Awesome essay Rurik, when it comes to Postmodernism it needs to be especially emphasized that we aren't speaking of lies per se. The heart of postmodernism is the impossibility of truth even existing. Without ontological truth there aren't any actual lies. This is how I square evil not having any positive metaphysical existence in itself, a lie has to be proceed by truth. That is evil exists purely as an opposition. Without the good there isn't evil. Evil is the metaphysical parasite on the good.
With postmodernism we have an inversion, truth has no concrete ontological existence, it's all a matter of power dynamics and power dynamics are constantly influx. What was accepted yesterday is todays heresy. There is absolutely no anchor or reference point and this leads to total incoherence. That incoherence is reflected most starkly in pop culture and modern art but in politics as well. The tranny circus is the most obvious in the West as it is but it's here in the slavlands as well as you document in your essay here.
Anyway we need to figure out how to join Arestovichs book club, that would make some excellent material for the blog.
Looking for the 'ontological truth' has wasted two millennia's worth of very fine minds.
'Truth' is a crutch. Throw it away and see if you can walk on your own two feet, facing the world with the tools at hand and not waiting for Godot to bring you victory or justice.
Here's a secret: In the same way that capitalists produce 'profit' by externalizing all costs and internalizing everything of value, systems of thought (and thinkers) work by *keeping the best stuff secret* and promoting only stupid stuff that give smarter peasants fodder for spinning their wheels while the elte go about their business of exploiting real-world assets.
'Truth' is, I submit to you, one such 'wheel-spinning' detritus flushed into the social sea as a psychic pollutant.
That's pretty cool bro and I applaud you for not needing any crutches. But should your son decide to grow tits and castrate himself just remember that dogmatic commitment to gender corresponding to chromosome counts is a crutch.
Yes, it does. And no ooga-booga 'truth' talk changes that. I don't need first principles to make that sort of thing stop. I just need the same thing the people promoting such perversion need: power.
Meh IDK. Your son castrating himself and growing tits would be his way of signalling his submission to those with power. That is you and him even share the same 1st principle, power. Everyone has a 1st principle your claim to the contrary not withstanding.
All flows from power. Your son in this thought excerxise is just acknowledging that there are better players in the game than you and he is joining the winners, which he ought to do, it's more consistent. Sure his health and soul will suffer but that befitts someone who is serious about worshipping at the alter of pure power.
The irony is despite all your theoretical knowledge of Nietzschean philosophy here you can't see what's right in front of your face. All these people you hate share the exact same 1st principle as you and even though they probably haven't read a page of Nietzsche, Hegel or Heidegger they understand it intuitively much better than you and accordingly play the game better.
"Son you only want to become a catamite because I don't have power over you"
Those people you hate for taking your power:
"Your father's power over you is oppressive, don't submit to it"
And why should your son submit to you when you are such a weak horse here? If power is the end all be all his submission is slave morality, submitting within the framework of a belief system he doesn't even believe in.. fulfilling a duty to the weak (you in this case) based on some sentimental moral custom in regards to listening to your parents.
There are mathematical systems in which A does not always equal A. In floating point arithmetic, NotANumber is floating point number that is not equal to itself and positive zero and negative zero are distinct but equal. Floating point arithmetic is ubiquitous.
I don’t know if not-things are ontologically possible in reality though. With logical systems, we can trivially create self-contradictory constructs like the famous “All Cretans are liars,” or “This sentence is false,” but the real world seems to iron them out so that no such destructive self-recursion exists. Present reality consists of all that which is real and none of that which is not-real, though I guess the future and past are not-real…
Courage is a 'not-thing'. Humor. Redness. Sanity. Civilization. Military Strategy. Cuisine. Good service. The way a properly polished military brass button gleams Just So. Most, if not all, of our experience is not-thing.
And our notion of what IS a solid/real/physical thing is...
Oct 2, 2023·edited Oct 2, 2023Liked by Rurik Skywalker
Great article. When it comes to this, though, "This is actually pure NEETshian will to power made manifest," I would say this is more Foucaultian and Derridaian will to power (the political and linguistic fathers of postmodernism hawking cheap derivatives of Nietzschean metaphysics). Again we come back to Heidegger, whose thinking (including in the essay On the Essence of Truth) provides a new ground for truth by going back to the "pre-Socratics." Heidegger's four volumes on Nietzsche are also relevant as I think it's important for thinkers to grasp what happened to thinking, metaphysics and truth with Nietzsche, and Heidegger's is probably the best published work on this topic.
Like Heidegger, Nietzsche was completely transformed by his reading of the pre-Socratics in the original Greek. The fact that Parmenides and Heraclitus had drawn the essential divisions in Western thought long before either Socrates or Plato had come on the scene pretty much broke his mind. Given a choice, he chose Heraclitus as his philosophical 'father'.
But he never gave up the dream of a the 'eternal' and 'unchanging'.
'The will to power' *is* his metaphysics. It exists prior to all other meanings or pupose. There's a moment in the fragments that his sister collected where N says something like this: The amoeba blindly reaching out into the world around it is the will to power.
And, of course, he proposed the idea of the 'Eternal Return' but that's a very materialist idea.
I like the idea of the pursuit of strength and making it the center of one's life and society. I just don't like his materialistic view of it. There are other forms of power that he would dismiss as life-denying navel-gazing. Only the Jews do it the right way according to him.
Nietzsche hates Jewish morality actually - as he sees it as the original slave morality and prerequisite for the even more broadly destructive Christian morality. He jokingly called Christianity and alcohol the two great European narcotics.
He sees everything as physical/biological, but that is b/c he saw the need to turn all philosophizing about mind, beings, things, things in themselves, on its head and seat these phenomena in the body.
Granted, I'm coming to believe the self is greater than the body - that the body's tethers can be loosened an left behind. But we're all born into bodies, and our bodies are the cornerstone of all spiritual growth in life as we know it. Do some people transcend the body completely and lastingly - yes, seemingly, but they were born in their bodies and cared for their bodies to attain their development.
I think Nietzsche - while he was certainly a navel-gazer himself, was almost totally unaware of what I'd call spirit: the conscious connecting force between intention/mind and the body. He was ahead of his time in seeing the manifold ways in which body and mind betrayed and supported each other unconsciously, and how bodily health and disease are the seat of many psychological "realities," but he was a product of his time in his lack of understanding of what I call spirit (as opposed to what the Church and philosophers have called spirit).
Through the years, I've thought a good deal about what the hell the holy trinity was intended to do. I was pretty sure that it (like everything else authored by the Catholic Church) was first and foremost a mechanism of social control. But its centrality and structure perplexed me till recently. Then it occurred to me - what are the natural, spiritual categories? Mind, body, spirit. Perhaps also self, spirit, cosmos? Again, the spirit / energy is the link between intent, will, mind, and the body and outside world, and it is our bridge to understanding the relations between apparent opposites. But in the trinity the spirit is figured as the conscience of the Bible speaking to you. The spirit is taken away, externalized and made a product of your dedication to the book they wrote. And the Church fathers even thought to make a "sin against the Holy Spirit" (would this include mischaracterization of the spirit?) the only unforgiveable mortal sin.
I think burying the true nature of the spirit (a nature which has been independently verified by every bumfuck tribe in the remote Amazon since time immemorial) was perhaps the gravest crime of the Christian church, of all their crimes against humanity.
And Nietzsche and all the western philosophers fell prey to it too - modern philosophy from the outset spoke of the mind and body (with a huge prejudice towards mind, and perhaps making spirit a special subcategory of mind, until Nietzsche). Then Nietzsche flipped the interpretation on its head, saying not only is the mind subservient to the body, but really there is only body. And now, in the era of transhumanism, every-body seems reduced to one principle - body, with a mind of pure chemistry (body), with no internal connection between this fake dichotomy.
I could almost guarantee you though, if Nietzsche had encountered examples of will breaking the herd-enforced, custom-enforced rules of "reality," he would've fallen in love with that possibility and posited as the preeminent task of the superman. I think his poverty in this respect just stemmed from ignorance - not willful ignorance.
Yeah, and not only biologically living things are subject to the will to power in his view. It's THE metaphysical principle.
As I understand it, the Eternal Return is a kind of cosmological belief - a thought experiment that becomes a necessary strength test of Zarathustra - the will that knowingly embodies will to power. One must affirm a becoming and self-overcoming where all apparent progress and teleology is ultimately an illusion. When he encounters it, this is the heaviest weight and darkest thought, which Zarathustra must affirm and celebrate to overcome the specter of nihilism.
But I'm not sure what you mean by 'cosmological belief'. Nietzsche assumed that, in infinite time with infinite matter, every arrangement of matter would simply reappear over and over again. One doesn't even have to believe in anything but statistics, sort of.
I just mean that (insofar as I can figure) there are always some "cosmological" (maybe that's not the right word) presuppositions to any position on the nature of the cosmos. In this case, the ones that occur to me are that the universe has limits - that its extent isn't infinite - and that there are not infinite dimensions that distort/impinge upon each other which would lead to infinite variation in any one dimension. But I admit I'm not very surefooted in doing this kind of speculation.
Not in the sense of the current genre of "metaphysics," but yeah, in the sense of attempting to define the unifying essence of beings. His ideas of "will to power" and "the eternal return" are the main, complementary ideas that constitute his metaphysical positions on the each thing (the being) and all things (Being). His thinking on history, peoples, morality, etc., are extrapolations from these two ideas.
I personally don't like the label metaphysics for today's genre of metaphysics. Too much baggage and too much implied in that term. The Daoists use the term "Neigong" (which translates to something like "internal skill"), and with their more modest "inner work" seem to have pulled back the veil of the physical world to a far greater extent than all these new age authors who insist on leaping over the generations of hard work to answer all questions at the outset. So western.
youre using heideggerian terms to explain him, idk.
Internal skill is a good term. I actually like the Western fresh and more empirical eye that is cast on the old eastern traditions. It cuts through the bullshit that has accumulated in some cases.
Yeah, whereas I've read most of Nietzsche's work repeatedly (was pretty obsessed with understanding him for a long time), my understanding of him is definitely conditioned by Heidegger, who is the deepest interpreter of the western philosophical canon I've come across.
I shouldn't be too dismissive of the western contemporary "metaphysical" scene as I haven't read enough of it. LMK if there are any books you liked especially.
Can’t say that I’ve ever been interested in continental philosophy or western mysticism. In my defense you have a couple of monks that narrowly escaped burning and that’s about it. Western thought went off the rails with Aquinas and can largely be ignored nowadays anyways because we’re in postmodernity ie brutal zog occupation
Good instincts to steer clear of continental philosophy. There's probably some things worth reading in it, as it's helpful navigating the modern world from an analytical perspective. But even the best of it (that I've read at least) is way too concerned with mind/body, and blind to spirit/energy. And a person can be totally ruined if the mind is allowed to run riot, unchecked by any knowledge of or relation to spirit/energy. And you can't get a very good notion about the self or cosmos while being totally blind to major components of the self imo. My favorite is how Christians have turned the "Holy Spirit" into your Jiminy Cricket of Bible scripture. Much evil work has been done in the west to bury what we truly are. We've certainly had our share of "cultural revolutions" here too.
Very long, but McGilchrist's 'The Matter with Things' is comprehensive new wave of post-materialist philosophy based on his clinical work with brain hemispheres but then going way beyond having established that foundation. It's also on Youtube in a series, chapter by chapter.
Oct 2, 2023·edited Oct 2, 2023Liked by Rurik Skywalker
Interesting how at the "best" U.S. universities at least, the philosophy, linguistics and rhetorical theory professors who are widely published, and consider themselves to be the pinnacle of intellectualism, are derivatives of Foucault, Derrida, and sometimes Marxist theorists like Althusser: Truth is purely a product of power dynamics, and there is no way beyond the labyrinth of linguistic interpretation. "There is no outside the sign" - their favorite Derrida quote. If you had to oppressively run a world where information had been thrown to the four winds, and YOUR postmodern relationship to "truth" was laid bare for the clever ones, who else would you want as the priests of "truth" at your universities but these priests of postmodernism? ... These "continental philosophy" fools, and the "analytical philosophers" - a phylum of linguists who don't know enough languages to do real linguistics, but who have convinced whoever controls the money spigot that they're the one true fork of philosophy.
there are two realities right? the one that we accept as a society because of coercion by priests, brutes and oligarchs and the true reality that is always hauntingly out of our reach ever since we became Christian at least. the french neo-marxists are right that we live in a societal reality created by the rich, powerful and pseudo-pomps.
If you regard 'reality' as something self-existing outside Experience (which is the essence of the materialist construct). However, reality is more like a gestalt, an atmosphere. Take an NFL football game with 70,000 spectators. If you have been to anything like that, then you know how the collective mood is like a powerful wave affecting mind, body, senses, everything. In Daoist medicine (pre-Maoist) it is called Dzong Chi, basically Group or Collective Spirit. It's a very real - if not material - phenomenon.
So part of 'reality' in the societal context is a mutual atmospheric creation. Yes, this can arise in part because of manipulation by narrative etc. but the feelings involved have a life, or spirit, of their own as well which spreads throughout the collective.
The the thing with the pre-Socrates is that is that I don't see how anyone can reasonably conclude that Parmenides wasnt right and Heraclitus wrong. Like Heraclitus says
Now if we take all that at face value than any movement is an illusion. We have constant change and motion but the essence absolutely never changes. Change itself is the mechanism for a kind of cosmic stasis. The world is and ever will be, war is and ever will be and is a desirable mechanism for change. But none of this is going anywhere, broken down to its bare essence everything is matter being arranged and re-arranged via natural process and war. So that dude in a dress jerking off in the girls locker room really is just a bunch of atoms in flux at the end of the day.
His take on the Logos is actually down right Niecean:
Of course he means that death, life, creation and destruction are flip sides and necessary preconditions for life which is not Christian but there is no actual subjectivity here at all in regards to say identity. If all is one within the great storm of war and matter in motion than well...there is no neither Greek or jew..male or female etc etc we all know that verse that edgy right wingers who love Nietzsche love to quote mine.
Basically I don't really see anything here that is especially useful to right wingers. All movement is totally an illusion, everything is one and everything is constant flux and matter moving, fire to earth to water and back again. Parmenides just pointed out the very, very obvious imo, this movement is going nowhere therefore the stasis is real. We are in the Matrix.
Oct 2, 2023·edited Oct 3, 2023Liked by Rurik Skywalker
A couple ideas come to mind: Parmenides and Heraclitus may only be opposed on the surface, or, rather, poetically occupied with describing opposing sides of the same coin - stasis and flux. I'm not an expert on them by any stretch, but just a thought.
What's even more intriguing to me about them though is their approach, which is not the approach of Plato/Socrates/Aristotle/Kant/etc. of defining the whatness of beings and Being, could be an antidote to free our collective thinking from its millennia-old obsession with whatness.
And when we look at what the East has done in exploring spirit/energy and its connection to body and logos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AZU8S9F0yI), I think we should be slow to say that either Heraclitus and/or Parmenides had the whole thing sufficiently mapped so early in the game of thinking. I for one don't really know whether their insights are to be accepted as the ultimate wisdom.
Last point - even if we do become convinced of the underlying stasis (or all-consuming flux) lying behind things and obliterating the surface phenomena we attempt to hold onto throughout life, that may not be totally at odds with playing our parts in the game of life courageously. Primitive tribes understood the tension between the eternal, the gods, and our roles as individuals, and used masks, dance, altered states, etc., to enter the eternal temporarily, as a Justification and never-ending spring to fuel our little worldly lives and loves. Socrates seems to have been intellectually embittered by this tension between the eternal and ephemeral (depending on how you view his life and voluntary death), but even if he was embittered and his daemon became principally destructive, that's not a necessary outcome: one can also be inspired by sharing in the eternal - whatever it is - and also embrace the role of man, father, soldier, with courage.
I cannot understand Heraclitus. Because if everything is forever changing, why war and strife. War is organised violence against another city or nation; strife is internecine fighting. But they require the existence of a city or nation. In an ever changing state, why fight at all for the city or for bettering the city since it is bound to disappear ? The natural outcome of impermanence is apathy.
My take is that he views war as the ultimate expresson of this constant flux and movement. It's not so much a betterment as a natural rhythm to the universe. It's a permanent fixture of the cosmos expressed via violent movement and change.
If my take there is close to the truth of what he was thinking though than any projection of nobility onto war is cope and sentimentality. It's a function akin to a man taking a shit. It's just transfering the matter from one form to the next and it's necessary to keep the body/cosmos functioning. Thats it. In that scheme there's no reason to complain about Zog wars for Israel or international tranny supremacy.
Well how can we have no whatness, no thing in itself, no forms but also have nobility? What is a soldier or father in a universe that's nothing but matter in motion, dispersing and re-forming in eternal cycles? To cling to some concept of the Father, soldier, etc in such a universe where the forms don't actually exist, where these concepts in your mind don't correspond to anything outside of the electrical and chemical process in your material brain is pure cope and sentimentality imo. If there is no actual truth, logos, etc to be had you are talking psycho babble. If Heraclitus is describing a pot of pooridge being boiled, cooled and re-boiled for eternity. All the will to power and nobility we project on that is fan fiction and trappings. In the cosmic scheme of things this movement goes nowhere, hence I'm with Parmenides. The movement doesn't even real. It's missing the whole point.
The more I read about the pre-Socrates the more I think Plato and Aristotle where the Humes of their day. They boiled down the immediate preceding schools of thought to their bare mechanics and stripped away the fluff. What's left is pretty stark and unsettling and it ends in a mass crisis of faith for society. The bare cosmology of the Pre Socrates doesn't require any actual gods and faith in the Pantheon definitely declined post Aristotle/Socrates/Plato. But the thing is how are they actually wrong even within the pre-Socratic framework? It's just like how is Hume wrong in
that knowledge is impossible within the pure materialist framework?
Parmenides did in fact as far as I can tell believe we are in some kind of matrix and that forms and examplers exist in some fashion. Apparently the Socrates had use for him and his take that the movement is an illusion makes way more sense to me personally. I don't completely agree with it but it at least leaves the door open for meaningful mystical practice that is more than just trying to cope in a totally pointless universe of eternal re-arrangment of matter.
The Heraclitus model is the gnostic universe minus any sort of mechanism of escape and the Parmenides model is the one where perhaps by reaching knowledge of the matrix and the illusions you can perhaps...if not move in a literal sense maybe see things the way they actually are and reach gnosis..or something like that. Like I said I don't totally agree with it but its definitely the more sensible take if we want to be able make assertions about what ought to be done or what the good is.
What if, rather than just making universalized observations about phenomena, Parmenides and Heraclitus are both, at least in part, speaking about the process by which beings arise and become differentiated as beings for us? What if both thinkers are attempting to take a step back from describing the what-ness of beings to describe the "how-ness" of their arrival into Being as beings?
In any case, understanding this how-ness is important in that it is the foundation for all beings and value judgements built out of it.
I need to revisit the pre-Socratics (and maybe also Hume and Plato? lol) before I can comment. But I don't get how Parmenides has any more potential of liberation than Heraclitus. You mean because he speaks of getting beyond the apparent world of change to unchanging oneness?
So we have the possibility of reaching higher knowledge and it's dependent on some kind of divine revelation to those capable of hearing it. The voice of the gods can reach men. Now as for Heraclitus his logos is the thesis that has no antithesis but it's a totally impersonal force. We mortals see conflict and dialectics but these things have a unity in logos. I mean hell it's not far at all from Aquinas in that this dance of opposites has an underlying element of unifying symmetry. The flux we observe is actually a balance. That is there is an underlying reason to the suffering for those who have the sense to see it.
You might be mad about the fates not giving you clean water but it's fine if you're a fish. Everything is actually in its place and within his paradigm as I understand it that is logical. What you perceive as a flaw in your ignorance is actually part of the cosmic harmony.
Seeing this unitary logos behind all the death, the flux etc is your gnosis. Everything is already in its place and you in your self pity and weakness are blind to it. Embrace the suck and love its underlying symmetry.
What's especially ironic with Heraclitus is he that he will something like this:
And what is this supreme iron law nourished by the divine. Well war is the father of all and the final arbiter of who is free and a slave. Furthermore ALL mens laws flow from this divine which has no antithesis. Very proto Nietzschean and I can see why he was such a fan. Embrace the suck, if it doesn't kill you it will make you stronger and wiser. In this formula who ever is imposing his will the hardest is in the most in harmony with logos more or less.
Heraclitus isn't preaching immorality but if war is the father of all and what's good for one is poison for another like with his fish analogy than there is nothing ACTUALLY wrong with weaponized immortality. The only context in which one can object to weaponized immortality is in that of a power relation. Trannies arent wrong just because, they are wrong because they are a weapon used against us and put us in the slave category and someone else in the master category. But what than when the trannies are higher on the power relationship scale than us? In this context it would be foolish of them to join us, what argument do we have against them when they are as kigs compared to us?
That's where this all breaks down completly imo. Behind all the rhetoric that appeals to the aesthetics of right wingers is a very brutal truth, with in this very paradigm all those of our own ethnos who go over to the enemy are correct to do so as long as they are on the side that wins and us over here seething are pathetic creatures practicing Nietzschean slave morality.
Parmenides on the other hand sees all this as a kind of shadow play. All that is just is and can't ever not be. But there are levels we just don't have access to without the required level of perception. All this chaos we perceive is a distraction and matrix and the deeper one focuses on it the lower he sinks.
I'm already sort of at wall text book length here but this a good blurb from that link I posted:
The death, the chaos, the movement, it's all illusion. Something doesn't become something else because the distinctions themselves dont even exist. However that which is always will be..now one could than say aha gotcha that means that everything we hate like the trannies and Jews always will be however that's a total misreading imo. A tranny was born as A and always will be, the transition is an illusion, part of the matrix. Jews were and always will be parasites. This is describing a purely mystical/spiritual re-arrangment where the fassades and masks between subject and observer are removed, the thing in itself is reached. That which isn't, a unicorn in the body of a human or a good ethnic pornographer can't even be the object of thought because they aren't. This is a process of mystic discipline and very non material and it makes way more sense to me than the Heraclitun just embrace the suck system.
I mean I don't subscribe to that Parmenides system as I am one one of the few token Christians left around here but I do see an elegance and admirable insight in his thought that are more helpful today than learn to love the symmetry of the abyss we live in.
1. War: no conclusion but it's interesting that the Heaven trigram in the Yijing is associated with War and Father. (In that Age this dynamic felt more seminal than it does today?)
2. Change etc.: in a world that is continuous, there is no birth or death of any particular. Particulars appear to arise and dwell for a while, like clouds forming and dissolving in the sky, but they cannot have any essential existens because the field in which they arise is eternal.
Eternity can be observed through a combination of logic and experience. This is most easily explained when considering the nature of Time. Our human mind seems to be able to distinguish between past, present and future periods of time. The past appears different to us than the present, for example, if for no other reason that it is no longer present but we seem to be able to remember it as something which happened earlier. That said, we can say that there was one moment when stuff in the past happened and a different moment when stuff in the present is now happening, therefore we can posit Time as a series of moments, one after the other.
However, if we drill down to examine a moment, presumably it has a limited duration, otherwise Time would be one eternal moment. But any given duration for a moment we pick can be divided in half, no? Thus we have an infinitely subdivisible asymptote. That is one mathematical example of eternity. The other is the flip side already mentioned: since moments don't really exist except as cognitive constructs, therefore Time is one continuous moment without a beginning (birth), or end (death). And if there is no birth and death in ever-present Nowness (how this is experienced in meditation for example), then all apparent things arising actually are not solid, independent and lasting as they seem. They may appear so but cannot be so because anything that is both continuous and in constant flux is not a particular, definable thing, just as no moment can be said to have a particular duration that cannot be divided or exist in a particular time separate from any other moment in time - because it is all one eternal moment (and therefore not a moment at all).
My personal term for reality from this POV is 'experiential continuum'.
"Basically I don't really see anything here that is especially useful to right wingers."
Right-wingers are suckers for officially approved thinkers that aren't "especially useful" such as Nietzsche (or NEETsche, as RS says) and Heidegger. The latter two are the sources and patron saints of postmodernism, but the "right-winger" somehow think they have what it takes will save us. It's the intellectual version of "owning the libs."
"Heidegger’s work on Nietzsche has been influential, particularly in France, but to me these lectures seem to do no good to the understanding of Nietzsche, nor to gain anything from it, but mainly to be a hideous example of several things that Nietzsche explicitly and rightly hated." https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n10/bernard-williams/nietzsche-s-centaur
I have only read some of Heidegger's writings on technology: in German and French. I was appalled by his deliberately abstruse style. But he ultimately did not say anything new or useful. His thought can be summarised quite simply : as the techniques of the industrial civilisation evolve, the tools shape man who adapts to them instead of being his natural self; as the use of tools expands, nature itself is reshaped and stops being itself. The free natural world is gradually being annihilated. This results in a transformed reality that is unnatural; this evolution is bad and is a hallmark of modernity.
Heidegger lacked knowledge of history. Because the agricultural revolution had already performed such changes in man and landscape. The mastery of fire most probably as well. Once I could understand his thesis on technology, I wrote him off completely.
"Heidegger lacked knowledge of history." As early as Sec. 7 of Being and Time, Heidegger renounced "vulgar" history, i.e., the knowledge of facts and events. Same with his doctrine of Dasein, which dispenses with "vulgar" anthropology. This is a key move, which frees him from needing to read books, or from being challenged or refuted. Heidegger "intuits" the truth, or receives revelations from Being. If you question him, you are ipso facto a sinner and damned.
For example, when Germany defeated France, Heidegger told his students this was because Germans truly understood Descartes, and so were better at wielding technology! Then, around 1942, when the tide turned, H. suddenly realized (had a revelation) that technology was bad, and the Germans were too spiritual to be sullied by it! Hence the essay on technology, which Heideggerians treat as a new revelation.
Wow. I had no idea he was that bad. Because the arduous part about philosophy in modern times is gaining enough knowledge about humans through history, anthropology, literature, and philosophy to produce new valid thinking. I am aghast that he could openly discard history and anthropology and being taken seriously.
Thanks, but of course thanks really are due to Herman Philipse's H's Philosophy of Being and Safransky's biography of Heidegger. H's writings are a Rorschach blot, which is why everyone's book on "H's Philosophy" is different (nice academic racket). Philipse treats it as philosophy and the results are dire.
Safransky's bio of Schopenhauer shows how Sch. also thought philosophy was impossible without precise knowledge of the sciences, human and otherwise, and this is just what despised Hegel & Co. Interestingly, H also said he "despised" Schopenhauer and Goethe; no doubt because they would have mercilessly exposed him!
Jung had his number already in the 50s: graphomania. And this was 50 years before his 100 volume "collected works" appeared.
Nonsense. Heidegger read a great deal, obviously. Just because someone is more interested in interpreting the world through a metaphysical lens rather than the sciences that are downstream from the basic metaphysical positions of their era, doesn't mean they lack reading material or credibility. Go read all of Hegel and Goethe and Kant and ... and ... and ... etc. and get back to me.
Being and Time is probably H's least important work (although parts of it are interesting) namely because he reworked his whole approach later in life.
And about him supporting the war - and thinking the Germans had a superior chance and claim to lead the world b/c of their culture - and his subsequent regret and questioning the causes of the wars (along with the direction of the world in general) - Welcome to wartime and post-war Germany: pretty much everyone felt that way.
But this isn't his thesis on technology. This is more like Rousseau's thesis on civilization.
It's hard to summarize Heidegger's thesis, but it's more along the lines that our entire understanding of what the most basic things are, of what knowledge is - for instance, our proclivity to frame the world in terms of subject and object - are all technological - and keep the world careening onwards to what we've come to call transhumanism in recent decades. He stresses that our metaphysical era is not like others - it is more perilous - b/c the power of putting the universe on an infinitely divisible and extendable grid of time and space for the purpose of modification, catches humanity in a slipstream that is difficult to escape. The sheer power of modern technology allows it (and its handmaid science) to more convincingly counterfeit a definitive explanation of Being than any metaphysical belief to date, and that could lead to humanity's self destruction.
This isn't all he says about technology, and he makes considerable effort to point towards antidotes to humanity being caught in this slipstream. And granted, these ideas aren't as groundbreaking in a world where families have dinner table discussions about transhumanism on the regular, but it is still the most important philosophical topic of our time, by far.
What you wrote was definitely not in the book I read; a hellish read or rather decipherment. But you are better read on such matters so I take your word.
From your account, Heidegger's take on technology falls short again. The plain truism stands: something is done because it can be done. It applies to everything: human animal embryo/foetal chimeras have been created; a Chinese researcher has edited the genes of an embryo, implanted it and a child was born; brain-computer interfaces are under development; wearable electronics to better monitor the body; exoskeletons; undersea mining; etc. That truism does not need modern metaphysics; it has always been at work.
As for a counterfeit explanation of the Being, one does not need technology. Evolution was already the ultimate theory of being in Heidegger's youth.
I think the truism only holds because people submit to the will of technocrats, and actively further their goals via decades of study and personal investment even, b/c they don't realize what science and technology are - that they're just one derivative modus operandi which robs human beings of their creative freedom. I think if more people understood this, technology's obliteration of humanity wouldn't be just a matter of time. And that's not a trivial matter. In the Christian cosmos, is there even a way into heaven for chimera cyborgs with neuralink internet algorithm feeds structuring all thought? The eye of the camel would be an understatement for such poor creatures. Or, souls?
After the War, the govt. asked Karl Jaspers, who was now the official Good German philosopher, what to do with H; there were various levels of punishment. J. said H. should be allowed to speak, and publish, in the name of our proud tradition of academic freedom. But he must never be allowed to teach, because "his mode of thought inculcates in the young a contempt for truth and logic" (paraphrase).
He was not "stupid" but an evil genius, a very clever, beady-eyed, ambitious peasant who was being groomed by The Church to be their warrior against secularism. When, for reasons, that big professorial chair ultimately went to someone else, he turned on the Church ("a crisis of faith") and ultimately developed his own atheistic version of Christianity (Being, the Fall, Sin, revelations) with, of course, himself as the prophet. Same story we've seen before, e.g. Steiner, but H was brilliant, and fooled a lot of people into thinking he was doing "philosophy". It's a German tradition, starting with Fichte.
The postmoderns were right to ignore the "nazi stuff" for so long, because it's irrelevant. H. was never a "nazi" he was a Heideggarian. His goal was to become their official philosopher and then more or less gradually convert them to his doctrine. Actual Nazis like Rosenberg sensed this, and despised him. They were happy to let foreigners praise this German as the greatest philosopher of all, but the Party was fighting a modern war and had no time for proto-Green Party stuff about abandoning technology and living in huts.
Meanwhile, he spent his spare time pestering Berlin with "evidence" that this or that colleague was disloyal and should be sent to a camp. He sometimes did this after promising to write a nice letter of recommendation; what an asshole.
Nonsense. Spoken like someone who has never read H, or never put the time into making sense of him if he "tried."
Not that it's relevant to what's written in works like Time and Being or The End of Philosophy or numerous other important works - but do you have any sources showing H. lobbied Berlin to get colleagues sent away to camps?
Also, I'm having trouble following your argument - was H. evil b/c he was a Nazi, or because he wasn't a REAL Nazi who could fully get behind modern war? There's nothing in his writings that could rightly be characterized as proto-Green Party: What? He questioned where modern technology was leading us? - after the atrocities of WWII, and the atom and hydrogen bombs?
IMO, the lack of intellectual courage amongst most of the far-right comes down to not being able to truly look at what technology is, b/c their idea of a saving grace is a far-right perma-populist authoritarian rolling in like Alexander the Great, grabbing modern technology by the balls (as if that could happen), and setting up some traditionalist high-tech Utopia with maximum military power and prowess. Ironically, although you paint him as a pure Charlatan, Heidegger's work after the war on Modern Technology could dispel the right (and the Green Party) of their technological fantasies.
Great discussion on how reality can be changed using lies, propaganda and occultism. Would love to hear you speak about this topic on your podcast. Very grateful for this piece.
Oct 2, 2023·edited Oct 2, 2023Liked by Rurik Skywalker
A great essay and really lays out the issues confronting us in a very tight package. At least for 'those that have ears'.
I want to, however, focus in on one thing you wrote:
'To a certain extent, all truth-tellers are either hypocrites or mislead, because there is some element of reality that they have misperceived or that they simply cannot speak openly about.'
There is a third option: Truth-tellers who appear to be 'hypocrites' are just playing for time.
The most fundamental axiom of genuine metaphysical revelation is DO NOT SHARE WITH THE PEASANTS.
However, if your revelation makes you eccentric enough, you may no longer be employable and might feel compelled to parley your 'occult knowledge' into being the head of your own cult.
That's when things get very tricky.
In the same way that the Tarot are supposed to have been created to 'keep the secret out in the open', the works of would-be 'revelators' often lay their their revelations down in a bed of lies.
Thus, you can look at the OT and NT and find some 'occult truths' there, but only if you know what you're looking at. The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares and the Parable of the Sower both directly apply to the 'third option' of 'throwing pearls before swine'.
'Post-modernism' is head-fake, a distraction. It's origins are in prehistory, not recent developments. It came into being when agriculture begat granaries and granaries begat the power of the priests to starve anyone who would not agree to their 'revelation'.
I'm not sure if 'Evil' exists as an independent force in the universe.
What do see is that some humans benefit in certain ways by making things worse for others.
The cat that toys with the mouse is not evil.
The human that abuses the trust of another human is.
Rolo - Bless you for this marvelous marvel of an essay. Gadzooks, it may be your best ever. That a man actually lives and breathes in this day with your dignity and intelligence is a profound and inexplicable miracle.
Meanwhile, I am embarrassed but ask - who, pray tell, is the "Argentinian Zionist?"
A great post, Rolo. Do you mind if I call you Rolo? I subbed back in the day.
I know I’ve experienced a slowly growing, creeping feeling of living in an unreal world, when it comes to media, politics, and all the rest, and I wonder if this is the result of postmodernism? I may not be able to prove it, but I feel it.
Another Z conspiracy theory that I just invented is it’s the last letter in the alphabet, which in Greek was Omega. “I am the Alpha and Omega”, the first and last, this is it! Just two more weeks!
Rolo is long gone. I stole his wife and banished him to the shadow world! Thanks for sticking with the blog for so long. Hopefully I'm still providing you with your money's worth.
I've been rumbling over the thought, or gut feeling really, that christ is actually the demiurge or embodiment of satan since I read the bible, this being about 2 - 3 years ago now, especially when it pertains the the last sections about his second coming and all the occult shite regarding a lamb with horns and 7 or so eyeballs.
Its never set right with me the way it's described Rolo, I regret to some extent I know too much and am corrupted as a result.
The texts of the jews and the greco-jews are just rehashes of the wisdom of the ancients. There's nothing in them that wasn't in myths and legends of the *much older* civilizations that came before them. The difference is that the 'church fathers' took the profound wisdom of the ancients that had been turned into stories that the peasants could remember and claimed *it really happened for reals*. The 'church fathers' made the primal myths moronic and created a religion that didn't lift the peasants up, but drug the smart peasants down. Eventually, it dragged almost everyone down.
To understand 'Christ' you need to understand that 'Christ' is a short-hand for the spark of the divine in even the lowliest peasant, 'Christ' makes no sense as it was understood in the first 300 years of Christianity without understanding the idea of 'Christ in you.'
But the church fathers gave us communion i.e. partaking in the body of Christ, both human and divine. They also gave us confirmation i.e. the gift of the Holy Spirit which dwells in us afterwards and enables our soul to elevate itself towards God; our bodies are said to become temples of the Holy Spirit. They also gave us confession, i.e. the verbalisation and exteriorisation of sins, which amount to cleaning up our mind and body, the temple. So the divine is within Christians, as you understood by yourself.
It takes an effort of intelligence to understand those Christian concepts and others, which prompts ordinary people to think. Contrast with Islam or Hinduism, which are orthopraxies that require no thought. How does that square with your belief that the church fathers sought to dumb the masses down? Orthodoxy does elevate the ordinary man.
None of the ideas that you describe require that Jesus was God and actually existed as a real person. Nonetheless, that is the central claim of Orthodoxy. Neither Islam nor Hinduism make this claim. The vindication of the Church's claim to exclusive authority over all spiritual matters depends upon the assertion of a material nature, the physical and historical existence of Jesus.
This is a great post, sort of developed from your equally great excursus on NEETsche last week. The points you raise about New Thought (aka positive thinking, aka mind metaphysics, which is really just applied metaphysics, a la Schopenhauer) are well taken. Mitch Horowitz, who seems to be the only serious person in the area, has addressed many of them in his recent books, such as Daydream Believer and The Miracle Club. And so have I, but also including the political dimensions (Trump especially). I'd like to send you a pdf of my book on all this, if there is some way to do so without violating your op sec. (Also loving the Marcion series).
All you have in the politics of resentment. You attempt to enforce your politics using shaming, which is the only tactic the politically impotent 'Judeo-Christian' has.
You wish ill on your enemies because you cannot benefit from your politics and you resent those that don't play along with your fantasies. Deep down, you're not different than trannies. Which is why trannies when and people like you lose.
You filter the idea of 'power' through your own narrow lens of 'truth fantasies' and act as though I - or anyone else - out to be impressed by your already-constrained logic.
The 'sentimental moral custom' is a *custom*, and that's why you *ought* to honor it.
Otherwise, you get thrown out of the community that nurtures and protects you.
And my enemies don't share the same 'first principle' as I do.
I don't have a 'first principle'.
I just have tools and tactics and from them emerge strategies.
And I have a body encoded with a race and racial preferences.
In the end, all 'truth' is tribal. White tribal custom evolved into the fake tribalism of 'truth' and 'principle'.
Mine is the call to return to the tradition of 'community rule', not rule by abstract fantasies.
Power in the context of the discussion here just means the ability for a group or individual to impose it's will. Thought that was obvious but in case you didn't realize what I meant thats it. Think that's fairly straightforward but yeah maybe it's good to clearly define what we are talking about.
By why though? Roman Generals weren't supposed to cross the Rubicon with their armies but..you know times change? You support doing away with Christian customs right? What makes one custom sacred and another not? Your preference and why should anyone bow to your preference? Who are you again? Maybe I'm more Nietzschean than you and my preferences are better for me?
But what if your community is wrong? Trannies have a community, why "ought" they bow to your sentiment and morals? And to think you call me resentful. You resent them for trampling on morals they don't even believe in, peake slave morality. You seriously don't see that? They are living your code just fine, they expell people like you and work with the tools they have at hand. They prefer dildos as the indenticator of who is in their group and you prefer race but with no truth involved here there is no custom on either side that "ought" to be cuddled. Your yammering to the contrary is pure cope.
Alright I'll concede that this sounds pretty hardcore and I'm ready to break out some mead listen to the Horst Wessel Leide on repeat for awhile but yet again what of people who have a different concept of tribe than you? You prefer race but what of those who prefer wealth, hookers and a steady supply of high quality coke? Those aren't abstract concepts at all and if there is no truth, only subjective "oughts" that are no more than personal preferences any resentment you have for those that chose differently than you is again pure slave morality.
Anyway it's obvious that you are lying to yourself about not having a first principle, you just don't like the concept because of it's association with Christianity. But unironically throwing around oughts and insisting tribal customs should be sacred telegraphs that you are suffering from the same congnetive dissonance like any trad Catholic. Just let the Nietzsche go bro. Not even Hitler was a fan and Hitler was no Christian. Just admitting that truth exists doesn't necessitate converting.
"I’ve found that most people struggle to understand words."
Intelligent people struggle interminably; the less intelligent think they understand everything.
Roerich was big into Shambhala; so was Adolf. An old prophecy which, when realized, will manifest in the Mother of All Battles, with the Shambhala King as Warrior Monarch leading all his followers, being now accumulated in various incarnations, into War.
I have always said. Postmodernism is a crime against humanity. I can disagree a little about the abrahamic metaphysics. Christians have a concept for evil, it is "Satan". This is why I think they are a little above the new agers. Christianity is mostly morality, that is good and evil. But I agree that they are not encouraged to resist or even to understand, to notice evil. They are supposed to be good sheep, pray to God and God will fight evil for them. In the afterlife. Great article as always. I think almost the same as you do with the exception of the relativity thing.
You're trapped in the tautology where you have accepted the universalist perspective of liberalism, therefore you cannot appeal to the *reasoning* of actually existing communities that *feel no need* to justify their choices.
You think that because you can ask 'Why?' that you deserve a response you're willing to accept.
But that assumes a universal arena of agreed-upon procedures and assumption which is the very things that are being contested in the first place.
I'm more than happy to allow you and those who think like to form up your own communities and enforce your preferences, but since we don't share a 'universal' moral communal code, your justifications or explanations of your choices aren't that important.
The Old Rule was 'Stay In Your Lane': Do not enter my/our territory without permission and expect to leave alive.
This sets the 'moral' boundary as a physical boundary.
Pretending to read my mind about 'first principle' just makes you look bad.
'Morality' is the ability to form up and sustain and defend a community. That's all it is and all it can ever be.
Awesome essay Rurik, when it comes to Postmodernism it needs to be especially emphasized that we aren't speaking of lies per se. The heart of postmodernism is the impossibility of truth even existing. Without ontological truth there aren't any actual lies. This is how I square evil not having any positive metaphysical existence in itself, a lie has to be proceed by truth. That is evil exists purely as an opposition. Without the good there isn't evil. Evil is the metaphysical parasite on the good.
With postmodernism we have an inversion, truth has no concrete ontological existence, it's all a matter of power dynamics and power dynamics are constantly influx. What was accepted yesterday is todays heresy. There is absolutely no anchor or reference point and this leads to total incoherence. That incoherence is reflected most starkly in pop culture and modern art but in politics as well. The tranny circus is the most obvious in the West as it is but it's here in the slavlands as well as you document in your essay here.
Anyway we need to figure out how to join Arestovichs book club, that would make some excellent material for the blog.
Looking for the 'ontological truth' has wasted two millennia's worth of very fine minds.
'Truth' is a crutch. Throw it away and see if you can walk on your own two feet, facing the world with the tools at hand and not waiting for Godot to bring you victory or justice.
Here's a secret: In the same way that capitalists produce 'profit' by externalizing all costs and internalizing everything of value, systems of thought (and thinkers) work by *keeping the best stuff secret* and promoting only stupid stuff that give smarter peasants fodder for spinning their wheels while the elte go about their business of exploiting real-world assets.
'Truth' is, I submit to you, one such 'wheel-spinning' detritus flushed into the social sea as a psychic pollutant.
That's pretty cool bro and I applaud you for not needing any crutches. But should your son decide to grow tits and castrate himself just remember that dogmatic commitment to gender corresponding to chromosome counts is a crutch.
Yes, it does. And no ooga-booga 'truth' talk changes that. I don't need first principles to make that sort of thing stop. I just need the same thing the people promoting such perversion need: power.
Meh IDK. Your son castrating himself and growing tits would be his way of signalling his submission to those with power. That is you and him even share the same 1st principle, power. Everyone has a 1st principle your claim to the contrary not withstanding.
All flows from power. Your son in this thought excerxise is just acknowledging that there are better players in the game than you and he is joining the winners, which he ought to do, it's more consistent. Sure his health and soul will suffer but that befitts someone who is serious about worshipping at the alter of pure power.
The irony is despite all your theoretical knowledge of Nietzschean philosophy here you can't see what's right in front of your face. All these people you hate share the exact same 1st principle as you and even though they probably haven't read a page of Nietzsche, Hegel or Heidegger they understand it intuitively much better than you and accordingly play the game better.
"Son you only want to become a catamite because I don't have power over you"
Those people you hate for taking your power:
"Your father's power over you is oppressive, don't submit to it"
And why should your son submit to you when you are such a weak horse here? If power is the end all be all his submission is slave morality, submitting within the framework of a belief system he doesn't even believe in.. fulfilling a duty to the weak (you in this case) based on some sentimental moral custom in regards to listening to your parents.
Your comment is a fine example of post-modernity.
Truth is as simple as A equals A, which is self-evident and absolute truth.
There are mathematical systems in which A does not always equal A. In floating point arithmetic, NotANumber is floating point number that is not equal to itself and positive zero and negative zero are distinct but equal. Floating point arithmetic is ubiquitous.
Interesting, thanks!
I don’t know if not-things are ontologically possible in reality though. With logical systems, we can trivially create self-contradictory constructs like the famous “All Cretans are liars,” or “This sentence is false,” but the real world seems to iron them out so that no such destructive self-recursion exists. Present reality consists of all that which is real and none of that which is not-real, though I guess the future and past are not-real…
Courage is a 'not-thing'. Humor. Redness. Sanity. Civilization. Military Strategy. Cuisine. Good service. The way a properly polished military brass button gleams Just So. Most, if not all, of our experience is not-thing.
And our notion of what IS a solid/real/physical thing is...
A notion.
I appreciate your position, but let me point out that an acorn is the 'not real' of an oak tree.
Great article. When it comes to this, though, "This is actually pure NEETshian will to power made manifest," I would say this is more Foucaultian and Derridaian will to power (the political and linguistic fathers of postmodernism hawking cheap derivatives of Nietzschean metaphysics). Again we come back to Heidegger, whose thinking (including in the essay On the Essence of Truth) provides a new ground for truth by going back to the "pre-Socratics." Heidegger's four volumes on Nietzsche are also relevant as I think it's important for thinkers to grasp what happened to thinking, metaphysics and truth with Nietzsche, and Heidegger's is probably the best published work on this topic.
did NEET get into metaphysics really?
Yes.
Like Heidegger, Nietzsche was completely transformed by his reading of the pre-Socratics in the original Greek. The fact that Parmenides and Heraclitus had drawn the essential divisions in Western thought long before either Socrates or Plato had come on the scene pretty much broke his mind. Given a choice, he chose Heraclitus as his philosophical 'father'.
But he never gave up the dream of a the 'eternal' and 'unchanging'.
'The will to power' *is* his metaphysics. It exists prior to all other meanings or pupose. There's a moment in the fragments that his sister collected where N says something like this: The amoeba blindly reaching out into the world around it is the will to power.
And, of course, he proposed the idea of the 'Eternal Return' but that's a very materialist idea.
I like the idea of the pursuit of strength and making it the center of one's life and society. I just don't like his materialistic view of it. There are other forms of power that he would dismiss as life-denying navel-gazing. Only the Jews do it the right way according to him.
Nietzsche hates Jewish morality actually - as he sees it as the original slave morality and prerequisite for the even more broadly destructive Christian morality. He jokingly called Christianity and alcohol the two great European narcotics.
He sees everything as physical/biological, but that is b/c he saw the need to turn all philosophizing about mind, beings, things, things in themselves, on its head and seat these phenomena in the body.
Granted, I'm coming to believe the self is greater than the body - that the body's tethers can be loosened an left behind. But we're all born into bodies, and our bodies are the cornerstone of all spiritual growth in life as we know it. Do some people transcend the body completely and lastingly - yes, seemingly, but they were born in their bodies and cared for their bodies to attain their development.
I think Nietzsche - while he was certainly a navel-gazer himself, was almost totally unaware of what I'd call spirit: the conscious connecting force between intention/mind and the body. He was ahead of his time in seeing the manifold ways in which body and mind betrayed and supported each other unconsciously, and how bodily health and disease are the seat of many psychological "realities," but he was a product of his time in his lack of understanding of what I call spirit (as opposed to what the Church and philosophers have called spirit).
Through the years, I've thought a good deal about what the hell the holy trinity was intended to do. I was pretty sure that it (like everything else authored by the Catholic Church) was first and foremost a mechanism of social control. But its centrality and structure perplexed me till recently. Then it occurred to me - what are the natural, spiritual categories? Mind, body, spirit. Perhaps also self, spirit, cosmos? Again, the spirit / energy is the link between intent, will, mind, and the body and outside world, and it is our bridge to understanding the relations between apparent opposites. But in the trinity the spirit is figured as the conscience of the Bible speaking to you. The spirit is taken away, externalized and made a product of your dedication to the book they wrote. And the Church fathers even thought to make a "sin against the Holy Spirit" (would this include mischaracterization of the spirit?) the only unforgiveable mortal sin.
I think burying the true nature of the spirit (a nature which has been independently verified by every bumfuck tribe in the remote Amazon since time immemorial) was perhaps the gravest crime of the Christian church, of all their crimes against humanity.
And Nietzsche and all the western philosophers fell prey to it too - modern philosophy from the outset spoke of the mind and body (with a huge prejudice towards mind, and perhaps making spirit a special subcategory of mind, until Nietzsche). Then Nietzsche flipped the interpretation on its head, saying not only is the mind subservient to the body, but really there is only body. And now, in the era of transhumanism, every-body seems reduced to one principle - body, with a mind of pure chemistry (body), with no internal connection between this fake dichotomy.
I could almost guarantee you though, if Nietzsche had encountered examples of will breaking the herd-enforced, custom-enforced rules of "reality," he would've fallen in love with that possibility and posited as the preeminent task of the superman. I think his poverty in this respect just stemmed from ignorance - not willful ignorance.
Yeah, and not only biologically living things are subject to the will to power in his view. It's THE metaphysical principle.
As I understand it, the Eternal Return is a kind of cosmological belief - a thought experiment that becomes a necessary strength test of Zarathustra - the will that knowingly embodies will to power. One must affirm a becoming and self-overcoming where all apparent progress and teleology is ultimately an illusion. When he encounters it, this is the heaviest weight and darkest thought, which Zarathustra must affirm and celebrate to overcome the specter of nihilism.
But I'm not sure what you mean by 'cosmological belief'. Nietzsche assumed that, in infinite time with infinite matter, every arrangement of matter would simply reappear over and over again. One doesn't even have to believe in anything but statistics, sort of.
I just mean that (insofar as I can figure) there are always some "cosmological" (maybe that's not the right word) presuppositions to any position on the nature of the cosmos. In this case, the ones that occur to me are that the universe has limits - that its extent isn't infinite - and that there are not infinite dimensions that distort/impinge upon each other which would lead to infinite variation in any one dimension. But I admit I'm not very surefooted in doing this kind of speculation.
Not in the sense of the current genre of "metaphysics," but yeah, in the sense of attempting to define the unifying essence of beings. His ideas of "will to power" and "the eternal return" are the main, complementary ideas that constitute his metaphysical positions on the each thing (the being) and all things (Being). His thinking on history, peoples, morality, etc., are extrapolations from these two ideas.
I personally don't like the label metaphysics for today's genre of metaphysics. Too much baggage and too much implied in that term. The Daoists use the term "Neigong" (which translates to something like "internal skill"), and with their more modest "inner work" seem to have pulled back the veil of the physical world to a far greater extent than all these new age authors who insist on leaping over the generations of hard work to answer all questions at the outset. So western.
youre using heideggerian terms to explain him, idk.
Internal skill is a good term. I actually like the Western fresh and more empirical eye that is cast on the old eastern traditions. It cuts through the bullshit that has accumulated in some cases.
Yeah, whereas I've read most of Nietzsche's work repeatedly (was pretty obsessed with understanding him for a long time), my understanding of him is definitely conditioned by Heidegger, who is the deepest interpreter of the western philosophical canon I've come across.
I shouldn't be too dismissive of the western contemporary "metaphysical" scene as I haven't read enough of it. LMK if there are any books you liked especially.
Can’t say that I’ve ever been interested in continental philosophy or western mysticism. In my defense you have a couple of monks that narrowly escaped burning and that’s about it. Western thought went off the rails with Aquinas and can largely be ignored nowadays anyways because we’re in postmodernity ie brutal zog occupation
Good instincts to steer clear of continental philosophy. There's probably some things worth reading in it, as it's helpful navigating the modern world from an analytical perspective. But even the best of it (that I've read at least) is way too concerned with mind/body, and blind to spirit/energy. And a person can be totally ruined if the mind is allowed to run riot, unchecked by any knowledge of or relation to spirit/energy. And you can't get a very good notion about the self or cosmos while being totally blind to major components of the self imo. My favorite is how Christians have turned the "Holy Spirit" into your Jiminy Cricket of Bible scripture. Much evil work has been done in the west to bury what we truly are. We've certainly had our share of "cultural revolutions" here too.
Very long, but McGilchrist's 'The Matter with Things' is comprehensive new wave of post-materialist philosophy based on his clinical work with brain hemispheres but then going way beyond having established that foundation. It's also on Youtube in a series, chapter by chapter.
Cool - I'll check that out. Thanks!
Interesting how at the "best" U.S. universities at least, the philosophy, linguistics and rhetorical theory professors who are widely published, and consider themselves to be the pinnacle of intellectualism, are derivatives of Foucault, Derrida, and sometimes Marxist theorists like Althusser: Truth is purely a product of power dynamics, and there is no way beyond the labyrinth of linguistic interpretation. "There is no outside the sign" - their favorite Derrida quote. If you had to oppressively run a world where information had been thrown to the four winds, and YOUR postmodern relationship to "truth" was laid bare for the clever ones, who else would you want as the priests of "truth" at your universities but these priests of postmodernism? ... These "continental philosophy" fools, and the "analytical philosophers" - a phylum of linguists who don't know enough languages to do real linguistics, but who have convinced whoever controls the money spigot that they're the one true fork of philosophy.
there are two realities right? the one that we accept as a society because of coercion by priests, brutes and oligarchs and the true reality that is always hauntingly out of our reach ever since we became Christian at least. the french neo-marxists are right that we live in a societal reality created by the rich, powerful and pseudo-pomps.
If you regard 'reality' as something self-existing outside Experience (which is the essence of the materialist construct). However, reality is more like a gestalt, an atmosphere. Take an NFL football game with 70,000 spectators. If you have been to anything like that, then you know how the collective mood is like a powerful wave affecting mind, body, senses, everything. In Daoist medicine (pre-Maoist) it is called Dzong Chi, basically Group or Collective Spirit. It's a very real - if not material - phenomenon.
So part of 'reality' in the societal context is a mutual atmospheric creation. Yes, this can arise in part because of manipulation by narrative etc. but the feelings involved have a life, or spirit, of their own as well which spreads throughout the collective.
It's more than words, in other words.
The the thing with the pre-Socrates is that is that I don't see how anyone can reasonably conclude that Parmenides wasnt right and Heraclitus wrong. Like Heraclitus says
𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥-𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 [𝘬𝘰𝘴𝘮𝘰𝘴], 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘭𝘭, 𝘯𝘰 𝘨𝘰𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦: 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦, 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦: 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘢, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘦𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘧 𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩, 𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘧 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘣𝘶𝘳
<𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩> 𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘦𝘢 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩.
And most famously amongst those who are the most obsessed with aesthetics:
𝘞𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯, 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘺.
𝘞𝘢𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘭𝘭; 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘥𝘴, 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘯; 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘴, 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦
Now if we take all that at face value than any movement is an illusion. We have constant change and motion but the essence absolutely never changes. Change itself is the mechanism for a kind of cosmic stasis. The world is and ever will be, war is and ever will be and is a desirable mechanism for change. But none of this is going anywhere, broken down to its bare essence everything is matter being arranged and re-arranged via natural process and war. So that dude in a dress jerking off in the girls locker room really is just a bunch of atoms in flux at the end of the day.
His take on the Logos is actually down right Niecean:
𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘥 (𝘓𝘰𝘨𝘰𝘴) 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦.
Of course he means that death, life, creation and destruction are flip sides and necessary preconditions for life which is not Christian but there is no actual subjectivity here at all in regards to say identity. If all is one within the great storm of war and matter in motion than well...there is no neither Greek or jew..male or female etc etc we all know that verse that edgy right wingers who love Nietzsche love to quote mine.
Basically I don't really see anything here that is especially useful to right wingers. All movement is totally an illusion, everything is one and everything is constant flux and matter moving, fire to earth to water and back again. Parmenides just pointed out the very, very obvious imo, this movement is going nowhere therefore the stasis is real. We are in the Matrix.
A couple ideas come to mind: Parmenides and Heraclitus may only be opposed on the surface, or, rather, poetically occupied with describing opposing sides of the same coin - stasis and flux. I'm not an expert on them by any stretch, but just a thought.
What's even more intriguing to me about them though is their approach, which is not the approach of Plato/Socrates/Aristotle/Kant/etc. of defining the whatness of beings and Being, could be an antidote to free our collective thinking from its millennia-old obsession with whatness.
And when we look at what the East has done in exploring spirit/energy and its connection to body and logos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AZU8S9F0yI), I think we should be slow to say that either Heraclitus and/or Parmenides had the whole thing sufficiently mapped so early in the game of thinking. I for one don't really know whether their insights are to be accepted as the ultimate wisdom.
Last point - even if we do become convinced of the underlying stasis (or all-consuming flux) lying behind things and obliterating the surface phenomena we attempt to hold onto throughout life, that may not be totally at odds with playing our parts in the game of life courageously. Primitive tribes understood the tension between the eternal, the gods, and our roles as individuals, and used masks, dance, altered states, etc., to enter the eternal temporarily, as a Justification and never-ending spring to fuel our little worldly lives and loves. Socrates seems to have been intellectually embittered by this tension between the eternal and ephemeral (depending on how you view his life and voluntary death), but even if he was embittered and his daemon became principally destructive, that's not a necessary outcome: one can also be inspired by sharing in the eternal - whatever it is - and also embrace the role of man, father, soldier, with courage.
I cannot understand Heraclitus. Because if everything is forever changing, why war and strife. War is organised violence against another city or nation; strife is internecine fighting. But they require the existence of a city or nation. In an ever changing state, why fight at all for the city or for bettering the city since it is bound to disappear ? The natural outcome of impermanence is apathy.
My take is that he views war as the ultimate expresson of this constant flux and movement. It's not so much a betterment as a natural rhythm to the universe. It's a permanent fixture of the cosmos expressed via violent movement and change.
If my take there is close to the truth of what he was thinking though than any projection of nobility onto war is cope and sentimentality. It's a function akin to a man taking a shit. It's just transfering the matter from one form to the next and it's necessary to keep the body/cosmos functioning. Thats it. In that scheme there's no reason to complain about Zog wars for Israel or international tranny supremacy.
Every moment is creation;
Every creation destroys the previous moment-creation.
War symbolizes destruction.
Creation is continuous destruction is continuous change.
Well how can we have no whatness, no thing in itself, no forms but also have nobility? What is a soldier or father in a universe that's nothing but matter in motion, dispersing and re-forming in eternal cycles? To cling to some concept of the Father, soldier, etc in such a universe where the forms don't actually exist, where these concepts in your mind don't correspond to anything outside of the electrical and chemical process in your material brain is pure cope and sentimentality imo. If there is no actual truth, logos, etc to be had you are talking psycho babble. If Heraclitus is describing a pot of pooridge being boiled, cooled and re-boiled for eternity. All the will to power and nobility we project on that is fan fiction and trappings. In the cosmic scheme of things this movement goes nowhere, hence I'm with Parmenides. The movement doesn't even real. It's missing the whole point.
The more I read about the pre-Socrates the more I think Plato and Aristotle where the Humes of their day. They boiled down the immediate preceding schools of thought to their bare mechanics and stripped away the fluff. What's left is pretty stark and unsettling and it ends in a mass crisis of faith for society. The bare cosmology of the Pre Socrates doesn't require any actual gods and faith in the Pantheon definitely declined post Aristotle/Socrates/Plato. But the thing is how are they actually wrong even within the pre-Socratic framework? It's just like how is Hume wrong in
that knowledge is impossible within the pure materialist framework?
Parmenides did in fact as far as I can tell believe we are in some kind of matrix and that forms and examplers exist in some fashion. Apparently the Socrates had use for him and his take that the movement is an illusion makes way more sense to me personally. I don't completely agree with it but it at least leaves the door open for meaningful mystical practice that is more than just trying to cope in a totally pointless universe of eternal re-arrangment of matter.
The Heraclitus model is the gnostic universe minus any sort of mechanism of escape and the Parmenides model is the one where perhaps by reaching knowledge of the matrix and the illusions you can perhaps...if not move in a literal sense maybe see things the way they actually are and reach gnosis..or something like that. Like I said I don't totally agree with it but its definitely the more sensible take if we want to be able make assertions about what ought to be done or what the good is.
What if, rather than just making universalized observations about phenomena, Parmenides and Heraclitus are both, at least in part, speaking about the process by which beings arise and become differentiated as beings for us? What if both thinkers are attempting to take a step back from describing the what-ness of beings to describe the "how-ness" of their arrival into Being as beings?
In any case, understanding this how-ness is important in that it is the foundation for all beings and value judgements built out of it.
You may find this thing I wrote many years ago interesting - my answer to why perpetual change and repetition should actually lend supreme value to our seemingly meaningless roles. https://anthony8484.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/a-sketch-of-a-new-metaphysics-and-its-signifigance/
I need to revisit the pre-Socratics (and maybe also Hume and Plato? lol) before I can comment. But I don't get how Parmenides has any more potential of liberation than Heraclitus. You mean because he speaks of getting beyond the apparent world of change to unchanging oneness?
This site gives a good summary of Parmenides thought.
https://www.parmenides.me/
Here's a copy past in regards to his way of truth of poem:
𝘈 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘢𝘴 "𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩" (𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘢, ἀλήθεια), 𝘢𝘯𝘥
𝘈 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘢𝘴 "𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦/𝘖𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯" (𝘥𝘰𝘹𝘢, δόξα).
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘦𝘮 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴 “𝘣𝘦𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘮𝘦𝘯” 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘨𝘰𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘴 (𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘋𝘪𝘬ē) 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺. 𝘈𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘢, 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 90% 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘰𝘹𝘢, 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘯𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴, 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦
So we have the possibility of reaching higher knowledge and it's dependent on some kind of divine revelation to those capable of hearing it. The voice of the gods can reach men. Now as for Heraclitus his logos is the thesis that has no antithesis but it's a totally impersonal force. We mortals see conflict and dialectics but these things have a unity in logos. I mean hell it's not far at all from Aquinas in that this dance of opposites has an underlying element of unifying symmetry. The flux we observe is actually a balance. That is there is an underlying reason to the suffering for those who have the sense to see it.
To Heraclitus the world is:
𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦, 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴
Fire, fire goes out and back again. The wise man can take the measures.
𝘚𝘦𝘢 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳: 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩𝘺, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘧𝘶𝘭
You might be mad about the fates not giving you clean water but it's fine if you're a fish. Everything is actually in its place and within his paradigm as I understand it that is logical. What you perceive as a flaw in your ignorance is actually part of the cosmic harmony.
𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭
Seeing this unitary logos behind all the death, the flux etc is your gnosis. Everything is already in its place and you in your self pity and weakness are blind to it. Embrace the suck and love its underlying symmetry.
What's especially ironic with Heraclitus is he that he will something like this:
𝘚𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘭𝘭, 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘭𝘢𝘸, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭𝘺. 𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘭𝘢𝘸𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘸. 𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘪𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘳 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘶𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘣𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘵
And what is this supreme iron law nourished by the divine. Well war is the father of all and the final arbiter of who is free and a slave. Furthermore ALL mens laws flow from this divine which has no antithesis. Very proto Nietzschean and I can see why he was such a fan. Embrace the suck, if it doesn't kill you it will make you stronger and wiser. In this formula who ever is imposing his will the hardest is in the most in harmony with logos more or less.
Heraclitus isn't preaching immorality but if war is the father of all and what's good for one is poison for another like with his fish analogy than there is nothing ACTUALLY wrong with weaponized immortality. The only context in which one can object to weaponized immortality is in that of a power relation. Trannies arent wrong just because, they are wrong because they are a weapon used against us and put us in the slave category and someone else in the master category. But what than when the trannies are higher on the power relationship scale than us? In this context it would be foolish of them to join us, what argument do we have against them when they are as kigs compared to us?
That's where this all breaks down completly imo. Behind all the rhetoric that appeals to the aesthetics of right wingers is a very brutal truth, with in this very paradigm all those of our own ethnos who go over to the enemy are correct to do so as long as they are on the side that wins and us over here seething are pathetic creatures practicing Nietzschean slave morality.
Parmenides on the other hand sees all this as a kind of shadow play. All that is just is and can't ever not be. But there are levels we just don't have access to without the required level of perception. All this chaos we perceive is a distraction and matrix and the deeper one focuses on it the lower he sinks.
I'm already sort of at wall text book length here but this a good blurb from that link I posted:
𝘚𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵, 𝘯𝘰𝘯-𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘢 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳, 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘐𝘯 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 (𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘰 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢), 𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴, 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦, 𝘪𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘦𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳:
The death, the chaos, the movement, it's all illusion. Something doesn't become something else because the distinctions themselves dont even exist. However that which is always will be..now one could than say aha gotcha that means that everything we hate like the trannies and Jews always will be however that's a total misreading imo. A tranny was born as A and always will be, the transition is an illusion, part of the matrix. Jews were and always will be parasites. This is describing a purely mystical/spiritual re-arrangment where the fassades and masks between subject and observer are removed, the thing in itself is reached. That which isn't, a unicorn in the body of a human or a good ethnic pornographer can't even be the object of thought because they aren't. This is a process of mystic discipline and very non material and it makes way more sense to me than the Heraclitun just embrace the suck system.
I mean I don't subscribe to that Parmenides system as I am one one of the few token Christians left around here but I do see an elegance and admirable insight in his thought that are more helpful today than learn to love the symmetry of the abyss we live in.
1. War: no conclusion but it's interesting that the Heaven trigram in the Yijing is associated with War and Father. (In that Age this dynamic felt more seminal than it does today?)
2. Change etc.: in a world that is continuous, there is no birth or death of any particular. Particulars appear to arise and dwell for a while, like clouds forming and dissolving in the sky, but they cannot have any essential existens because the field in which they arise is eternal.
Eternity can be observed through a combination of logic and experience. This is most easily explained when considering the nature of Time. Our human mind seems to be able to distinguish between past, present and future periods of time. The past appears different to us than the present, for example, if for no other reason that it is no longer present but we seem to be able to remember it as something which happened earlier. That said, we can say that there was one moment when stuff in the past happened and a different moment when stuff in the present is now happening, therefore we can posit Time as a series of moments, one after the other.
However, if we drill down to examine a moment, presumably it has a limited duration, otherwise Time would be one eternal moment. But any given duration for a moment we pick can be divided in half, no? Thus we have an infinitely subdivisible asymptote. That is one mathematical example of eternity. The other is the flip side already mentioned: since moments don't really exist except as cognitive constructs, therefore Time is one continuous moment without a beginning (birth), or end (death). And if there is no birth and death in ever-present Nowness (how this is experienced in meditation for example), then all apparent things arising actually are not solid, independent and lasting as they seem. They may appear so but cannot be so because anything that is both continuous and in constant flux is not a particular, definable thing, just as no moment can be said to have a particular duration that cannot be divided or exist in a particular time separate from any other moment in time - because it is all one eternal moment (and therefore not a moment at all).
My personal term for reality from this POV is 'experiential continuum'.
Very cool. I'll read and think more about it when I have time.
"Basically I don't really see anything here that is especially useful to right wingers."
Right-wingers are suckers for officially approved thinkers that aren't "especially useful" such as Nietzsche (or NEETsche, as RS says) and Heidegger. The latter two are the sources and patron saints of postmodernism, but the "right-winger" somehow think they have what it takes will save us. It's the intellectual version of "owning the libs."
"Heidegger’s work on Nietzsche has been influential, particularly in France, but to me these lectures seem to do no good to the understanding of Nietzsche, nor to gain anything from it, but mainly to be a hideous example of several things that Nietzsche explicitly and rightly hated." https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n10/bernard-williams/nietzsche-s-centaur
I have only read some of Heidegger's writings on technology: in German and French. I was appalled by his deliberately abstruse style. But he ultimately did not say anything new or useful. His thought can be summarised quite simply : as the techniques of the industrial civilisation evolve, the tools shape man who adapts to them instead of being his natural self; as the use of tools expands, nature itself is reshaped and stops being itself. The free natural world is gradually being annihilated. This results in a transformed reality that is unnatural; this evolution is bad and is a hallmark of modernity.
Heidegger lacked knowledge of history. Because the agricultural revolution had already performed such changes in man and landscape. The mastery of fire most probably as well. Once I could understand his thesis on technology, I wrote him off completely.
"Heidegger lacked knowledge of history." As early as Sec. 7 of Being and Time, Heidegger renounced "vulgar" history, i.e., the knowledge of facts and events. Same with his doctrine of Dasein, which dispenses with "vulgar" anthropology. This is a key move, which frees him from needing to read books, or from being challenged or refuted. Heidegger "intuits" the truth, or receives revelations from Being. If you question him, you are ipso facto a sinner and damned.
For example, when Germany defeated France, Heidegger told his students this was because Germans truly understood Descartes, and so were better at wielding technology! Then, around 1942, when the tide turned, H. suddenly realized (had a revelation) that technology was bad, and the Germans were too spiritual to be sullied by it! Hence the essay on technology, which Heideggerians treat as a new revelation.
Wow. I had no idea he was that bad. Because the arduous part about philosophy in modern times is gaining enough knowledge about humans through history, anthropology, literature, and philosophy to produce new valid thinking. I am aghast that he could openly discard history and anthropology and being taken seriously.
Thank you for enlightening me.
Thanks, but of course thanks really are due to Herman Philipse's H's Philosophy of Being and Safransky's biography of Heidegger. H's writings are a Rorschach blot, which is why everyone's book on "H's Philosophy" is different (nice academic racket). Philipse treats it as philosophy and the results are dire.
Safransky's bio of Schopenhauer shows how Sch. also thought philosophy was impossible without precise knowledge of the sciences, human and otherwise, and this is just what despised Hegel & Co. Interestingly, H also said he "despised" Schopenhauer and Goethe; no doubt because they would have mercilessly exposed him!
Jung had his number already in the 50s: graphomania. And this was 50 years before his 100 volume "collected works" appeared.
Nonsense. Heidegger read a great deal, obviously. Just because someone is more interested in interpreting the world through a metaphysical lens rather than the sciences that are downstream from the basic metaphysical positions of their era, doesn't mean they lack reading material or credibility. Go read all of Hegel and Goethe and Kant and ... and ... and ... etc. and get back to me.
Being and Time is probably H's least important work (although parts of it are interesting) namely because he reworked his whole approach later in life.
And about him supporting the war - and thinking the Germans had a superior chance and claim to lead the world b/c of their culture - and his subsequent regret and questioning the causes of the wars (along with the direction of the world in general) - Welcome to wartime and post-war Germany: pretty much everyone felt that way.
But this isn't his thesis on technology. This is more like Rousseau's thesis on civilization.
It's hard to summarize Heidegger's thesis, but it's more along the lines that our entire understanding of what the most basic things are, of what knowledge is - for instance, our proclivity to frame the world in terms of subject and object - are all technological - and keep the world careening onwards to what we've come to call transhumanism in recent decades. He stresses that our metaphysical era is not like others - it is more perilous - b/c the power of putting the universe on an infinitely divisible and extendable grid of time and space for the purpose of modification, catches humanity in a slipstream that is difficult to escape. The sheer power of modern technology allows it (and its handmaid science) to more convincingly counterfeit a definitive explanation of Being than any metaphysical belief to date, and that could lead to humanity's self destruction.
This isn't all he says about technology, and he makes considerable effort to point towards antidotes to humanity being caught in this slipstream. And granted, these ideas aren't as groundbreaking in a world where families have dinner table discussions about transhumanism on the regular, but it is still the most important philosophical topic of our time, by far.
sounds essentially the same as reductionist materialism which ends up substituting atomizing conceptualization for fluid experiencing/Being.
What you wrote was definitely not in the book I read; a hellish read or rather decipherment. But you are better read on such matters so I take your word.
From your account, Heidegger's take on technology falls short again. The plain truism stands: something is done because it can be done. It applies to everything: human animal embryo/foetal chimeras have been created; a Chinese researcher has edited the genes of an embryo, implanted it and a child was born; brain-computer interfaces are under development; wearable electronics to better monitor the body; exoskeletons; undersea mining; etc. That truism does not need modern metaphysics; it has always been at work.
As for a counterfeit explanation of the Being, one does not need technology. Evolution was already the ultimate theory of being in Heidegger's youth.
I still wonder what has he mused so much on.
I think the truism only holds because people submit to the will of technocrats, and actively further their goals via decades of study and personal investment even, b/c they don't realize what science and technology are - that they're just one derivative modus operandi which robs human beings of their creative freedom. I think if more people understood this, technology's obliteration of humanity wouldn't be just a matter of time. And that's not a trivial matter. In the Christian cosmos, is there even a way into heaven for chimera cyborgs with neuralink internet algorithm feeds structuring all thought? The eye of the camel would be an understatement for such poor creatures. Or, souls?
Just my two cents, but Heidegger is probably one of the stupidest if not the most stupid person ever to live.
Not stupid, just evil.
why?
After the War, the govt. asked Karl Jaspers, who was now the official Good German philosopher, what to do with H; there were various levels of punishment. J. said H. should be allowed to speak, and publish, in the name of our proud tradition of academic freedom. But he must never be allowed to teach, because "his mode of thought inculcates in the young a contempt for truth and logic" (paraphrase).
He was not "stupid" but an evil genius, a very clever, beady-eyed, ambitious peasant who was being groomed by The Church to be their warrior against secularism. When, for reasons, that big professorial chair ultimately went to someone else, he turned on the Church ("a crisis of faith") and ultimately developed his own atheistic version of Christianity (Being, the Fall, Sin, revelations) with, of course, himself as the prophet. Same story we've seen before, e.g. Steiner, but H was brilliant, and fooled a lot of people into thinking he was doing "philosophy". It's a German tradition, starting with Fichte.
The postmoderns were right to ignore the "nazi stuff" for so long, because it's irrelevant. H. was never a "nazi" he was a Heideggarian. His goal was to become their official philosopher and then more or less gradually convert them to his doctrine. Actual Nazis like Rosenberg sensed this, and despised him. They were happy to let foreigners praise this German as the greatest philosopher of all, but the Party was fighting a modern war and had no time for proto-Green Party stuff about abandoning technology and living in huts.
Meanwhile, he spent his spare time pestering Berlin with "evidence" that this or that colleague was disloyal and should be sent to a camp. He sometimes did this after promising to write a nice letter of recommendation; what an asshole.
So, not stupid, just evil.
wow.
i like him defending the pre-socratics, but I guess you don't need heidegger for that.
Nonsense. Spoken like someone who has never read H, or never put the time into making sense of him if he "tried."
Not that it's relevant to what's written in works like Time and Being or The End of Philosophy or numerous other important works - but do you have any sources showing H. lobbied Berlin to get colleagues sent away to camps?
Also, I'm having trouble following your argument - was H. evil b/c he was a Nazi, or because he wasn't a REAL Nazi who could fully get behind modern war? There's nothing in his writings that could rightly be characterized as proto-Green Party: What? He questioned where modern technology was leading us? - after the atrocities of WWII, and the atom and hydrogen bombs?
IMO, the lack of intellectual courage amongst most of the far-right comes down to not being able to truly look at what technology is, b/c their idea of a saving grace is a far-right perma-populist authoritarian rolling in like Alexander the Great, grabbing modern technology by the balls (as if that could happen), and setting up some traditionalist high-tech Utopia with maximum military power and prowess. Ironically, although you paint him as a pure Charlatan, Heidegger's work after the war on Modern Technology could dispel the right (and the Green Party) of their technological fantasies.
Why do you say that?
Great discussion on how reality can be changed using lies, propaganda and occultism. Would love to hear you speak about this topic on your podcast. Very grateful for this piece.
A great essay and really lays out the issues confronting us in a very tight package. At least for 'those that have ears'.
I want to, however, focus in on one thing you wrote:
'To a certain extent, all truth-tellers are either hypocrites or mislead, because there is some element of reality that they have misperceived or that they simply cannot speak openly about.'
There is a third option: Truth-tellers who appear to be 'hypocrites' are just playing for time.
The most fundamental axiom of genuine metaphysical revelation is DO NOT SHARE WITH THE PEASANTS.
However, if your revelation makes you eccentric enough, you may no longer be employable and might feel compelled to parley your 'occult knowledge' into being the head of your own cult.
That's when things get very tricky.
In the same way that the Tarot are supposed to have been created to 'keep the secret out in the open', the works of would-be 'revelators' often lay their their revelations down in a bed of lies.
Thus, you can look at the OT and NT and find some 'occult truths' there, but only if you know what you're looking at. The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares and the Parable of the Sower both directly apply to the 'third option' of 'throwing pearls before swine'.
'Post-modernism' is head-fake, a distraction. It's origins are in prehistory, not recent developments. It came into being when agriculture begat granaries and granaries begat the power of the priests to starve anyone who would not agree to their 'revelation'.
I'm not sure if 'Evil' exists as an independent force in the universe.
What do see is that some humans benefit in certain ways by making things worse for others.
The cat that toys with the mouse is not evil.
The human that abuses the trust of another human is.
Rolo - Bless you for this marvelous marvel of an essay. Gadzooks, it may be your best ever. That a man actually lives and breathes in this day with your dignity and intelligence is a profound and inexplicable miracle.
Meanwhile, I am embarrassed but ask - who, pray tell, is the "Argentinian Zionist?"
Isn't the 'Argentinian Zionist' now better known as 'Pope Francis'?
Milei
Since we do physiognomy on these pages, Heidegger's is of interest in his early years.
http://hubert-brune.de/heidegger_bilder.html#h6 on:
http://hubert-brune.de/g1_nk_p_heidegger_martin.html with several other early photos.
His affair with Hannah Arendt always amused me even when I was a teenager reading about it. They were both ridiculous.
Great article once again with the Hermes tricker Surkov providing us with fresh amusement.
Comments were great and informative, but we gotta remember, everything we think we know is a lie. Once we realize that, we are truly free.
A great post, Rolo. Do you mind if I call you Rolo? I subbed back in the day.
I know I’ve experienced a slowly growing, creeping feeling of living in an unreal world, when it comes to media, politics, and all the rest, and I wonder if this is the result of postmodernism? I may not be able to prove it, but I feel it.
Another Z conspiracy theory that I just invented is it’s the last letter in the alphabet, which in Greek was Omega. “I am the Alpha and Omega”, the first and last, this is it! Just two more weeks!
Rolo is long gone. I stole his wife and banished him to the shadow world! Thanks for sticking with the blog for so long. Hopefully I'm still providing you with your money's worth.
Hrjove Moric said he will contact you soon for geopolitics and empire podcast.
I've been rumbling over the thought, or gut feeling really, that christ is actually the demiurge or embodiment of satan since I read the bible, this being about 2 - 3 years ago now, especially when it pertains the the last sections about his second coming and all the occult shite regarding a lamb with horns and 7 or so eyeballs.
Its never set right with me the way it's described Rolo, I regret to some extent I know too much and am corrupted as a result.
Fuck.
The texts of the jews and the greco-jews are just rehashes of the wisdom of the ancients. There's nothing in them that wasn't in myths and legends of the *much older* civilizations that came before them. The difference is that the 'church fathers' took the profound wisdom of the ancients that had been turned into stories that the peasants could remember and claimed *it really happened for reals*. The 'church fathers' made the primal myths moronic and created a religion that didn't lift the peasants up, but drug the smart peasants down. Eventually, it dragged almost everyone down.
To understand 'Christ' you need to understand that 'Christ' is a short-hand for the spark of the divine in even the lowliest peasant, 'Christ' makes no sense as it was understood in the first 300 years of Christianity without understanding the idea of 'Christ in you.'
But the church fathers gave us communion i.e. partaking in the body of Christ, both human and divine. They also gave us confirmation i.e. the gift of the Holy Spirit which dwells in us afterwards and enables our soul to elevate itself towards God; our bodies are said to become temples of the Holy Spirit. They also gave us confession, i.e. the verbalisation and exteriorisation of sins, which amount to cleaning up our mind and body, the temple. So the divine is within Christians, as you understood by yourself.
It takes an effort of intelligence to understand those Christian concepts and others, which prompts ordinary people to think. Contrast with Islam or Hinduism, which are orthopraxies that require no thought. How does that square with your belief that the church fathers sought to dumb the masses down? Orthodoxy does elevate the ordinary man.
None of the ideas that you describe require that Jesus was God and actually existed as a real person. Nonetheless, that is the central claim of Orthodoxy. Neither Islam nor Hinduism make this claim. The vindication of the Church's claim to exclusive authority over all spiritual matters depends upon the assertion of a material nature, the physical and historical existence of Jesus.
This is a great post, sort of developed from your equally great excursus on NEETsche last week. The points you raise about New Thought (aka positive thinking, aka mind metaphysics, which is really just applied metaphysics, a la Schopenhauer) are well taken. Mitch Horowitz, who seems to be the only serious person in the area, has addressed many of them in his recent books, such as Daydream Believer and The Miracle Club. And so have I, but also including the political dimensions (Trump especially). I'd like to send you a pdf of my book on all this, if there is some way to do so without violating your op sec. (Also loving the Marcion series).
My email is rololives@protonmail.com
I was planning on reading your book once I finished evolas magic trilogy
Groovy. I will ask the publisher to send pdf. I should finish Evola's trilogy myself, only read the first vol.
Never encountered that author before. Looks fascinating....
All you have in the politics of resentment. You attempt to enforce your politics using shaming, which is the only tactic the politically impotent 'Judeo-Christian' has.
You wish ill on your enemies because you cannot benefit from your politics and you resent those that don't play along with your fantasies. Deep down, you're not different than trannies. Which is why trannies when and people like you lose.
You filter the idea of 'power' through your own narrow lens of 'truth fantasies' and act as though I - or anyone else - out to be impressed by your already-constrained logic.
The 'sentimental moral custom' is a *custom*, and that's why you *ought* to honor it.
Otherwise, you get thrown out of the community that nurtures and protects you.
And my enemies don't share the same 'first principle' as I do.
I don't have a 'first principle'.
I just have tools and tactics and from them emerge strategies.
And I have a body encoded with a race and racial preferences.
In the end, all 'truth' is tribal. White tribal custom evolved into the fake tribalism of 'truth' and 'principle'.
Mine is the call to return to the tradition of 'community rule', not rule by abstract fantasies.
𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢 𝘰𝘧 '𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳' 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘸 𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 '𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩 𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘴' 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘐 - 𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦 - 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺-𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤
Power in the context of the discussion here just means the ability for a group or individual to impose it's will. Thought that was obvious but in case you didn't realize what I meant thats it. Think that's fairly straightforward but yeah maybe it's good to clearly define what we are talking about.
𝘛𝘩𝘦 '𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮' 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 *𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮*, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 *𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵* 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘳 𝘪𝘵.
By why though? Roman Generals weren't supposed to cross the Rubicon with their armies but..you know times change? You support doing away with Christian customs right? What makes one custom sacred and another not? Your preference and why should anyone bow to your preference? Who are you again? Maybe I'm more Nietzschean than you and my preferences are better for me?
𝘖𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘯𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶
But what if your community is wrong? Trannies have a community, why "ought" they bow to your sentiment and morals? And to think you call me resentful. You resent them for trampling on morals they don't even believe in, peake slave morality. You seriously don't see that? They are living your code just fine, they expell people like you and work with the tools they have at hand. They prefer dildos as the indenticator of who is in their group and you prefer race but with no truth involved here there is no custom on either side that "ought" to be cuddled. Your yammering to the contrary is pure cope.
𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘺 𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 '𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘦' 𝘢𝘴 𝘐 𝘥𝘰.
𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 '𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘦'.
Than from where are you pulling out all your "oughts"?
𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴.
𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥, 𝘢𝘭𝘭 '𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩' 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘢𝘭. 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘢𝘭 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮 𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘮 𝘰𝘧 '𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩' 𝘢𝘯𝘥 '𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘦'.
𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 '𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘳𝘶𝘭𝘦', 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘳𝘶𝘭𝘦 𝘣𝘺 𝘢𝘣𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘴
Alright I'll concede that this sounds pretty hardcore and I'm ready to break out some mead listen to the Horst Wessel Leide on repeat for awhile but yet again what of people who have a different concept of tribe than you? You prefer race but what of those who prefer wealth, hookers and a steady supply of high quality coke? Those aren't abstract concepts at all and if there is no truth, only subjective "oughts" that are no more than personal preferences any resentment you have for those that chose differently than you is again pure slave morality.
Anyway it's obvious that you are lying to yourself about not having a first principle, you just don't like the concept because of it's association with Christianity. But unironically throwing around oughts and insisting tribal customs should be sacred telegraphs that you are suffering from the same congnetive dissonance like any trad Catholic. Just let the Nietzsche go bro. Not even Hitler was a fan and Hitler was no Christian. Just admitting that truth exists doesn't necessitate converting.
New subscriber. What a great commentariat. No ad hominems. Must be a first! Congratulations to the host and all guests.
"I’ve found that most people struggle to understand words."
Intelligent people struggle interminably; the less intelligent think they understand everything.
Roerich was big into Shambhala; so was Adolf. An old prophecy which, when realized, will manifest in the Mother of All Battles, with the Shambhala King as Warrior Monarch leading all his followers, being now accumulated in various incarnations, into War.
I have always said. Postmodernism is a crime against humanity. I can disagree a little about the abrahamic metaphysics. Christians have a concept for evil, it is "Satan". This is why I think they are a little above the new agers. Christianity is mostly morality, that is good and evil. But I agree that they are not encouraged to resist or even to understand, to notice evil. They are supposed to be good sheep, pray to God and God will fight evil for them. In the afterlife. Great article as always. I think almost the same as you do with the exception of the relativity thing.
You're trapped in the tautology where you have accepted the universalist perspective of liberalism, therefore you cannot appeal to the *reasoning* of actually existing communities that *feel no need* to justify their choices.
You think that because you can ask 'Why?' that you deserve a response you're willing to accept.
But that assumes a universal arena of agreed-upon procedures and assumption which is the very things that are being contested in the first place.
I'm more than happy to allow you and those who think like to form up your own communities and enforce your preferences, but since we don't share a 'universal' moral communal code, your justifications or explanations of your choices aren't that important.
The Old Rule was 'Stay In Your Lane': Do not enter my/our territory without permission and expect to leave alive.
This sets the 'moral' boundary as a physical boundary.
Pretending to read my mind about 'first principle' just makes you look bad.
'Morality' is the ability to form up and sustain and defend a community. That's all it is and all it can ever be.
Everything else is just propaganda.
Yes. So?