The previous post.

The only ethos of service permitted under liberalism is the military.  The geek-technocratic need for clarity, for private reason, contradictions ignored that need to be open and negotiated, makes things even more dangerous. All contradictions are externalized, expunged from the ideologically defined non-contradictory self.

Reason divorced from obligation to anything but itself is a form of self-interest. Identifying with the absolute as if you could become the absolute by force of will is the theater, performance art, of scientism. I once asked a Marine on a milblog whether he was a soldier first or citizen. His response was "Semper Fi"

"The Churchlands are like Puritan believers in predestination who nonetheless dress simply and with the utmost [predetermined?] false modesty to demonstrate that they're among the elect."

One afternoon recently, Paul says, he was home making dinner when Pat burst in the door, having come straight from a frustrating faculty meeting. “She said, ‘Paul, don’t speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my brain is awash in glucocorticoids, my blood vessels are full of adrenaline, and if it weren’t for my endogenous opiates I’d have driven the car into a tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting. Pour me a Chardonnay, and I’ll be down in a minute.’ ”

For instance, both he and Pat like to speculate about a day when whole chunks of English, especially the bits that constitute folk psychology, are replaced by scientific words that call a thing by its proper name rather than some outworn metaphor. Surely this will happen, they think, and as people learn to speak differently they will learn to experience differently, and sooner or later even their most private introspections will be affected. Already Paul feels pain differently than he used to: when he cuts himself shaving now he feels not “pain” but something more complicated-first the sharp, superficial A-delta-fibre pain, and then, a couple of seconds later, the sickening, deeper feeling of C-fibre pain that lingers. 

It's all the same shit.