In listening to the very beginning of FDR podcast 70 in my second (or is it third? two-and-a-half?) run-through of Real-Time Relationships, I’m struck by just how important epistemology is.

It’s not that I didn’t think it was important before, but I didn’t really get just how important it was.

The thing about epistemology is that everybody you meet has an epistemology. That is, everybody has a belief about how we come to know what it is we know.

My gut tells me that epistemologies rarely, if ever, change. I’m not sure if I can square that with the fact that I used to believe in gods and devils (but I will try! ), except to say that I never really believed in those things at all despite trying my absolute hardest to do so for years and years… until I finally gave up.

It was absolute torture for me to continue believing in things I couldn’t see, especially when all my conceptions of Invisible Things were always cruel, harsh, sadistic, punitive, terrifying, invasive…

But there are billions of people around the world–nearly the whole world, in effect–that do believe in these things, these ghosts, these holdovers from a brutal history. Their epistemology centers around a fundamental rejection of reality. I don’t think that but a handful of those people can challenge their epistemology which, when taken collectively, is centered around a fundamental rejection of reality.

Of course, these billions of people eat, sleep, procreate, use language, intuitively understand physical laws, etc. It’s a rare individual that believes he can fly by leaping off of a cliff–that would be a very short flight indeed!

So where does this anti-reality epistemology come into play?

It would be impossible to live for very long if you did not believe that air, water, or food was necessary for survival, and most people have this down to the best of their ability.

Most people, though somewhat fewer, also accept abstracted forms of reality–scientific laws and theories which have given rise to an unparalleled quality of life compared to all of human history. It is difficult to reject these abstractions since they are so useful and predict reality so accurately that even if you believed reality was a dream, the physical law within the “dream” is accurate as far as you know.

It is the area between the lowest basics and the highest abstractions that this anti-reality epistemology rears its ugly head. This is the space where laws of reality and causality and just about everything else we observe about the world gets turned completely on its head.

As discussed in Universally Preferable Behavior, this area is called “The Null Zone.”

This Null Zone is used to justify all kinds of evils and atrocities, labeling what we would consider “evil” in any other context as “good.” Parents can beat their children but would severely punish their children for beating them. Government officials can point a gun at you and demand half of your income and nobody says “boo”, but if you did the same thing to your neighbor, you would be roundly castigated as immoral–as well you should be.

There are all kinds of justifications put forward as to why these reversals of morality are valid, but they do not withstand scrutiny. As an example, take a look at this 5-minute refutation of the social contract.

After listening to the Nihilism series at FDR (Video and Bronze+ podcasts), I realized that I was at least something of a nihilist, in practice, without even knowing it.

The event I point to is the Sunday show right after Universally Preferable Behavior came out, in which I basically said of the book, “It’s nice,” or “It’s interesting.” I remember that feeling excitement (or, rather, anything) about the book was difficult, and it took me a number of months before I finally had a moment where it suddenly made sense, consciously.

Prior to FDR (and certainly for a while afterwards), I basically lived in a world where there were no absolutes, everything was opinion, and everything was a sales job. I just don’t think I had quite intellectualized it to that point, but was just living from moment to moment at that time. That is, I couldn’t explain why I didn’t believe, I just didn’t. When challenged, I seized.

The religiosity in my past was exceptionally nihilistic in terms of my desire for moral behavior being used to control and attack me, and though I hadn’t intellectualized it, I definitely put morality into an entirely relativistic category. As part of my deconversion from Christianity, I took my cues about behaving morally from the parts of my culture that I liked (which included “sex is not sinful” but also “taxation is moral, but not too much”).

Of course, the moral relativism wasn’t borne completely out of religiosity as my parents were not overtly religious my entire life. My father only became overtly religious at some point in my mid-childhood, in which the whole set of moral rules suddenly changed. Now, attending church was “good,” not wanting to attend church was “bad,” where before there was no moral category regarding attending church whatsoever.

There are more examples but I am a bit pressed for time at the moment. Thanks for reading!