Friday, August 31, 2012

The Satanic Fecundity of Envy

Yes, it's a hoot to watch MSNBC's coverage of the RNC, but it does raise some important questions, because these methodical fact-chuckers are obviously not trying to be ridiculous.

Specifically, the shocking gulf between the MSM and Realville demonstrates that our political divide has gone way past the point of who is right and who is wrong, or whose explanations and policies are more likely to succeed.

Rather, one of us is flat crazy, and I don't mean this in any trivial, polemical, or merely insultaining way. No, there is only one reality, and someone's not in it. That being the case, one side is castigating the other for failing to inhabit their "false reality," or what Voegelin calls a "phantasmagoria of deformed existence."

Theoretically this shouldn't be all that difficult to sort out, but we all know that reason is generally not only the slave of the passions, but that passion is what lends rationalization the kind of triumphant sanctimony we see in, for example, doctrinaire atheists, global warming fanatics, and New York Times columnists -- or the mediarabble-wackademia complex.

But genuine reason is calm and centered, like truth itself. It has only to stare down a bad idea to make it wither or turn tail. Unless the idea is a sociopath, in which case it will simply stare back like a hungry reptile.

Interestingly, MSNBC and the Obama campaign share the same slogan: forward. For the godless, "forward" is a god-word, a term that unconsciously partakes of the religious energies it consciously denies and denigrates.

Indeed, the word can have no meaning whatsoever in a flat and horizontal universe drained of hierarchy and transcendence, any more than "improvement" can result from natural selection. So why can't all human beings, rational and transrational alike, agree on this truism?

For if there exists an objective measure of improvement, it obviously lies outside natural selection. And natural selection cannot produce beings (or just say Being) that negate itself, for the same reason that God cannot create a rock so heavy that he couldn't lift it. Religious people understand this. Why can't the irreligious?

For the leftist, "forward" and "progress" can only mean what I want, and nothing else; or in other words, desire and the will to bring it about, which in turn reduce to power, full stop. Why dress up the will to power with such benign-sounding god-words?

To ask the question is to understand the convoluted mind of the leftist.

In reality, to go "forward" is to go intellectually deeper and spiritually higher. These are the true contours of the human adventure.

For every leftist god-word there is an equal and opposite demon-word. Again, these words are not deployed to convey meaning as you or I understand it. Rather, their purpose is to convey sub-linguistic meanings rooted in primitive physical reactions such as disgust.

The left specializes in conjuring grotesque caricatures of evil, which they proceed to attack in a kind of frenzy -- e.g., Bain Capital -- in order to "justify the good they proclaim" (Don Colacho). But if the ideas were actually good -- or if Obama's record were actually praiseworthy -- this exercise in demonization would be unnecessary.

Dis-gust is related to "gustatory" and the like, and means literally to spit something out because it is so vile. Really, it is man's most primitive defense mechanism, because we all need to be able to taste what might harm or kill us in order to expel it from the body.

Just so, survival mandates that we also be viscerally disgusted by genuinely disgusting ideas, ideas like child abuse, incest, rape, torture, the Rosie O'Donnell Show, etc. But it is a permanent project of the left to make us disgusted by ideas that are not remotely disgusting, and to not be disgusted by things that are.

For example, until a few historical moments ago, virtually all Americans would have been a little disgusted by the idea of "homosexual marriage," or late-term abortion, or public employee cartels extracting dues from their members in order to elect Democrats who will steal from the public trough in order to give them more cash and other valuable prizes in order to elect more Democrats.

The properly brainwashed leftist will no doubt respond: some people were also disgusted by blacks, or Jews, or Asians! To which we will say: our point precisely. You don't know the difference between right and wrong.

In America, we have the freedom to try to rise to the level of our abilities and ambitions. You'd think this would be a good thing, but it cuts both ways, at least. This is because it bakes hierarchy into the cake, and necessarily results in some people being at the top, others at the bottom. Way it is. The only way to avoid this outcome is via some form of injustice and tyranny that forces lions to dine on lettuce because that's what rabbits eat.

Until relatively recently, Americans understood and tolerated this. And in order to tolerate it, they must tolerate their own envy, not indulge in it.

Or, if the person is excessively envious, he must at least try to put it to good use, and not just use it to tear down someone else in order to appease a frustrated sense of entitlement. The person who is truly motivated by envy won't actually be happy once he achieves his persecutory dream, but at least this is preferable to attacking and parasitizing someone else's.

Tolerance of envy is a marker of emotional maturity. For the same reason, indulgence in envy is a prime characteristic of immaturity. And envy flourishes when there is an absence of gratitude. Thus, the cultivation of gratitude is critical to both personal happiness and a functional society.

But this will not do for the left. While we should all be disgusted by envy and the envious, this would put the kibosh on the schemes of the left, which must tap into the human well of envy in order to gain any traction at all.

Instead of "You shall not covet," the left insists that there is something wrong with you if you do not covet the wealth of "billionaires and millionaires." We need to have fewer of them, so that we will have less envy. It never occurs to them that envy is a personal failing that cannot be satisfied by feeding it, and that every violation of a cosmic duty gives birth to a new right.

Which ends in the irreversible victimocracy we can hail from just this side of the historical knife-edge, and which requires just one more little push to be terminal. In November we will know if we have fully plunged into that dark new world.

(By the way, there are far fewer millionaires and billionaires today than there were when Obama took office. So why isn't the left overjoyed? Because when envy succeeds, there are two losers instead of one, and it's a win-win for the Evil One. Note that the disease tends to spread exponentially, so loser + envy = loserpower². In short, the left knows everything about wealth except how to create it. See socialist regimes for details.)

America's wealth is not an inventory of goods; it is an organic entity, a fragile pulsing fabric of ideas, expectations, loyalties, moral commitments, visions. To vivisect it for redistribution is to kill it.... [G]overnment managers of complex systems of wealth soon find that they are administering an industrial corpse, a socialized Solyndra.... The belief that wealth consists not chiefly in ideas, attitudes, moral codes, and mental disciplines but definable static things that can be seized and redistributed -- that is the materialist superstition . --George Gilder, Unleash the Mind

62 comments:

mushroom said...

For the leftist, "forward" and "progress" can only mean what I want ...

That's a lot of the problem because they do not know anything to want. You have millions of bubbleheads staring at the TV screen or the monitor trying to find out what they are supposed to want.


The properly brainwashed leftist will no doubt respond: some people were also disgusted by blacks, or Jews, or Asians! To which we will say: our point precisely. You don't know the difference between right and wrong.


HiYo! Direct hit. Does the left have another argument? If they do they certainly don't use it very often. This is clearly one of their favorites.


I was thinking about envy while picking green beans last night. I admire what other people have. One time my wife and I were living a crappy little apartment, and we were down to the cash in my money clip. Because it was snowing, I didn't want to get the car out, so I walked to the grocery and back with some beans and noodles or something. Somehow on the way back, my money clip dropped out of my pocket. Fortunately, I later found it with our little stash in the bottom of one of my bootprints in a drift. Even then I wasn't envious of the people with money in the bank and houses and nicer cars. I was happy with what I had, though I did not intend to stay in that condition. I do not see any point to envy.

Gagdad Bob said...

I think I was just born an unusually unambitious, or slack-loving, person, and for that reason knew that I had no one else to blame for my own mediocrity. But I think underneath the lack of ambition is the fact that I just enjoyed life as it came to me. It never occurred to me that I could be happier under different circumstances. Or, to turn it around, if I was ever unhappy, I knew it was my fault, not someone else's.

Really, I'm just kind of right-wing hippy.

ge said...

'kind of a right-wing hippy'
...we know the feelin'!

EbonyRaptor said...

It's not just envy that has been turned from a sin into a statist's birthright, every other vice has been made virtuous too. This turning upside down of our cultural values has been "progressing" for atleast several generations. How has it stayed on course and kept momentum through these many decades?

It seems too big to be humanly directed, and too long to be humanly executed. Something seems to be driving it that spans human generations.

While I suspect that most of my fellow travelers believe in the literal Creator, I'm not sure of their belief in the literal Satan.

I think looking at the change in western culture is proof there is a Satan and he is the anti-alchemist turning God's gold into lead.

I will go so far as to say that if our culture isn't turned back to God soon, the Islamic assertion that America is the great satan may turn out to be true.

vanderleun said...

Hey, check it out:

http://www.amren.com/features/2012/08/why-everyone-else-is-wrong/

Gagdad Bob said...

Taranto: 'Obama's journalistic supporters live in a bizarre alternate reality in which a politician's actual words mean nothing. When the president says something foolish and offensive, he didn't say that. Meanwhile every comment from a Republican can be translated, through a process of free association, to: "We don't like black people."'

Gagdad Bob said...

More truth: "The left has not moved beyond seeing Obama as a racial symbol, and that is for two reasons. First, his record as president doesn't have much else to recommend it, so that crying racism is about the best they can do as an argument for re-election. Second, it is of great psychological importance to American left-liberals to believe that their opponents are racist and they themselves are not. Their self-image as a moral elite revolves around the imputation of invidious racial attitudes to others."

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

By the way, there are far fewer millionaires and billionaires today than there were when Obama took office. So why isn't the left overjoyed? Because when envy succeeds, there are two losers instead of one, and it's a win-win for the Evil One."

Indeed. If leftists manage to steal everything (or drive away) all of our wealthy people (except for the "good" leftist wealthy)...they will canninbalize their own.

Celebrities, Soros, Buffett, Oprah, lefty politicians, etc.. will become food for the envy they helped to stoke.

Because once that fire is buring full force, there's no way they can put it out.
It must burn out, and they are fuel.

That leftist leaders can't see this outcome goes to show their utter stupidity.

This is what a party of envy does if it gets the power it craves.
Total annihilation of wealth, and everything that is good, true and beautiful. Burnt to a crisp.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Right wing hippy? The dude abides.

You know, I always wondered about that. It's always been easy for me, even as a child, to be grateful for what I had.

OTOH, my yonger brother, as a child and an adult has always had a difficult time being grateful and has a lot of envy.

Another family member I'm close to also has a lot of envy but she knows it and constantly struggles against it and works hard to be grateful.

Why are some of us born with seemingly different levels of envy? Or are we? I dunno. I dunno if it's born with or something happens in their developement.

Wee have two daughters. As children one was always happier than the other. Why? She just seems naturally thankful.
Our other daughter has to work harder at it.

Perhaps it's a gift. We all have different gifts. Something to ponder.

In any sense, however, we all have the tools to fight envy, and be grateful.
Both internally and externally.

All we are sayin' is give thankfulness a chance.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"Really, I'm just kind of right-wing hippy."

Right on. :^)

EbonyRaptor said...

I have a tendency to see things a little more simply than some others. Maybe I'm simple minded or too opinionated - I've been accused of both and one or both may be true. But I think it's as simple as your relationship with God. I'm grateful that God loves me. I'm grateful that Jesus died for me. I'm grateful the Holy Spirit guards me.

That's the best there is. Nothing comes close. No there's no room for envy.

Those who don't know God's love or maybe aren't as sure of it also don't know the gratitude it brings.

At lease it seems that way to me.

Jack said...

"It seems as though new society was arising which will acknowledge no hierarchy of values, no intellectual authority, and no social or religious tradition, but which will live for the moment in a chaos of pure sensation. "

-Christopher Dawson (1929)

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

EbonyRaptor, I don't know, I'm pretty simple...just ask my wife.

As far as Absolute and Infinite Joy, I can't argue with what you said. :^)

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Jack, that's exactly what the OWSers think they want.

Of course, they are too daft to think it through. Plus, they don't even know what anarchy means.

They organize to talk about it, play drums and crap in the streets.

Real anarchists would be lone wolves and they would prey on sheep like the OWSers since they are such easy marks.

Jack said...

"Real anarchists would be lone wolves and they would prey on sheep like the OWSers since they are such easy marks.

Ben- So true it made me laugh! Basically, it's easy to be an postmodern-anarchist when you know you can still dial 911.

They don't think it through, because they are *unable* to think it through. The rejection of reason, logic, language, meaning etc is seen by them as a LIBERATION. Which I suppose it is, just in the wrong direction.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

I'll say, Jack!
I can't even imagine being that disconnected from reality (nor do I want to even try).

Anonymous said...

Like a hungry reptile.....



LOVE THE HUNTER THOMPSON IN YOU

Jack said...

Related to the idea that we are always living on the knife-blade between the Apocalypse and mere catastrophe...has anyone read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter M. Miller, Jr.?

I just finished reading it and for what it's worth I found it astoundingly good. It might be described as Augustinian Science Fiction, though that probably doesn't do the book justice.

Gagdad Bob said...

In California they are about to pass a bill making it against the law for a psychologist to help a person with homosexual impulses to be heterosexual. I wonder when they'll pass a similar bill to prevent therapists from encouraging the sexually confused to embrace homosexuality?

Gagdad Bob said...

If a therapist succeeds in helping a homosexual become heterosexual, will the state force him to make restitution by reversing the process?

Van Harvey said...

"For the leftist, "forward" and "progress" can only mean what I want, and nothing else; or in other words, desire and the will to bring it about, which in turn reduce to power, full stop. Why dress up the will to power with such benign-sounding god-words?

To ask the question is to understand the convoluted mind of the leftist."

And to question them towards that lack of direction, is to see their realization of it.

The leftist's agitation always goes off the scale as you peak under the fablecloth of PC words they use to cover that raw will to power with. A very thin fabric of lies separates 'altruism' & 'kindness' from envy & spite, and attempting to peak underneath, especially if you use calm reasoning to do it with, triggers an 'outraged!' offendsive which you are then supposed to feel bad for inflicting upon them.

And if you don't apologize for their offendedness? It takes a linking of arms with as many likeunminded fellows as they can find, in a long & loud group smug over your nastiness, to get over it.

Fascinating.

julie said...

Bob @ 11:31, I was wondering the same thing, though not only with regard to therapists, but to schools and other organizations that work to "normalize" homosexual activities.

ge said...

Did you hear that Clint's original idea was to have a Lawn Jockey in a suit & tie in the chair, but they talked him out of that, gracias a dios
meanwhile...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/30/rachel-maddow-clint-eastwood-weirdest-thing-political-convention_n_1845231.html?ncid=wsc-huffpost-cards-image

Gagdad Bob said...

Proves how truly bourgeois these avant garde, "forward" thinkers actually are. They get the vapors when someone mocks the establishment.

Gagdad Bob said...

Don Colacho: "The bourgeoisie is any group of individuals dissatisfied with what they have and satisfied with what they are."

Van Harvey said...

EbonyRaptor said "How has it stayed on course and kept momentum through these many decades? It seems too big to be humanly directed, and too long to be humanly executed."

How? The 'How' is easy: Modernity has given them what never 'existed' before, the appearance of justification. Such ideas can't really be justified of course, but by throwing a cloak of inaccusability over themselves, that provided a suitable stand-in, and enabled one depravation to be piled upon another without fear of approach, at least not from eachother, and soon a thick enough curtain of 'scientisticalness' was hung up to keep everyone else safely at a distance.

Decartes provided the first useful threads for weaving that cloak with, with his positioning of mind before reality, and his 'method of Doubt' served as the Ideal spinning wheel. When what you think is So, provides the standard that any other standard must be checked against, it's only a matter of time before reality becomes safely unreal to you.

Rousseau took those threads and spun them into the first functioning cloak of inaccusability 'Western Civilization created an environment that's responsible for our sins, and Free Will doesn't exist, therefore we must be forced to be free'. Hume, Kant & Hegel spun a percale thread count of soph-deceptions woven so tightly together, it easily spans the generations and they've had no fear of light shining through for well over 150 years now.

Still, Truth cuts like a knife, and they will do their very best to keep that danger at arms length at all times.

Van Harvey said...

Gagdad Bob said "If a therapist succeeds in helping a homosexual become heterosexual, will the state force him to make restitution by reversing the process?"

Stands to unreason. After all, they've already instituted a policy of diseducation which we're all forced to fund, in order to reverse any signs of Education that family, church, and reality might succeed in slipping by the censors.

Soon, anyone how shows signs of being able to think is going to be mandated (aka: Tuition Free) to undergo more advanced indoctrin... er... college, or even post-grad programs.

Jack said...

Interesting that one can choose to change one's sex with the full cooperation with a licensed physician. No problemo! One can even change, a la Michael Jackson, the color of one's skin. Though, admittedly, the latter is a bit less common--but you could do it!

We're even supposed to think that this is a-okay and not even the slightest bit weird.

Yet if one chooses--of one's own free will--to deal with homosexual urges with the intention of being heterosexual, and does so with the help of a psychologist, that this is somehow abnormal and illicit?

If I have understood correctly, there seems to be a bit of confusion here. That it looks very much like we've got it all just completely backwards.

Van Harvey said...

Jack said "If I have understood correctly, there seems to be a bit of confusion here. "

Nah. Choosing to change your gender is putting your whims above (or below) reality, a denial of what is, for what you'd prefer it to be.

Choosing to clarify your mind, to strive to be what in reality you are, is an attempt to conform your wishes to reality, rather than the other way around.

Even recognizing a standard which has roots beyond the whims of men, is taken as a violent rejection of man as the measure of all things.

Which... in reality... it is.

JWM said...

I haven't dropped a line here in a good many moons, but it's Saturday night, Mary is out of town, and I'm here alone with my best ol' Buddy the cat. This was a great one, Bob. I too, for whatever reason, seem to have a low envy quotient. Now wrath, sloth, gluttony- those are another matter.

Several times in the last ten years I've had once I once called 'the voice' just sort of drop a label into my consciousness. 9/11 was The Dark Epiphany.
What followed seems to be this terrible polarization in our culture- a declaration of irreconcilable differences:
The Alignment of Sides.
With GWB's second term came the phase that we are in now:
The Great Inversion
where all that is evil is called Good and Good called evil.
With this last Blue moon I got the next phase-
The Reckoning. I am afraid we are in for some very interesting times.

JWM

ge said...

Hey I went to grade school with Neil !

and after all WHO checks on the checkers of the checkers of the checkers of the 'fact-checkers'?
...and how did they vote?

ge said...

meanwhile My...kind...of Gnosis:

Just as the objective field is absent in reality,
so 'the knower'-- in actuality pure mind,
in essence an absence, is like the sky:
know it in its ineffable reality!

The essence of gnosis, the indeterminate, inalienable ground of all inner and outer, samsaric and nirvanic, emanaion, cannot be determined in any way---just like elemental space.

All experience is pure mind,
which is likened to the sky---[that same simile]:
the nature of pure mind is like the sky.

Pure mind and its gnosis are self-aware existential space wherein all phenomenal experience of samsara and all noumenal possibility of nirvana
occur; but gnosis itself cannot be located, it is indefinable, like the element space. It is ineffable--- beyond verbal conventions, intentional thought-forms and modes of expression. It does not turn into anything specific; it does not become something other; it never transforms into anything else; so it cannot be defined as anything at all.

Though ineffable, the pure mind of absence has three remarkable qualities:
it is unconditional, nondiscriminatory, and unerring...


-from "Old Man Basking in the Sun: Longchenpa's Precious Treasury of Natural Perfection"
[i am planning next weekend to attend a couple classes with this translator K. Dowman]

Gagdad Bob said...

JWM:

Maybe the Mayan calendar is right on schedule! According to the late Terence McKenna's elaborate Maya-and I Ching-inspired, computer generated temporal wave, things are supposed to reach a kind of historical denouement by 12-12-12.

I used to go in for that kind of stuff. Even halfway jokingly got married on the great Harmonic Convergence in 1987!

What is kind of interesting about McKenna's ideas is that, just when everyone was thinking that history was kind of winding down, he said no, no, no. To the contrary, not only is it ramping up, but every great conflict and trend of the past 40,000 years is going to be fractally telescoped into the last 25. Every theme will be repeated until we reach a kind of transformative crescendo in 12-12.

He didn't regard it as the "end of the world," just the end of a world, so to speak. And just because the transformation occurs, it doesn't mean many people will be aware of it, any more than many -- if anyone -- understood what happened at the Crucifixion.

So, because the cosmic stakes are so monumental this November, there's a part of me that is still a little intrigued by the idea of Timewave 2012.

Gagdad Bob said...

Speaking of recurring themes, think of how the MSM's corrupt attempt to dictate reality is more than a little like the prelude to the Protestant rebellion. Or how the reign of Obama resonates with the divine right of kings. Or how the Islamists recapitulate the barbarian invasions. Or how the internet is like the printing press. Or how liberalism is just warmed over paganism. Etc.

Joyce was obviously on to the same thing, both in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake: the same returns.

Gagdad Bob said...

I think I'll drag out my old copy of Earth Ascending and try to figure out what I was thinking at the time, and if any of it still resonates in any way whatsoever.

whitney said...

I have a question...for anyone interested. I am not particularly biblically literate but my question is about one of the basics. In the Ten Commandments, it says 'do not covet' which implies that God is saying you can own things, it is not all communal. I know anybody can take bits and pieces from the bible and conform them to whatever they want to promote but that one seems so clear. I am wondering if I am being to simplistic?

Joan of Argghh! said...

Nothing to add. Just happy to be here.

Gagdad Bob said...

Whitney: Yes, you could say that the 10 Commandments implicitly sanctify private property.

whitney said...

Thanks. I am unsure of my own understanding sometimes.

Van Harvey said...

Whitney, the Ten Commandments are in Exodus 20, but if you read the following chapters (shorter than most blog posts), Exodus 22 for instance, the full understanding and meaning of owning, selling, money, of repayment for theft or damaging of property, and a grasp of the need for not only giving identical items for restitution, but equivalent Value, was fully understood.

ge said...

I just had a important insight re recorded music [my chosen medium btw]: to wit, If you play a song for someone-- say
BROKEN ARROW by Buffalo Springfield [Neil Young tune]-- and you say, "Isn't that Bob Mosley of Moby Grape singing the 1st live-sounding verse fragment?"
You don't say "WASn't that Bob Mosley..." etc.
It's in the Present! though recorded decades ago, eternity captured in a moment...
Praise the Lord & Pass th' Bong!

mushroom said...

It's all over but the shouting.

The One Cosmos Poet Laureate Suzanne Somers tweets support of Eastwood.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Neil Diamond too.
Man, Kirstie Allie is gonna find out just how vile her fellow democrats can be!
She was honest and they can't forgive that.



EbonyRaptor said...

Van Harvey said "How? The 'How' is easy: Modernity has given them what never 'existed' before, the appearance of justification."

Yes, but how has this modernity come to be? It's the same answer.

I drew attention only to the battle within which we live. There is a dark force that has been driving western culture away from the eternal truths of God. Godless humans are only pawns.

Whether one believes in a literal anti-christ or not, it is easy to see how the masses could easily be deceived by it.

julie said...

Wholly crap. The man acknowledges that he is his own measure. It may be the truest thing he's ever said...

Van Harvey said...

EbonyRaptor said "Yes, but how has this modernity come to be? It's the same answer." I disagree, it seems as if you are confusing the Why for the How, and if you do that, there is no way to combat the What the two combine to produce. You can of course say "It's all because of Evil" and leave it at that, but I think that leaves what is of real importance in our time just sitting on the table.

However you want to term it, Satan, 'the fall', the desire for what is easy over what is good, we all know that man has always had the tendency towards darkness (well, the left will deny it... How?), whether one, two, three or five thousand years ago or today - but reiterating it tells us nothing useful about our world today - a distinction that ignores the differences.

The fact is that there is a difference between what began to take shape four hundred years ago, and all the ages prior to it; and that difference is that in previous ages those who were doing evil, knew that they were doing evil, or at the very lease they knew it to be not good, but in their arrogance they felt entitled to it or simply didn't care enough, or worry enough about the consequences enough to bother correcting themselves.

What has made modernity so devastatingly dark, is that it gives us moderns the ability to claim that the evil we do, is actually good or at the very least, not bad. That's the key to how modernity has become so non-chalantly evil, and the chain of ideas that makes it possible for the average person in the street to participate in evil with a 'clear conscience', began with Descartes and the philosophic justification for imposing what you want to be true, over what actually is True - which is simply asserting Power over truth, in camoflauge.

Once legitimized, Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" transformed in short order into Rousseau's 'No one really thinks, they only react to their environment' and 'It means nothing less than they must be forced to be free', and it represents the total inversion of truth and justice. In a brief flash of time that philosophic spell picked up 'substance' and applicability, through Hume, Kant, Hegel & and all the rest, untill we've reached the point today where evil is either entirely unrecognized or considered impolite to point at and goodness is scoffed at.

There was a 'funny story' that I heard being told yesterday about a preacher calling the kindergartners up on stage after the church Easter activities, and he asked the kids "What do we mean by Resurection?" One little boy raised his hand and said "If you have one for more than four hours, you should see a doctor right away."

It's laugh worthy because it is entirely plausible that kindergartners would know all about the possible side effects of taking viagra. In that space between laughter and the absense of revulsion or outrage, lays the portrait of modernity, and the best way to avoid 'getting the joke', is to be able to recognize and explain it before you find yourself laughing your head off too.

Rick said...

Yes, I think "to not covet" implies "ownership" also without which true charity (in the Christian sense) would not be possible. Since, how is it charitable to give what is not yours to begin with? Just as it is not charity if someone forces you to give. Nor feeling you have done something charitable when you vote to raise some other man's taxes.

And, as Julie raises, sin is also something of which a person must claim ownership. Ownership cuts both ways, otherWise, in the case of the boy king, ownership is all in Ones head.

Van Harvey said...

Rick said "And, as Julie raises, sin is also something of which a person must claim ownership."

Not a problem. You didn't build that.

(sigh)

Or as Julie's link points out the next (prior?) best answer "I didn't see that".

Rick said...

Boy King claims ownership of the values.

EbonyRaptor said...

Van Harvey - I agree with your historical narrative and it is indeed how God has methodically been excused from the lineage of godless philosophies.

But the point I was trying to make, albeit not very well, was that the godless left of western culture are not carrying "forward" their worldview on their own, there is a force driving them over the many generations, and the irony is that the very people who celebrate their liberation from transcendend morality are in fact entralled in the service of transcendent evil.

Also, that doesn't release us from our duty to stand against the evil. The destiny of each individual alive today is not sealed, we are all still redeemable, until we're not.

julie said...

EbonyRaptor, you might find a relevant post here, or by doing a search of this blog plus the term "egregore."

Tuerqas said...

EbonyRaptor asked: How has it stayed on course and kept momentum through these many decades?

I think the answer is more simple than Van Harvey has been describing, at least concerning mechanics. The 'intelligentsia' has leaned left since FDR at the least. They write the histories, they write the dictionary.

A forty year old dictionary defines marriage as a sacred binding between one man and woman as the no. 1 meaning and a secondary as being a contract between two parties. A five year old idctionary has same sex marriage as the number 2 or 3 definition, but it is included. The Mirriam Webster online dictionary today defines marriage as a contract recognized by law. It states in the number one definition that it can be same or different sexes in the contract.

Every old definition of charity includes the word 'voluntary'. Mirriam Webster today leaves that word out. The movement has been conscious, but it has been by pawns of Satan, not followers.

The left intelligentsia has been very active in changing the meanings of words thereby changing the meanings of existing laws and documents to fit their wants. They have not been able to get same sex marriage to pass into laws, so they have changed the definition of the word. It is only a matter of time before they pass same sex marriage through legal maneuvers rather than votes. Charity is already fully inculcated. The words like 'voluntary' have been removed from the definition and indeed the number 1 definition in most progressive dictionaries includes 'intitution' in the definition.

It makes the argument: "Look up forward or charity or marriage in the dictionary you idiot." obsolete against liberals as the dictionary now supports their argument, not yours.

Van Harvey said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Van Harvey said...

Tuerqas said "I think the answer is more simple than Van Harvey has been describing, at least concerning mechanics. The 'intelligentsia' has leaned left since FDR at the least." Maybe. Problem with that is that you are about 100 years late in picking your lean-date (see "This is Cassandra calling" below).

"Every old definition of charity includes the word 'voluntary'. Mirriam Webster today leaves that word out. The movement has been conscious, but it has been by pawns of Satan, not followers." Whatever the source of their movement, the method of halting it must be dealt with face to face, and to do that you need to know how it operates, and it's history.

For instance, Webster, Noah Webster, the founder of Webster's Dictionary, was one of the first (late 1700's, early 1800's) to begin pushing for discarding the traditional materials of Education (The Bible, Homer, Virgil, Plutarch, etc), the materials of an Education that our Founders, and even himself, were formed by, in favor of "A selection of essays" that would strip all 'superflous' imaginative material out, in favor of more easily listed facts. He felt that a grey, lifeless list of facts could be drilled into kids heads quickly, so schools could focus more quickly on giving them the skills that'd make them more useful in the workplace.

That was the birth of the modern textbook, which kids have been successfully not learning a thing from for 150+ years.

If you begin with the notion that the attack on America began in the 1960's, or even the 1930's, then you are not only going to miss the real start, but very likely use some methods and means in responding to it that are actually part of the attack.

A 'short' summary I posted six years ago:
What never was and never will be


More in depth: Our Rotten Common Core Curriculum -
* Our School Curriculum's Rotten Common Core - pt.1
* Should the Education of your children include educating the government about your private life? The Rotten Common Core pt 2
* Breaking the Chains – Our Rotten Common Core Part 3a
* You Could Become Educated... but wait...There’s Less! Our Rotten Common Core Part 3b
* A tale of two lessons - Education outside, and inside, wackademia
* Echoes of History Repeating Itself, "This is Cassandra calling: will you accept the charges?"

Tuerqas said...

I understand your point Van Harvey and I know colonial history pretty well. I just don't believe that the removal of God from schools started in earnest much before WWII.

Neither atheism nor homosexuality, for instance, are new thoughts. They are no doubt older than written history. I just don't think either were a prominent subject pushed for change by the elite or highly educated until the 50s and beyond. These thoughts no doubt had their beginning in earlier times, but I don't think it was a conscious agenda of US academia until after the majority of academia accepted atheist ideals as humanistically superior to supernatural belief.

If that is much older than mid 20th century, please cite me a reference or two. I was basing my thoughts on the 1962 Engle vs Vitale and Abington school vs Schempp in 1963 decisions. I feel that was about the time when academic consciousness reached its critical mass point and consciously started pushing its liberal agenda into more than just the schools. I think a history of dictionary definitions of many specific words would bear me out.

I certainly was not trying to disparage any of your commentary. I just had the impression that Ebonyraptor was more interested in a nuts and bolts answer to 'how' rather than an existential one. I could be way off on that part.

Van Harvey said...

Teurgas "I certainly was not trying to disparage any of your commentary"

Oh, I didn't think so and certainly no offense was taken; quite the opposite.

"If that is much older than mid 20th century, please cite me a reference or two."

Well the "Cassandra" link I gave above has a letter warning of instances of what people commonly associate with the 1960's, from 1920. And another of the links, the series on Common Core, particularly the The Rotten Common Core pt 2.

But the issue I have most often with people, is that sure, people didn't come out and declare themselves to be atheists until late in the game, but they only did so then, because the 'legitimacy' for it had been laid much earlier in the game, when the possibility of Certainty, of Truth itself, had been torpedoed long before.

That has been the work of modern philosophy, and as those concepts seeped through the culture, riding on the appearance of 'science!', the corruption finally reached the point where they could come out and declare themselves openly as they did, in the 1960's.

More dangerous than that, if we simply insist on rolling back the visible changes of the last 50 years, the roots which bore them, will simply sit idle for a short, short while, and blossom anew upon us.

Van Harvey said...

Tuerqas, sorry, I misspelled your name in the previous comment, was not intentional.

Tuerqas said...

I see your point and I have to agree with it. What I am thinking is that 'the roots' that set the foundation did not have the kind of long term goals set in earlier history. i.e. I don't think there was a coalition of atheists and/or homosexuals who had the goal of specifically bringing about the reality weaving machine the intelligentsia uses today back in the 1920s or before. They may well have had a dream of acceptance (at least atheists), but no more. On that level, it even follows real american tenets of free belief, free scpeech, etc.

In the 1960s they had the foundation, used it(but they also bared it), and realized how much further they could take it. I think it wasn't until then that it reached a planned conspiracy level. It wasn't until then that people started to look at the modes of change as a weapon to use against religion among other things. Or, IMO, it wasn't until then that a political party took over its reins.

Van Harvey said...

Tuerqas said "I don't think there was a coalition of atheists and/or homosexuals who had the goal of specifically bringing about the reality weaving machine the intelligentsia uses today back in the 1920s or before."

What can I say, but that I understand what you are saying and that you are wrong.

From the Our School Curriculum's Rotten Common Core - pt.1

"Woodrow Wilson was elected, and Teddy Roosevelt before him, because a full generation and more of Americans were raised up with the idea that the ideas which proregressives were proposing – and which were in direct opposition to everything the Founding Father’s era believed and fought for – were wrong, old, outdated, unsuited to their new fangled ‘technological times’ which their oh so modern ‘progress’ oriented selves were experiencing."
(blogger size break)

Van Harvey said...

(cont)
And the end,
".....Here’s a final two cheery and popular thoughts from the early 20th Century to tease you into the coming posts, first from the premier historian of Education prior to Brubacher, Ellwood P. Cubberly, one of his optimistic observations was that:

“Each year the child is coming to belong more to the State and less and less to the parent.”

He wasn't moaning about that, mind you, but praising it. That was from 1909. Charming, yes? Who was Ellwood P. Cubberly? Oh... just someone else most of us don't think about anymore, but of those who do still think about him, they note that:

"Throughout his career, Cubberley remained deeply involved in shaping national policy on issues from teacher certification to textbooks. He retired in 1933."

And those policies stuck. And finally from another popular proregressive fellow of the times, Lester Ward, also mostly forgotten today, he helped make it possible for Cubberly to get away with saying what he did. Ward, faced as he was with people who still knew what a real Education once meant, carefully went about redefining the word ‘Education’ in his book “Dynamic sociology”, though he didn't hide how he intended to use his newly redefined word:

"…if the word can be made to embrace the notion of imparting a knowledge of the materials and forces of nature to all the members of society, there can be no objection to the employment of this word education as the embodiment of all that is progressive.
Education thus defined is the available means of setting progressive wheels of society in motion; it is, as it were, the lever to which the power must be applied.


The lever to which the power must be applied. Can you say ‘Nudge’?..."

Click the link to Ward's 'Dynamic Sociology', written in 1883. You don't need to read it, just look at the couple pages of rave review quotes about it in the first couple pages, from 'Educators' from around North America.

Cubberly, the father of the structure of modern schools, school systems, textbooks and school testing, such as SAT's, made his comment, “Each year the child is coming to belong more to the State and less and less to the parent.” in 1909.

They were, for the most part, atheists, some of questionable orientation, but that is the least relevant part, what they were intent upon imposing upon all Americans, was a materialist anti-American ideology, and in order to accomplish that, they were explicitly setting up a machine - they even thought of it as a machine - with which to replace the 'old, out worn' ideas, and especially the Morals and Ideals, of Western Civilization in general, and of America in particular.

Those who don't know history, are doomed to repeat it. If you'd like to see the latest echo, have a look at Mitt Romney's education plans... plans... plans... plans....

Tuerqas said...

Van Harvey said: "What can I say, but that I understand what you are saying and that you are wrong."

Alright, alright, I read through your multi-post links. You have done more thorough research and I appreciate your time spent.
Thank you.

Van Harvey said...

"What is best in life? Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."

;-)

Sorry Tuerqas, I know, I tend to relentlessly beat points into the ground... it's a habit.

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