system; or rather, religion and political dogmas, mingled and merged together, should together form a general or national mind sufficiently strong to repress the aberrations of the individual reason which is, of its nature, the mortal enemy of any association whatever because it gives birth only to divergent opinions.”

“The essence of all intelligence is to know and to love. The limits of knowledge are those of its nature. The immortal being learns nothing: he knows by nature everything he should know. On the other side, no intelligent being can love the bad naturally or by virtue of his nature; for this to be so, it would be necessary for God to have created man evil, which is impossible. If then man is subject to ignorance or evil, this can be only by virtue of some accidental degradation, which can be only the consequence of a crime. The need, the hunger for knowledge, which stirs man, is nothing but the natural tendency of his being that carries him toward his primitive state and shows him what he is.”

This hunger for knowledge is fundamentally different from the reason man inadvertently exercises in his actions, albeit man can rid himself of intentional reasoning no more easily than his evil proclivities, as both stem from his nature. Nevertheless, let us define two types of reason by fiat to get at the issue at hand.

Positive reason is used with respect to that which is; it is used unwittingly, humbly in order to do what one ought to do; reason is likely used more positively the less one is aware he is using it.

Normative reason is used with respect to that which should be; it is used intentionally, selfishly in order to assess what one ought to do; reason is likely used more normatively the more one is aware he is using it.

Rebellion is intrinsically an act of normative reason. Subjects, citizens, children, employees, slaves and subordinates rebel against authority for reasons of what they believe ought to be. Fear not, tender reader, for since the arc of the universe is long but bends towards justice, there is no insurrection so noble, good, or right that its full consequences are not eventually disorderly AKA bad.

Positive reason, insofar as it is free of normative reason’s corrosive effects, is if not good at least not bad.

Man deals less harm (both absolutely and proportionally) by communicating only insofar as is necessary to identify, contend with, act well based on what is – not what should be. (What should be is realized – by timeless intuition and in reality over time.) The “pure” engineer is a good example of this, since he – roughly speaking – communicates what ought to be only for the eventual purpose of delineating the pros and cons of courses of actions based on the constraints of what is. The sophist, in contrast, communicates what ought to be for any number of (often subconscious) reasons not directly pertaining to the subject of his words – hubris, social acceptance, demonstration of sexual market value, etc.

Examine human history. What good has ever come of human reason? Of argument? Although to fully answer such a question one must first recognize what is goodness, the disorder wrought by reason is so inherent and consistent that even one who denies the intrinsic value of intuition will notice a most pronounced trend: social order is a consequence of belief and submission, never reason or argument.

Was Pax Romana the result of reasoning, of experiment, of communication for the sake of communication? Or was it the result of fortuitous circumstances, great leaders, and religion and patriotism taking hold of and forging the very definition of an entire people?

A note on sophistry. As all action is exercise of power and all communication is action, the mere expression of opinion is not only the seeking of control but also – and therefore – the exercise of it. Thus, works of penmanship are works of swordsmanship and a definition of morality is immoral/amoral inasmuch as it is universally defined and/or meant to apply outside the bounds of the author’s recognized authority.

Those dogmas that entail thoroughly prescriptive judgments of that which ought to be, but that are sufficiently clothed in the descriptive garb of what is, comprise those beliefs sufficiently blind to stabilize society, for it is by assuming that reality must be as it is that reality becomes closer to what it should be.