Severed Conscience DocumentarySevered Conscience is a weapon against our minds. It locks into a reactive state, and this state is an anathema to a mind like Jefferson or Aristotle.
Sovereignty Of The Mind is Not Found in AI nor Hegelian / Marxist Sophistry
Our society was founded upon the principle of the individual being able to actualize their potential, and that was achieved by providing a framework of rights were respected and held sacred above the needs to factions and the majority. A republic, which was representation of many by a few to form a majority, was not the final form that the Constitution granted. The Founding Fathers understood and acted to preserve the rights of the individual as fundamental to the functioning of this new form of government. It was beyond republicanism, it was an entirely new form of government and society.
The individual, as Jefferson and others understood, was not just allowed to perform whatever acts that they willed. This new society would require that institutions would provide the means for individuals to understand and communicate their rights. And they MUST act in accordance with their responsibility to ensure rights of all citizens were maintained.
Today we have forces that wish to erase this rich heritage from our culture. The forces come in the form of technology, there is a great promise of entirely different life online with countless people who support your viewpoints. There is the promise of information and access to wisdom at your finger tips.
This is collectivized thinking, it is The Wisdom Of The Crowds on Steroids. It is collectivism for you and me while a caste of technocrats perch above us, watch, and guide us. Like the Watchmakers describe in Show Notes: Who Watches The Watchmakers, these guardians steer us. They don’t guide us, the drive for us, the deliver us to entities and interests whose goal is to use us, perhaps to change society permanently.
A is A
For Aristotle, self fulfillment and self improvement were at the center of a virtuous life. Of primary importance was above all, the pursuit of truth through the use of reason. A government, society or regime were considered “good” that fostered those characteristics.
https://digitalshowcase.lynchburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1177&context=utcp
He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1101a10)
political friendship (politikē philia), specifically, as a central feature of what makes a good regime. It, in short, is generative to harmony and like- mindedness (homonoia) among citizens, and thus helps to sustain the peaceful self-governance of the regime. Political friendship, in tandem with a virtuous citizenry with well-aimed civic practices, makes possible the self-governance — and the living well — of citizens
Use of reason recognizes a very important thing: contradictions are the mind killer. Clear thinking strives to remove contradictions. That means “A is A, and never A is Not A”. 3 is always 3 and never 4 at the same time.
This simple rule, when employed, frees the mind. It is central to being able to think rationally. It is central to being able to recognized characteristics. Exercising this one principle leads to prudence, the ability to govern, regulate, disciple or arbitrate for one’s self.
Aristotle uses the term happiness as describing the well being of person, but the term happiness has a different connotation today. Aristotle considered happiness as fulfillment and contentment.
We have discussed several times how collectivism and the thinking of Hegelian Marxism takes us away from making such distinctions. For the Marxist, there is an ever present evolution of meaning since new things will be revealed. This means, that the individual is not left to think for themselves, because those engaged in the best thought may have something new to impart. Marxism, and post modern thought, instills a stasis as more information is constantly needed. Being open the evolution of facts is a prerequisite for the modern thinker.
Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson thought that people must be fortified with the ability to make decisions. While may say that this is discernment, it really is simpler than that. People need to be able to determine what those things are that are important to their lives, and what helps them live a relationship with the Creator.
“I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness.”
“because political power followed property ownership, a virtuous republic must have an economically independent citizenry and general equality… in moderate wealth” (Sheldon 1991, 74).
Jefferson to believed that a pursuit of your free will was what God had intended for man to fulfill his role as intended.
For Jefferson, an Enlightenment rationalist, reason had to govern in all areas, including religion. “For the use of … reason… every one is responsible to the God who has planted it in his breast, as a light for his guidance, and that, by which alone he will be judged,” Jefferson explained.[2] His declaration to Benjamin Rush that “I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man,” was made in the context of religious freedom: any government effort to control religious beliefs was “tyranny over the mind of man.”
As James Madison explained, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom “is a true standard of Religious liberty: its principle the great barrier agst. usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is respected & no longer, these will be safe.”
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
[Whereas] Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power
Ability over Pedigree
“natural aristocracy among men,” is grounded in superior demonstrations of virtues and intellectual talents (to John Adams, October 28, 1813). This natural aristocracy is
fundamentally different from the “artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents…
Jefferson’s system of education was thus designed to raise “the mass of the people to the high ground of moral respectability necessary to their own safety, and to orderly government…
A Walk Offline and Severed Conscience
To gain dominion over yourself, you need to decouple and respect the inner voice that will emerge when you walk alone. How many times do we walk alone – if we are preoccupied we may not receive the dispensation that is being sent to us.
Severed Conscience is a state of mind where an individual’s thinking has been so stunted by technology that the ability to exercise rational thinking, to recognize the “A” in “A is A” is lost. You are trapped in a cycle of reaction that prevents you from exercising your reasoning faculties. Our brains and nervous system is wired to accept information on the conscious and subconscious levels, and social media aims to affect change in our thinking by entertaining and enraging over and over, playing with our dopamine cycle until we become addicted to the highs and lows of the infinite scroll, the delight of new information or the outrage witnessing an act antithetical to your values. AI and algorithms are used by social media to study triggers you in positive and negative ways, then entice you into remaining engaged online. Trauma is the trigger for you to enter that state.