FishBowl

That the past has been denied relevance in modern systems can best be understood as a method of population control. It constitutes a detachment from nature, from our very identity, so as to facilitate a reintegration into abstract concepts, such as nation, ideal, country, economy.

Modernity might declare a love of nature, as being a part of its advancement towards a pristine, cleansed, idealistically sanitized natural world but in fact it deplores nature, and all this connects to.

Nature represents, for them, a burden they would sooner forget or deny than accept and be forced to deal with.

The dissatisfaction with the world is inherit, but more so there is an underlying self-hatred expressed as this undying, blind love for otherness. This “love”, like their kind of love, is the emotionally driven kind; the kind which goes on a whim, changes when the winds change direction and has the reliability of a child, or a woman.   

The past is always “overcome” or engaged in from the comfortable and fearless distances of books, graphs, art, and fences. Anything that gives them that desirable distance of space, making the other this idealized object d’art that is best appreciated from afar but quickly turns ugly as you approach it discovering the techniques of its apparent perfection.

These “renaissance men” tear down the walls because it is remoteness that is their barricade.  The more “open” they become to this “otherness” all the more they take a step back, away from it, to enjoy it better.

  

The modern man visits wilderness in parks or when it’s particular manifestation is chained and caged; he does no different when it comes to history.  He indulges his curiosity about the past with the cold aloofness of a man who is not touched by the subject, choosing to learn how the ancients bathed or what languages they used to communicate or how they wiped their bottoms after defecating, but he never really cares about it, as none of it pertains to his modernistic lifestyle and it changes nothing about his already made choices.

A quaint little vacation from his “reality”, which is nothing other than an artificiality he has never been outside of. He loves going places but not really happy about the mosquitoes or the smells or the heat or those pesky locals that try to pull that piece of coinage form his well-crafted portfolio. He loves the meat, but prefers to keep the killing part out of his mind, because it might disturb his enjoyment of the meal.   

The “real” is flipped on its head.

The fabrication becomes the “natural”, forgotten for a long time when man tumbled into barbarity; the counterfeit becomes the “authentic”, where nobody can quite remember what the original looked like; the shark swimming behind the glass wall is now “inside” whereas he, the sophisticated man, is residing and walking about “outside” the enclosure, free to return to his own little fishbowl any times he chooses to.

Guenon on Modernity

Although I've only but began to investigate Guenon and I've already come up against some very basic matters to disagree with him about - I suspect a shift in metaphysical perspective, a delving into Heraclitus and Hellenism, forcing a redefinition of certain terms would suffice to do away with these conflicts - , I, nevertheless, offer this little excerpt which was fabulously lucid. 

"Under such conditions, industry is no longer merely application of science, an application from which science should, in itself, remain completely independent; it has become the reason for, and justification of, science to such an extent that here too the normal relations between things have been reversed. What the modern world has striven after with all its strength, even when it has claimed in its own way to pursue science, is really nothing other than the development of industry and machinery; and in thus seeking to dominate matter and bend it to their service, men have only succeeded, as we said at the beginning of this book, in becoming its slaves. Not only have they limited their intellectual ambition – if such a term can still be used in the present state of things – to inventing and constructing machines, but they have ended by becoming in fact machines themselves. Indeed, it is not only scholars but also technicians and even workers who have to undergo the specialization that certain sociologists praise so highly under the name of “division of labor”; and for the “workers”, it makes intelligent work quite impossible. Very different from the craftsmen of former times, they have become mere slaves of machines with which they may be said to form part of a single body. In a purely mechanical way they have constantly to repeat certain specific movements, which are always the same and always performed in the same way, so as to avoid the slightest loss of time; such at least is required by the most modern methods which are supposed to represent the most advanced stage of “progress”. Indeed, the object is merely to produce as much as possible; quality matters little, it is quantity alone that is of importance, which brings us back once more to the remark we have already made in other contexts, namely, that modern civilization may truly be called a quantitative civilization, and this is merely another way of saying it is a material civilization.

Anyone who wants further evidence of this truth can find it in the tremendous importance that economic factors take on nowadays, both in the lives of peoples and of individuals: industry, commerce, finance – these seem to be the only things that count; and this is in agreement with the fact already mentioned that the only social distinction that has survived is the one based on material wealth. Politics seem to be altogether controlled by finance, and trade competition seems to be the dominant influence in determining the relations between peoples; it may be that this is only so in appearance, and that these factors are really not so much causes as means of action, but the choice of such means is a clear sign of the character of the period to which they are suited. Moreover, our contemporaries are convinced that it is almost exclusively economic conditions that dictate historical events, and they even imagine that it has always been so; a theory has even been invented according to which everything is to be explained by economic factors alone, and has been named, significantly, “historical materialism”. Here also may be seen the effect of one of those suggestions to which we referred to above, suggestions whose power is all the greater in that they correspond to the tendencies of the general mentality; and the result of this suggestion is that economic factors have really come to decide almost everything that occurs in the social sphere. It is true that the masses have always been led in one manner or another, and it could be said that their part in history consists primarily in allowing themselves to be led, since they represent a merely passive element, a “matter” in the Aristotelian sense of the word. 

But, in order to lead them today, it is sufficient to dispose of a purely material means, this time in the ordinary sense of the word, and this shows clearly to what depths our age has sunk. At the same time, the masses are made to believe that they are not being led, but that they are acting spontaneously and governing themselves, and the fact that they believe this is a sign from which the extent of their stupidity may be inferred." - Guenon, Rene (The Essential Rene Guenon)  

Stupidity indeed.  

Pinker on Modern (post-modern) Art

Visual Art – without beauty

Literature – without narrative plot

Poetry – without rhyme

Architecture and Planning – without ornament, human scale, green space, natural light

Music – without melody or rhythm

Criticism – without clarity, attention to aesthetics, and insight into human condition.

Baggage

 For my beloved cousin...

Let’s add “baggage” to the list of words in our modern lexicon; right beneath “projecting”.

It is another one of those terms that is meant to replace thinking, offering a shorthand dismissive insinuation with no content – all implication with no substance; one meant to avoid direct insult, everything being insinuated implied without ever having to be stated outright.

In the case of “projecting” we can safely say that we are all guilty of it, because we all use ourselves as a starting point to extrapolate and define the behavior of an alien being. In this case the quality of self-awareness, self-consciousness, and the amount of emotional content, wishful thinking, as well as the vividness of the imagination determines the quality of the projection. The more reluctant or unable the mind is to separate its evaluations of self from its fears, and the antidote to it, that of hope, all the more subjective these projections will be; in the extreme case turning into unfounded, simplistic, accusations which have the unique character of being expressions of self-assessments which cannot be admitted as self-criticism.

A preemptive attack used as a defensive tactic.

In the case of “baggage” we can say that it denotes nothing more than precedent, experience, and history. The longer a man lives the more stuff he acquires, needing “baggage” to put it all into convenient boxes.

Of course in this case one must lighten the load either by throwing away useless mementoes of travel, making part of the luggage unnecessary, or one must find generalities and simplifications to wither down the bulk of weight he is carrying to a few simple multitasking trinkets.

But throwing ay things is not the same as throwing away experiences. In the latter one is made naïve and ignorant every time he attempts to throw a past memory away, forgetting it ever happened.

Containers can either make your trek more efficient or they may slow you down and tire you out…but in all cases we all must have stuff and containers to put them in (categories) if we are to go anywhere.

Just as in the case with projections the quality of the luggage is not always the same, nor are the contents similarly useful. How one packs his bag and what he requires to go on a trip differs from man to man.

Taking along a fur coat for a trip in the tropics is an extravagance only a few can muster. A delicate display within a wrong context; an unnecessary hyperbole.

But going only with a pair of shorts into the Arctic Circle is a recipe for disaster.

When a man approaches a horse which has kicked him in the past he approaches it with care; the past informs his present or is projected as a possible future…he carries with him the baggages of an earlier encounter.

To ignore this would be foolish.

You might call it fear. Fear is a necessary survival tool.  

The modern man is urged to cleanse himself of all his past; he is to be made a newborn infant who with every encounter, even of the same thing, he is rediscovering the world all over again…or so it goes in theory. He must be made innocent, with no baggage, projecting his innocence fearlessly and carelessly.

Everything is new…nothing of the past remains or must be admitted into the picture. He has no accountability in relation to his previous activities because with every passing moment he is progressing, morphing, being cleansed from his past, reborn as a new man.

He will denounce anyone who remembers his previous reincarnations as they only serve to limit his traveling….he is forgetful, and although he carries baggages of his own he will accuse others of having too much luggage in regards to him.

His every action must be taken as a new action, with no instructions from any past. When he reads history he approaches the subject matter as if he were approaching a lion in a zoo: from the safety of distance and knowing that he need not be concerned with this natural phenomenon, as it does not affect his existence in the here and now.

Creationism Story

 Whomever thinks Americans are stupid (about 90% of them) must be intolerant bigots.

Nocturne

The Blank Slate Compendium - 0

A renewed old war

Once the Hellenic world turned into a Roman Empire, and it was later infected with an eastern “bug” two great autoimmunizing pushes were made to return to its past virility: the first by the French, under Napoleon, and the second by the Germans, under Hitler. Currently a third push has been undertaken by both in unison under a core a Franco-Germanic alliance.

The same forces oppose it now as they did then.

From the looks of things in all three attempts an overreaching ambition has overextended them to the point of breaking.

At this point the two allies might be regrouping so as to begin anew with none of the “dead weight” who still seem to be buried in Judeo-Christian ethology, banking interests and Asiatic demeanors.

The old wars continue, the body still fighting off a virus.   

  

Peeking through the Crisis

The face of Globalization is not looking as wise and benevolent as it once did when we could still imagine it wearing a peaceful countenance, full of smiling crevices and a wise knowing gaze.

Sometimes violence is done with a tender touch; sometimes it offers itself on a silver platter, justifying its necessity with arguments it has already made possible with its earlier effects.

The old idea of a United World of open borders and “free markets” is showing its ugly face.

I know that history teaches us, and what it teaches us is that ideologies oftentimes choose to come bearing gifts of hope and love when they are proposing self-hatred and world-denouncing nihilism.

If we only take Christianity as an example we can see how the idea of “eternal life” and “universal love” is used to sell the desperate on the idea of surrender and docility.  

Take the concept of “individuality” as it has been marketed in the Capitalistic west for decades. A concept sold to the individual who is then rendered helpless and isolated with it; forced to seek fulfillment in material symbols that the very same marketers offer it as a solution to a problem they’ve created.

Hitchen's Dead

May he finally rest in...silence.

Coming German Hegemony

Germany is now trying to accomplish what it could not in the past, by using armed conflict, this time by using economic means.

Either Europe will become a political unity, under the dominion of Berlin, or it will crumble and fall, with unknown consequences. 

Yockey would be pleased. I can’t say that I would not share in his sentiment.