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notebook on liberalism and obsolesence

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> *These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.* -- Planned Parenthood v Casey, US Supreme Court, 1992 (O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter) > *These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.* -- Planned Parenthood v Casey, US Supreme Court, 1992 (O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter)
We have obliterated The One, and subsumed him into ourselves. We all now live in self-styled universes, each of our own creation, where we can tailor not only our surroundings, but customize to arbitrary will, our very nature as beings, including the boutique mangling of the human body itself to suit one's taste in the moment; and if some prognosticators are correct, the eventual transplantation of raw identity (dare I say, the soul) into any physical container one desires. We have obliterated The One, and subsumed him into ourselves. We all now live in self-styled universes, each of our own creation, where we can tailor not only our surroundings, but customize to arbitrary will, our very nature as beings, including the boutique mangling of the human body itself to suit one's taste in any given moment; and if some prognosticators are correct, the eventual power to transplant raw identity (dare I say, soul) into any vessel one desires.
But as I said before, Gods are very jealous things. They do not tolerate plurality well, and the liberation of the human will and its ascendance to Godhood is coming at a great cost. The whole of the twentieth century was a constant oscillation between this ecstatic individualism, and reactionary totalitarian collectivism, as so-called liberals and progressives fought over who would define the new *telos* for man. For, now that we are no longer taking our cues from nature, or the divine Godhead, we are free to invent our own purposes. And invent we do. And then war over it. In the midst of all of this, in 1938, Liberal philosopher Jacques Maritain had this to say about what was going on: But as I said before, Gods are very jealous things. They do not tolerate plurality well, and the liberation of the human will and its ascendance to Godhood is coming at a great cost. The whole of the twentieth century was a constant oscillation between this ecstatic individualism, and reactionary totalitarian collectivism, as so-called liberals and progressives fought over who would define the new *telos* for man. For, now that we are no longer taking our cues from nature, or the divine Godhead, we are free to invent our own purposes. And invent we do. And then war over it. In the midst of all of this, in 1938, Liberal philosopher Jacques Maritain had this to say about what was going on: