The philosophy of Brexit and Globalism

These waves of unfocused nationalist anger are largely because globalism hadn't yet figured out how to manage the old systems, and avoid adverse side effects of such things as manufacturing outsourcing and condensation of business into international mega-corporations. As with the 2008 financial crisis there is basically a huge vacuum in which new globalist paradigms in economics and politics are proving ineffective. The failures are basically the same failures they've always been, on the state and national levels, but now it's seen as a failure of globalism since globalism has taken responsibility for just about everything.

The US financial system fucked up and in 2008 collapsed the markets, consequentially collapsing world markets due to massive global interconnection of economies. NATO fucked up with Eastern Europe and Putin, which has yet to fully explode but it will. China will increasingly work with Russia to form a regional currency stability against US and EU uncertainty. Meanwhile political failure in the US is crippling whole generations with student loan debts upwards of $50-100,000 a person, basically a capitalization of public good by the failure of politics to actually secure a reliable functioning education system, and a failure that is the primary driving force behind US economic woes today. The international capitalist investors and corporations move in and capitalize on these failures. It's similar to what I wrote about the modern anti-tax oligarchy: the cumulative effect of numerous small detriments and consequences from a society that doesn't believe in itself anymore, that has been politically gutted and is now owned by capitalist principle. In the same span that upper tax rates in the US (on multi millionaires and billionaires) plunged in half, rates on the third highest bracket of earners actually increased from 20 to 25%. Sales and property taxes have also gone through the roof, along with real inflation, all of it draining the economy and weakening the entire system, and all because of an essentially political failure. That political failure reflects a very low state of philosophical thinking in the general voting public. I see rising xenophobic nationalist reactive anger as basically a manifestation of this.

Humanity needs some kind of global systems, but it also needs the national and individual political will to regulate global systems against being overcome by pure capitalist principle. When globalism is run capitalistically we get all the negative consequences on the citizenry and economy, such as massive debt and austerity and unemployment in Europe, and student loans in the US, that drive reactive nationalistic outrage movements. Trump and other anti-politicians are capitalizing on this; only problem is, they are anti-politicians, they don't believe in politics... And it is a lack of politics that had led to this very situation we are in. Are these reactive, fear-mongering, xenophobic nationalistic anti-politicians and demagogues really going to fix a problem caused by a lack of true political will? Again, politics is simply a manifestation of underlying philosophical realities and ideas, or rather, of the lack of them.

People in the US want to be saved from global capitalism, and they are turning to Trump, an international billionaire capitalist, to save them... yeah. Good luck. The real problem is just that people don't want to think anymore; thinking is too difficult, quick emotional reaction and "outrage" is much simpler. The real answer is to improve the systems we have, with real politics which means with improved philosophies, not to scrap the entire project. If westerner civilization scraps the project of... western civilization... then what does it have left? Some power will always fill the global power vacuum, if western nations like US and UK want to suicide on the international scene then they will simply withdraw themselves from any kind of real influence in the world. But I can assure you then others will simply step in and take over than influence. Globalism isn't going anywhere, these are simply battles over if the people of western nations have what it takes to remain the primary human civilizations on this planet, to exert main political and philosophical cultural power in the human species. The U.K. has now answered clearly: no, they do not. Cowardice and fear rule the day, evidenced by the fact that it was mostly old people who voted for the UK to exit. The best that this can do is force globalism (which, again, isn't going anywhere) to find better forms and hopefully inspire new political (philosophical) will to shape globalism into something more truly human. But since the nationalists are non-political I won't hold my breath for nationalism to birth a new movement of better more truly human politics.

Admitting that I do not live in Europe so have an outsider's point of view on it, my general sentiment can be summed up in two points:

1) this present nationalistic sentiment espoused by Trump and others like him, including the sentiment behind the Brexit vote, to me seems just a kind of extreme emotional reaction and overblown fears over immigration, distortion of facts, and basically being whipped into a neo-religious frenzy of psychologism from demagogue anti-politicians who actually have no real solutions at all, and

2) that some form of globalized cooperatives among and between nations is an absolute philosophical imperative for the human species. Not only this, but these nationalistic movements in the west are simply expressions of the west voluntarily removing itself from having significant influence on world affairs, which means others like Russia and China become de facto far more prominent in those affairs, affairs that are nowadays primarily (psychological late capitalistic) economic ones. Capital will move where it moves, it has no allegiances to culture or civilization or historical thought or ideas, nor to values-- capital is a-valuational. Capital attaches itself to values because values attract capital; so what of these crypto-anarchic, isolationist nationalist movements we see in (anti)politics today? From the point of view of capital, these movements are simply decisions to remove the respective people and nation from the action of capital, which actions and which capital itself has always been and will always be fundamentally "global" (universalizing impetus) in nature.

Fixed Cross wrote:

It happens in France, Begium, Holland and Germany. These are all since WWII socialist regimes, who have, to win immigrant votes from the early 70's onward, done everything to make sure no muslim could ever be addressed in terms of the law when it comes do domestic affairs. I sound like Im exaggerating but I am hardly touching the surface. Imagine the pain everyone in those countries feels, the loathing they have been building up.

I think you should read about Islams history in Europe. They have been on the brink of overtaking the continent twice.
99 percent of muslims in Europe says they prefer Sharia over the constitutional democracy. No one knows what they really want,
including them, as it doesnt matter - if you dont say this, you get excommunicated directly.

I would, even as a Jew, prefer to live in nazi Germany over being born a muslim anywhere. It is pure mind-rape.
Of course we cant wage war on the religon. We can just maybe try not to fuck our own children over by unleashing
unlimited horrible psycholgical and physical violence on them in class and in the streets because we wish for muslims to eventually see that
they are wrong.

They wont ever see this. The religion has been growing without interruption. It is designed to be confirmed by everything anyone else does.
Most things we, you and I, hold dear is foridden in the Islamic world. If I would say that not a single philosophy book has appeared in the Islamic world for 800 years, and not a single fiction story, I might even be right. In any case the amount of books published in that world of a billion
is about a tenth of the output of Demnark, and all the books are about Islam.

Its like I said - the only reason Islam is being tolerated at all is that Europeans are too conservative to ever visit an Islamic home
or talk to a muslim. I, bein very much an exception, have learned quite a bit about how ideology is able to hijack a selfvaluing befor
consciousness has been born. All muslims are slaves, and will be for the rest of their lives. It's their form of love. They will not deny it.
And I say it's fucking beautiful in the desert, among totally Arabian Arabs. It is the Ottomans and the Persians that did something unspeakable to it.

Arabs were never a problem for the European world - even their invasions in Spain were to our benefit. In those days Islam was still an indigenous, value-based thing. Now... now it's just the manifestation of the potential for perversity. Make no mistake, it is very possible that the world will simply grow perverse and sting itself to death. It often happens with self-valuings. It is a matter of whether we recognize the drives that lust after death and blindless for what they are, and are willing to condemn that. THe latter is the problem. It takes formidable will power, thus self-valuing, exceptionally consistent standards, to actively outdo that drive once it has set in. And it has set in, as soon as we undid all our centuries of bloodshed to rid us of the Father God by inviting god in all anew.
You are right, what we can do for the religion is show better standards.
But this certainly means being explicity about these standards.
And this is simply a risk virtually no one in Holland, Germany, Scandinavia is willing to take.
Lets not forget that everyone who speaks out against Islam in politics in Holland is under plocie protection and lives in secret locations. Or that satiricist comic artists get nightly visits from massive SWAT teams, and stop drawing and go in recluse. It's all about how Islam influences daily life for people. Where Amsterdam used to be gay-safe, now holding hands for gays in public is risking the integrity of their skull.

Most muslims that I know are deeply civilized, where they care for it. But self-consciousness-wise, they are simply not what we would call human. They do not endorse self-reflection.

I assume you think I exaggerate. I wish I could recommend spending some time in Islamic practice and countries as I did. But I would sooner recommend converting to the flying spagetti monster, which is harmless bullshit, than to get close to this strange coercive aesthetic neurosis.

Now that I have the fuller benefit of the information and perspectives offered by FC on this issue, more specifically Muslim immigration to Europe and how this is impacting things there, I have been processing at a deeper level and come up with a startling discovery:

There is a categorical disabsolution between two critical momentous terms in the massive existential equation:

(What I mean by disabsolution is that it is impossible to properly absolve either term when the other is present to it)

Term 1: Wester Civilization, its values, ideals; reason, the history of thought, the Greeks, medieval European evolutions of Christianity, liberal secular enlightenment; technology, science, freedom, equality, valuing the mind, self-consciousness, progress over time, knowledge; ethics, the Self.

Term 2: Islam with respect to its mass immigration into European societies (not necessarily Islam "itself", but the total effect and logic it has upon those societies into which it immigrates en mass).


Notice that Term 2 is a conditional re-framing of Islam into the modern context whereby its mass immigration into non-Islamic countries causes changes to both Islam and those host societies. What is interesting about Term 2 is that we see there is a buried logical potentiation within Islam itself, a kind of 'switch' that in most cases isn't flipped but in certain cases becomes flipped over. This switch has two setting, A and B; A is the standard typical normalized religiosity that establishes individual and local codes and generally seeks by necessity and is able to fit into larger extra-local codes and norms with relative success, this applies to most religions including Islam, and B is where the religion breaks down into being categorically unable to process outside codes and impossible to conform itself relatively to the larger extra-local contexts and norms, so that breakdowns occur. Breakdowns can be initiated both within the smaller isolate religious code as well as within the larger societal non-religious code.

If FC is correct in his observations about Europe today, then Islam has been flipped from A to B. This happened due to the simply quantitative pressure of immigration into European societies that did not contain the adequate means of absolving the growing fractures and code misalignments that occur with immigration. Stress was initiated into the systems; that stress was not addressed, but only added to over time; now we have the situation where stress is so large that tectonic ruptures have occurred, if European societies were a living biological organism then we would say that many small and increasingly significant health detriments have occurred such that now a full-blown disease is present. The organism cannot cure itself of the disease, such as say with cancer, the immune system has simply been out-paced and cannot return the organism to health.

I think this situation must exist right now in a still relatively small segment of European societies, probably pushed to the extreme in only a few countries and even in those only in a few of the main urban areas. This is my hypothesis anyway; it isn't as if the entire body needs to get cancer every where to get seriously sick, one small incidence of true cancer can be enough to wreck its total health.

Anyway, if we take Terms 1 and 2 and look at them in their own nature, to their cores, what we find is that there is no possible reconciliation or synthesis between them. It is possible for a "term 2" Islam to reconcile to Term 1, but only if it remains a term (lowercase 't') and not a Term. Now that it has become and is becoming a (capital 'T') Term it becomes impossible for integrations between Term 1 and 2 to be achieved. This results in breakdowns along growing categorical fault-lines.

Note that it is still quite possible for individual Muslims, even for very many of them, to integrate successfully into European or US societies, even despite moving from term 2 to Term 2. But the issue isn't whether or not a given number of individual people can be reconciled and absolved into the larger context of the host society, that is irrelevant once we have a full-blown Term 2 situation. Now the real issue is that it doesn't matter if many or even most Muslims can hypothetically integrate peacefully and productively with the host society, because Term 2 has become a over-coding system that re-writes actual flows and determines pressures and outcomes beyond the scope of any number of individual people's success stories to cumulatively overcome.

It comes down to a simple issue of quantity, not quality: The sheer quantity of immigrants has tipped the scales, and now the quality of the immigrants themselves doesn't matter. Thus we have the "categorical disabsolution" that I mentioned, the fact that reconciliation is no longer possible. This subtler fact represents a serious thorn in the side of Term 1, because modern liberal western capitalist scientific rational humanist society stands upon a pillar of quality over quantity: the pillar that proclaims the value that it is rational to judge and evaluate individuals first and groups second, that the individual should be given preference in moral and ontic matters and be free to self-determine. This pillar and value is undermined by the fact that the Islam immigration issue has moved from a simple term to a full-blown Term 2 situation.

The western rational enlightenment value of equality, freedom and individuality is no longer functioning properly. This has provoked a failure within Term 1 itself, which can be seen by the fact that it is impossible to criticize Islamic immigration from within Term 1 unless other Term 1 values are also compromised and thrown out the window, which is to say that any critical flows within Term 1 pointed at Term 2 naturally tend to become counter-valuing forces to other values in Term 1, they become ultra-nationalistic for example, implicitly fascist, exclusionist, group-focused in some cases and individual-focused in others, and essentially self-inconsistent. In other words, in order to truly address the full Term 2 problem it is required to compromise the value-pillar mentioned above, but only in certain instances that apply to Term 2 and not to any other instances. And yet this kind of selective discernment and differentiation can only be interpreted within Term 1 normality as a kind of irrationality and "racism".

The full nature of the situation of Term 2 and what this means to Term 1 must be understood, in order to allow for exceptions to typical Term 1 functioning such as to construct new means of addressing directly the problems associated to term2-->Term2. Term 2 threatens Term 1 in a serious way, if FC is correct (this entire analysis is based upon the assumption that FC is correct in his observations and conclusions, and certainly I am not in a place to claim he is not correct on these). Therefore what we call nationalist, extreme right wing isolationist or xenophobic, "racist" (yes I know that Islam isn't a race) and fascist type emotional responses and tendencies must be seen through the lens of Term 1 naturally trying to cultivate the exception-strength and "selective discernment and differentiation" power needed to address real Term 2 problems without compromising too much its own Term 1 values. This is going to be a difficult and lengthy process of refining these responses and tendencies. Trump and other right-wing nationalist figures and movements in the US and Europe, with Brexit being among these, are all part of this overall trend of trying to refine the selective discernment and differentiation capacity for the sake of being able to take on Term 2 problems within a context of Term 1 allegiance. The fact that these figures and movements are as-yet largely unrefined is provoking hostile counter-responses from Term 1 figures and movements, since it tests the pillars and values of Term 1 by introducing small contradictions into them, by forcing them to move from universalizing principle to a perspective requiring specific determinations. So I need to amend my point 1 in the previous post, as to the emotional reactive and un-thinking nature of Trump-like sentiments: these may manifest in this emotional reactive and un-thinking way, but are in fact broken-off flows from the larger Flows of Term 1 attempting to refine itself in the presence of a hostile Term 2 situation. The fact that the "un-thinking" emotionalism is still so important to these new Trumpian/Brexitian flows is only a consequence of the fact that the full hostile threat of Term 2 hasn't been clearly and consciously articulated in such a way that would allow these evolving-refining flows within Term 1 to elevate themselves to a more cognitive self-aware and rational status. So the emotionalism and reactionary quality of these small flows shouldn't be the determining factor in how we judge those flows, since after all it is only a consequence of a larger failure of philosophy, the failure of philosophy to explain and edify clearly the real Term 1 situation and the real Term 2 situation. Islam is still attempting to be included universally within Term 1, despite that Islam has moved into an irreconcilable situation full-blown Term 2 that can only be a kind of remainder in Term 1 operations.

Naturally the solution would be to reduce the quantity of immigrants so that Term 2 goes back to being a term 2. However, this isn't possible since even if new immigration were stopped the existing immigrants are already here and already comprise a Term 2 situation.

Not only this, but the challenge to Term 1 values which this new situation represents only increases Term 1 allegiance: for example, France renewed its commitment to taking large numbers of Muslim refugees after the Paris terrorist attacks. This strong allegiance to its own Term 1 is posing a problem because the drive for universal self-consistency forces out otherwise rational responses -- it would be natural to realize, in the aftermath of such terrorist attacks, that the sheer number of refugee/Muslim immigrant situation is untenable in their European society, however this realization is interpreted as an abandonment of Term 1 values and so is rejected in favor of doubling down on Term 1 "at all costs", namely to reject the realization of the problem that Term 2 is posing. The more terrorist attacks occur, the stronger will this elements within Term 1 allegiance double down on itself and accuse others who align to the realization of being "racist", abandoning western values and ideals, etc. This is basically the extreme end of liberal-leftist political correctness today.

This double bind needs to be broken. The right-wing nationalist movements and trends are an unconscious attempt within Term 1 to break the double bind. If the situation of Term 2 continues to get worse and lead to further terrorist attacks, economic problems, etc., which it probably will, then the right-wing trends are going to increase and more Brexit-like outcomes will occur, putting pressure on the double bind. If the double bind breaks (this will happen when the pressure on the bind increase to the point where political power and voter sentient on the side of the right-wing anti-(universal) Term 1 allegiance side outweighs that universal allegiance side) then new radical solutions will be introduced, such as building large walls, stopping immigration, deporting people, increase in hate crimes against immigrants, passing new laws restricting Islamic expressions in public, adding more police on the streets, cutting funding for social services aimed at helping immigrants, etc. etc.

If/when this happens the end result might be to finally be able to bring down the sheer quantity of immigrants such that Term 2 fades back into a term 2, after which Term 1 society can being going about picking up the pieces of itself. This is a very dangerous situation, though, and could result in total collapse of the EU, even all out war within Europe. In any case, the extreme and unrefined right-wing elements that end up taking power during this process are not simply going to want to give that power up once the Term 2 situation has been resolved. These elements will have served their larger purpose within the historical process for Term 1, but since the elements remain mostly unconscious and are simply being used by that historical process they are not going to be able to recognize when they are no longer needed. Hitler for example was a manifestation of an unconscious historical process (of equalizing imbalances between post-WW1 Germany and the rest of Europe) but that manifestation got away from itself. The manifestation always tries to self-value to its fullest extent, which is how it becomes able to be used for purposes larger than itself, how it becomes a reliable tool for larger world-historical forces that simply make use of these tools (people, movements, etc.), and yet there is always over-reach since the tool is not conscious of what is happening and simply thinks it has re-written the entire playbook in its own terms.

The danger is that the necessity of these new elements and flows within Term 1 needing to refine over time to break the double bind and address the Term 2 problem is going to open the floodgate to new Hitler-like self-valuings that coordinate and get out of hand. Thus it is very important to keep the focus on Term 1 as much as possible, to limit the power of these new flows and to make sure it is known that they play only a secondary role to Term 1. We must apply philosophy to make sure it is understood that these Trump, Brexit, etc. flows within Term 1 are not seen as categorically upsetting the existing order within Term 1 nor are they confused with being Term 1 itself. The difference between these flows and the larger Flows within Term 1 should always be noted, the irreconcilations and exceptions involved never shoved into non-recognition. This requires that we elevate ourselves from the convenience of typical universalizing synthesizing valuing to a more situations-focused perspective that can deal with exceptions and contradictions without feeling like it is abandoning the totality of itself in the process.

If anyone else has any proposed solutions to the Term 2 problem, please post them here so we can examine them.


Now, I just realized there is another sense in which Term 1 needs to be distinguished from Term 2 with respect to the effects on Term 1 itself: any kind of radical right-wing nationalist increase within Term 1 is going to threaten Term 1 itself, but since coming from within Term 1 (western civilization and its values) is going to exert a self-critical influence for Term 1, resulting in an eventual uplift for Term 1 overall. This is what happened with Hitler, for example, it didn't matter how much of a threat he posed to existing Term 1 because since he was always-already himself from within Term 1 the end result was a self-critical eventual uplift in Term 1 itself. This doesn't apply to Term 2's effect on the eventuality of Term 1, however, since Term 2 (the situation of Islam and Muslim immigration en mass into Europe) does not come from within Term 1 we cannot say that any threat posed to Term 1 by Term 2 is necessarily going to exert a similarly self-critical effect. In other words, it is much harder for a Hitler to truly and seriously damage/destroy western civilization and its values that it would be for radical Islam and its mass immigration into Europe to achieve this. Although again this point isn't Islam-specific, and would apply to any potentially threatening situation that is itself not rooted always-already from within Term 1 itself. This means that while we should be wary of extreme right-wing nationalists, we should be even more wary of anything threatening on that scale that isn't existentially rooted within western society and history already.

It should of course be stated clearly that sovereignty and national self-determination are cornerstone values and human rights. This is a point Parodites made to me, and I agree with it. If the EU threatens national sovereignty of its member states, such as by imposing laws or officials that sit over nation states and which those nation state's people cannot remove by vote, then that is a violation of sovereignty and self-determination. It seems that the strong argument can be made that the EU has indeed constituted this violation or significant threat of violating nation state sovereignty and the right of the people to self-determine.

If anyone else from Europe or with knowledge or experience there can weigh in on this issue that would be helpful.

Bottom line: is it possible for the issue to be reframed in the facts that 1) western societies should support immigration and religious inclusion and tolerance as a general rule, but 2) the specific situation of Muslim immigrants into certain European countries is posing a potentially fatal problem to those countries due to the sheer quantity of immigrants.

Yes, it is possible to reframe it like this. I think this reframing is necessary.

So we now have a few certainties on this issue of Brexit and possible exit of other EU states. We have points 1 and 2 above about the reframing, and we also have the point (I'll call it point 3) that the self-determination and political sovereignty of a people as their nation-state system is a core value; any globalism (and I still see that some degree of globalism is necessary and inevitable) that we accept must also be built around the respect for sovereignty and self-determination.

Point 4 would then be this idea that right-wing extreme nationalists such as Trump are merely embodying unconsciously a larger historical force and reaction response to the fact of point 2 above. Further stipulated to point 4 is the speculative idea that these nationalists cannot inflict any serious and permanent damage upon western civilization simply because the nationalists are elements from within western civilization already and therefore provide a self-critical function, a delimitation of sorts. But this stipulation to point 4 is speculative and I need to think more about it. Anyone's thoughts on the matter would be helpful.

Points 1-4.... Does this clear up the ground and premises on which we can now re-think the issue of Brexit and Muslim immigration anew?