Saturday, August 23, 2008

Assessing Ethical Impairment with the Ten Commandments

I just had an odd thought that may be of no relevance to anyone but myself. But it occurred to me that when I do a psychological evaluation of someone, part of that involves assessing the degree of psychological disability. This is intrinsically impossible, the mind being what it is, but the law is the law. So in analyzing the overall disability, you have to break it down into eight "factors of disability," and rate the person's impairment in each of the factors, such as the ability to perform simple and repetitive tasks, the ability to follow directions, the ability to get along with others, etc.

But that only refers to workplace impairment, and only a Marxist would reduce the psyche to one's ability to work. What if, say, we also had to rate an individual's "moral disability?" Perhaps we might use the Ten Commandments to assess a person's ethical impairment.

Let's take, say, Obama. Just how ethically impaired is he? It's a little difficult to say when one is immersed in an ideology that has its own ethical norms. For example, in Obama's world, infanticide is permissible, even a sacred right. Furthermore, it would seem that he has an ironclad defense, since his ideology also values multiculturalism, which means that there are no objective values that can be judged from outside the culture in question. Therefore, from "within" Obama's ethical system, murdering a baby who is "accidentally" born alive is not problematic.

Likewise, if we surrender in Iraq and genocide ensues, it is "not our problem," since Obama is for peace. People who are against peace are bad, whether it is people who want to commit genocide or people who want to stop them from doing so.

With multiculturalism, it goes without saying that one cannot say "you shall have no other gods before me." Rather, this is inverted to say "you shall have all other gods coequal or even above me, since I'm such a demanding and judgmental tyrant. In fact, the more the merrier." Nor can you have an injunction against bearing false witness, since multiculturalism and deconstruction insist that there is no such thing as objective truth, and that truth is a function of power. Of course, this only proves that the left is power mad, but you're not supposed to notice that.

I could go on and on, but here are commandments five and six in our series. Please be culturally sensitive, and remember that they do not apply to liberals.

*****

Never fail to respect the sages. See the divine in your mother, father, and teacher... --Taittiriya Upanishad

The fifth of the first five “vertical” commandments is “honor your father and your mother.” This is an important point, because the verticality of this commandment means that it is clearly not just referring to our earthly parents. At the very least, the commandment implies a link between the earthly and celestial dimensions, filtered through the family. The trinitarian family of father-mother-child is an intrinsic reflection of God's design, another instance of the microcosm reflecting the macrocosm (“as above, so below”). Also, being the last of the vertical commandments, it is somehow an important link to the next five "horizontal" commandments that allow the wider human community to properly function.

Naturally, a large part of the leftist project is to undermine this commandment and to de-sacralize the family, so that it essentially becomes "just anything." Thus, the vertical family that is ultimately oriented in a hierarchical manner toward the divine is reduced to a wholly horizontal entity in which the members are only oriented toward each other. A family is “any two or more people or animals who love each other.” Not “honor your mother and father,” but “honor your father and father,” or worse yet, honor just earthly love. But earthly love alone cannot sustain a family, which is one of the reasons for the increased incidence of divorce. If you enter a marriage thinking that another person is going to make you happy and fulfill all of your needs, you are bound to be sorely disillusioned.

Some may think that the onus of this commandment is upon children to honor their parents. But I believe this is a misunderstanding of the total context of the commandments. For an equal burden is actually on the parents -- especially the father -- to be an earthly reflection of the celestial Parent. Indeed, this is a father’s only claim to legitimate (i.e., post-biological) authority -- the extent to which he is a dignified and noble man through whom divine authority radiates “downward.”

Parents do not own children -- this was one of the radical innovations of Judaism, in contrast to other ancient (and contemporary) peoples who practiced infanticide and other forms of systematic abuse.

In raising a child, you are deputized by the divine to help usher your child from his earthly caretaker -- i.e., you -- to his celestial benefactor. Even if you are not particularly religious, this is still the aim of your parenting, but it will merely go by another name -- for example, instilling good values. Few people outside the Muslim world actually consciously want to raise their children as antisocial, homicidal beasts. And even these Moloch-worshipping parents are under the delusion that they are on a divine mission to raise their children in this perverse manner.

Arab parents are now naming their children “Hizb’allah” and “Nasrallah,” a genocidal group and a genocidal fanatic, respectively. These children will surely grow up to honor their father -- the father of lies. These parents are spiritually unfit to bring children into the world, because they inflict the worst possible psychic injury to the child: failing to provide them with a parent worthy of honor. Like most any abused child, the child will still do his part -- he will honor his parents -- which will have the practical effect of making him lower than the beasts, unless the child somehow sees through his warped parents and locates his father “who art in heaven.”

Obama, whose father was an alcoholic bigamist, abandoned him when he was a child. As a result, he spent much of his adulthood searching for a father worthy of honor. That he chose someone like Reverend Wright speaks volumes. One can see how bad fathers are always available to children who have had no experience of a good father, just as there is no shortage of bad men for confused women who were never properly loved by a noble father. If all girls had good fathers, the pool of bad men would soon dry up, since they would be deprived of sexual partners.

In short, to the extent that our parents are worthy of of honor, it is because the archetypes of our otherworldly Mother and Father are revealed to us through them. Not only do many parents fail at this fundamental task, but they even usurp God’s rightful power, becoming bad gods and “lording it over” their children (as undoubtedly happened to them).

More generally, the pure love we receive “vertically” from our parents is like a seed that is planted deep within our psyche. Children can have no idea how much they were loved until they have children of their own. This is as it should be, because the task for the child is to spread this divine-parental love horizontally, out into the world. If children loved parents as much as parents love their children, it would be very difficult to break out of that closed circle and evolve psycho-culturally. When children "worship" their parents, it puts an end to personal and cultural evolution (and this pseudo-worship is usually a result of some kind of abuse, rooted in fear and unconscious hatred).

And just because we have left our earthly parents, it hardly means that we have no further need of parenting. Again, there is something primordially true in the trinitarian arrangement of father-mother-child. In order to continue to grow spiritually as adults, we must in some way "become as children" and establish an ongoing rapport with the divine masculine and feminine. As such, the commandment also implies that we should honor worldly representatives of the divine, for example, the avatars, saints, and spiritual masters who, just like our own parents, have made incredible sacrifices for our benefit, and who extend truly priceless wisdom, guidance, and even salvation. Thanks to these exemplars, the vertical hole in creation is always accessible.

There is nothing which is more necessary and more precious in the experience of human childhood than parental love.... nothing more precious, because the parental love experienced in childhood is moral capital for the whole of life.... It is so precious, this experience, that it renders us capable of elevating ourselves to more sublime things--even divine things. It is thanks to the experience of parental love that our soul is capable of raising itself to the love of God. -- Meditations on the Tarot

***

Worlds there are without suns, covered up with darkness. To these after death go the ignorant, slayers of the Self. --Isha Upanishad

The sixth commandment is often erroneously translated as “thou shalt not kill” instead of “thou shalt not murder.” Killing has no inherent moral consequence one way or the other (i.e., it depends on the context), whereas murder specifically refers to the deliberate taking of innocent human life.

In the West, I know of no one outside the left who argues otherwise. For example, one routinely hears leftists insist that there is no difference between deaths that occur as a deliberate policy of Islamic terrorists vs. those that occur as a result of Israel defending herself from Islamic terrorists. One also routinely hears George Bush described by the left as a terrorist -- indeed, “the world’s biggest terrorist” -- which again simply highlights the broken moral compass at the foundation of leftist thought. It's like a house built on a cracked foundation.

The same broken moral compass is present in animal rights activists who equate the killing of animals with the murder of humans. One also hears leftists perversely invoke “thou shalt not kill” in order to try to prevent murderers from being put to death. But again, the commandment specifically forbids the deliberate taking of innocent human life, and no one is less innocent than a murderer. The “golden rule” maintains that we should treat others as we would have them treat us, and it is just so with capital punishment.

As Schuon writes, it is absurd to want to abolish the death penalty "on the grounds that one would not like to be in the condemned man’s place; to be in the place of the condemned man is at the same time to be the murderer; if the condemned man can earn our sympathy it is precisely by being able to recognize his crime and by desiring to pay for it with his life, thereby removing all antagonism between him and us.”

But there are many ways to murder a man without killing the body, and these also fall under the authority of this commandment. One can even draw out the implications of the commandment, in that, if we are to refrain from the taking of innocent life, we are necessarily enjoined to promote, preserve and protect innocent life in all of its manifestations.

At bottom, what the commandment is emphasizing is that life is sacred -- it is of infinite value; therefore, do everything you can to honor and protect it. Clearly, not all cultures do so. Some, as in so much of the Muslim world, explicitly worship death, not life. And this inversion is reflected throughout these sick cultures, in that they are “fruitless.” That is, they produce nothing but misery, both to themselves and to others. They produce nothing for the body, i.e., no medicines, no new ways to produce food; they produce nothing for the mind, i.e., no science, no translations of books, no freedom of inquiry; and they produce nothing for the spirit, i.e., only the spiritual shackles of their medieval death cult.

Most soul murders are undoubtedly committed by those who are already so spiritually damaged as to be functionally dead. These undead souls such as a Nasrallah, an Arafat, or an Amahdinejad, speak to us from “the other side,” from the shadow world that is created when the soul has been so damaged that it essentially withdraws from the body, leaving only a human animal in its place. But other demonic energies rush in to fill the void, so that the individual becomes a sort of “antihuman.” At their core, they are filled with unbearable envy toward the living, and the only way they can assuage this envy is to kill and kill plentifully. Life is a painful reminder of their own living death, hence, “death to Israel,” that primordial symbol of life: l’chaim.

The undead also cannot help converting their children to their way of non-being. In ways both subtle and profound, they will interact with their children in a pathological manner, causing the children to internalize the same virus that afflicts their parents. Regardless, the virus always goes by the name of “love,” which simply further confuses the child. In the end, they will not be able to distinguish the difference between love and hate or truth and lies, any more than they can distinguish between spiritual life and death.

That depraved Muslim couple that was going to use their baby as a bomb surely love their child, except that the love flows out of death, not life. Likewise, the proud Palestinian parents who raise their children to be mass murderers undoubtedly love their children, as do the Muslim parents who murder their daughters for holding hands with a Christian boy. Death loves, just as the person who doesn't believe in truth seeks to accumulate “knowledge.” Our universities are filled with lie-roasted academia nuts who know much. They too worship death -- the death of the intellect and its innate spiritual wisdom.

Oddly, just as life spreads and propagates, so too does death. In other words, death has a sort of life all its own -- just as disease isn’t the opposite of health, but a pathological form of living. The undead soul attempts to overcome and “transcend” his soul death by killing, by substitute sacrifices. Human sacrifice is a way to “steal” the life essence of the victim in order to give the undead a spurious sense of life. This is why the Islamist butchers ecstatically scream "allahu ackbar" (the god of death is great!) as they chop off another head.

In this regard, the Izlambies are no different than Jeffrey Dahmer, who would attempt to have an orgasm at the exact moment his victim was dying, the idea being that the victim's life force would somehow pass into him. Islamists believe that by exterminating Israel, the life essence of Israel will pass into and revive their undead souls and cultures, but this is simply the most perverse of unconscious fantasies. If tiny Israel had never existed, the same massive death cult would have simply metastasized into the geographical area now called Israel. Life departed from Gaza a couple of years ago, but Death merely rushed in to occupy the void created.

Again, the implicit message of the sixth commandment is that we must promote Life in everything we do, not just limiting ourselves to innocent human life, but to the Good, the True and the Beautiful, for these are the principal manifestations of the uncorrupted, living soul. As I wrote in the Coonifesto, “There is a culture of Life and a culture of death, and the cultural necropolis can only maintain itself by an increasingly brazen assault on Truth (as well as beauty and decency). It is therefore also a cult of hypnotic enslavement, for only the Truth can liberate us from this zone of illusion. In your day-to-day life, you must refrain from activities that advance the infrahuman tide of ugliness, barbarism, and falsehood in our endarkened world.”

66 comments:

Aloysius said...

Malachi 4:5-6 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Anonymous said...

"Furthermore, it would seem that he (Obama)has an ironclad defense, since his ideology also values multiculturalism, which means that there are no objective values that can be judged from outside the culture in question."

With Biden as the V.P. pick, hasn't The Annointed ONE just shot down every arguement he has made up to this point in the campaign? Oh, I forgot, he's a Democrat.
Take for instance Obama's anti Iraq war stance from his perch in the Illinois State Senate. Biden voted for the war.
Or his yapping about change and getting some new blood in the race. Biden has been wrapped in the cocoon of the Senate since 1972 from the tender age of 29. So much for the Washington insider attacks. But I'm sure they won't stop.
Or how about the criticisms of Bush being unqualified so he picks Cheney as his veep to add gravitas to the ticket. But we all know who the real puppetmaster is, wink, wink.
Or Obamas' unification message where we all come together and sing kumbaya with the first multi-racial candidate. Isn't Biden one of the worst angry attack dog, loose cannons in the politics?
Oh yea, I forgot, I need to jump through to the other side of the looking glass in order to see the "New Reality" and get with the pogrom. Silly me.

Anonymous said...

Slow Joe's greatest hits.

Anonymous said...

I love this description of Biden:

"Now, aside from Joe Biden himself, is there anyone that thinks that Biden brings much of anything to this ticket? Aside from hair-plugs and an over-inflated sense of self-worth, that is...

"He strikes most folks who live outside the beltway as someone who has built a political career by merging the hucksterism of his used car salesman father with the charisma of publicity seeking, shinola spewing trial lawyer."

Anonymous said...

How about Joe "I Will Screw You Badly" Biden.

joyce said...

Good post, Bob. Explains a lot.

My husband, also named, Bob recently posted a good story about his gramma, and how his dad was Sinai, and his gramma was Zion or Jerusalem. Connecting that with what you said about God being the ultimate parent, masculine and feminine, God is both Sinai and Zion.

And thanks for uncovering the lies that are Islam. "undead" can I use that in Scrabble?

jp said...

Bob says:

"I just had an odd thought that may be of no relevance to anyone but myself. But it occurred to me that when I do a psychological evaluation of someone, part of that involves assessing the degree of psychological disability. This is intrinsically impossible, the mind being what it is, but the law is the law. So in analyzing the overall diability, you have to break it down into eight "factors of disability," and rate the person's impairment in each of the factors, such as the ability to perform simple and repetitive tasks, the ability to follow directions, the ability to get along with others, etc."

Well, that thought is certainly relevant to me.

As a attorney who deals with disabily law, I spend a great deal of my professional life reading such psychological/psychiatric reports.

I like the idea that it is "intrinsicly impossible" to establish the degree of psychological disability.

Gagdad Bob said...

Yes, it's like trying to analyze the causes of a cloud, and then apportioning the causes by percentage. The whole exercise is an artifact of trying to apply the Newtonian paradigm to the mind and to justice.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Will: Thought about your comment from yesterday, and I think you are correct. Chesterton says in 'The Everlasting Man' that Rome's victory over Carthage represented the triumph of the 'good gods' over the 'evil gods' (in the Pagan sense, of course.)

So I think in the context, you're definitely correct. Of course, what was to happen was it was to be shown that even the good gods were not Good enough, or that in particular what was regarded as 'just another one of the gods' was actually the God of Gods himself; the Father of creation. Good old Elohim :D

Chesterton says something to the effect that part of what had to happen was for the good gods to triumph; for just as Yahweh's people had to triumph and be whole for Mary to be able to live and raise her son, the good gods had to win the world so that the people would be lost but receptive, instead of full of death from their demon-god, Moloch. The resistance to Christianity was real, but weak and mostly insane and desperate. Many Christians died at the hands of the Tyrants, but their wrath against these people was ultimately anemic.

Or as St. George the Dragonslayer put it: "Nice shoes!"

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Bob: Self-examination for communion (at least with my prayer book) involves going over all ten commandments.

So, I guess the treatment for ethical impairment disorder is the medicine of immortality ;)

shoprat said...

Very profound and well thought out. And very true.

The thief comes only to kill and destroy. I come to bring life in all its abundance.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Also, I like your Sixth-commandment stuff, Bob. It can be summed up like this:

"There are ways to murder a man which do not involve killing his body."

*shudders*

I am reminded of the Communists and what they did to Christians.

Joan of Argghh! said...

It's nice to know that zombie culture is correctly derived in its current presentation: zombies eat brains and flesh but have no way to consume the soul. No selling out to the zombies is ever entertained. Even the worst sci-fi writer understands this.

If we could convince more misguided politicians and voters that the Left isn't as evil as it is Evil Dead (thanks, Bruce Campbell) perhaps they'd quit trying to make deals and selling their soul to a group of undead that don't want it. Just more flesh and tenure, please.

Sibylline Zipper said...

Love these esoteric Biblical interpretations Bob. Heard it all growing up but you make it come alive.

Anonymous said...

Reductionst nonsense on parade!

(Ex NYT writer, need I say more?)

Flesh Made Soul

julie said...

She could have spared a lot of words by saying "soul, schmoul - it's all just neurological activity. Nothing to see here..."

Though honestly, I wonder what they think will happen if spiritual experiences can be induced on-demand through manipulation of the brain? It still wouldn't prove or disprove anything about the nature of God (she's proof enough of that), but I imagine it would become powerfully addictive, just like any other euphoria-inducing agent.

julie said...

"The undead soul attempts to overcome and “transcend” his soul death by killing, by substitute sacrifices. Human sacrifice is a way to “steal” the life essence of the victim in order to give the undead a spurious sense of life."

In this vein, I'm reading another Pressfield book (Last of the Amazons), and today came across the following passage describing the tribal mentality in relation to torture and sacrifice:

"The tribesman wagers on how his victim will endure. One who has not witnessed such an orgy cannot conceive the ecstasies to which such a brute may ascend, aplpying iron and flame to the flesh of his foe. Nor are these acts cruelty in the savages eyes, as they would be, performed by a man of civilized station, but rather a trial of the captive's aedor, his magic. The prisoner too participates. By an equation incomprehensible to the emancipated sensibility, the clansman acclaims his victim even as he impales and vivisects him. For the captor's object is the acquisition of the aedor of his prisoner; the victim's, to prove his magic superior to the torturer's. The more nobly he endures, the greater his power. He suffers, does the captive, not for himself (for the savage cannot conceive of himself apart from his gods and tribe) but for the grantors of his luck, those Otherworld guardians who have endowed him with his soul magic. He seeks to prove his power mightier than his foes' and, expiring, wring the last drop of renown. I have seen victims spit their terminal breath in their tormentors' faces and dive to hell with a laugh."

Granted, this is a work of pure fiction, but I think Pressfield really grasps the basic tribal mentality. If you haven't read it, this book actually touches on warfare in several realms - spiritual, cultural, and the more usual horizontal issues.

Sorry for the long post; I figure since it's Saturday, nobody'll complain :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Julie: No, no complaints from me. I'm kind of reeling right now, as I've just had a confrontation with a particularly nasty soul thief, and I need to decompress a liitle.
It was at the corner Starbucks which has been a hangout for a me, and lot of folks for the last several years. M is one of the regulars. He's one of the more toxic individuals I've ever met. Backbiter, two faced, bully. I've seen the guy more than once actually threaten other people if he thought they wouldn't push back. He knows my politics, knows where I stand on matters of faith. Anyway, I was alone. He showed up and sat with me. Uninvited. The guy started in talking sh*t about people, and when he couldn't get a rise out of me there, started in ragging on religion and politics. Like I said, he knows where I'm coming from- he was trying to push my buttons- trying to piss me off. I was in no mood for that kind of crap so I got up and left. Turned the other cheeks to him so to speak. I'd had just too damn much of his crap. But by the time I got to my car I was quaking with rage. Then I went dead calm, which means trouble. My feet walked me back to the guy's table, and I did what I had seen him do to other people...
only worse
I haven't threatened another man with physical violence since I was a surf bum, and someone shoulder-hopped my wave. But I got in this guy's face, and told him I'd kick his ass if he ever got within fifty feet of me. I cursed that bastard a blue streak. IN his face, and LOUD. real loud. I took his inventory hard, too and spit it in his face that nobody who hangs out at the corner could stand his miserable backstabbing toxic ass. (which is true) I called him out hard. Insulted his ass harder, and dared him to do anything about it. Scared the shit out of him. Then I left.
None of the regulars was there. No one saw this happen except an unfortunate couple having ice cream with their kids. No one to tell the tale except him and me. And he will. He will lie, too because that is what he does.
I don't know what this has to do with anything. As I said, I just need to decompress. Probably not my finest hour in the realm of spiritual growth. Eh- you do the best you can with what you have...

JWM

julie said...

"My feet walked me back to the guy's table, and I did what I had seen him do to other people...
only worse"

I know that feeling (only once or twice, but still...) - it's that breaking point where you've just had enough. And then you become as one possessed, lashing out in the worst possible way - by which I mean, both completely engaged and completely detached, so as to inflict maximum damage, whatever the method may be. Then afterwards, you're left shaking, drained and stunned.

It sounds like your rage was probably a righteous one, J, but it never feels good. I hope the fallout isn't too bad; maybe he'll take the hint and just leave. I doubt it, by your description, but I hope, anyway.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a breakthrough to me.
I bet he doesn't say a word.

Susannah said...

The undead:

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20080816/D92JHAMO1.html

Sickening.

(Found the link at The Point.)

debass said...

I wonder if BO's beautiful daughters will come to realize that their parents believed that it was OK to murder them even after they were born. At what age did his children become human?

Anonymous said...

...Then afterwards, you're left shaking, drained and stunned.

Gold, silver, and bronze. A solid row of 5.0's. That is exactly it.

I've been digesting the whole thing little by little this evening. Righteous or not, there is no feelgood to be found anywhere in the experience, unless it's the kind of relief you feel after you've gone all reverse peristalsis on some bad fish. The whole episode calls for some sort of fizzy psyche-seltzer for the
*burp* of relief.

JWM

Anonymous said...

From Bob's vantagepaint:

Likewise, if we surrender in Iraq and genocide ensues, it is "not our problem," since Obama is for peace. People who are against peace are bad, whether it is people who want to commit genocide or people who want to stop them from doing so.

Thanks for clarifying what Obama is saying by iterating on his behalf. Always a good jumping-off point for a well-foundered coonclusion.

Whose moral handicap is featured when we invade Iraq on spurious, unauthorized and ambiguous grounds resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians AND the current lose-lose situation facing the next president-elect? Never mind answering, as in this context it's rhetorical. I know it's Obama's fault. I was just wondering, you know, what if the arguments you posed were, you know, objective.

Anonymous said...

I don't blame you for being pissed, Norm. I also don't understand why Obama picked a running mate who authorized the United States to invade Iraq on spurious, unauthorized and ambiguous grounds resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians.

Anonymous said...

And I don't blame you for being drunk, Dupree.
Say, here's a thought: Maybe he's soliciting the votes of some right-wingers whose memories aren't quite so...selective.

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure he's soliciting votes of some liberals who are bound to discover that we won the war. The MSM can't hide such things forever, if only because of the Enquirer.

Anonymous said...

Hoot! - and how bout them Packers?

Anonymous said...

Obamajoebiden-
Sounds like "The Name Game" gone horribly wrong.

Shirley, Shirley
Bo-birley
banana fana fo firley...
Take that earworm, Norm!

JWM

Anonymous said...

This demolishes Norm's feeble point, as if it needed demolishing. Amazing how invincibly stupid people are.

julie said...

"normal,"
Here are just a couple more reasons we're not likely to change our minds about Obama.

His choice for veep is pretty much moot. But food for hilarity. And so, the mockery continues apace.

Gagdad Bob said...

I swear, Deepak writes like someone with a brain injury. Every time I read one of his rants, I'm amazed all over again. He's so beyond the pale that he's unfiskable and impossible to parody.

walt said...

Bob,
Out of simple curiosity I followed your link to Deepak. You know, he does write as though impaired!
While it's easy enough to see the "intent" of his words, many of his sentences run on as though gibberish.

Even his closing -- "The best any citizen can do is to promote the new realism that wants to emerge. Reversing history is a toxic dream. Moving ahead is the only option that favors everyone's well-being in the long run." -- refers to exactly . . . what?

Fifteen years ago, his writing was completely different -- something must have happened.

Gagdad Bob said...

Via Powerline, a great video of Aretha live. I actually had the opportunity to meet Jerry Wexler, as he was good friends with my in-laws in Sarasota. Not too many people have contributed more to my happiness quotient, given his impact on the careers of Aretha, Ray Charles, Big Joe Turner, Dusty Springfield, Wilson Pickett, Duane Alllman, and so many other music immortals. He actually coined the term "rhythm & blues."

Gagdad Bob said...

Walt:

I'm guessing that Deepak has never actually written any of his books. They're either ghost-written or heavily edited by the publisher. He himself is just the product of marketer's dream, filling that ubiquitous niche for a "wise man from the East." What a hideous load. Perhaps some day I'll declare open war on him and his sleazy kind, if I ever want to raise my profile. People like him do untold damage to the Raccoon mission.

julie said...

Back to the Deepak for a sec, Wow - so he's basically saying socialism and communism are the way to go, even while he rakes in the dough by taking advantage of capitalism to the fullest extent a huckster guru is capable in this country. Which, sadly is quite a lot.

julie said...

"I'm guessing that Deepak has never actually written any of his books. They're either ghost-written or heavily edited by the publisher."

Hm. That would explain a lot. He's like the Indian version of the magical negro - fools want to believe him because he comes from an exotic place that, deep down, they want to believe is infused with more magic and mysticism and wisdom than they see in this country. Of course, most all of those things can be found within, but they actually require work and true self-knowledge and metanoia. Far easier to follow the advice of a huckster who fills your head with soothing illusions than to align oneself with Truth.

Gagdad Bob said...

Precisely. His hatred and ingratitude toward America are really quite remarkable, but I guess that's a big part of his appeal for liberals.

Gagdad Bob said...

Deepak makes Madonna look deep.

Sibylline Zipper said...

Deepak started off as a popularizer of Ayurvedic medicine. His first books were pretty useful and well written. He should have just stuck to that but he saw the opportunity to be more than just an alternative doc like Andrew Weil. So he repackaged himself as a New Age guru and started writing the vacuous drivel required to succeed in that field.

Van Harvey said...

Calling all Raccoon's, I hope he doesn't mind my saying, but our friend USS Ben is going through a tough time, please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

Van Harvey said...

"Again, the implicit message of the sixth commandment is that we must promote Life in everything we do, not just limiting ourselves to innocent human life, but to the Good, the True and the Beautiful, for these are the principal manifestations of the uncorrupted, living soul. As I wrote in the Coonifesto, “There is a culture of Life and a culture of death, and the cultural necropolis can only maintain itself by an increasingly brazen assault on Truth (as well as beauty and decency). It is therefore also a cult of hypnotic enslavement, for only the Truth can liberate us from this zone of illusion. In your day-to-day life, you must refrain from activities that advance the infrahuman tide of ugliness, barbarism, and falsehood in our endarkened world.” "


And only the Truth, and willingly seeing it, whether that is Grace or the final realization that if you disintegrate any further yOu will cease to exist, it is then that you finally re-cog-nize a Truth (as 911 did for so many) and become willing to see how One small Truth integrates into another, and eventually how they are all but facets of the One all encompassing Truth from which the True yOu are born from. I sure do enjoy these posts, they go to the true heart of the matter, and beyond agreeing and saying 'Yep', I don't have a lot more to add.... and so... I'll brazenly toot my own horn, having finally posted my elusive next post on Liberal Fascism: The Spiral of Knowledge and the Flattened Worldview of the Left post,

"If you don't have recourse to a universal principle of value, let alone an objective idea of Truth to judge it by, you are cemented into a barbaric confrontation between muscles and desires. And until you recognize that universal understanding, the existence of Truth and our unique ability to partake of it, then any discussion of Right and Wrong, Truth and Falsehood, Beautiful and Ugly, Good and Evil, will be infinitely above and beyond your capacity to grasp and engage in it."

Van Harvey said...

normal holeman said - nothing, as usual.

Van Harvey said...

Julie said "Granted, this is a work of pure fiction, but I think Pressfield really grasps the basic tribal mentality. If you haven't read it, this book actually touches on warfare in several realms - spiritual, cultural, and the more usual horizontal issues."

Where else, today, are you going to find the Truth, but in fiction? That's the only place in modernity, where you can get away with uttering what is True! And Pressfield, grounded as he is in history, is one of the best at doing what Intellectuals are supposed to do, inspire, enlighten and Educate.

Van Harvey said...

Walt said "Fifteen years ago, his writing was completely different -- something must have happened."

Yeah, probably the he reached that decision point, where the contradictions between his positions and truth were to great to sustain... one way held renouncing membership in his budding celebrity and all it provides... and Truth, and its personal, hidden, experience.

Guess which he chose to follow.

Van Harvey said...

Gagdad Bob said "Deepak makes Madonna look deep."

Ho'-know!!!

walt said...

Going to the Democrat Convention next week? Of course you are!

This is one of the ones we've been waiting for!

And, to be thoroughly modern at the convention, you'll want to accessorize!

debass said...

Jobama. He's just biden' his time.

Van Harvey said...

Debass said "He's just biden' his time."

HA! Been wondering how long I'd have to wait to hear that!

(yes dear, I am going to do the yard work, just tying my shoes first)

Anonymous said...

I had to go back to the corner this morning. I picked a fight yesterday, and today I had to follow through. I knew M was going to be there, and so would a bunch of the regular crowd.
As I said, I knew as soon as I woke up, that the confrontation was not over. It would have been easy to find a reason to avoid the corner for a while. I could "take the high road", and walk away from trouble. I could be "mature".
But I knew I wasn't going to take any kind of high road at all. Nonetheless, My wife, and I (she wanted to come)took the five mile detour through the hills so I'd have time to think and consider consequences rather than going straight over there.
Consequences.
Like the plastic lens that the surgeon implanted in my right eye last Monday. (cataracts) Hate to get that puppy knocked loose...
not to mention the after-market arteries in the old ticker
Like the chance he'd call the cops, and I'd get arrested for assault.
Or the chance I'd get 86'd from the corner.
But all very good reasons not to go looking for a confrontation added up to: "Yeah. Fine. But I gotta finish this."
And so I did.
He was there, talking with a couple of people I know. Several other of the regulars were there as well. I had an audience this time. And I let the guy have it again. I called him a liar, a shit-talker, a backstabber, and a bully. I called him 300 pounds of toxic waste wrapped in bullshit. He tried to be concilliatory. I called him a dogshit lowlife coward. In front of everyone.
The manager from Starbucks came out and everything.
He went inside. Mary and I left, and it was over. I won't pursue it any farther.
Damn. I mean, hell. I'm fifty six years old. This is high school crap. But sometimes all of those inner voices of reason, and moderation are just wrong. Sometimes you have to go on the offensive, or risk not being able to look yourself in the eye. Male ego? FUCK YEAH!
Sometimes you just have to.

JWM

debass said...

Van said:

"HA! Been wondering how long I'd have to wait to hear that!

(yes dear, I am going to do the yard work, just tying my shoes first)"

Sorry I took so long. I was out doing yard work.

Joan of Argghh! said...

JWM, it's never wrong to call out a bully, and to call bullshit when it's being slung. You do everyone else a favor. It's like clearing the air of a hypnotic stench and all of sudden others find their backbone again and say, "about time someone said it."

I had to call out my own boss, once, for trying to set up some sort of catfight between me and the corporate accountant. He tried for a year until I marched into his office and called him on it and dared him to prove one shred of evidence or shut the hell up about it.

He was shorter than me, thankfully. Heh.

Anonymous said...

Right on JWM,

The best people have been cowed into being "civil" and "letting it go" to the point where the scum have free reign without fear of consequence. It's time to begin taking it back.
Continue to frequent that place and let HIM run through all the scenarios of how his little wennie ass is going to get thrashed while you on the other hand have no intention of lifting a finger beyond giving intimidating stares. ;*) (Might want to discuss it with the manager first to head off any unwanted legal action if any has been contemplated.)
Fifty six doesn't mean jack beyond the fact that you're young enough to give people a piece of your mind and old enough to be willing to suffer the consequences. If you get caught, that is.

Anonymous said...

JWM, you're da MAN!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your kind words, folks. You guys are great. This episode gives me a lot to think about. I consider how rare, and how common incidents like this are in our daily lives. Common, because it's a daily occurrence; rare, because most people can count their personal incidents on the fingers of one hand. I know I can.
I consider that the whole thing was verbal. No one raised a hand to fight. How common is that across the many equally groovy cultures of Gaia?
I consider the primal dictates, the lowbrain responses: rage. attack. knowing not to stop until the adversary submits. smelling fear and instinctively preying on it. It is intoxicating. And when you're in that state, the doorway to Stan is wide open, and he's got most of the channels in your innercom on his frequency. Cruelty seems hugely appropriate, even when you know it isn't. I have to believe that a hand stronger, and wiser than my own threw the circuit breakers at the right time.
As I said, we just don't get a lot of this stuff in daily life. That is a good thing, it really is. Anyway, Mary just brewed some coffee, and she got some ice cream at Trader Joe's, too.

JWM

Van Harvey said...

JWM, the only unfortunate thing I can see, is that he didn't think that anybody would ever call him on it.

As Mr. Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing."

Good for You.

('...300 pounds of toxic waste wrapped in bullshit...'
Yee-Haw!)

;-)

julie said...

I'm with Hoarhey, J. The truth is, to not call this guy out does no favors to anyone. Not you, not the other regular patrons, and not him, either. It's possible that having someone stand up to him might actually do him some good - swinging the cluebat in the real world, so to speak. It's a lot tougher to do that face-to-face than on the web, but perhaps all the much more valuable.

So yeah, you should keep going back, unless it all remains too toxic (I'm not naive enough to think that people, being people, won't side with him, even if they agreed with you before).

And also, fifty-six these days doesn't seem like all that much. I may be a youngun (relatively speaking), but most of the people I socialize with are your age and older. The only ones who seem "old" to me are the ones who've given up, regardless of the number of years they've spent on this earth.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think any Raccoon falls into that category.

Anonymous said...

JWM, when you posted the first installment of JWM's Excellent Starbucks Adventure on this thread, I immediately thought of this item.

Oh, so True

Anonymous said...

Thanks Cuz! Somehow knowing that you might consider me worthy of an "invincingly stupid" category adds a bounce to my step this AM, like someone complimenting me on a nice tie. I'll wear my Franken hoodie all day in your honor.

Since your link provided absolute proof that we Americans didn't live through what we lived through, what, six short years ago? and since rhetorical questions aren't coonie strongpoints, let ME indulge in some similar proof a la Cousin Dupe that I'm right and you're glue, and everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you. Apparently when a bobbish argument falls flat, a link serves as a mc-cane. Take that, you...smarties.

Van Harvey said...

normal holemon...psst!
A serious historian who gives a historical evaluation of current events is neither serious, nor a historian... which of course fits in just fine with your mined.

From a link at the top of your link (you probably missed it, not being a reader who Reads) The Follies of Instant History: Another Meaningless Poll of Historians,

"...The current poll’s respondents (like those of the earlier poll) are acting as soothsayers because the history profession has not yet had the opportunity to engage the practices of valid historical scholarship... "

Anonymous said...

Good Morning, Big-Brain-Boy-With-Glad-Countenance!

Why do you waste time writing what we both already know you know? But let's let George say it for us (again), shall we?

(drum roll, please)

“As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach.”— George W. Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb10, 2008

Now Vanity, how or why would you hope to top that? Did you honestly think that I'd think you and G would disagree?

BTW, the above was the opening paragraph of my link. I guess you missed it, but I'm not given to spuriously cooncluding as to why. Does that mean I lose a coonie point? Waaaahhh!

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Did someone just write something? There appear to be words, but no meanings.

Van? Any ideas whats going on here?

Sal said...

Bob,
I have the last line of today's post on a card on my fridge.
No fear of you ever selling out to the refrigerator magnet people, though...

Anonymous said...

Anyone who imagines that truth is a democracy -- much less a democracy of liberal wackademics -- is truly beyond hope.

Anonymous said...

I sense a disturbance in the force.
It's as if a trillion mosquitos simultaneously hit an empty vein and are crying in anguish as they suck their own brains out...

Anguish is nice in late August.

JWM

Van Harvey said...

nermal holemon typed "I guess you missed it, but I'm not given to spuriously cooncluding as to why."

River, yeah it seems to be a very good word processor, but a very poor comprehendoor. Can't seem to put to and too together.

Probably an artificial intelligence bot. Of course seeing as it is an extreme leftist, that’s being a bit redundant.

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