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Subject and Interrogation: Zizek, Dugin, and the Rough BeastFrom Slavoj Zizek’s Interrogating the Real:
Brecht is right here: we are never in a position directly to choose between theism and atheism, since the choice as such is already located within the field of belief. ‘Atheism’ (in the sense of deciding not to beleive in God) is a miserable, pathetic stance of those who long for God but cannot find him (or who ‘rebel against God’). A true atheist does not choose atheism: for him, the question itself is irrelevant—this is the stance of a truly atheistic subject. The standard critical procedure today is to mobilize the opposition of human and subject: the notion of subjectivity (self-consciousness, self-positin autonomy, ect.) stands for a dangerous hubris, a will to power, which obfuscates and distorts the essence of humanity: the task is thus to think the essence of humanity outside the domain of subjectivity ... From A. Dugin’s essay Subject Without Confines:
It is impossible to understand Dugin without supplying what he does not: the Subject is not generic in the same way as the supposed universal Object and not only cannot be constructed by “reversing the sign” of each constituent of the latter so that it is lowercase subject instead of lowercase object but cannot be identified with a collection or set at all. The Subject cannot be a set of “solitary people” or any other kind of people: it is itself solitary and not subject to analysis. Nevertheless it commands the loyalty not of “all” but of “some”: these “some” are identified in thought with the Subject but are not constitutive of it. When I asked Zizek whether he was familiar with Dugin’s work he professed ignorance, which might well have been unfeigned, but which he would have had to do in any case, as anyone who reads them in alternation can prove to himself, since Zizek’s entire project is an attempt to distract us with (highly amusing) squid-ink while the Subject is strangled in its cradle. Posted by Søren Renner on Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 11:17 AM in Political Philosophy Comments:3
Posted by Guessedworker on March 27, 2010, 09:54 PM | # Soren, Zizek on Hegel:
Goodness, Zizek’s “only human” commentary on Hegel demonstrates a remarkable ignorance of how kinship extrudes into citizenship. He thinks we come at it from the other direction, from a blank slate with the power of choice. He is wrong. Zizek on Kant:
Freed into an unlimited civicism by liberalism, he means. Liberalism as the enemy of blood:
Again, the cleavage to “identification” when discussing blood. But blood is not identity, but the thing before the thing that is the same with itself. A determinant. And then we have the problem with Reason, aka choice in Berthold’s cranky language:
Actually, we are never in a position to choose anything because we do not have psychological unity and therefore we do not have will. We do not have psychological unity and will principally because ordinary waking consciousness has an attraction to rest, so to speak, and elides the Self with externalities. The life of absence which ensues is filled with dreams instead of the Real, and is the thief of Time. Accordingly, Zizek “interrogates the Real” from a life of dreams - as we all must, it’s perfectly true to say. But he plainly doesn’t know it. He doesn’t know that unless one begins reasoning from a suitably parsimonious model of Mind, “real facts” - and especially the relatedness of “facts” - can hardly be discovered, never mind communicated with sufficient accuracy to organise a new departure into a global civicism. So what appears as the opposition of Dugin’s stubbornly organic traditionalism to the real “terror” of a putative Subject Without Confines, predicated as it is on a completely false model of Man and a miniscule notion of human freedom capable of producing only pathology on pathology, is actually a stumbling blindly onwards through falsehood and absence in both cases as opposed to a movement or, at the very least, a gesture in the direction of truth and presence. 4
Posted by Matt Parrott on March 28, 2010, 12:49 AM | # That blew my mind. I wonder if there’s a correlation between the frequency of autism-spectrum personality types in the West and our general susceptibility as a people to the tribe-denying universal abstractions. Is it as easy to do away with Western Civilization by way of ideology as it was to do away with Amerindians with small pox blankets? Could that susceptibility be identified or perhaps targeted or compensated for? 5
Posted by Matt Parrott on March 28, 2010, 12:50 AM | # I’m not used to this setup, here. It ate the quote that actually blew my mind, which is… Herr Keuner said: I’d advise you to think about how your behavior would change with regard to the answer to this question. If it would not change, then we can drop the question. If it would change, then I can help you at least insofar as i can tell you: You have already decided: You need a God. That’s what blew my mind. 6
Posted by Guessedworker on March 28, 2010, 10:34 AM | # Matt,
It is not complicated. The causal line to “tribe-denying universal abstractions” is from Christianity. But that’s a bit on the brief side, so ... To some considerable opposition, I’ve contended that faith is literally an instinct, ie, it is genetically coded and is either expressed or not (as may be case in about 20 to 25% of Europeans). It is part of our sociobiology. As such, it requires an expressive form (also known as a religion) that commends to us an ethic exactly productive of the salient features of a life of adaptiveness in the European environment. Commending adaptiveness is the evolutionary purpose of faith. It is reasonable to presume that the old pre-Christian religion, which is utterly lost and irretrievable, performed this action organically, since we can fairly assume that it emerged from the act of living of Europeans. The violent imposition of another religion, particularly one abstracted from such an evolutionarily-singular source as Jewry in the ancient world, could never reproduce the organic “match” of the old religion to the European sociobiology, no matter to what degree it was adapted - and it certainly was adapted. Now, the liberal antithesis to Christianity was not an antithesis of faithlessness to faith. It was an antithesis of godlessness to godliness, ie, the faith objects were preserved but re-formulated, relabelled and re-marketed, universalism among them. When Soren writes:
... he is right on the money. There is no choice. We can never choose to ignore our “faith gene”, if it is expressed. Liberals like Zizek and, doubtless, Brecht are not “reasoning” towards a bloodless global civicism. They are rationalising a prior belief. They cannot reason because they cannot ignore their faith gene and its attachment to, for example, de-Christianised universalism. In the same sense someone like myself, who has nil expression, cannot choose either, because the choice as such is already located within the field of disbelief. There is no choice. We can never choose faith if the gene is not expressed. However, we have no belief to rationalise, and since disbelief suffers no rationalisation, we - the 20 to 25% of Europeans who are “religiously-challenged” - really do have to either ignore the whole shabang or reason our way through life, depending on our constitution. 7
Posted by Søren Renner on March 28, 2010, 11:12 AM | # Dear Guessedworker, you do not see yet where this train is headed. Mr. Parrott appears to have the advantage over you in this. 8
Posted by Guessedworker on March 28, 2010, 12:12 PM | # But, Soren, do you not see where I would wish to take it, that is, in a completely divergent direction from someone in Russia who considers that:
You are giving us a debate over filters. All of it - Zizek, Galmozzi, Dugin - is slavery to one analysis or another of a certain historical dynamic in the influences which form human personality. That is, they are time-bound and non-organic, and therefore anti-organic in an important sense. Meanwhile “the search [for] one universal criterion” was resolved rather a long time ago, and the resolution is: being approached through consciousness. What the exact meaning of the words “being”, “approached” and “consciousness” might be is another matter, of course, and would certainly take a mighty effort to uncover to anyone’s satisfaction. But if there is another end-product with historical purchase, I should very much like to see it. 9
Posted by Søren Renner on March 28, 2010, 12:17 PM | # And your own position is adumbrated only in your refusal to quote from the climax of the text. (Hint: It isn’t from Zizek, Brecht or Dugin.) 10
Posted by cladrastis on March 28, 2010, 01:15 PM | # The fate of the object (the deceived fool) at the hands of the Subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEOQqnHMSMc Dare I say it? They look so happy. 11
Posted by Matt Parrott on March 28, 2010, 02:27 PM | # GW, Tradition, including religious tradition, can be understood as a memetic superstrate over our biological evolution. It’s a way to arrive at emergent truth through the trial-and-error and selection for people who have ideas which are functional. As you know, much of it is corrupted, defunct, and incorrect. This is where our reason can serve as a complement to tradition. To set wisdom and knowledge against one another is a common folly in the contemporary West, one which both you (favoring knowledge) and the Radical Traditionalists (favoring wisdom) are guilty of. Pre-Christian paganism failed. It failed by the universal standard of simple competitive victory and it failed by its own metric. In the pagan context, a God arrived from the Orient who defeated the Indo-European Gods. It’s only natural that the West would borrow from the Middle East in arriving at a Tradition (or a Group Evolutionary Strategy in MacDonald’s evolutionary psychology lexicon). Mature civilization began there, and took millennia to arrive at a collection of myths, traditions, customs, and habits commensurate with success in this civilizational habitat. The rejection of Christianity in favor of the pre-Christian Traditions of Europe is nothing more than Peter Pan Syndrome writ large. Perhaps the Zoroastrian Tradition has a better claim to sharing a common Indo-European descent, but its defeat by Islam and continued marginalization suggests that it’s dysfunctional, too. Besides, the Wise Men of the New Testament relieve us of having to choose between the Christian and Magic Traditions. The former endorses the latter by alleging that the latter endorses the former. The technically inclined can think of paganism as DOS or the old Mac OS and Christianity and Islam as Windows XP and OS X. They both compete with Unix (Judaism) by borrowing and adapting from its proven foundation. I don’t get how anybody could possibly hold Christianity accountable for the Jewish ascent to hegemony in the West. Byzantium confined Jews to a structured and symbiotic relationship for centuries, as did the Catholic Church in Europe. The Orthodox oligarchy in Eastern Europe has proven more durable than the abortive Jewish power grab of Bolshevism. Europe’s ascendant mercantile elite (Masonic oligarchy) entered a Faustian pact with the Jews against the Catholic oligarchy and the decadent aristocratic oligarchy. Christian Zionism is a very recent exception to a long tradition of restraining Jewish power. If anything, the fault lies with people like yourself who are so completely sure of their logic and dismissive of tradition. You carelessly rebel against the political machines which have been designed to check the perpetual striving of the Jewish oligarchs to replace our managerial elites. The Jews wouldn’t have been able to transform Western Civilization into a monstrous golem in servitude to their increasingly tyrannical whims had we (read: you) not made that possible by rebelling against and ejecting our indigenous managerial elites. You don’t propose or provide an alternative to the managerial elites you depose because you don’t understand the nature of the struggle. We’re in a mature civilization. We can no more return to pre-Christian Europe as I can return to my childhood innocence. I would like to know your thoughts on the very promising developments in Russia, including the potential for having our own Putin and the possibility of a Christian oligarchy which is supportive of White American nationalism as the Russian Orthodox Church is of Russian nationalism. 12
Posted by Wandrin on March 28, 2010, 02:57 PM | # And another http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFOUqurUgFk Lots of bubbles, bubbling. 13
Posted by Guessedworker on March 28, 2010, 04:46 PM | # Matt, It’s a way to arrive at emergent truth through the trial-and-error and selection for people who have ideas which are functional. Religious belief is not, not a way to arrive at truth. It is a way to arrive at beauty. “Ways” to truth only inhabit religious systems with an esoteric core, and then only as a corollary to consciousness and being. The beautiful truths that are available in the outer circle are just beliefs, regardless of how dazzling they may be, or how utterly convincing, or sometimes even how well rationalised. Now, we are really only interested in philosophical not esoteric truths. Ontology, being about being rather than of being, is a distinct category. But it yields a quality of truth that holds the relationship to esoteric truth of thought to being ... that is, it is investigative, prospective but never proprietorial. The intellect does not own truth. All thought is a passing presence. Now, if we allow ourselves to draw “truth” (belief) from beautiful exoterica we wind up, as I tried to explain before, with faith products like Zizek’s liberalism and Dugin’s traditionalism, and these have a strictly limited appeal, certainly for me. To set wisdom and knowledge against one another is a common folly in the contemporary West You mean the “wisdom” and “knowledge” of the outer circle, of course. Pre-Christian paganism failed ... I have no personal interest in religion, Matt. I am insensible to it. I just have an intellectual curiosity about its evolutionary function. And in that respect, Christianity has demonstrably failed. Not entirely surprising - we are Europeans, not Jews. But the failure is there in the existence of major historical antitheses. Liberalism, for example, stands as a whole body of evidence against Christianity in exactly the same way that Protestantism stood as a whole body of evidence against Catholicism. There is plenty of evidence on which to judge Christianity, should one wish. Even so, I am not proposing to replace Christianity ... We can no more return to pre-Christian Europe as I can return to my childhood innocence. Making religions is out of the realm of the possible. But, imo, beliefs and teleologies do not have a place in a “universal criterion” founded on what is true. You carelessly rebel against the political machines which have been designed to check the perpetual striving of the Jewish oligarchs to replace our managerial elites. I did? You’d better tell me when. Remember I’m English and living in England. The English managerial elite, so far as I can see, has moved seamlessly from the City and the Rotten Burroughs to India and Hong Kong and onward to Europe, Davos and the Bilderberg. Jews? Well, some. And then there are the banking dynasties. But I hope you don’t think the class as a whole has not been replaced by Jews. I wrote about the power elite here, btw: http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_problem_of_the_power_elite/ You don’t propose or provide an alternative to the managerial elites you depose because you don’t understand the nature of the struggle. Of course I do. But new elites require a new global philosophy to replace the universal liberal milieu. You tip the old elites out by destroying the ideational foundations of their power. That is what a revolution actually does. I would like to know your thoughts on the very promising developments in Russia, including the potential for having our own Putin and the possibility of a Christian oligarchy which is supportive of White American nationalism as the Russian Orthodox Church is of Russian nationalism. I am an ethnic nationalist. I do not wish to live under anyone’s wing, including Russia’s. For one thing, their average IQ is 96, and their level of civilisation reflects that. For another, eastern Slavs are markedly more authoritarian than northern and southern Europeans. It does not inspire trust. My notion of an adaptive and, therefore, sustainable life for Europeans is that it must be sensible to our sociobiology, including our individualism, altruism and faith. The latter is just one part, and can never be the whole for the reasons I have explained above. 14
Posted by Guest Lurker on March 28, 2010, 05:07 PM | #
It seems the jews did much of their own borrowing and adapting from other religions and mythologies-the Sumerian, the Babylonian, the Zoroastrians. Jewish Scribes like Philo constantly reworked Judaism to harmonize it with Hellenistic philosophical currents. In fact, the case can be made that the highest streams of all 3 semitic monotheisms derived from Pagan neoplatonism.
Isn’t this a bit like saying that because today hip hop is the popular music so many youth listen to that all other varieties of music which preceded it have been marginalized because they were dysfunctional and culturally immature? Maybe the reason semitic faiths like Christianity and Islam superceded prior traditions is because exoterically they appealed to the lowest common denominator. And if it wasn’t for the social and economic pressure to convert by their conquerors, would the Persians have otherwise accepted Islam over their “dysfunctional” Zoroastrianism, as you claim it was? 15
Posted by Guessedworker on March 28, 2010, 07:35 PM | # Soren,
OK, let’s look at this:
If we must speak of identity, at least let us identify the Subject as the same as itself or, if one wants to be flash and strictly Heideggerian (which I often do), the same as itself with itself. Ultimately, the rather fey putting forward of these cloister-categories “Subject” and “Object” suffers from a solidity of one which, however, remains obscured and a fluidity of the other which is all too visible. It is tempting to reduce the entire conflict to the opposition of solidity and fluidity, rock and water, what is native and what is only acquired, essence and personality, racial character and sociality, one thrown into the world, one thrown into the culture, each drawing unto itself. The identity - horrible word - of the one is the same as itself, indivisible and whole, but unknown and perhaps unknowable. The identity of the other is whatever fills the vessel, and the forces fighting for our mondial non-existence have culture nicely sewn up, thank you very much. Yep, it is tempting to reduce it all to that pretty scheme. But that would be wrong. And the reason it is wrong is also the reason that Dugin is wrong - but not you, I think, Soren, since you write about the Subject being strangled in its cradle. Well, why would a world-oppressor fiddle-faddle around with a bit of culture to produce a global sociality, a generic identity, an Everyman of the new worldhood, and not attend to the danger lurking in the shadows? Bad for business. Bad, bad, bad. Well then, step forward Leona Lewis and Lewis Hamilton and all those children of Alon Ziv’s little book, whose IQ averages 91 and whose Subject, far from being confined, is unconflicted with the reality it has been given, for it has not been offended against. Mundial non-existence, too, can have a Subject, can’t it? And it would not be ours. The game is and always was the browning of Europe. Of course, it may not seem that way in the icy fastness of Dugin’s flat in a Moscow winter.
The Subject, if I am right, is an abstract understanding of our being offered by people who think instead of pay attention. Or if it isn’t, it damned well ought to be. 16
Posted by Matt Parrott on March 28, 2010, 08:04 PM | # GW, Religious belief is not, not a way to arrive at truth. The most crude and obvious demonstration of the functional nature of religious tradition would be the admonition to refrain from homosexual activity and promiscuous sexuality. To the irreligious man, the reasons were nonsensical, even apparently aesthetically crude. Yet, the rule proves quite functional, in ways that few anticipated. The Sexual Revolution has been an unmitigated disaster on several levels, one which a non-rational religious man would have been more likely to dodge than a scholar. You can’t just make a sweeping claim that religion is about beauty without supporting that claim. You may have done elsewhere. If so, I would like to see that. On the face of it, it seems like sophistry. This stuff about the inner and outer circles is also alien to me. Would you do me the favor of either referencing or summarizing the private lexicon? It may be a simple education or intelligence disparity, in which case common courtesy obliges you to stoop to my level. I did[rebel]? You’d better tell me when. I’m speaking in very general terms of anybody who refuses to submit to the authority of any of the indigenous oligarchies. If you’re a devout Catholic, Freemason, Anglican, etc. then I retract the accusation. But new elites require a new global philosophy to replace the universal liberal milieu. Wait. What’s wrong with the Orthodox Nationalist model of autocephalous and independent nations sharing a loose Christian communion? their [Russians’] average IQ is 96 The Mongoloid race of subhuman Slavic manbeasts is beside the point. The point is that the model is what you appear to be waiting for. Is it not? The Orthodox Nationalist model is an excellent global philosophy to replace the universal liberal milieu. It’s both universal and particular. It’s tried and proven. It’s not about submitting to the Russians. Though it would probably be prudent for us to start thinking in terms of alliances with ascendant powers outside of Western Europe and America. 17
Posted by Matt Parrott on March 28, 2010, 08:12 PM | # Guest Lurker, The Jews absolutely did borrow from a variety of sources. No question about that. It’s kind of my point. Why scrap a robust and proven operating system when you can modify an existing one to our uniquely-Western ends? You suggest that Christianity and Islam appeal to baser instincts. If you dichotomize the martial values as good and the managerial values as base, as Nietzsche and many others have done, then you’re internally consistent. However, the primary challenge for Western Civilization at this point is managerial, priestly, civilizational. If we refuse to accept our managerial challenge, Jews will be glad to step in and be that managerial elite. But somebody must manage it. 18
Posted by Captainchaos on March 28, 2010, 08:38 PM | # As exasperating as it is, if you try to approach Christians with these ideas in a way that is too aggressively materialistic, they will stop up their ears. Like liberals, to question the core tenets of their faith is to run up against a brick wall. There is a way around that wall, however. There is enough in the Bible of anti-Jew and pro-tribalism to use as a fulcrum to leverage them to our side, something Red State Whites are inclined to anyway. What I do is to attempt to claim the ground of ‘holier than thou’ and brand those who dig in their heels as heretics if if comes to it. As infantile and pathetic as their mindset is, they are substantially all we have. 19
Posted by Nicholas on March 28, 2010, 11:02 PM | # The most crude and obvious demonstration of the functional nature of religious tradition would be the admonition to refrain from homosexual activity and promiscuous sexuality. To the irreligious man, the reasons were nonsensical, even apparently aesthetically crude. Yet, the rule proves quite functional, in ways that few anticipated. The Sexual Revolution has been an unmitigated disaster on several levels, one which a non-rational religious man would have been more likely to dodge than a scholar. Also, note that up until the early 20th century, doctors, “experts,” quacks, etc. were more likely to kill their patients. Religion arguably saved lives and enhanced fitness by keeping people away from doctors and in mass or praying or whatever. 20
Posted by sirrealpolitik on March 29, 2010, 01:04 AM | # soren, ah zizek, the lovable iconoclast, furry and dracula-accented. though his “project” - after the mode of frankfurt school deconstructionists - seems to have been to negate subjectivity, or rather the Subject, ziz seems to not buy in to the ring-kissing position to which the school’s jews have wanted to rope us. even as those who claim atheism in the either-or fallacy of theism/atheism seem defined against a pre-supposed theism that bows to the debate, similarly those who adopt the subject-object rhetoric find themselves already in enemy territory nowadays, especially if we un-abstract subject-object polarities into particulars (as is so often and so annoyingly done in multi-culti “academic” environments) that position whites as the cartesian subject who “needs” the object “other” to make them “complete.” think on how many undergrads now are forced to bear the yoke and kiss this ring of the frankfurt school priestcraft. they have turned the rhetorical tools of the old cartesian ontologies into a ontic game ascribing labels to peoples, dividing the world into two camps: guilty meat and entitled meat. derrida also always uses similar rhetorical binaries (see his writings on circumcision) that seem slyly to slither from abstractions into the concrete and the political. gasp: is he talking about how theoretical or metaphoric uncut weenies are bad because they are a closed-off circle and seemingly complete (as “Subjects”) while the cut weenie is incomplete - and since incomplete “open” to “the other”; or is he talking in dense physical terms: actual uncircumcised men=bad? if one were to call him on suggesting the latter (when he was still alive), he’d just escape down the scuttlehole of the old “c’mon man, we’re only speaking ‘theoretically’ here!” excuse. 21
Posted by Al Ross on March 29, 2010, 01:52 AM | # Upon learning of Derrida’s demise, one rival academic smilingly said, “Let’s see you talk your way out of that one”. With regard to circumcision, I think the estimable Wintermute put it best when he referred to that Jewish act of mutilation as “a land for foreskins deal done by grasping desert hagglers”. 22
Posted by Al Ross on March 29, 2010, 02:58 AM | # Captainchaos is surely correct in what I take to be his best estimate of Christian potential support in the struggle against our audacious and implacable enemies. Imagine the possibilities open to WNs if, instead of sending hard - earned money to a gaggle of jackanapes, Israel - supporting, tele - evangalists, the inveterately open - hearted (and walleted) Christians decided, instead, to divert those funds to the righteous cause of racial survival. Of course, even a scenario such as the above would not necessarily change the status quo. The Inner Party’s financial contributions to the Tweedledum Democrats and the Tweedledee Republicans would doubtless increase, exponentially, from the current 50 % and 38% respectively of total contributions. Jewish shock, though, in the face of timid White people’s having the unmitigated temerity to defend their legitimate EGI in the country which Aryans built would be worth the price of admission. 25
Posted by DRS on March 29, 2010, 02:09 PM | # Zizek is quite clearly an lunatic. Obviously if your IQ is above a certain level you’ll be unable to detect that. 26
Posted by Guessedworker on March 29, 2010, 07:36 PM | # Matt,
Can we agree that moral truths, however adaptive, are not what we are seeking here, and don’t offer proof that religious faith holds such truth as we might be interested in? Plainly, my contention is that it does not ... that the faith process, with its focus on piety, reverence and devotion for the Absolute, is absolutely a lover of the beautiful. Thats just how teleologies work.
The Christian faith is also about prayer, morals, worship, charity and communion. Do I have to support that claim? Matt, there is a cost to Christianity’s absence of an inner core of practise such as exists, for example, with Sufism in Islam. And while this is no loss to the rule-following, zikr-saying, diet-observing, alms-giving submissives of the Ummah who populate the exoteric circle because, by their presence there, they attest to having no use for the kind of truths certain Sufis might be interested in, Christians who might be interested in such truths have no recourse to follow, and so must reflect as they are able, and read and pray and try their hardest to love. As a rule, beauty without, truth within. But “within” is an exclusive category (or would be if it exists anywhere at all, obviously).
Have you never met a revolutionary before?
What political structure has always existed is not necessarily the best that can exist. Anyway, in this thinking business one does not decide on the solution before the problem has been stated. Let’s wait and see where we go.
It is not a philosophy. You could scribble its fundaments on a postage stamp. It is a political model. It cannot replace liberalism. 27
Posted by Matt Parrott on March 29, 2010, 11:11 PM | # GW, The Christian faith is also about prayer, morals, worship, charity and communion. Do I have to support that claim? All of these phenomena can be explained in terms of the religion as an adaptive memeplex. I don’t know how this whole beauty thing could be proven or falsified. I don’t get the point of it. I don’t see what caused that assertion or what that assertion would lead to. I’m almost certainly missing something and will probably need to just give up. Have you never met a revolutionary before? We’re all revolutionaries. It could be a proposal for a brand new indigenous oligarchy. Replacing the alien oligarchy is the challenge. What political structure has always existed is not necessarily the best that can exist. Anyway, in this thinking business one does not decide on the solution before the problem has been stated. Let’s wait and see where we go. [...] It is not a philosophy. You could scribble its fundaments on a postage stamp. It is a political model. It cannot replace liberalism. You’re evidently intelligent and well-read on these issues, so I challenge you cautiously. But I can’t help but feel that you’re striving for some philosophical goal rather than a political goal. This might be how we’re speaking past each other. I’m not trying to discern the best political structure that can exist. I’m not trying to triumph over liberalism with a profound new universal philosophy. The “universal particularism” of Christian orthodox nationalism appears to fit the bill. Would you be willing to support a political or philosophical ideal which held a genuine promise of restoring indigenous sovereignty even if it were definitely less than your ideal system? Do you believe that describes the BNP? 28
Posted by Desmond Jones on March 30, 2010, 12:53 AM | #
It can’t be, that’s why it’s employed. The point is that the “contention” cannot be proven, however, conflating beauty with adaptive traits might be intimidating. The intention is to denigrate Christianity as frivolous, without actually constructing an argument. However, if teleology embraces beauty, ‘cause that’s just how it works, it also embraces purpose and order, ‘cause that’s just how it works. If Christianity is teleology then it must also embrace purpose. Equally it can be said the Christianity is a lover of order, purpose and beauty. However, doing that presents Christianity in a more formidable light. The problem is not Christianity, it is the perversion of Christianity. 29
Posted by Al Ross on March 30, 2010, 03:21 AM | # Desmond, would you consider “the perversion of Christianity” to include interpretations such as ‘liberation theology"and the “social gospel”? Would you also include the sort of clergy - displayed tolerance of homosexuality that suggests a knowledge of the deviancy which goes somewhat beyond the theoretical? 30
Posted by Desmond Jones on March 30, 2010, 06:07 PM | # Al, Would you accept a white nationalism that “displayed tolerance of homosexuality that suggests a knowledge of the deviancy which goes somewhat beyond the theoretical?” http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2010/01/02/censored-at-vnn-the-post-alex-linder-doesnt-want-read/ http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/hiv_in_britain_is_black_and_it_is_gay/ In answer to your question generally yes post WWII. 31
Posted by Guessedworker on March 30, 2010, 08:30 PM | # Matt,
Perhaps the day is not too far off when it will be possible to devise a test to compare the experience of a prayerful exoterist and an esoterist in a state of self-consciousness. Short of that the problem, obviously, is that the prayerful have absolutely no knowledge of the other’s experience, and are in no position to offer an opinion.
Suppose that at an election in an ethnostate of the future there are two men with recognised qualities pf leadership. One is living in and from the love of his people, and only the love of his people, and holds to the conviction that he may respond to their call upon him for leadership but dwell not one minute beyond the fading of that call. The other man is living in the light of Christ and the love of our father the lord God. He holds to the conviction that he has been called to bring the people to the same light and the same love, and that this call will guide him in his actions all life long. Both wear a nationalist rosette. Both are paragons of virtue within their respective moral universes. But can you not see that they differ in their political utility by the degree to which their ultimate values differ. Which do you want? The pure nationalist or the religious? Well, of course you will say that you want neither but a certain combination of both whereby Christianity’s negative characteristics - its teleological focus, its universalism, its appalling puritanicalism - can be magically moderated by the nationalist impulse. Do you have a plan for that, or are you just hitting and hoping? My idea is to restrict Christianity to the private sphere. Isn’t that safer and easier than constantly trying to control its malign aspects? I mean, why do you have to have God in our politics, for pete’s sake?
It is a matter of mechanics, of the consequence of prior actions. It is not a direct objective in itself. Specifically, replacing the ideational (not just ideological) foundations of the polity disaccomodates the existing power elite and regulates the positioning of the new elite.
The world is made of ideas, Matt. Without a stable and coherent ideational structure there is no politics, merely tribalisms, power interests, interludes of leadership by psychopaths.
The world we are in now is Judeo-Christian-liberal. One we segregate from. One we retire to the private life. One we consign to history. If we are to live, which is the whole point, the future must be nationalist, an understanding I came to in January 08: It has taken til now to shape MR into an engine of philosophical investigation. We are ready. I have no idea what the future holds. It is exciting.
The real question is, would I organise against a government which, while nominally nationalist, did not do all that must be done: http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/to_do_what_we_must_to_remain_who_we_are/ ... to give life to our people? And of course I would. 32
Posted by Matt Parrott on March 30, 2010, 09:46 PM | # GuessedWorker, It’s been working pretty much as advertised in Eastern Europe virtually uninterrupted since Day One. This really feels like it keeps coming back to your contempt for Eastern Europeans and Christians. You also keep acting as if Christianity has this unbearable gravitational pull away from healthy tribal instincts. History doesn’t support that characterization. The world is made of ideas, Matt. Fine. Let’s play by your rules, here. Christianity is a set of ideas, ones which are not incompatible with our peoples’ divine and/or natural right to exist. It’s like I found a rope for us to climb out with and you’re going to ignore or even cut the rope because some sort of elevator or levitating contraption would be superior to climbing out with the rope. Hell. Let’s climb out on the rope, then you can take your time working out this nebulous web of abstractions you hint at. But, ultimately, I don’t play by those rules. I believe the world is first and foremost one of tribes, with ideas being secondary. I believe it’s a classic Anglo-Masonic boner to fall for ideas without fully understanding the tribal, class, and gender milieu within which ideas suspended. Hell, even the idea that ideas should be freely considered is a self-serving proposal by Europe’s mercantile elite against decadent and declining religious and aristocratic elites whose ideas were relatively fixed and designed to reinforce their own primacy. Wait. Did you just suggest that you’re prepared to organize against the BNP for failing to be nationalist enough? I would cut off a hand to have something so well-organized, sharp, and ascendant on my side of the pond. I understand there are legitimate objections. But I think we’re circling back to my political orientation and your philosophical orientation causing us to talk past one another. Any practiced idea, religion, or political party on this planet of assholes and idiots will fall short of your platonic abstractions. 33
Posted by Captainchaos on March 30, 2010, 10:12 PM | # Parrot, I hardly think the ethically particular, five hundred year lived tradition of Russian Orthodoxy is applicable to America, and certainly not Western Europe where church attendance is in rapid decline. 34
Posted by Guest Lurker on March 30, 2010, 10:40 PM | #
Is this really so? I know the Eastern Orthodox Church practices a sort of meditation know as Hesychasm which utilizes the Jesus Prayer in helping the aspirant achieve Theosis. The idea is that man can become God-“like” since God became man. Christ as the logos is the bridge between man and the Absolute. Frithhof Schuon also wrote a book on the esotericism of Christianity called “The Fullness of God”, where he compares and contrasts Semitic monotheistic creationism to Hellenic neoPlatonic emanationism. Being of a philsophical bent, you might already be familiar with this material. 35
Posted by Fred Scrooby on March 30, 2010, 10:53 PM | # Matt Parrott gave a nice little speech Saturday in Martinsville, Indiana. You can watch it here: http://www.hoosiernation.us/node/264 . Well done, Matt. 36
Posted by Matt Parrott on March 31, 2010, 10:01 AM | # Captain, Kinism + Orthodoxy = FTW? Fred, 37
Posted by Wandrin on March 31, 2010, 11:35 AM | #
I see GW’s point but speaking as both a religiously inclined person and also someone inclined to whatever works best i still think the best way forward practically speaking, in England at least, is a combination of the two: - a clean break with the Old Testament with Jesus as a clear rejection of what went before - insertion of Norse myth and earlier pagan ideas into schools as our pre-Christian “roots” - maintain and reinforce the cultural Christian rituals that people like and want possibly interbred with earlier pagan ideas e.g births, weddings, funerals plus harvest festival, mayday etc - play around a bit with New Testament theology if needed. Without the Old Testament the bible is very malleable in a non-puritanical direction while less useful in a war-like direction - although personally i’m all in favour of moral restrictions on evil behaviour except when survival is threatened. I think the New Testament seasoned with a little paganism especially with regards to being fruitful and multiplying would be fine as a moral basis for in-group behaviour. For me the key thing is the rejection of the Old Testament.
I think it’s important to keep eyes on the prize and view any particular organisation as a vehicle for attaining the prize. If a vehicle comes to a halt at some point before the prize then you can jump off and onto another. That’s not to denigrate anyone - tactics isn’t personal. 38
Posted by Søren Renner on March 31, 2010, 12:13 PM | #
There is another way. 39
Posted by Guessedworker on March 31, 2010, 08:05 PM | # Guest Lurker,
Sorry, no:
Schuon was a very interesting man. But his life’s goal was to incorporate the sacred at the heart of the polity. Sacredness here means the very core of the core, which he cognised as a primordial wisdom coming into the world from the same place to inhabit the major faith systems. Well, sorry, but the polity is the phenomenon that DanielJ wrote about yesterday, and the esoteric is esoteric precisely because it cannot be grasped so easily. It is not ideas about being and nothingness and the All that somehow do this retiring before the world. The active agent in esoterism is the lumpen nature of the overwhelming majority. 40
Posted by Guessedworker on March 31, 2010, 08:39 PM | # Matt,
It is not a rope or a ladder or a beanstalk. It is a version of Christianity adapted for a European ethnicity gifted with a more authoritarian and reclusive sociobiology than we are, and one, moreover, especially susceptible to religious beauty. Russian Orthodox liturgy is filled with a strange and inspiring beauty. But it cannot and will never lead to the free and sovereign, defintely non-authoritarian life our people must live. It’s alright, Matt, I have no faith. I cannot see anything beyond the great Cathedral doors that you can, so we shall never come to agreement. You will never agree with me that several essential features of Christianity bestow a moral licence upon the methods of persecution we face now. Christian teleology reappears today in the unfettered will in liberalism ... Christian love reappears in a self-loving sacrifice ... Christian universalism reappears in tolerance and fairness to the Third World Other ... Christian puritanism reappears in anti-racism ... Christian absolutism reappears in the social and legal mechanisms of control, and so on. Religion in political life is a disaster for us, and will continue to be so. 41
Posted by Al Ross on March 31, 2010, 09:00 PM | # The answer to your question, Desmond, is “up to a point”. Every Aryan is part of the WN nation (in the ancient Greek ‘natio’ sense of the word) but we must repay traitors on a like - for - like basis and that unhappy band contains, I believe, a well above average proportion of homosexuals. 42
Posted by Matt Parrott on March 31, 2010, 11:20 PM | # I demonstrate that Christianity is central to a White nation’s post-Jewish and deeply nationalist rebirth. You blink, then repeat dogma about Christianity being antithetical to what I just demonstrated it to be doing. When you are forced to admit that White people are using Christianity to help reinvigorate their nationalist instincts, you blink, then insist that those particular Whites are dumb and reclusive. There’s a very promising model for rescuing Western Civilization, but that porridge is too lumpy. There’s a very promising political party attempting to rescue England, but that porridge is too cold. I still have no idea about this religious beauty thing, but I’m pretty sure it also exists solely in a world made of ideas. All these abstractions and five dollar words devoid of actions go against my corporate instincts, I reckon. I can’t find a single action item. This reminds me of a quote from Nikola Tesla, one of those grubby Orthodox Eastern Europeans… “The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” - Nikola Tesla It’s not that I believe you’re insane, but that I believe you’re thinking deeply and not clearly. 43
Posted by Guest Lurker on March 31, 2010, 11:29 PM | #
If I’m understanding you, praying or utilizing mantras is somehow a distraction and a hindrance in achieving this consciousness of the self and the beatific? As for some of the other posts in that thread, it looks like it breaks down into those who see consciousness as numenous, and those materialists like yourself, a self-proclaimed scientific Darwinist, who leave open the possibility that it’s merely rooted in the phenomenal world, in which case you’re talking past each other. 44
Posted by Al Ross on March 31, 2010, 11:39 PM | # If Christian mystery - mongers like Parrott can explain just how belief in the old Jew God, Yahweh, can help raise the racial consciousness of White people, I’d be interested in further and better particulars, or as Ross Perot might put it, “I’m all ears”. 45
Posted by Guest Lurker on March 31, 2010, 11:43 PM | # Matt Parrot,
I might have misread something or may simply be out of my depth here, but I don’t think GW believes in any numenous world of Platonic ideas. If I’ve read him correctly, he even sees the human need for the beatific as rooted in the phenomenal mind. Ironically, I would have thought that you, as a Christian, would have championed the numenous, rather than struggling as mightily as you have in resorting to an evolutionary justification of Christianity. 46
Posted by PF on April 01, 2010, 01:08 AM | # Guessedworker wrote:
Could you please explain this further? 47
Posted by Wandrin on April 01, 2010, 05:16 AM | #
Their god is Baal. Jesus rebelled against it. The Old Testament is upside down. Their god is satan. They are Lucifers unto the nations etc. The key would be to take the New Testament as being in conflict with and the enemy of the Old Testament. In effect what you do is make Jesus a rejection of their god. You could even turn it into Jesus being the first humanist if you wanted. Easy. I’m not really proposing this as i’m unsure of the best way. I’m religious by inclination but practically i think the benefit of using (some form of) Christianity is cultural strength and roots combined with social bonding and perceived luck rituals but the cost is the universalist theology. If the first can be used while the second is diluted then i see a net benefit. For example i really think people underestimate the psychological value of prayers and blessings before a battle. 48
Posted by Guessedworker on April 01, 2010, 05:19 AM | # PF, Primordialists like Frithjof Schuon wanted to create a world in which the source of eternal knowledge - something they thought they cognised - was placed at the centre of the world of men. They believed that this quality of knowledge had a near-material or, at least, permanent existence, and if one could increase the amount of it in the world, said world would be made a better, more mysterious, more sacred and all-round more Shuon-esque place. They didn’t want knowledge to go on holing up in some dusty and ancient, deeply inaccessible corner of the Mysterious East. So these guys were pretty idealistic, to say the least. But, in my inconsequential opinion, they were terrible psychologists. What was missing from this hopeful scenario was a cold, hard appreciation of people’s real mentality. The distance between the Mysterious East and the sinful world we all inhabit was created not out of some picky preference for the recondite by the keepers of said knowledge but by the nature of uncomprehending Man. In the aggregate, he can never be brought to consciousness of the sublime. Simply saying some special words and exercising a few emotions in a church or mosque, or out in great Nature, or at a holy site, or in a foxhole or on a launchpad ... that’s all that can be expected from him. He would, if he came into contact with something called eternal knowledge, mangle it, waste the opportunity, and see nothing beyond what he always sees. The world cannot be other than it is, cannot be perfected in any form. Illusions are always just illusions. 49
Posted by Guessedworker on April 01, 2010, 07:09 AM | # Guest Lurker,
Yes. It is a case of taking the word “prayer” from one side of the divide into the other where in the darkness its content is lost and its form unseen and only guessed at, and thereafter reified as verbal formulae, bead-fiddling, wheel-spinning, candle-lighting and assorted pleadings for supernatural intercession, and - just occasionally - a mad, wheel-spinning scramble after enlightenment, grace, or whatever. It isn’t very systematic.
I do entirely believe in the existence of the “numinous world”, but as a world of illusions. It is a real world. It is our world, our prevalent state of ordinary waking consciousness. The illusions in it are, of course, illusions.
Plainly either: (i) this need evolved in our higher emotions because it offered a fitness gain, and the gene complex for it is either expressed (as in Matt’s case) or not (as in mine), or (ii) men learn it from other men, starting from early infancy, and sort of “growing” the faith emotions of piety, reverence, and devotion. (iii) a god or gods made the whole thing appear in us ab initio. I go for no 1. And whilst it is perfectly OK for other people to choose one of the other explanations, I would prefer them to be allowed nowhere near the levers of power. We have seen what, untrammelled, they can do. 50
Posted by Matt Parrott on April 01, 2010, 07:45 AM | # Al Ross, I keep falling back on the emergent situation in Russia, where a charismatic leader allied with a truly indigenous and national religious priesthood is reinvigorating the ethnonational spirit in the wake of Bolshevism. This isn’t idle conjecture or theorizing. I’m pointing at a working model and exhorting others to reflect on how we can attempt to replicate that situation here at home. We can set the theological particulars aside ENTIRELY and recognize that the priesthood is an oligarchy. A national priesthood like the ones found in Orthodox nations, could be the indigenous oligarchy we need to set against the alien oligarchy we currently suffer under. I’m not mystery-mongering or trying to force religion down peoples’ throats, here. The bottom line is that we MUST raise an indigenous elite against the alien elites, and I challenge anybody here to draw a straighter line from where we’re at to where we need to be than that line. Guest Lurker, I speak of religion in strictly adaptive and political terms in this context here because the point I’m trying to convey is that we should explore ways to politically adapt the Orthodox model here in the West. Scripture does not promote universalism and is very consistently supportive of the concept of the ethnic nation. It even explicitly eschews universalism in the story of the Tower of Babel. As such, I believe that Christ’s plan for us includes a church which is integrally national. I believe that coldly calculating ways to revive White America’s ethnonational identity is God’s work. 51
Posted by Guessedworker on April 01, 2010, 08:32 AM | # Matt,
You have merely claimed that the Russian Orthodox Church is necessary to a nationalist ideational universe. What you are really doing here, of course, is committing the political sin of teleology, like the second fictional paragon I described earlier in the thread. And you don’t seem to understand that conservatism is anti-teleological, and has a core value of stability. Not tradition, not conservation. Stability. The kind of becoming that may flow from that is beautiful - that word again - in the smallness of its scale, wholly compatible with the European nature but quite incompatible with the heavenwards reach you desire. I have written a lot of words about this dangerous and alluring self-deception called “rebirth”. Lately PF has taken over this mantle and written some good pieces on the value of striving away from one’s being, and done a better job that I. If you only use the word descriptively, Matt, it is possible that you are on the right side of the line. But if you are commending a new Nation arisen from the ashes of the old, with a new destiny - a high destiny - and a driving sense of purpose towards that goal, then that would be a different matter. Then, I would say to you that stability and destiny cannot co-exist, that destiny is hell, that you are at best confused and possibly dangerous. That is what a Conservative must say.
I did? I have? If you believe so.
Here is an idea. There are, imo, six means available to us to explore the nature of the universe. These might be said to occupy a continuum ordered Precise <> Speculative as follows: mathematics <> science > psychology > philosophy <> metaphysics <> religion Note that politics is not present among them. But their truths are funnelled down into political theory. Now, it has come to my notice that the very few religious writers on the nationalist internet draw entirely from the right side of the equasion. Sadly, I am not a mathematician like James or PF. But if I was I would certainly be pressing the case for abstracting truths - truths, not beauty - from all six. The truths from religion are related not to its content but to its practise, as you yourself admit (“White people are using Christianity ...”) In other words, you are now making a utilitarian, not essentially religious, argument - which you only confirm by your disdain for “the world of ideas”. Utilitarianism is acceptable in practical, feet-on-the-ground politics. Like kissing babies and saluting the flag. But it has no business in the philosophical and, therefore, ideological spheres. It has nothing to say that we have not heard for the past thousand years. 52
Posted by Matt Parrott on April 01, 2010, 11:10 AM | # GuessedWorker, You speculated on Russians having low IQ and being reclusive as reasons why the model worked there but would not work in the West. I’m pretty sure you have a simple bias against the Russian people. I’m neither intelligent nor educated enough to truly follow your train of thought. But what appears to be happening is that you’re attempting to force any discussion of religious organizations out of the realm of politics and into the realm of philosophical and religious sophistry. The potential existence of God or the “beauty” of religion are totally off-topic. I keep trying to make this a political discussion about the utility of an alliance with a particular type of oligarchy, a religious priesthood. I feel like I’m on intellectual acid, grasping for moments of focus and sobriety, only to be drug back into a fantastic realm of unfamiliar abstractions, concepts, and multisyllabic words. I’m not surprised that you jumped on the word “conservative” to digress about definitional errata. I’m a Traditionalist striving for Restoration, not a Burkean striving for stasis. I’m a queer sort of Traditionalist, what I coined as an Evolutionary Traditionalist, who respects the emergent wisdom of the memeplex/G.E.S. I do think in terms of utility because emergent wisdom isn’t explicitly arrived at and may even prove more subtle than the limitations of the human mind can bear. So, yes. I do often treat religion as a sort of black box, and I do believe it’s valid to judge the tree by its fruit. In the context I’m trying to keep this in, a nationalist religious priesthood is indeed a tool to be examined for its utility in achieving the goal I’m pursuing. There are other contexts and dimensions. You name many of those. One of those is whether it’s actually true or not, whether the religion in question is the one true religion. Have you ever read Controversy of Zion by Douglas Reed? 53
Posted by Armor on April 01, 2010, 11:51 AM | # Matt Parrott : “The potential existence of God or the “beauty” of religion are totally off-topic.” I agree with that, if the main concern is how to defend the existence of white nations. 54
Posted by PF on April 01, 2010, 12:55 PM | # GW wrote:
understood. 55
Posted by Guest Lurker on April 01, 2010, 03:15 PM | #
GW, I don’t really understand what you mean by “near-material”, but it seems to me that the Traditionalists had a very Platonic view where quality precedes quantity, essence precedes substance, form over matter. This transcendent Perennial Tradition, they argue, informs all particular traditions to one degree or another, but is best preserved in certain eastern quarters.
That’s not my reading of the Traditionalists at all, and specifically not of Schuon. He plainly states that man’s openness to truth is contingent upon his capabilities and aspirations, which of necessity leads to the distinction between the esoteric and exoteric in a given tradition.
I’m probably totally missing your point, but the traditionalists would probably argue the same with regard to humanist leadership, that without a will towards the unconditioned, humanism leads to generational slippage and decadence. Looking at the state of the west today, I can see their point. If man is a meaning seeking animal as symbolic anthropologists argue contra the Boazian cultural materialists, can a viable society be maintained without lapsing into nihilism if there is no transcendent focal point? Ancient Indo-Europeans organized society and its castes in according with their view of cosmic law. The closest we see to this today are the Muslims, and whatever their qualities, they’re not humanists, and their patriarchal organization is proving to be evolutionarily adaptive in the demographic sense, while western humanistic egalitarianism is maladaptive as evidenced by our demographic crisis. I guess I’m wondering how you would accommodate what you see as the evolved need for the numinous in an organization of society and its leadership, since you see it as conferring a fitness gain. 56
Posted by Desmond Jones on April 01, 2010, 06:11 PM | #
Al, It’s evident in the past, but whether the current “perversity” masquerading as Christianity can replicate the past is of course another question. It has the toolkit but whether or not it gets used again… In the Virginia settlement:
John Rolfe’s consternation is quite clear;
http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_bears_lair3/P100/#c44427 KMac on the Puritans:
http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/towards_a_god_that_can_save_us/#c71547 57
Posted by Guessedworker on April 01, 2010, 07:56 PM | # Guest Lurker, I am not speaking of FS specifically, but of the entire drift from a pure metaphysic into revolutionary conservatism, the heart of which was this astonishing, wild and beautiful idea of the union of the praeternal transcendent, spirit and blood which undergirded Evola’s apoleteia and still calls strongly to sections of the (entirely political) New Right today. I do admire Schuon, though I find too too material lumps of pig iron where he rejoices in Vedantic rays of light. But that’s just me and my cold-eyed faithlessness. I also accept source-universalism for knowledge of “being and beyond” but not for “being and beyond” itself (and, therefore, not for for the divine origin of religions - that is interpolation by the religious mind, though an interpolation impressive in its universality). Schuon provides a large clue to this issue of beauty and truth, as you, with your Platonic references, must know. My point is that if one strips away faith one strips away beauty, and leaves science, logic and analytics, whose beauty, while still existent - I am always mystified and quite jealous of those who can speak of the beauty of mathematics - is only incidental. 58
Posted by Guessedworker on April 01, 2010, 08:20 PM | # Guest Lurker,
Too early to say exactly. But let’s put some heat under this question of the numinous. First let’s strip away the religious impulse and the religious practise, strip away the grave, glorious images, the sacred signs, sacred words, strip away the emotional hunger for everything that is “at church”, and leave ... the ontological question of our (I believe) non-evolved will to the solid, the belonging, the real in us. To inhabit this intimately known and original place is not in the slightest “numinous” or “divine”, but is only our birthright (you see - pig iron). As a metaphysician and not a philosopher I find corollaries everywhere between the self and this home, and the collective self and our home, our site of the event of appropriation I think ontologists like Heidegger and Badieu call it in another context (correct me if I am wrong). The opportunities to incorporate the existential dynamic in an emergent and intellectually powerful philosophy of nationalism abound if we resist the perennial temptation to waltz after teleology’s beauty and wreck everything - again. 59
Posted by Al Ross on April 01, 2010, 10:01 PM | # Desmond, you may well be correct in your view of Christianity’s having been a unifying factor for Whites in the past. However we may have to go fairly far back in time to reach that point. Here is an example from Mexico in the year 1810 in which a hot - headed Spanish priest, one Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, started a revolution against Spain in the interests of the Indians. In a telling interpretation of the turbulent priest’s motivation, a picture of the Virgin Mary was employed as his revolutionary banner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Hidalgo_y_Costilla I like to think that the late lamented John Kennedy Toole employed that historical meme in a hilarious scene from his superb comic novel, ’ A Confederacy of Dunces’, in which the hero Ignatius J Reilly leads an attempted strike in a New Orleans garment factory. 60
Posted by Desmond Jones on April 02, 2010, 12:34 AM | # Al, Your point is well made. It is a distant story. However, before I clicked your link, I guessed Jesuit. They of the School of Salamnaca and you know what that means. Bartolomé de Las Casas was another such example. Was he or wasn’t he? http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2009/09/return-of-quetzalcoatl-chapter-4.html 61
Posted by Al Ross on April 02, 2010, 01:26 AM | # “Was he or wasn’t he?” Circumcised and Marrano? Quite probably, I’d have thought. 62
Posted by Guessedworker on April 02, 2010, 11:40 AM | # Guest Lurker, On the materiality of knowledge, I shouldn’t really have thrown that in. But I have mentioned once to PF in private conversation the interesting relationship of knowledge and intelligence to materiality, and it was to him that I was responding. It’s something I am kicking around in my own mind, along with a lot of other things. The idea is that since knowledge is not a permanent presence in the intellectual faculty it must be a passing one. It passes in to and out of our focus as electro-chemical activity, returning to our memories where, too, it must have some material but, of course, now inert existence (which, as one gets older, let it be said, is all too apt to degrade). Well, the idea of a divine origination of knowledge of the transcendent or the eternal is necessary to the divine ordination of religions, which FS believed in. But now we are bump into an elegant little problem concerning intelligence and the origin of knowledge. Thus ... The quality and quantity of knowledge available in the human mind is a function of its intelligence. Religions are comprised of generations of believers. So if the intelligence of the believers was reduced from, say, an average of IQ 115 to IQ 70, the quantity - and no doubt quality - of knowledge in the religion would crash. But ... if the knowledge in the religion was really divine in origin - together with the religion itself - that could not happen. The entire Weltanshauung of the primordialists, traditionalists and revolutionary conservatives is built on the foundation of a divine infusion not of faith but of knowledge. It’s a crock, of course, and accordingly I was being ironic in my response to PF, since he shares my scepticism. If man is a meaning seeking animal as symbolic anthropologists argue contra the Boazian cultural materialists, can a viable society be maintained without lapsing into nihilism if there is no transcendent focal point? Well, if you ask a teleology question you get a teleology answer. But, actually, it isn’t the seeking of meanings that distinguishes Man from animal. All animals seek meanings according to the dictates of their survival strategies. What distinguishes us, principally, is two things: 1. We have an intellectual centre which has evolved to model in thought “the thing that is”, supplementing the other two major cognitive systems of the brain (which we share with all mammels). 2. Our ordinary waking state of consciousness is characterised by absence and mechanicity. 63
Posted by PF on April 02, 2010, 02:26 PM | # Guest Lurker wrote:
There are two interesting issues that this question brings to mind. (1) Knowing that man’s state is characterized by what GW said above, and that in the moment of mentation one is interacting with a symbol matrix in the mind, which can have varying emotional undertones (hence the “sublimity”, “divinity”, inferred post-hoc, of certain thought-events) but can never render by itself a more profound experience of being than the click-click of its rolling symbol-associations, how can there be a symbol which is transcendent? It is the symbol-system itself which would have to be transcended for the meaning of this word to be properly fulfilled at all. If certain associations point to knowledge-areas less heavily layered by prior actions of the machine, sections of the wall less thickly reinforced by time and obsessive focus, then they suggest naturally the process of breaking out by allowing the prisoner (he who cannot transcend) to feel a section of the wall Knowing that this is the fate of these sort of attempts to establish “transcendent focal points”, one becomes skeptical of the ability of human beings to actually set up such focal points. The realization that the brick with light splaying out of it is not the goal or the thing, but the world outside, further relativizes one’s estimation of these attempts at and claims of transcendence in the context of human society. (2) I’m not fully convinced in any trans-historical mass critique, because I believe that absence is man’s default state and that more or less adaptive social arrangements do not alter this profoundly. Consider Nietzsche, Spengler, Yockey, Evola, Juvenal, and whatever others one can add to the list of Jeremiad-writers. Each was in their way a social critic who was willing to condemn present society on the basis of an explicitly or implicitly superior prior epoch. Each was also a historically-fixated genius suffering the alienation from one’s contemporaries which is implied in that, and the temptation to rail against the time for not supplying one with recognition, awards, friends and whatnot. A teleological relationship to the past (i.e. one that grants the existence of images of greatness and images of perfection [Evola = Romans, Nietzsche = Periclean Athens & 17th century France, Juvenal=Roman republic] demands the present be sacrificed, since it is difficult to find overwhelming image-fodder in the present. Also images of greatness vary depending on one’s filters, and filters are based on the recognizable features of a phenomenon being observed; the recognizable features of society change as history progresses, so that men fixated on the past are by default poor lovers of the present. In light of the heavy use of imagination in the reconstruction of the social characteristics of all these epoches, the tendency to distill salient aspects which is only possible when the past lays slaughtered on the table, a thing impossible with the breathing living present, and the psychological dynamics obviously at work within all these men who have undertaken this work, I do not know how seriously I can take the charge of nihilism applied to any epoch, including the degraded present. Lastly I think the trends being discussed go far deeper than simply the relationship of the masses to an idea which is considered pious. It deals with technological change, and all the changes that flow from technological change. It strikes me as too easy to imagine, as Nietzsche and Evola did, that all the currents and trends that they were observing the negative manifestations of, could be reversed or even mitigated by the emphasis on transcendent focal points. Although, about this last bit I’m not sure. Transcendent focal points can be more useful than the J-mainstream-media, in helping the prisoners to explore the currently neglected parts of their prison and realize that there is a gym, there is a cafeteria, and there is a letter box where messages from the outside occasionally flit in(i.e. poetry). Right now they are perhaps spending undue time in the toilet and showers, watching South Park, and could use some transcendental focus. 64
Posted by Guest Lurker on April 02, 2010, 04:51 PM | # Guessedworker,
I’m not qualified to correct you on this Guessedworker, as I am not too well versed in Heidigger and have not yet read Being and Time. From what I’ve read about the man and his philosophy, as little as I’ve understood it, Dasein is the human entity that cares about its being and what it means To Be, and throughout its existence this entity is bound temporally to the historical milieu and tradition within which it finds itself. Within this context, Dasein is afforded the opportunity to make choices given the possibilities and potentialities of its existence. I gather how it makes these choices leads to a sort of individuation? The key here, I think from what you’re intimating, is that since there is a correlation between the self and the collective, ethno-nationalism can also be accommodated within the context of a people’s historical milieu and tradition as a collective individuation? Or maybe I’m completely off base and have missed the point.
That’s just the thing. You’ve noted that certain white ethnicities are particularly susceptible to the beautiful, but it seems that white people collectively are distinguished from other races especially in this trait. Would the dynamic you envision be able to take root among whites? This proclivity towards “Beautiful” abstractions probably underlies white liberals’ tendencies to consistently try to improve upon reality with fanciful abstractions that have no anchors in it. What you describe has an aridity to it that may fall short of sating Euroman’s “spiritual” needs. I wonder if your project has greater viability than Matt Parrot’s idea to revamp Christianity.
The traditionalists would say that noetic intellection is different than the rational discursive intelligence and even irrespective of it. Gnostic knowledge is an ontological breakthrough conferred via initiation or a traditional ascetic practice-satori, enlightenment, gnosis, nirvana. And while I’m nearly as skeptical as you and PF, a part of me wonders how it’s possible so many traditions describe what sounds like the very identical thing.
Which an ascetic practice like meditation is supposed to remedy by brining us to a state of presence and deliberateness. Ultimately, Buddhism concludes man is totally contingent upon the phenomenal world and that there is no self apart from it. So while self is contingent, it is also totally transcendent. Samasara equals nirvana is the conclusion of the Mahayana school. Is there any parallel here with Heidigger’s temporal Dasein within the context of its milieu? Buddhism seems to go a bit far and can slip into universalism as well, yet that hasn’t been the case in Japan. 65
Posted by Guessedworker on April 02, 2010, 07:17 PM | # Matt,
It isn’t speculation. For Europeans they have a rather low national average IQ.
Not reclusive. Authoritarian.
Yes. Politics must respect sociobiology, or conflict will arise.
My position seems perfectly rational to me.
No, that is not what is happening. First, I’m separating faith from the will to be, and connecting the latter to the possibility of a new nationalism. Second I am placing faith in its fully human evolutonary context, well away from god things. Third, I am acknowledging that faith is expressed in one form or another in a substantial majority of people of Western European descent, and the dread fascination will out regardless. Accordingly, fourth, I assign it to the private life of the individual - not the public life of the nation, and do so whether said fascination is for god or something else (in other words, exotic politics also have no place in the life of the saved nation, other than as a subject of private fascination). This offends against people whose principal desire is to have their faith emblazoned across the life of the people. I think it is usually for this reason that they are unwilling to constrain themselves and practise their religion in private. Faith evangelism is an awful affliction - mostly for the innocents on the receiving end. I’m a Traditionalist striving for Restoration, not a Burkean striving for stasis. Only Americans and wet liberal-conservatives think that the great Irish talker was a lodestar of English Conservatism. We have Disraeli and his duplicitous Coningsby to thank for that. In the context I’m trying to keep this in, a nationalist religious priesthood is indeed a tool to be examined for its utility in achieving the goal I’m pursuing. A nationalist religious priesthood would seek its own suzereignty in the unshakable belief that it was ordained by God to do so. It’s human nature, I’m afraid. Remember the two rationalisations for the priesthood that you yourself have raised on this thread: spiritual rebirth and utilitarianism. I accept that you have revealed yourself as an advocate of the latter. But the priesthood would not see itself as such, that’s the point. Have you ever read Controversy of Zion by Douglas Reed? I might have seen it at some point. It rings a definite bell. Why do you ask? 66
Posted by Guest Lurker on April 02, 2010, 11:30 PM | # PF wrote:
I might or might not be following your train of thought completely, PF, but my understanding is that holy words and images are not themselves transcendent symbols, but symbols pointing at or hinting at the transcendent. A metaphor from the zen tradition is that when someone points the moon out to you, you don’t stare at the finger. As to the nature of some of these profound experiences, traditionalists like Evola were adamant that they had nothing to do with emotions, sentiment, or discursive reasoning. They claim it is a supra-rational experience which is apprehended directly by the intellect, the intellect in this sense being not discursive rational thought, but a form of intuition. At the end of the day, believing all this would indeed still require a leap of faith I don’t possess, so for me transcendence is a chimera. As to your second point on nihilism, I think what you were stating is that nihilism is relative and contingent upon your historical vantage point and the blinders you’re wearing. Yet you state:
Wouldn’t your analysis also apply to your own characterization of the present as “degraded”? 67
Posted by PF on April 02, 2010, 11:46 PM | # Good points, Guest Lurker!
True! What would the transcendent be then in the moment of our experience of it? Not a word or an image, but something else?
Yes! 68
Posted by Guessedworker on April 03, 2010, 08:14 PM | # Guest Lurker,
Close. Individuation no. It is impossible to drive a whole people to anything more than the most superficial change. As you have seen, I reject what is still the default nationalist setting of chasing after a spiritual rebirth, be it religious or fascist. While it is true that it may effect a selective re-moralisation, this will always come at a vast and unbearable cost to our individualism and, all too probably in the case of fascism, our conscience. We are Western Europeans, and we must live out of our own truth. For every step along the supposed way to a rebirth there would be violence done to us somewhere. It is a doorway to hell, as all big political ideas predicated on the unreal have so proven. So no, I am commending a philosophical line - the only line - which draws us and all the characteristics of our evolved nature in the same luminous but by no means numinous direction, detaching us from our self-estrangement and ethno-masochism, and from our helplessness, and propelling us into an active, shared rediscovery of our truth, and of the life we live in the light of that truth - the life of community we lived for centuries, and would do again given the freedom to do so. In one word, I am proposing a philosophy of the fountainhead. I do not think it arid. I think it natural. I do not think it unbeautiful either, quite the contrary. And it is not a reification of the folkish, or of a pastime for metaphysically over-active imaginations - it cannot escape the moment of the present. Nor is it a mere psychological trick or a utilitarian tactic. It is an idea scaled prospectively at least to the race as a whole and to the history of Western ideas. It is small and distant-sounding now because it is new. But at its back is the breeze of existential necessity, of science and Nature and metaphysical truth, and of the best ontological philosophy we could possibly have. It can be made into a force if the will and interest to do so exists, which I hope we will find out over the next months and years.
Well, this is like saying that prayer, as a description of mental function in presence, is different from thought … therefore it is of divine origin. Why? Both are products of the mind, the first being intentional - attentional - in a certain way, and the other not. The difference between attention and mechanicity is not created by the divine but, imo, by our decline into absence and mechanicity. It is the difference, in other words, between normal and ordinary. It is normal for a being with our intelligence and brain architecture to be (transcendent), but it is all-too-ordinary for us not to. Pig-iron everywhere with me, I’m afraid. Never seen an angel. Never believed a word I was told about them. 69
Posted by Søren Renner on April 03, 2010, 10:18 PM | #
GW, you don’t understand Matt at all. 70
Posted by Desmond Jones on April 03, 2010, 11:28 PM | #
Not prayer but intuitive thinking. The difference? Intuition is what man shares with animals . Thought/prayer is derived from language. Without language there is no thought, however, intuition exists.
Not necessarily, as Murray pointed out vis-a-vis Jews. It might be an erosion of the lesser intellect because the benefits are nominal. Or as in the case of the Catholic church the institution becomes the repository of the knowledge. The priests are the intellectual class that then disseminates it.
The remainder then become God’s chosen. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/jewish-genius-10855 71
Posted by Al Ross on April 04, 2010, 08:39 AM | # As you rightly noted, Desmond, the Mexican story is a distant one but not as distant as this example of Christian - led, anti - host, social subversion from the 1630s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimabara_Rebellion It is surely to the Japanese race’s credit that they seem to have developed a lasting immunity to what they perhaps perceive to be the psychological virus of Christianity. A Jew - aware bunch, too, it would seem. 72
Posted by Guessedworker on April 04, 2010, 08:24 PM | # Soren,
No doubt. But on this thread he has claimed to be both an upfront spiritual rebirthist and a scheming utilitarian, which is a tad confusing (though either way, a white world organised by Matt would have a religious elite of a Russian Orthodox persuasion goading us all heavenward). But on top of that we have been told by Matt that he is a conservative, though not in that Burkean sense which is not conservatism anyway, and he’s a traditionalist and a nationalist, though not in any of the primordialist, traditionalist or revolutionary conservative senses that traditionalism normally implies. So, er, no, you are robably right. I don’t understand him at all. But I am willing to learn - care to explain? Desmond,
I do not mean common-or-garden prayer in the sense that you understand it. This prayer is the product of the functional unity of our cognitive apparatus during moments of self-consciousness. So far from language is it that it can fairly be summarised in, and may only possess, two words: I am. Guest Lurker is not at all out of his depth in this discussion. Your intervention suggests that you may be. I see that you return stubbornly to your previous insistence that the acquisition of language made the brain think. My last reply to that on the Blackmore thread was here: http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/susan_blackmore_on_the_myth_of_free_will/#c89941 You, by the way, talked yourself into agreeing with what I had been saying.
Except that we are talking about God creating the religion and infusing it with divine wisdom as defined by the very intellectual gentlemen of the primordialist persuasion. The requirement of this theory is that it really does not, could not matter whether “Man” is variable or not. The divine act cannot be dependent on IQ, can it? I mean, if ole Yahweh did all that creating and then had to sit back and watch his little favourites come over all retarded, would he be happy to roll his eyes and exclaim, “Fuck, they’re all too thick to hear my Word”? No, no, no ... that’s not right. Where’s the will? Where is the power? Of course, if Yahweh doesn’t exist in the first place, and it is Man, really, who slowly developed the ideas of the sojourn into self-consciousness, then it all makes perfect sense. Get it? 73
Posted by Desmond Jones on April 05, 2010, 03:12 AM | #
No, but that was not the original point, was it?
How does the quality of the knowledge ‘crash’ if there are guardians/shepherds on the right side of the bell curve, to use La Griffe’s term, the smart fraction, sustaining it? Or it could be they’re all too obstinate to hear the word or all too bloody Jewish. Which we are told is the case, but how does that crash the divine knowledge? It doesn’t. If the mean increased by a standard deviation does that mean the divine knowledge is a higher quality? No. For as you say it is not dependent upon human IQ. ‘I am’ is not part of language? Does the great ape possess the analog ‘I’ without language?
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Posted by mossydottir on March 27, 2010, 05:45 PM | #
Can you say “billions will die, subject without confines (some)(we) will win”?