Monday, February 26, 2007

Planet of the Apes of God: The Subhuman Agenda of the Stick-Wielding Kosmonkeys (2.28.09)

I have a feeling that we'll be staying with this arc of salvation business for a while. However, like the course of exterior history -- which is the arc's shadow in the herebelow -- we may jump around a bit, up and down, back and forth, in and out. For one thing, I can only write things as they occur to me, as none of this has been thought out in advance. Furthermore, dwelling within it simultaneously brings it into being.

Not to spark another debate about the Trinity, but another universal trinity as it pertains to man's spiritual development is that of purification, realization, and union. Whatever your basketball tradition, this is the form of the path to the bucket (as Big Chief Triangle might say).

Perhaps these three phases can also tell us something about our collective history, which -- let's face it -- is either a process that is leading somewhere, or complete horizontal chaos onto which we simply superimpose fanciful patterns. Obviously I believe the former is true; and in fact, one of man's prerogatives -- one of the things that defines him as man -- is the ability to think historically. In other words, prior to this or that particular history is the intuition of absolute history itself.

Speaking of which, Dupree alerted me to the most appallingly fatuous piece of scientistic gobshite on dailykos the other day. If anyone wants to know why I so despise the secular left -- why it is the mortal enemy of the Coon way of life -- perusing this infrahuman dispatch from the bowels of metaphysical ignorance would serve as well as any, for it reveals the ultimate premise and goal of the left in all its hideously naked barbarity, which is to turn man into a beast. Entitled Science Friday: You Are Not That Special, it reads,

"a pair of recent articles point up the folly of making tool use the test of humanity. It appears that chimpanzees had their own 'stone age.' Around the same time the pyramids were being constructed in Egypt, Chimps in West Africa were using stone tools to get at hard-shelled nuts. It's not only chimpanzees of the past who use tools. It's long been known that some bands of modern chimps use sticks to tease insects from their hives."

There, you see? This ignoramus looks at the vast panorama of creation and concludes that one of the seven wonders of the world is indistinguishible from a hungry monkey cracking open a nut. By this adamantine logic, Kos himself is nothing more than a grubby chimp poking his joystick into a cyberhole to satisfy his animal impulses. Which, of course, is entirely true.

The self-confessed monkey in question then asks,

duh, "how can you draw the line between us and them? Emotions? Language? The answer is that you can't. There are no lines. Deeply unsatisfying as it is to the desire to group items into black and white (a tendency also not limited to humans), all the answers of science are grey."

Oh, really? What could be more black and white than suggesting that there is absolutely no distinction between animals and human beings? For example, even my dog knows better than this. Frankly she is in awe of Dear Leader and his magical powers -- indeed, even of Future Leader and the mysterious Trail of Food he leaves in his wake.

The stick-wielding kosmonkey then presumes to inform humans -- but how would he know? -- that "Your species is not that special. Reading the text of paleontology and history, there is no bold message of certainty. Winding back the clock reveals no inexorable march in our direction, or even the triumph of 'better' over 'worse'.... [H]uman history has been defined as much by fortuitous placement of natural resources as it has been by human action. You're the tail end of the tail end of a process that much more closely resembles random chance than progress toward an objective."

Furtherless, "Your world is not that special. Your planet is not located at the center of the universe. Neither is your star, or your galaxy. Perhaps most disturbing at all, as telescopes have revealed to us the enormity of space, both astronomy and geology have revealed the breathless expanse (sic) of time. We are not just insignificantly small items living in a vast ocean of space; we're living in a moment so brief that it's barely a single tick of a clock that's already run through millennia without us, and will not pause when we are gone."

I don't mean to dwell on this moronic diatribe, but it is important. Don't worry, we're almost done. The beast finishes poking his verbal stick into the dirt by saying,

"No, you are not that special. And yet, you are a wonder, absolutely unique and irreplaceable. Your species is a wonder, gifted with physical and mental resources that provide boundless opportunity. Your planet is a wonder, swarming with life in infinite variety and complexity. Your universe is a wonder, based on laws so precisely balanced that the slightest variation in any of them might have caused everything -- space, time, and everything that moves through both -- to never have appeared."

Let's de-deconstruct this vacuous elegy to nothingness for just a moment, since it does such a good job of articulating the satanic agenda of the left, and presents such a perfect mirror image of the Coon view of creation -- the arc of salvation.

According to Valentin Tomberg, all evolutionary progress in the vertical is accompanied by a sort of shadow version in the lower vertical. (Catholics know full well, for example, that the shadow of evil unavoidably entered the church with its inception; likewise, it is not a coincidence that Marx was the son -- or grandson, anyway -- of a rabbi, being that he crafted what can only be called the ultimate "reverse-sinai revelation"; similarly, most of the "new age" is a perverse reflection of certain primordial truths that are only now coming into full flower in the collective vertical.)

Will has referrred to this as the "ape of God" -- not "ape" in the animal sense, but in terms of aping, or imitating. It would be perfectly accurate to say -- and all true theologians know this -- that leftism itself is the ape of the primordial doctrine. It is not analogous to, say, paganism, which, as Will has pointed out, had its role in the arc of salvation. After all, religion had to start somewhere, as does any developmental process. It only becomes pathological if the developmental process becomes arrested, if there is a regression to the earlier mode, or if there is a "fixation" or a "complex" -- a proscribed area that does not enter the stream of development, but becomes "stuck" in exactly the manner of a mind parasite.

In other words, a human being can be quite developed in certain areas but completely fixated in others. For some reason Alan Watts comes to mind. On the one hand he could speak eloquently and charismatically about matters of spirit, while on the other hand he was a pathetic alcoholic with a masochistic spanking fixation. He was a fairly typical Phase II man, but would never do in Phase III, which will require a much higher level of purity, integration, and actualization.

You will note, for example, how deeply flawed were certain heroes of the Old Testament -- David comes to mind, or even a secular hero such as Alexander the Great. These men had a critical civilizing mission to accomplish, and behavior that was perfectly acceptable in Phase I would be entirely unacceptable in Phases II or III. We are called to a much higher moral standard, but let us never forget that the gulf between animal-man and Phase I man was probably even greater than the distance between Phases II and III. In his context, David is as great a man as any who has ever lived. Unfortunately, it is possible that the same may be said of Mohammed, whose mission involved the evolution of the nomadic animal-men of the Arab world into Phase I. Islam began moving into Phase II some 700 years ago, but then pulled back for a variety of reasons. Now they wish to re-impose Phase I on the rest of the world, completely halting its evolutionary progress.

Back to leftism. It is not not a fixation, a regression, or an arrested mode of development. Rather, it is in every respect a parallel, or "shadow" of principial truth. Let us review the main conclusions of the kosmonkey referenced above:

1) Man is an animal, fundamentally no different than any other.

2) Values are an illusion; nothing is actually any better than anything else (e.g., the Giza Pyramid is a stick in an ant hole and Shakespeare is Maureen Dowd).

3) Emotion and language -- or heart and head, meaning and truth -- cannot actually exist in any human sense. My dog knowing where to poop or when it's time for a walk is no different than the theory of relativity.

4) Nothing can be known with certainty, which is simply another way of saying that nothing may be known except falsehood -- which is no knowledge at all.

5) Ironic though it may be for a "progressive" to say, there is actually no direction in history, no objective standard of measurement, no better or worse. Our unique Western values have nothing whatsoever to do with our extraordinary "success." As the Big Baboon, Jared Diamond, has argued, it's just a matter of geography, disease, and fortuitous placement of natural resources.

6) There is no intrinsic meaning in the cosmos, much less in your life -- which is simply the tail end of the tail end of a random process leading from nowhere to nothing.

7) The secular leftist takes an appallingly violent wrecking ball to the entire realm of the vertical, in that not only are you not special, but you are insignificantly small. Furthermore, the world is not special -- which of course makes us wonder -- but not really -- why all these leftists cheer the fanatical message of Al Gore, which is obviously premised on the doctrinal truth that the earth is of infinite importance; here again, a fine example of the "ape of God."

8) Neither human beings nor the planet are at the center of the universe, since there is by definition no center once the vertical has been demolished by academic monkeys with sticks. Again, the correct doctrine is that of course human beings are at the very center of the cosmic drama if viewed vertically. The center of a three-dimensional cone is a line that descends from the point to the base, not anything located along the base. Reduced from three to two dimensions, we are left with only a circle at the base. This is the self-imposed "circle of hell" inhabited by the the secular left which they -- no different than the Islamists -- would like to impose upon the rest of us.

No, we're not done, because once the leftist has annihilated the vertical -- which is definitional for them -- he performs a bait and switch, inserting the horizontal values of the left into the hole he has created with his monkey stick. This is where the "ape of God" comes into play. Some are more slick and subtle than others -- i.e., Obama or the Clintons -- but the kosmonkey is not subtle, to say the least. In one sentence he declares,

1) No, you are not that special.

And then, in the very next sentence, 2) Yes, you are a wonder, absolutely unique and irreplaceable.

As you folks with a rudimentary grasp of logic will have noticed, there is no way to derive (2) from (1), the eternal yes of life, hope, meaning and value from the NO! of abject nihilism.

But here your troubles have only just begun, because -- to paraphase someone -- hell is the place where logic is rendered null and void, as in a Kafka novel. I will just end with something I wrote a while back, and let you draw your own conclusion:

"The philosopher Michael Polanyi pointed out that what distinguishes leftist thought in all its forms is the dangerous combination of a ruthless contempt for traditional moral values with an unbounded moral passion for utopian perfection.

"The first step in this process is a complete skepticism that rejects traditional ideals of moral authority and transcendent moral obligation. This materialistic skepticism is then combined with a boundless, utopian moral fervor to transform mankind.

"However, being that the moral impulse remains in place, there is no longer any boundary or channel for it. One sees this, for example, in college students (and those permanent college students known as professors) who, in attempting to individuate from parental authority and define their own identities, turn their intense skepticism against existing society, denouncing it as morally shoddy, artificial, hypocritical, and a mere mask for oppression and exploitation. In other words, as the philosopher Voegelin explained it, the vertical is 'immamentized' into the present, expressing the same religious faith but in wholly horizontal and materialistic and terms.

"What results is a moral hatred of existing society and the resultant alienation of the postmodern leftist intellectual. Having condemned the distinction between good and evil as dishonest, such an individual can at least find pride in the unblinking 'honesty' of their condemnation. Since ordinary decent behavior can never be safe against suspicion of sheer conformity or downright hypocrisy, only an amoral meaningless act can assure complete authenticity. This is why, to a leftist, the worst thing you can call someone is a hypocrite, whereas authentic depravity is celebrated in art, music, film, and literature. It is why, for example, leftist leaders all over the world were eager to embrace a nihilistic mass murderer such as Yasser Arafat."

Let us stipulate that we are engaged in a cosmic struggle between human beings and monkeys with sticks, newspapers, academy awards, suicide bombs, and tenure. Choose sides wisely. It's up to you, but my advice is to choose the side in which the possiblity of wisdom exists, and to steer clear of the side that thrashes wisdom to dust with so many monkey sticks.

*****

Check out Her Badness, Dr. Sanity, who looks through the cosmic colliderescape and sees almost the same beastly pattern.

51 comments:

Anonymous said...

After reading just the first paragraph, I see we'll be taking the "scenic route". All aboard?

Anonymous said...

I have to run to class before finishing this piece, unfortunately, but I do have one stick to poke the kosmonkey who wrote that drek about humankind being non-special; yes, the universe is vast, as is time. Billions of years of time upon billions of light-years of distance is mind-bogglingly vast, as Douglas Adams was fond of going on and on about. And yet, the more we learn about our physical universe, the more we realize that ours is the only living planet in it all, and we are the only intelligent beings on that planet. I can't help but see this as saying that someone went through a lot to make a bunch of sapient, soul-searching hominids. And while you can say that this is just vast quantities of random chance (quantum physics even has a theory stating that there are multiple universes, and that ours is just one in a million that went right), it's to the point that looking for a reason in it is the only sensible thing to do. If it's really just random, no purpose, nothing special... well, then no wonder the kosmonkeys, like Douglas Adams, are always so pessimistic.
Off to class! Sorry if I rambled without making sense.

Anonymous said...

I read an article somewhere this past weekend that some monkeys actually use "spears" (you could practically see the orgasmic joy from various leftists: "look they use pointy sticks to stab fish - they're exactly like us!!). Monkeys also practice "tribal" warfare and cannibalism, but of course you have to dig fairly deeply into the research to find those articles. I have yet to see anything suggesting that monkeys have created fire and used it reliably to prepare food, but even if they did I wouldn't be really impressed. No, the real wonder would be if monkeys began to create real art, demonstrated complex communication skills (not just "big cat heading your way - hide!), and developed humility and a desire to cover their nakedness (it doesn't count when we make them wear diapers!).

Wow - ranting.

Anyway, what I actually wanted to remark on was how much this Kosling's theory sounded like the Underpants Gnomes' plan for profit:
Phase 1 - steal underpants
Phase 2 - ???
Phase 3 - profit!!

Although I suppose his version was more like:
Phase 1 - nothing matters, you virus on the ass of universe
Phase 2 - ???
Phase 3 - you're special!

Genius. Clearly, the monkeys are catching up to him, anyway.

Anonymous said...

Was watching a Nat'l Geo special on Gobi Desert dinosaurs with my dad this weekend.

The narrator's cheerful sign-off: everything goes extinct, just like the dinosaurs and that means you, too, Mr. Smarty Human.

I'm slightly surprised he didn't say 'neener, neener, neener".

Anonymous said...

Your musical choice of the day, by the way, is one of my favorite albums!

Anonymous said...

While full fledged leftism, of the DailyKos variety, is delusionary, and the utopianism of "progressives" is rooted in loss of faith, I have doubts that your metaphysical Manicheasm gets us to where we need to be, castigating the many intellectual sinners with contempt for choosing the wrong side in a grand evolutionary cosmic struggle. What I notice with many ex-leftists, David Horowitz being a prima example, is a carrying foward of a "radical" compulsion to "change the world", rather than understand it and those who disagree with them - the development of wisdom losing out to the need to exclude and expel the intellectually impure. Minor historical point: Marx's father was a lawyer not a rabbi; but on his mother's side there were a long line of rabbis in Holland (that same mom who reportedly said: "If only Karl had made capital, instead of writing about it...").

Anonymous said...

As I said before, a real inspiring lot.
Where do I sign?

Gagdad Bob said...

Erasmus:

I am hardly "manichean." However -- thankfully, I might add -- principial Truth is manichean, cutting like a sword through existence, dividing what is true from what is false, and what is real from what is illusion. Our task is not to artifically split reality in a dualistic, manichean manner in order to satisfy some primitive need, but simply to align ourselves with truth. The only alternative is to align ourselves with falsehood.

Anonymous said...

Erasmus:
Dr Bob is not ‘castigating’ them so much as because they are simply wrong. He’s warning us because they are dangerous. He’s right.
It seemed the guy that wrote the article had to catch himself before he finished because even he could tell he might hurt someone today. Maybe permanently hurt someone.

Anonymous said...

I am speechless. And now Bob's computer screen is a mess... better clean it before he gets home... By the way, God bless the Maestro... The world wouldn't be in this mess he were still here to share his awesome love vibes with us....

Gandalin said...

Not only was Karl marx's father no rabbi, he was a Christian.

Anonymous said...

Dupree, that video brings a whole new meaning to "precious". Do we have to hit the tin cup for an indulgence if we confess to laughing our butts off?

I laughed. I cried. I was horrified.

Anonymous said...

To be exact, Marx's father "descended from a long line of rabbis," but "when the Prussian authorities would not allow him to continue practicing law as a Jew, he joined the official denomination of the Prussian state, Lutheranism, which accorded him advantages.... "

Anonymous said...

I was actually gonna to try a coherent comment on today's post (which would be different, I know), but it's lost now, you lucky people. Lost forever in the vile remnants of the eye-scratchingly evil video that Dupree posted a link to. Gah!

My mind's eye is scarred for life.

Back to work. Sigh.

Anonymous said...

It's one thing for a monkey wannabe to rant about men and beasts from the comfort of academia, but what if he really did become Beast For A Day? Would his line in the sand remain so blurred?

Well, it's been done. Here's one man's descent into the animal kingdom and the resulting enlightenment upon his return to reason. How could it not be otherwise?

Daniel 4:33-37

The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' [feathers], and his nails like birds' [claws].

And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever, whose dominion [is] an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom [is] from generation to generation:

And all the inhabitants of the earth [are] reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and [among] the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?

At the same time my reason returned unto me; and for the glory of my kingdom, mine honour and brightness returned unto me; and my counsellors and my lords sought unto me; and I was established in my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added unto me.

Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works [are] truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.

Anonymous said...

In related lefty news, noted biblical scholar and archeologist James (Titanic) Cameron blows the lid off the two millennia scam known as Christianity - he's found the tomb of Jesus in a Jerusalem suburb!

Yup, as Bob points out, the anti-Christian/religion agenda has been in play since the beginning, but these folks are getting positively messianic about it lately. Seems like a concentrated blitz. The sharks must smell blood in the water.

For what it's worth, I think Cameron turned the real Titanic saga - a story of ennobling sacrifice and devotion to duty - into a Noble Savage-inspired tale of class warfare. The usual lefty reductionism in other words.

Anonymous said...

FWIW

I recall reading that there was
evidence that the apes *devolved*
from human ancestors.

So they were seen using tools.
No big deal. They won't be.
They're _devolving_.

-Another Bob

Anonymous said...

Bob, this was a good fervent anti-left polemic.

However, regarding animals: the larger animals do hava a psychic being (albeit a small young one).

The newly formed psychic being takes animal bodies to learn things: freedom in an eagle, loyalty in a dog, langour in a cat, ferocity in a crocodile.

We have all inhabited animal bodies. A long succession of animal lives is always experienced before we take a human body.

Humans have larger, older psychic beings but we are only different from animals in age and experience, not in basic type or kind.

Don't think reincarnation is real? Then you'll be spinning your wisdom wheels to no avail in this life.

Get some respect.

Anonymous said...

Has happened to me too, Joan. Sorry.

Another pothole on the spiritual path. It's the Argghh of Salvation.

Anonymous said...

Both men and apes can use tools, but only a man like Kos can be a tool.

Vince, if you're diligent, you may come back in the next life as a Raccoon, but only if you're very, very good.
:)

Anonymous said...

The Argghh! of Salvation.

Life takes the Argghh! with the Alleluias, you know.

Gagdad Bob said...

Sorry Vince, but the vetical gulf between animal and man is "relatively infinite," so to speak, mirroring the absolutely infinite gap between man and God. Man, for example, can know truth and know it absolutely, something no one would claim of an animal. Furthermore, there is nothing analogous to free will in animals, nor, for that matter, can they love beauty or goodness. Hitler's dog loved Hitler as much as he would love you -- which is another way of saying that dog love is not real love, any more than "knowing falsehood" is real knowledge.

Anonymous said...

Hey I finally figured out why Firefox makes all the good stuff on the right sidebar of OC disappear. It's the Adblock Plus extension doing its job too well. Duh! Adding an exception filter brings it all back home.

Cocker lives! He and Leon Russell were surely channeling something holy back in the Mad Dog days. Delta Laaaaady!

Anonymous said...

"Kos himself is nothing more than a grubby chimp poking his joystick into a cyberhole to satisfy his animal impulses. Which, of course, is entirely true."

Perhaps Kos is using his "a dog is a goat is a monkey is a boy" "logic" to soften up and make ready the Koskids for the revelations about his personal life yet to come.



Vinny said:
"Get some respect."

Care to point out where the respect needs to be directed? Or are you just talking about the current, mindless, respect without discernment trend in current society?

Anonymous said...

"Both men and apes can use tools, but only a man like Kos can be a tool."

Joan - here's another Offering: "Tools" using Tools & What Can Go Wrong in 10 Seconds"


These hoist-with-their-own-petard "work accidents" (as the Israelis dryly call them) arghh inspiring as is mossad and Shakespeare.

Anonymous said...

"You're the tail end of the tail end of a process that much more closely resembles random chance than progress toward an objective."

Oh dear.

Not news to Coons, I suppose; but a revelation of late to me: just HOW MUCH of that desultory conclusion, which is passed-out by the left as TRUTH, has influenced me over the years; I've "absorbed" parts of it, kind of "behind the scenes," as "conventional wisdom," simply by living in a culture that has let it thrive. And it's not just in politics: yesterday I was reviewing a book that described the basis of "knowing" (sentience) from a neurological perspective - and that lead-in sentence that Bob quoted from Kos above was exactly the conclusion presented! I realized that, to one degree or another over the years, I had bought into the theory, if only by default. Without seeing the issue clearly, with its innuendos and implications, I see now that parts of it have stuck to me.

As I said, "Oh dear!"

Had someone asked me about this before being exposed to Bob's book and the influence of this blog, I would have denied it. Now I wonder what other unexamined crap is gumming-up my hard drive?

Anonymous said...

There may be a middle ground on this primate argument. Since becoming Orthodox, I have discovered that evolution per se is not outside Christian dogma and Biblical respect. Only the deified materialistic nothing-but-stuff stuff is hellish.

Some respected thoughts include the plausible fact that humanness rests for the time being on an animal base. In fact, things like the tool discovery show just how thick and solid that base is, and includes bare mammal family-tending and other things that touch our hearts and stimulate our neurology.

The really interesting question is, if God entrusted His Breath to a line of primates at a certain point, what is it that distinguishes the life and function of That Spirit in human life? and, what aspects that are merely decent animal should we practice and support, but not deify? Tribalism of all kinds comes to mind...

And the eventual human destiny of Christ-like resurrection and ascension may perhaps both free the glorified human body from confusion with the old animal, at the same time animal and all matter are redeemed and glorified.

The old easy divisions are better than the Kos-gotcha', but there may be a lot more to it.

Anonymous said...

Ca-moron’s discovery reminds me of that Seinfeld episode about his dentist converting to Judaism…and then telling Jewish jokes.

Jerry goes to his rabbi or a friend’s priest (I forget which) and Jerry is asked:

“ ..so your dentist offends you because your Jewish?”

And Jerry says:

“No it offends me as a comedian”.

Did you read that crack police work Camoron used to arrive at his conclusions?
You have to. Just don’t drink your coffee at the same time.

Here’s a doozie:

“The (DNA) results for the coffins labelled Jesus and Mariamne showed the two were not related by blood, leading Cameron and his team to conclude they were married."

Any real scientist, forensic anybody, etc should be offended by the work referred to there as science.

But then again, since I haven’t watched the program yet I realize I too may be jumping to conclusions.

Nah, I’m safe.

NoMo said...

The difference between humans and animals. Hmmm. All animals will be in heaven?

Gagdad Bob said...

Dilys:

I would never deny the existence of natural selection. However, elevated to a metaphysic, it obscures what is ontologically novel in humans. It can only account for the continuity, not the radical discontinuity, which comes from "above," not "below."

NoMo said...

I’m sure to be way out of my element here (if I have one), but here goes. You can only love yourself and others if you know there is a God and that He loves you. If you don’t, you can only loathe yourself and pretend you don’t loathe others. Through their thinking and behavior the left seem to be part of a collective self-loathing – a pathology that intensely desires everyone join them in the darkness. Being that they’re not on the “ark” of salvation, they are determined that everyone perish with them.

“Ark” of Salvation – aka “the love boat”.

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm going to go to bat again for animals.

Bob states that there is an "infinite gap" between people and animals, based on free will and the ability to know truth.

Since we can't inhabit a dog's mind, for instance, we don't know for sure what goes on in there. But certainly, dogs do think and they do learn. They don't parse out what's true or not, but then again, is that such a big deal?

It's not impossible that dogs may recieve "revelation" (intuition) just like we do, directly from God.

Yes, God talks to His animals just as he does to people, but he talks on their level and in their "language."

We must remember that the soul of every animal will eventually transmigrate into a human body. Animals can be seen as "fur people," junior partners in the Cosmos, not contemptible underlings with no spark of divinity.

They have the spark. They are worthy of our utmost consideration.

The cave-people knew this. That is why humanitie's first art works are images of animals, and why to this day animals are found in most homes.

You have intuitively named yourselves "raccoons" because you revere the qualities of that animal.

So don't elevate yourselves so highly above the fur 'n feather set. They are here in the trenches with us and they are aware of much.

Anonymous said...

vince -

Discovery Channel is looking for a replacement for Timothy Treadwell, in case you're interested.

Gagdad Bob said...

Vince:

I am not familiar with the source of your faith, and I have no desire to try to talk anyone out of their faith anyway. If in your religion the ability to know truth is "no big deal," then I will leave you to your Possibly True (but it doesn't really matter anyway) Religion of Animal Transmigration.

I am an animal lover, so I don't know where you got the idea that I have contempt for them. But it is specifically man's quasi-divinity that confers diginity upon the animals, not animal divinity that confers it upon man. As for primitive peoples' treatment of animals, you don't want to know.

And we name ourselves Raccoons because that is the name chosen by Toots Mondello and Herman Hildebrand. It was chosen not because we resemble raccoons, but they us:

In the West and in the East
There’s a mighty little beast
For courage there is no other.
When the chips are all at stake
We are proud to call him brother.
So with our noble tails entwined
And a spirit strong of mind
We'll have hearts that cannot melt.
In the forest, in the trees
On the land or seven seas
We're brothers under the pelt.
Raccoons, the noble Raccoons

NoMo said...

Vince - Thanks for providing some welcome, albeit brief, comedic relief from reality.

Anonymous said...

There's been an on-going story over at LGF - LittleGreenFootballs for the past few days that I find worrisome. As Charles says, it highlights "a real-time view of normally hidden left-wing totalitarian tactics."

I feel safe and sound stowed away in the "Love Boat"
and my fairness alarms are going off.

Gandalin said...

Bob,

Did Hitler's dog love Hitler as much as God loved Hitler?

Gagdad Bob said...

No, but nor did Hitler's dog hate Hitler's evil as much as God did.

Gandalin said...

What did the dog know of the evil?

robinstarfish said...

jesus' coffin found
gored by inconvenient truth
the departed wins

Anonymous said...

Nothing, Gandolin - that's why he still loved Hitler. He could not discern the difference. Yet humans are "supposed" to be able to tell good from bad and truth from falsehood.

Anonymous said...

gandalin,

Precisely. That's the separator, in an oversimplified nutshell...

wv: ylejxwav (You Allegedly Wave?)
wv: sbqga (Foghorn sound?)

Gandalin said...

So it isn't the dog's ability to love or hate to distinguish between good and evil, but his ignorance that you think should determine his spiritual status? I think you are substituting a cognitive deficiency here for a spiritual one. I grant you that the dog does not have a neshamo, but Scripture clearly states that the animals have a living soul - a nefesh chaya. Within the four cubits of what he could know, I would wager that the dog's judgments would be as sound as yours or mine, within the limits of what we know.

Anonymous said...

yay robinstarfish!

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jamie Irons said...

Bob,

Back in the pre-9/11 era, when I was still rather left of center, I would occasionally listen to our local (Bay Area) Pacifica station, and a number of times heard recordings of "sermons" (I put the word in quotes, but it's not that inappropriate) of the late Alan Watts.

Watts was -- somehow, and at least to me -- deeply convincing in his gravelly, almost wheezing, eloquence; I ended up deciding that these homilies were actually rather touching and, in spite of (because of?) Watts' obvious limitations, shortcomings, and sins, rather effective.

But these talks of his always made me feel an intense sadness; I think Watts was in some sense a tragic figure.

Jamie Irons

NoMo said...

And now, today's coon tune:

Lord of the Starfields
by Bruce Cockburn

Lord of the starfields
Ancient of Days
Universe Maker
Here's a song in your praise

Wings of the storm cloud
Beginning and end
You make my heart leap
Like a banner in the wind

O love that fires the sun
Keep me burning.
Lord of the starfields
Sower of life,
Heaven and earth are
Full of your light

Voice of the nova
Smile of the dew
All of our yearning
Only comes home to you

O love that fires the sun
keep me burning

Anonymous said...

Just finished the article.
Good gravy, Bob. You actually managed to do something I'd figured impossible; you explained why the loony left is as it is, and concicely at that. Count this kit-scout applicant in awe of today's experiment.

Van Harvey said...

The Kosmoonapes seem to not only miss the fact that there is an infinite separation between ape and Man, but between man-beast and Man. Where they recognize "skills" are lacking, they seem to think that they are but skills and nothing more. But more than skills, there is the uprightness stemming from something in the family-ization process that loads the civilizing program, into the heart of what prior to that was, as Gagdad put it in the Coonifesto "... only a flexible mainframe for the storage and retrieving of the human being" - prior to being humanized, we are just tool using beasts.

It's interesting that these Kosmoonapes in this day and age, haven't grasped what our earliest city dwelling furbears recognized and marvelled at. One of the first epic stories of civilization we have comes to us through babylon, telling of Sumer and its Hero Gilgamesh and his friendship with Enkidu.

At the beginning of the epic of Gilgamesh, it tells of a Wildman of the mountains, Enkidu, who is running with, and as one of the animals, and is ravaging the farmlands of Sumer. Gilgamesh doesn't seek to defeat this creature in battle, but instead calls for a Woman who seems to be a combination priestess and women of easy virtue, to wait outside the walls of the city of Uruk for the Wildman, Enkidu, and unclothe herself before him... that being done, they... well... basically they spend several days exhausting Stings big book of many Tantric tricks.

Afterwards Enkidu tries to go back to his wildman ways, but finds that his animal friends see that he has changed and flee from him, and then he realizes that he's changed; through knowing this woman, he finds he has knowledge, an awareness of the Vertical, and a desire for a Friend - no longer a beast, he seeks the Beautiful, the Good and the True. Here's one of the more family friendly translations of that moment of realization:

"... he was sated with her charms.
But when he turned his attention to his animals,
the gazelles saw Enkidu and darted off,
the wild animals distanced themselves from his body.
Enkidu ... his utterly depleted(?) body,
his knees that wanted to go off with his animals went rigid;
Enkidu was diminished, his running was not as before.

But then he drew himself up, for his understanding had broadened.
Turning around, he sat down at the harlot's feet,
gazing into her face, his ears attentive as the harlot spoke.
The harlot said to Enkidu:
"You are beautiful," Enkidu, you are become like a god.
Why do you gallop around the wilderness with the wild beasts?
Come, let me bring you into Uruk-Haven,
to the Holy Temple, the residence of Anu and Ishtar,
the place of Gilgamesh, who is wise to perfection,
but who struts his power over the people like a wild bull."
What she kept saying found favor with him.
Becoming aware of himself, he sought a friend."

I wonder if what may be different, defective in the Kosmoonapes, is that they have not been civilized? They (male or female) know nothing of Women, or Family in the Vertical sense, all they know of are the horizontaly biological female, and that "a family is a group of people who {small 'L'} love each other".

The Sumerians, at the beginning of it all, seem to have known more than our primitive Kosmoonapes. The Sumerians at the earliest strivings for the Vertical, knew that between beast and man, there was no middle ground, there was no tool skill that would bring enlightenment; they knew that the the Man side of the divide was far superior to the beast, and was attainable only through the glamour of Women and Friend, the seeking for the Beautiful, the Good and the True.

Its odd that at the Kos, they seek tools and skills to reverse evolution, they're eager to make us all fit to run with the gazelles, rather than become upright members of the Human family.

Enkidu would be amused.

Stephen Macdonald said...

Xivilai said...

"kit-scout applicant"

Finally! That means you can take over from me cleaning out the Lodge gutters and shining 'Coon boots, while I move up to washing dishes and returning Dupree's beer cans for recycling!

NoMo said...

Van - Thanks for the reminder. I love that story.

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