Wednesday, February 23, 2022

An Immodest Proposal

I should acknowledge up front that I really don't have much to say, at least nothing new. A string of meh books has left me bereft of material to pilfer and playgiarize with.  

I do have one new idea, but it would require too much work, plus it's wholly impractical anyway: it involves taking seriously the notion that I'm right and everyone else is wrong.

Well, not me literally. Rather, Western civilization. Christendom. Classical liberalism. The modern world, minus all the leftard scolds spoiling the fun and ruining it for everyone else. 

Our ideological adversaries are permitted to unapologetically insist they've got all the answers -- or else! -- e.g., feminists, homosexual activists, equitarian thieves and hustlers, etc., so why can't we? 

Let's begin with that famous quote by Joe Sobran, hanging right here on my sacred meme screen. Which sentence is wrong?

WESTERN MAN man towers over the rest of the world in ways so large as to be almost inexpressible.

Correction: you can express this idea in academia. Once.

It's Western exploration, science, and conquest that have revealed the world to itself. 

That last observation manages to be simultaneously a banality and HATE SPEECH!!! 

Other races feel like subjects of Western power long after colonialism, imperialism, and slavery have disappeared. 

They have to, otherwise what's their excuse? Israel was colonized until 1948. So what? They've moved on. Most of Africa has been decolonized and independent for nearly as long. They have not moved on, to put it politely. What's the difference? Could it be that there is a correct way to go about things? 

The charge of racism puzzles whites who feel not hostility, but only baffled good will...

That's for sure. Every time I hear this slur, I wonder what depths of loserhood and self-perceived inferiority must motivate the charge (unless it's from white Karens, in which case it is to signal virtue to fellow People of Pallor and superiority over the People of Color for whom they presume to be Saviors). 

... because they [we] don't grasp what it really means: humiliation. 

"Black History Month" is what we psychologists call a reaction formation to what must be an unconscious feeling of Black Inferiority. Blacks who don't feel inferior must surely be embarrassed at the sickening pandering. 

The white man presents an image of superiority even when he isn't conscious of it.

Here again, this isn't us saying it, it's them: they just translate "superiority" to "privilege," in order to transform the pain of envy into the pleasures of victimhood and entitlement.

They crudely project this superiority-privilege into whites, even though plain vanilla Americans are way down the list of, say, median household income, after Indian-Americans, Taiwanese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Turkish-Americans, Pakistani-Americans, Persian-Americans, Nigerian-Americans, Indonesian-Americans, Korean-Americans, etc.

And superiority excites envy.

Envy is part of the standard equipment of every human being, and if you don't manage it, it will manage you -- just like food, sex, or money. Envy is as important to understanding human psychology as are genetics, interpersonal relationships, and the drive for status. (Perennial raccoomendation: Envy, by Helmut Schoeck.)    

Destroying white civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call "minorities."

Which has become the motive force behind the Brandon Administration. Brandon is our first truly Black president, in the sense that he is unabashedly pursuing the Equity Agenda, which is the newphemism for the old Envy Agenda. (One might be tempted to say Obama was the first black president, but he was the first white female president and the first homosexual president.) 

Now, what sent me down this line of thought? It was the following passage from a book I'm rereading called Being and Some Philosophers, by Etienne Gilson (published in 1949):

There are countries where no professor of any science could hold his job for a month if he started teaching that he does not know what is true about the very science he is supposed to teach, but where a man finds it hard to be appointed as a professor of philosophy if he professes to believe the truth of the philosophy he teaches (emphasis mine).

This despite the fact that science provides only likely knowledge whereas philosophy teaches not only certain knowledge -- truths that cannot not be true -- but without which the practice of science would be strictly impossible.

Neverthelesss, "if a philosopher feels reasonably sure of being right, then it is a sure thing that he is wrong." Such a man is

a living insult to those who don't happen to see reality as he does. He is a man to steer clear of; in short, he is a fanatic.

"Fan" is short for fanatic, and my dictionary defines the former as an ardent admirer or champion (as of a person, technique, or pursuit): ENTHUSIAST. 

So, guilty as charged. I'm a big fan of truth, reality, and civilization. As is our pal Nicolás:

Truths are not relative. What is relative are opinions about the truth. 
Violence is not enough to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference to the particular values that founded it.

8 comments:

John Venlet said...

Truths hurt, but truths only hurt those individuals who revel in fantasy and avert their eyes from reality.

Gagdad Bob said...

Some recent relevant tweets from Happy Acres:

--A lot of underclass anger is that others blissfully grow up in decent homes with capable, caring parents. It feels unfair.

--While we fight for the survival of civilization, know that 90% of our fellows consider Hollywood celebrity romances more important.

--I have a hardest time disentangling effeminism & progressivism. Both are all about feelings, I suppose.

--Not wanting to live among disturbed, chaotic people is a civilized impulse that should be praised & honored.

--In order for low IQ people to feel included, America must be redesigned

--His every day is devoted to correcting wrong opinions on the internet.

julie said...

But but but your truth makes my truth feel bad! - paraphrasing NPCs everywhere

Gagdad Bob said...

Whatever happened to "sharing the good news"? That's a loving action, so long as it isn't coerced.

julie said...

Well, in Finland these days the Good News is officially hate speech. Sharing the time-tested ingredients for healthy relationships and a healthy civilization just isn't inclusive enough, so it must be silenced. For inclusivity.

Coming soon to a state near us, no doubt. Or at least Canada.

Byron Nightjoy said...

Excellent post - thanks Bob. How do we understand the paradox that the modern world, having arisen in the context of ‘Western civilization, Christendom and Classical liberalism’, has spawned the most godless society ever seen in history? Wouldn’t you expect that its vastly superior outlook affords some kind of protection against secular materialism on the tragic scale we’re seeing now? Perhaps there is an inverse proportion between the ascendancy of truth and an attempt by ‘tenebrous’ forces to tear it down to the extent that it poses an existential threat to the ‘rulers and principalities of this world’.

julie said...

Certainly.

Plus it's what always happens: build something great; forget to teach the children why it's great, how it was built, and how to maintain it; after a couple generations, the young view it all with a mixture of contempt and taking-it-for-granted; then those who hate it try to kill it, gut it, and wear it as a skin suit, demanding respect, until it all falls apart and "bad luck" becomes the default lifestyle for a few centuries.

Wash, rinse, repeat...

Or put another way, the adversary kills us with our love. Not the strong, fatherly love that disciplines its children for Good, but the kind that permits all things because it can't bear to upset its children or make anybody feel bad. I wouldn't call it motherly exactly, because no good mother acts that way, but it's certainly an excessively feminized sort of love.

Van Harvey said...

"if a philosopher feels reasonably sure of being right, then it is a sure thing that he is wrong."
, is the 'Critical' means of carrying out:
"Destroying white [Western] civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call "minorities."[and the tenured]

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