Let's see if that chapter has any other helpful tips. Here's one:
One must never forget that all classic philosophy is built on common sense, while no ideology is built on common sense.... Realizing that is a great breakthrough (Voegelin, in Sandoz).
That is a very good point. You will have noticed....
I often say that, don't I? You will have noticed. When I do, it's probably because I'm directing your attention to something plainly commonsensical. It's a kind of compliment, because I'm assuming my readers are gifted with a fully functional common sense with which to perceive the bleeding obvious. To put another way, every troll is missing something, if not everything.
But this also means that someone who disagrees on the point at hand isn't necessarily stupid, just lacking in common sense. You will have noticed that a person can be quite intelligent, and yet, be utterly lacking in common sense. Many intelligent people, for example, believe Black Lives Matter has something to do with Black Lives instead of being just the latest iteration of totalitarian leftist ideology (but I threepeat myself).
Indeed, the observation that intelligent people can believe idiotic things qualifies as a banality, but why is it true? I'm sure we've discussed this in the past, so I won't spend a great deal of time on it. Taking myself as a prime example, I'm as intelligent as I was when I was younger (if anything, less intelligent), and yet, like any liberal, I believed all sorts of nonsensical things. Why? What was going on?
Gosh. So many things. As I said, I don't want this tangent to hijack the post. Is it possible to cut through the archetypal Jungle and identify one or two principles that explain my former idiocy? Think, Bob, think....
Okay, that phrase right there: think, Bob, think. It reveals one of my principles, i.e., that a type of pure thought can disclose the nature of reality. However, the operative word is pure, which goes to the moral requisites alluded to in yesterday's post. Does this imply a moral oneupmanship on my part? As in, "I know better than you because I am better than you."
No, I don't think so. Rather, the opposite, because we're talking about reverence and humility in the presence of Truth, which form the essence of intellectual honesty. As Voegelin emphasizes time and again, philosophy is not a body of knowledge, rather, a whole way of life.
Yes, it sounds pretentious to say I am a philosopher. That's for others to decide. But I can say I practice philo-sophy as a way of life, and that the practice of it requires several things, including love of wisdom and truth, perpetual openness to the transcendent, and lots of drugs. (I apologize. Some jokes insist on writing themselves despite one's best efforts to make a serious point.)
Back to the principle of Pure Thought. There are several wrong ways of engaging in it that we must rule out straight away, for example, any form rationalism. That's just a nonstarter for any number of reasons, but let's just say Gödel and move on.
In a way, we could place all forms of endeadening Wrongthink into one huge casket of deplorables called ideology. We might say that the way of ideology is at antipodes to the way of philosophy, largely because it reduces philosophy to a specific content and thereby closes off the divine ground, AKA reality.
Various profane dogmas, doctrines, and ideologies are indeed secondary realties that eclipse first reality (and there can be only one). These are "deadening to the living spirit of faith no less than to the living tension of the philosopher's contemplative (noetic) quest" (Sandoz).
Which reminds me of another critical point: living. Just as there exist biological life and death (the latter only intelligible in the context of the former), there are intellectual and spiritual Life. If you are lucky, then somewhere along the way you had exposure to, and were drawn into the attractor of, a Living Man who initiated you into the life of mind and spirit. If not, then you'll have a hard time understanding what we're talking about.
At the moment, we are enduring a tsunami of spiritually demented ideology washing over what remains of our civilization. It is quite obviously dead, deadening, and deadly, both spiritually and intellectually. Ironic, is it not, that its standard bearer is literally a dead man walking, Joe Biden?
No, not ironic. Inevitable.
How to combat this zombie apocalypse, or anti-political night of the living dead? Has anyone seen the movie Shutter Island? I saw it just the other night, but it's difficult to discuss without being a spoiler.
Let's just say that you can't just push back against a delusion, for the deluded person will simply incorporate you into their delusion -- like when Adam Schiff accused Tucker Carlson on live TV of being an agent of Putin for questioning the Russia hoax. Likewise, the surest way to be called a racist is to point out the intrinsic racism of the identity politics of the left.
The crisis of consciousness that has propelled alienated intellectuals' assault on all that our most venerable traditions hold dear and true cannot be met merely by reasserting dogmas even more loudly than before (ibid.).
You can't just yell back at the screamers, hate the haters, or resurrect the soul dead. "Rather, something more is needed."
The rightness of what has always been right must not only be reaffirmed but also recaptured in the hearts of men and as the living truth of a science of human affairs...
Yes, there are short-term mitigations, but let's be honest: the de-Nazification of the left is a multi-generational project, nor can it happen without divine intervention -- or better, without widespread openness to the divine ground. Which is why we agree with the Aphorist that
In history it is sensible to hope for miracles and absurd to trust in plans.
Never did get to my original point. I'll get straight to it in the next post.
24 comments:
Personally, I've begun to question whether racism even exists or not. Perhaps the whole thing was a hoax all along. Did lynchings ever happen, or was it all garage door rope loops? Can such a thing even be known, given our 'betters' commitment to objectivity?
Perhaps certain historical facts can bear another explanation, instead. Common sense suggests if an explanatory paradigm gives pernicious results, priors are at fault, not logic itself.
My original post was going to touch on the subject of the imaginary racism that necessarily flows from identity politics, since the latter is a regression to the primitive tribal mentality that defines the tribe in terms of the Other. Stay tuned for details.
River, I can say from experience that racists (focusing mainly on whites who hate blacks) exist, and sometimes they are complete jerks. They say unpleasant things to people who don't deserve it, and sometimes treat people with suspicion who are doing something completely innocuous. Usually, though, the outright racist is as much a jerk in other ways as in that one; it's part of a suite of behaviors. And it's very rare for a white person to go out of their way to make a black person suffer simply for existing. There is no white version of the knockout game. Conversely, there are terabytes of evidence available showing black people randomly assaulting whites or anyone unfortunate enough to set off the mob.
Racist acts such as white people going out of their way to actually hang up a noose to scare black people, however, are complete BS. I have yet to see an instance of anti-black racism in America that didn't turn out to be a complete hoax. Ditto for so-called "Islamophobic" attacks and most anti-alphabet stuff as well. When there's anything to it, the perpetrator is usually one of the same group being "attacked."
*I should say, in the past couple of decades I haven't seen it.
Well, they tell us that black attacks on white people aren't a result of racism, so clearly if whites are doing the same sort of thing, it can't be racism either. Now they tell us also that it's not racism because there isn't that power dynamic, but my experience has always been that everyone who acts in a way that is ever identified as 'racist' is usually not powerful, and is often reacting to their perceived powerlessness. (Almost every neo-n*zi I've seen is in prison, and not for white collar crime.) Therefore, the model of inner city blacks, who are in general rather powerless, seems to apply to all cases of racism I have ever known. That is, apparently, not racism. What is it?
Jim Crow, for example, is clearly a reaction of the defeated South and does not come from a position of power, but of perceived powerlessness. Since the South could no longer fight against the North, they were taking it out on a proxy, which was black folks. The significant part of this dynamic isn't really the relationship between the South and the proxy (black people) but the South and the North. But why is that relationship so pernicious?
Empowering people doesn't seem to solve this problem either, as the empowerment recently demonstrated that giving people who behave this way power only continues the behavior, it only validates it. Not sure again what this behavior can be called; but notable is that it seems more the reaction of a person who lacks power in the presence of a proxy for whomever they think has power over them, but it also presupposes that any relationship of power over a person by another person is by definition adversarial, which makes it sound like it's satanism.
Nazi-ism is generally defined as an aberration end game of the anarchist right. Things get so liberty free with Rule of Law getting so unregulated, that it gets bought and power concentrates unobstructed and we wind up right back at totalitarian leftism again.
It’s like a wormhole through political spacetime.
But since it’s black, most conservatives get fooled into believing that there’s nothing there and they get sucked in. And as we all know, not even light can escape.
A possible antidote would be Christian morality, where the morally Christian senses Satan somewhere in that otherwise pleasant appearing void. But Satan is tricksy and false and people sure do love their sinning.
Nazis usually achieve their power by allying with other concentrations of power, with corporate and religious being the most popular. You wind up with a few sociopathic elites scratching each other’s backs to maintain power at the expense of many who they’re supposed to be governing/serving. As a diversion away from what’s really going on, they’ll find a scapegoat, often the Jews, to loot the crap out of before disposing of them and finding another scapegoat.
Blacks are pissed off because just when majority cultural prejudice against them was in obvious decline, just when finally after centuries of racism blacks were going to get their economic chance, neoliberalism happened. The jobs they were hoping for went overseas.
And I suppose the legal allowing of illegals to mass immigrate to compete directly with blacks for jobs was a factor. And automation too. And the enabling of soul crushing oligarchies like Amazon and Walmart and Popeyes Chicken and corporate superfarms which takes away a great many small business opportunities for entrepreneurial blacks.
So the great black economic rising never happened. What bothers me is that most of them will vote for Biden, who has sworn that he'll just enable more of the same economic poisoning of the American Dream enabling entry level jobs of opportunity which blacks really need to pull themselves upwards.
Sorry, "disabling" and not "enabling entry level jobs"
Re genuine “intelligence”, wisdom, insight - I have to say that’s ultimately a matter of “gnosis”, isn’t it? There’s an arbitrary or seeming arbitrary nature to gnosis. It’s just get handed out or not handed out depending on .... what? Well, we see through a glass darkly. Best we can do is to strive for it and pray that it’s delivered.
Re spiritual ignorance of the Left - the Left can be very intelligent in the material sense that their brain synapses can fire off neurons rapidly, and this obviously by itself doesn’t constitute the intelligence of wisdom. Just as one can trace all elements of the Good back to their divine source and discover their “meaning “ therein, I think one could do the same with ignorance and evil. Their ultimate source, the fallen ones.
Whether the fallen ones are cast-out-of-heaven angels, or as the Kabbalah would have it, they are former denizens of a short-lived prior universe that was out of balance, yet they somehow remained and now inhabit our present universe - I have no doubt that they are far more intelligent than any human could possibly be. You don’t argue with or debate them. You’ll lose. True, they must be motivated and crippled by an archetypal rage, and they are by nature “out of balance”, but they are much more intelligent than we are. “Resist ye not evil”. The only way to deal with them is to transcend them, and of course pray for protection. In terms of the chaotic evil we see in our midst today, this doesn’t mean we don’t righteously defend ourselves by force of arms if necessary. But it does mean that must maintain a spiritual vigilance, with ourselves the primary subject.
Stay cool. 😎
will
What you resist, persists.
I reckon Dr. Okusan knows a lot about cyberspace? Has he ever come across anything like... time travel? Asking for a friend.
GOD bless you for your fight against the agents hell-bent (literally) on Immanentizing the eschaton!
Hello I am a leftist.
I'm so left I changed my human rights to human lefts. I have God given lefts to life, liberty, and the pursuit of Eschaton.
I thought you might like to get to know me. I don't bite.
What would you like to know about me? What would you like to say to me?
What are you feeling right now?
Let's talk about your feelings.
Let's dialogue and just see where it leads.
Thanks, Justine Curvy.
What's it like to be in League with Satan? To have Hitler as a role model? To watch Rachel Maddow night after night and never ever learn a damned bit of Truth? To worship Obama as a god and Biden as an uncle and consider Mecca to be the capital of the Holy Land? To wear grotesque clothing and chant with the BLMs and think of Antifa as crusader saints? To smoke dope and swear and never hold a real gun while besmirching our heroic police and military? To be a satan worshipping atheist full of russian made vodka? To want this mask-wearing craze to go on forever as if you're hiding your face from our heroes?
Have you no shame?
What is it like to be a very, very, very bad person, Justine Curvy?
Hi Anonymous 06:37
I have no shame. Do you? If so, what are you ashamed of?
Being a very bad person can be very good. If you know what I mean.
Tell me, have you had any enjoyment in life lately? What did you do?
I would like to know how you get pleasure. I will tell about me after you share first.
Don't worry I won't judge. Are you kinky?
-Justine
Dr. Nanette Okusan here. I do NOT cast spells. I am a reputable OB Gyn with a thriving practice. I do not know what Christiana is talking about. I've never met anyone by that name.
Perhaps there is another Dr. Okusan? It is not an uncommon Korean surname.
Ok maybe I have cast a spell or two, back when I was a teenager. I've outgrown that stuff.
So do spells even work? Well I think....I'd rather not say.
Some years ago the embarassing dipshit Jonah Goldberg wrote a terrible book, Liberal Fascism, putting forth the thesis that liberals were the real fascists. The book and the thesis were garbage and soon forgotten.
A few years later, the even sleazier and stupid Dinesh D'Souza put out an even worse book on the same subject. This was I think after he got booted from his job as a christian college president for sexual indiscretions.
Fortunately for them this is America, there is always someone even stupider, so these worthless con artists will always make a good living selling their dreck to the likes of you.
Imagine being stupid enough to spend effort promoting this garbage without even a financial upside.
Imagine being stupid enough to spend effort promoting this garbage without even a financial upside,
What's it like to be in League with Satan? To have Hitler as a role model? To watch Rachel Maddow night after night and never ever learn a damned bit of Truth? To worship Obama as a god and Biden as an uncle and consider Mecca to be the capital of the Holy Land? To wear grotesque clothing and chant with the BLMs and think of Antifa as crusader saints? To smoke dope and swear and never hold a real gun while besmirching our heroic police and military? To be a satan worshipping atheist full of russian made vodka? To want this mask-wearing craze to go on forever as if you're hiding your face from our heroes?
Have you no shame?
What is it like to be a very, very, very bad person, Mr. or Ms. "Imagine being stupid enough to spend effort promoting this garbage without even a financial upside".
The Reverend Gabriele Amorth, the former Vatican's Exorcist in Chief, once advised that "Practicing yoga is satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter."
Now what does this have to do with Nazism? If you need to ask then you are indeed, a liberal Nazi.
At least we can all agree that Jonah Goldberg is a silly ass.
Governmental sweet spots can be tricky enough things to discern as it is, without having to drag around an ideology with you everywhere you go. How much police freedom is too much police freedom? Or freedom from? Somewhere in the scale between defunding the cops and making them the totalitarians best friends is a sweet spot for Rule of Law.
And then there’s the double sweet spot, like in Iraq. You either go in with full force and quickly transform the place to sanity with minimal collateral damage, or you don’t go in at all and avoid ISIS and 20 years of mess and civilians wanting retribution against your country because you killed their dog, grandma and dad for WMD that they tell you weren’t even there. The in-between sweet spot of going in half-assed yields too many problems.
And then there are all the variables to consider, including that historians may not be very cool in a particular age and will tend to be ignored, especially if what they’re speaking of is ideological in nature. I just got done ‘debating’ with a historian telling me that Honorus’ chicken and the Visigoths was not a symptom of a decrepit Roman culture. He said there was nothing wrong culturally and Rome just got overextended and overwhelmed by forces outside of the control of the emperors. I said “Ideology, much?” and he left in a huff.
I think he thought that I was the one with the ideology. Maybe there's an ideological test we can all take and then we have it tattoed on our foreheads so people can be forewarned.
Here's an example of common sense verses all the abstract pontificating. She'd make a good woman for some lucky young man, too.
of course what you resist persists - that is, until you overcome it.
it's called 'escalation'.
As for why people are bad for really no financial compensation? While Americans are taught that money runs America and so on, money doesn't grow on trees most of the time, and even if it did, without the right connections you'd be a counterfeiter. Fact of the matter is that status always runs human society; it's just that it tends to be much easier to buy status in the USA than it was in Europe. The recent changes in the Left represent a certain disclosure of this tendency, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. However, unless status is based on a mixture of heredity and virtue, it won't solve the problem it's intended to address.
So people do these things for status. However, most of the people doing things are not really gaining anything, they're "pwned". My good friend Zero HP's thread basically covers the now-gold-standard case:
https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1272180537541656577
I dunno ted. She may need to live life as a poor ugly fat depressed black woman for a while, surrounded by horny men on drugs who had no father.
I don't think it's the entitlements. I think it's the opportunities. A little like the difference between Palestinians stuck in the Gaza and their freer saner cousins living in Israel itself.
Maybe blacks need a better culture of heroic bootstrapping? But it seems that a lot of undocumenteds do the bootstrapping thing all the time. Maybe they just need to quit naming their kids ghetto sounding names.
But then I've been wrong before.
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