“I’m plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.” – Dr Stockmann (in Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People)
Contra Mundum is a handbook for all those who think there is something fundamentally wrong with the world. The ancient Gnostics claimed that the world was actually created and ruled by the Devil (the Demiurge), hence why everything is so hideous, unfair and horrific.
Modern Gnostics (Illuminists) assert that the problem with the world is that it’s ruled by the forces of unreason rather than reason, by Mythos rather than Logos, by silly story-based religions rather than mathematics, philosophy and science.
People are in thrall to their feelings, senses and mystical intuitions, and regard reason and logic as “unreal”, “abstract”, and boring. Everywhere, rationalism is under assault. Empiricism and relativism are all-conquering.
Science is useless without mathematics (rationalism), yet proclaims itself the quintessence of empiricism. It claims to be in the business of explaining the universe, but cannot explain what mathematics is ontologically, and why an empirical subject is worthless without the quintessential rationalist subject (mathematics).
Science is all about experiments, but would achieve nothing without mathematics, which doesn’t use experiments at all. Not a single scientist in history has addressed this fundamental contradiction. Remove math from science and you go back to Aristotelianism, alchemy and divination. Why is it mathematical non-empiricism that uniquely elevates an empirical subject such as science into something useful?
This book also addresses the new irrationalist religions that have appeared of late ... such as Discordianism, the gospel of relativism and subjectivism, much-favoured by internet trolls seeking to sow discord wherever they go.
The world is in a terrible mess, but it can certainly be fixed ... via reason. Reason, however, is that against which the world has turned its face. Reason is contra mundum, and so are all rational and logical people. They are having to endure a madhouse where reason and logic are despised. Humanity refuses to be cured. It loves madness too much. No sane person would be anything other than contra mundum.
