[FRIAM] [[Narcissism Again]again]

[Nick Thompson]

Hi everybody, 

 

I kind of got buried by the list last week, but we seem to keep coming back
to this topic, even when we are  talking about globalism.  

 

So.  Let me just share one thought.  I have said a hundred times that I
think the great achievement of the Right in my life time has been to
problematize (Ugh!) the Deweyan consensus of the 1950's  One of the elements
of that consensus was that there is a truth of most matters and if we gather
inclusively, talk calmly, reason closely, study carefully, investigate
rigorously,  we will, together , come to it.  What was, at the time of my
coming of age, the shared foundation of argument, became over last 50 years,
a position in the argument.  The alternative to this Deweyan position seems
to be something like, "There is no truth of the matter; there is only the
exercise of power.  He who wins the argument, by whatever means, wins the
truth.  Truth is not something that is arrived at; it is won."

 

So.  My sense of trump is that in fact, he is not lying.  On the contrary,
he does not share the view of discourse that makes lying a possibility.
>From Trump's point of view, "Whatever I can win with is true."  Hence, if he
wins with what we call "a lie", it is true.  

 

I feel we are straying along the edge of some Nietzschean chasm here.
Unfortunately  I haven't read any Nietzsche .  A brief rummage in Wikipedia,
led me to The Parable of the Madman
<http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/nietzsche-madman.asp> . And THAT led me
to wonder if the TV Series, Madmen <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men> ,
about marketing execs in the 60's, was written with Nietzsche in mind.  In
any case, if there is ever a domain in which the truth is that which wins,
it would be marketing.  

 

So, if we are going to counter Trump, it cannot be by demonstrating that he
lies.  It has to be by demonstrating that liars don't win.  

 

Heavy lift. 

 

Nick 

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

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