Words can be stretched, or
even abused, in the service of a self-serving ideology that is utterly unfair
to other people as well as stubborn facts. Nietzsche theorized that ideas are
the stuff of instinctual urges tussling for supremacy in the human mind. Against
Kant’s love of the fixed laws of reason for their own sake, I submit that Nietzsche’s
tussle of ideas can bend even the laws of reason, like the gravity of large masses
can bend space (and thus light) and time. The basic framework of the universe
is not static. Neither, I believe, are the rules of reason, and reasoning
itself. Intense power, such as that of an ideology, can warp both the basic
framework and process of reason. This can explain why ideologues can be seen by
others to suffer from cognitive dissidence: holding two contradictory beliefs
at the same time. A defense mechanism of ideology can block awareness of one of
the two. Self-serving applications of the word, national, is a case in point.
The full essay is at "National Absurdity."
