[Potemkin]

@Potemkin :

Well said, my friend. Would you say then that there's a different philosophy at work in the West? Can you compare or contrast for example not Tarkovsky and Michael Bay (lol...) or whoever, but similar scale of genius like Tarkovsky and Stanley Kubrick? I say this because I'm wondering if it leaves me in a similar position as we discussed with Tolstoy versus Dostoyevsky. This is the way I see it though:

I saw all the Kubrick movies, " the shining", " eyes wide shut", " Barry Lyndon", " Lolita", and " 2001 a Space Odyssey", and it was only with the latter in the final scenes of David with the Monolith that I " got" Kubrick: the Monolith is the Movie Screen itself, an object for looking into (the magicians mirror) at which man is given or made to consume a narrative of what reality is.

Tarkovsky is apparently on a whole other level

When Tarkovsky was preparing to make his movie Solaris, he watched Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both he and his colleagues were horrified by Kubrick’s movie. They felt it was cold and inhuman. Tarkovsky took Kubrick’s movie as a model of what not to do when making Solaris. There was and is a cultural difference between Russia and the West, and Kubrick and Tarkovsky, in their different ways, perfectly embodied that difference. A whole other level indeed.

[annatar1914]

When Tarkovsky was preparing to make his movie Solaris, he watched Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both he and his colleagues were horrified by Kubrick’s movie. They felt it was cold and inhuman. Tarkovsky took Kubrick’s movie as a model of what not to do when making Solaris. There was and is a cultural difference between Russia and the West, and Kubrick and Tarkovsky, in their different ways, perfectly embodied that difference. A whole other level indeed.

@Potemkin :

I finished " The Mirror", and it is one of the best movies I've ever seen, a work of absolute genius. I was moved by many things, the very end scene was astounding with the wild field and trees and the Cross....

I haven't seen " Solaris" either, but in any case (counting " the Mirror" in that same category a la " Stalker"), I can see from my perspective what the central problem is as symbolized by Tarkovsky versus Kubrick.

Kubrick is pretty much saying that the West is watching a movie, of someone watching a movie, a total virtual inversion of reality. Jean Baudrillauds Matrix, world of Simulacra and Machines. Tarkovsky breaks the " fourth wall" with a sincere lack of irony, proclaims that what he represents is the Real. Consciousness. Memory. Time and Eternity. Heaven and Earth. Conscience, Good and Evil. The wisdom of the People. The Russian Christ. A contrast between Faustian Magick and natural Art.

As for the rest, the other questions and comments I want to ask and to make, I'm almost ready for that. I'm making a significant breakthrough in my work.

[annatar1914]

@Potemkin , @Political Interest , @Verv , and others of my friends:

I want to begin (and perhaps won't be able to post again for a few days) by quoting Leon Bloy concerning History and it's larger themes:

" History is like an immense liturgical Text in which the jots are and iotas are worth as much as it's verses or entire chapters, but the importance of one or the other is indeterminable and profoundly hidden."

I like then what Bloy says of Napoleon:

"If I think then that Napoleon could very well be a glimmering iota of glory, I am compelled to tell myself, at the same time, that the battle of Friedland, for example, could have been as easily won by a small girl of three or by a centenarian vagabond asking God that His will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. So, what one calls Genius would simply be that divine Will incarnate, if I dare say so, having become visible and tangible in a human instrument brought to it's highest degree of force and precision, but incapable, like a compass, of exceeding it's extreme circumference."

What I shall prayerfully attempt is a reevaluation and also concretizing of what I have written before. Revaluation insofar as I can stop thinking of " great men" as such and keep my heart within a broad humanism which expells and breaks all such pretended Giants. And to expand and go deeper on the eschatological dimension of Revolution, where it found roots and why, and the same with Reaction.

[annatar1914]

@Potemkin , @Political Interest , @Verv , and others of my friends:

I want to begin (and perhaps won't be able to post again for a few days) by quoting Leon Bloy concerning History and it's larger themes:

" History is like an immense liturgical Text in which the jots are and iotas are worth as much as it's verses or entire chapters, but the importance of one or the other is indeterminable and profoundly hidden."

I like then what Bloy says of Napoleon:

"If I think then that Napoleon could very well be a glimmering iota of glory, I am compelled to tell myself, at the same time, that the battle of Friedland, for example, could have been as easily won by a small girl of three or by a centenarian vagabond asking God that His will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. So, what one calls Genius would simply be that divine Will incarnate, if I dare say so, having become visible and tangible in a human instrument brought to it's highest degree of force and precision, but incapable, like a compass, of exceeding it's extreme circumference."

What I shall prayerfully attempt is a reevaluation and also concretizing of what I have written before. Revaluation insofar as I can stop thinking of " great men" as such and keep my heart within a broad humanism which expells and breaks all such pretended Giants. And to expand and go deeper on the eschatological dimension of Revolution, where it found roots and why, and the same with Reaction.

@Potemkin

I start with the subjective, the timeless, the personal. I noted this Nativity fast season that my thoughts have been going often to the Magi of the Story, and how in the earliest representations of them they all wear Phrygian caps, and how it became a Greco Roman symbol of the freed Slave and of the Barbarian (mainly of the East), the Trojans, of Mithraism, of those who struggled against the Roman Imperium and from there in the time of Revolution, the Phrygian Cap became a symbol of Liberty, worn by revolutionary fighters. Felt cap much like an Ushanka, and for much the same reasons in everyday life.

Is there still a struggle then against the immortal Roman Imperium? The Magus Kings who followed His Star from the East to Bethlehem of Judea and gifted Him by the gold and frankincense and myrrh, the symbols of His threefold office as Man Who is also God of Prophet, Priest, and King of the World knew what they were doing, and no delegates of Wise Men came from the Ecumene, from civilization, from the West and Rome or Athens, did they?

[Potemkin]

@Potemkin

I start with the subjective, the timeless, the personal. I noted this Nativity fast season that my thoughts have been going often to the Magi of the Story, and how in the earliest representations of them they all wear Phrygian caps, and how it became a Greco Roman symbol of the freed Slave and of the Barbarian (mainly of the East), the Trojans, of Mithraism, of those who struggled against the Roman Imperium and from there in the time of Revolution, the Phrygian Cap became a symbol of Liberty, worn by revolutionary fighters. Felt cap much like an Ushanka, and for much the same reasons in everyday life.

Is there still a struggle then against the immortal Roman Imperium? The Magus Kings who followed His Star from the East to Bethlehem of Judea and gifted Him by the gold and frankincense and myrrh, the symbols of His threefold office as Man Who is also God of Prophet, Priest, and King of the World knew what they were doing, and no delegates of Wise Men came from the Ecumene, from civilization, from the West and Rome or Athens, did they?

The Jewish faith was, as such, alien to Rome and could not be digested by it in the same way it easily digested Greek paganism or even the cult of Isis. The Jewish God was not merely an appendage to the Powers and Principalities of this world, but was set apart from this world, superior to it and judging it. No mere man could be worshipped, or was even capable of deserving to be worshipped. To put a statue of a Roman Emperor or a Greek king in the Holy of Holies was therefore the worst blasphemy imaginable, the abomination of desolation. This alone put the Jewish faith on a collision course with Imperial Rome, since the Empire required that its human symbol, the Emperor himself, be publicly worshipped as a loyalty test to the Roman Empire. The Jews, and then the Christians, could not even take that loyalty test without betraying their own God, the creator of the universe, who could not be contained or controlled by any earthly empire.

The only solution to this problem was to merge the Jewish faith with the Roman Empire. Together, as a single entity, there would no longer be a contradiction between Caesar and God, since Caesar would become God's anointed ruler, a proxy for the Messiah, ruling on behalf of God and Christ. It is this miraculous and salvational unity between the classical Roman polity and Christianity which Dante took for granted in his Divine Comedy, and which he believed to be the basis of Western civilisation as he knew it.

[annatar1914]

The Jewish faith was, as such, alien to Rome and could not be digested by it in the same way it easily digested Greek paganism or even the cult of Isis. The Jewish God was not merely an appendage to the Powers and Principalities of this world, but was set apart from this world, superior to it and judging it. No mere man could be worshipped, or was even capable of deserving to be worshipped. To put a statue of a Roman Emperor or a Greek king in the Holy of Holies was therefore the worst blasphemy imaginable, the abomination of desolation. This alone put the Jewish faith on a collision course with Imperial Rome, since the Empire required that its human symbol, the Emperor himself, be publicly worshipped as a loyalty test to the Roman Empire. The Jews, and then the Christians, could not even take that loyalty test without betraying their own God, the creator of the universe, who could not be contained or controlled by any earthly empire.

The only solution to this problem was to merge the Jewish faith with the Roman Empire. Together, as a single entity, there would no longer be a contradiction between Caesar and God, since Caesar would become God's anointed ruler, a proxy for the Messiah, ruling on behalf of God and Christ. It is this miraculous and salvational unity between the classical Roman polity and Christianity which Dante took for granted in his Divine Comedy, and which he believed to be the basis of Western civilisation as he knew it.

@Potemkin :

Dante spelled it all out explicitly and in an esoteric manner regarding the details of what he believed to be the eternal (albeit cyclical) order: Rene Guenon and Julius Evola are very instructive in this regard, as too the " Meditations on the Tarot" of Valentin Tomberg.

I know this seems a digression, but after many years I am rewatching the Soviet " the elusive avengers" series, and it's related to this belief of Dante and others upon an eternal Aristocrat order. Here are these kids, with crosses and friends among the common people and clergy alike, fighting the Whites, red flag versus black flag of death... I'm not flying the black flag... Orthodoxy is about liberation spiritual and physical, and Christianity bringing about that the Father's will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. This is why Orthodoxy actually destroyed the East Roman Empire, and the Tsarist empire of the Third Rome, while the Papacy and Holy Roman Empire in the West have spiritually preserved It in the Western world and that larger hierarchical order in general.

I'm flying the Red flag of Barbarism, of Christian victory. Of the Holy Spirit and of Fire. Not the Black Flag of Darkness and Death, of Slavery and Civilization...

[Verv]

@annatar1914, yuo wrote

I'm flying the Red flag of Barbarism, of Christian victory. Of the Holy Spirit and of Fire. Not the Black Flag of Darkness and Death, of Slavery and Civilization...

Might be finally time to start the Red Flag of Barbarism & Christian Victory thread for 2023, changing over at least from the Black Flag thread. ^^

I want to say, actually, that your writing is very inspiring, and I have come here somewhat fortunately because we both have gone through a very similar Orthodox traditionalism / monarchism & integralism sympathies trajectory into what we have now. And, since we are both Americans, we have inside of us the temperament & spirit of pioneers and revolutionaries that were not actually satisfied with the Old Order. Not necessarily because we disagree so much with metaphysics, but with hypocrisy.

So we are like Tolkien... Dancing on the cliff's edge of anarho-feudalism...

I think we believe in both the importance of the individual, and the double order of church & state. Our belief in the individual means that both church & state must be limited in their influence, and our belief in the fallibility of individuals doubles down on this: too much power in the hands of the state allows for the potential of a sick man exploiting and infecting the nation with madness, committing atrocities and plundering it.

The barbarism is the interesting touch you add, though: a profound skepticism towards civilization itself. As if the natural course of civilization is corrupting, and so it has to be balanced out by the pure & untamed organic thrust of nomads & peasants that are immune from the monopoles of civilization. It calls for a preservation of a certain kind of character in society - it is a call for there to always be cowboys, mountain men, backwoods rebels, Indians in the hinterlands, because their lawlessness, tribalism, roughness, is a great resource for the nation, which is why the nation should let it breath and never seek to control it.

And in all this is an admission that Christian anarchism (of a sort) is viable and natural - Christianity can support and prosper within a state or civilization, but here it does inevitably become hypocritical and bent to the will of power.

Christian communities that are aligned against state power and existing at the edge and also within perhaps even stateless barbarism are perhaps the actual ideal communities. Imagine some world in which the US does exist as an isolationist economic hegemon, and certainly New York & Los Angeles remain the homes of world trade and the culture of Babylon, but within a few hour drive of either place you can find a skete where Christian monks & nuns live with serious laypeople, and it is understood that New York or California state police have virtually no jurisdiction. No taxes are paid, nor are they asked for, and at some of these communities they emphasize pacifism and resistance to Capitalism, modernity, etc. Two very different energies in a single Nation, but both of these things feed each other and provide for one another's needs.

[annatar1914]

@annatar1914, yuo wrote



Might be finally time to start the Red Flag of Barbarism & Christian Victory thread for 2023, changing over at least from the Black Flag thread. ^^

I want to say, actually, that your writing is very inspiring, and I have come here somewhat fortunately because we both have gone through a very similar Orthodox traditionalism / monarchism & integralism sympathies trajectory into what we have now. And, since we are both Americans, we have inside of us the temperament & spirit of pioneers and revolutionaries that were not actually satisfied with the Old Order. Not necessarily because we disagree so much with metaphysics, but with hypocrisy.

So we are like Tolkien... Dancing on the cliff's edge of anarho-feudalism...

I think we believe in both the importance of the individual, and the double order of church & state. Our belief in the individual means that both church & state must be limited in their influence, and our belief in the fallibility of individuals doubles down on this: too much power in the hands of the state allows for the potential of a sick man exploiting and infecting the nation with madness, committing atrocities and plundering it.

The barbarism is the interesting touch you add, though: a profound skepticism towards civilization itself. As if the natural course of civilization is corrupting, and so it has to be balanced out by the pure & untamed organic thrust of nomads & peasants that are immune from the monopoles of civilization. It calls for a preservation of a certain kind of character in society - it is a call for there to always be cowboys, mountain men, backwoods rebels, Indians in the hinterlands, because their lawlessness, tribalism, roughness, is a great resource for the nation, which is why the nation should let it breath and never seek to control it.

And in all this is an admission that Christian anarchism (of a sort) is viable and natural - Christianity can support and prosper within a state or civilization, but here it does inevitably become hypocritical and bent to the will of power.

Christian communities that are aligned against state power and existing at the edge and also within perhaps even stateless barbarism are perhaps the actual ideal communities. Imagine some world in which the US does exist as an isolationist economic hegemon, and certainly New York & Los Angeles remain the homes of world trade and the culture of Babylon, but within a few hour drive of either place you can find a skete where Christian monks & nuns live with serious laypeople, and it is understood that New York or California state police have virtually no jurisdiction. No taxes are paid, nor are they asked for, and at some of these communities they emphasize pacifism and resistance to Capitalism, modernity, etc. Two very different energies in a single Nation, but both of these things feed each other and provide for one another's needs.

@Verv ,

I thank you for your reply, I don't know if I am deserving of much praise for what I write but I will not let a false humility on my part reject your kind words and so I accept them in the good brotherly spirit in which you wrote them.

I am partial to a minimal State these days because of my antipathy towards the modern era of " hyper civilization" we live in today: in but perhaps not of. True organic democracy I think is good for freedom and brotherhood as well as for equality, and thus resists the depredation of both civilization and the state. Contrarywise, a hypertrophy of either State or Civilization comes from a lack of these qualities. Love and all human feelings on even a natural level disappear and cannot be sustained under such circumstances, much less the supernatural of true unity and charity.

And so today we come to an unsustainable point at which technology, the promises of Transhumanism and AI and attendant ideologies threaten the very basis of what it means to be human. Classical civilization and it's Western Faustian iteration was always going to end in the Machines triumph, with the Devil embodied in the Machine. I am reminded of Spengler's comments about the concern that future would be candidates for technical support for the machinery would be concerned in turn of it's essential Satanism, and turn away from their training, grinding the machinery to a halt. Unless of course it repairs and rebuilds itself....

With these concerns in mind, I'd like to believe in a peaceful separation, wherever and whenever possible. And of these issues I do think it is only correct to start a new. We're only going to be saved by Revolution and Barbarism, humanity that is, and only Humanity can save the Revolution, Humanity being the Integral Humanity which is the Orthodoxy. In time and only in freedom.

[annatar1914]

@Verv , @Potemkin :

You guys may or may not appreciate this, but although it's near to Great Lent and my mind should be on higher things, one small matter is bothering me.

On this thread, I used the example of Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian Knot to illustrate the Barbarian mindset, as if it were an ontological difference per se compared to the civilized humanity. I was wrong. It's if I watched the whole event and tried to make a simple solution of it myself, as there's a little bit of Alexander in me, a bit of Western and civilized mankind.

It's Barbarism versus Civilization all right, but I had the story and the meaning muddled. It bothered me all this time since I wrote about this originally.

The truth of the matter is that Alexander the Great stood in Gordium beholding what is always hateful to the Western and Greco Roman mind: Mystery. The Unsolvable. The Unknown.

So Alexander didn't " solve" the riddle and undo the Knot, gaining Divine favor and be granted the rulership of Asia. He in his anger and belief in his own clever intellect, cheated. And tried to claim the solution and conquer Asia from the Persians in any case. He couldn't handle risking the illusion of his own autonomy and self sufficiency trying to solve a puzzle that seemed impossible for a mortal to solve. For Alexander didn't believe himself quite mortal, like unto other men.

Real Civilization, the Western and Greco Roman, is based on being able to solve everything, know everything, have everything.

Barbarism is based on the contrary, on a point of Mystery, of reverent unknowing, no matter how technically proficient in practical sciences the barbarians might become, and even there they wind up lagging behind sooner or later, at least in the minds of the civilized.

So I'm on my old thread with the old troubling problems with myself and desiring the roots of things. Itself a trouble similar to Alexander and Westernized persons would expect

[Potemkin]

@Verv , @Potemkin :

You guys may or may not appreciate this, but although it's near to Great Lent and my mind should be on higher things, one small matter is bothering me.

On this thread, I used the example of Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian Knot to illustrate the Barbarian mindset, as if it were an ontological difference per se compared to the civilized humanity. I was wrong. It's if I watched the whole event and tried to make a simple solution of it myself, as there's a little bit of Alexander in me, a bit of Western and civilized mankind.

It's Barbarism versus Civilization all right, but I had the story and the meaning muddled. It bothered me all this time since I wrote about this originally.

The truth of the matter is that Alexander the Great stood in Gordium beholding what is always hateful to the Western and Greco Roman mind: Mystery. The Unsolvable. The Unknown.

So Alexander didn't " solve" the riddle and undo the Knot, gaining Divine favor and be granted the rulership of Asia. He in his anger and belief in his own clever intellect, cheated. And tried to claim the solution and conquer Asia from the Persians in any case. He couldn't handle risking the illusion of his own autonomy and self sufficiency trying to solve a puzzle that seemed impossible for a mortal to solve. For Alexander didn't believe himself quite mortal, like unto other men.

Real Civilization, the Western and Greco Roman, is based on being able to solve everything, know everything, have everything.

Barbarism is based on the contrary, on a point of Mystery, of reverent unknowing, no matter how technically proficient in practical sciences the barbarians might become, and even there they wind up lagging behind sooner or later, at least in the minds of the civilized.

So I'm on my old thread with the old troubling problems with myself and desiring the roots of things. Itself a trouble similar to Alexander and Westernized persons would expect

Greek philosophy began with the Pre-Socratic philosophers. They debated with each other concerning what the fundamental substance was out of which the cosmos was made, whether water, fire or atoms, and so on. In fact, they actually all agreed with each other about what that fundamental substance was - to them all, the cosmos, reality, was made of stuff which can be understood. Socrates, I think, realised this point, which is why he didn’t bother speculating about what fundamental substance the world was made of. He just assumed the world could be understood, and that was that. This was the founding moment of Western civilisation - the assumption of the understandability of the world, and the drive to understand it by posing questions, whether to others or to the world itself (through scientific experiments). We assume that no mystery can ever escape our understanding for long. We will chase it down with our questions, and slay it. Christianity, with its Middle-Eastern desert mysticism, modified that attitude and seemed to occlude it for a thousand years, but it had never gone away, and re-emerged again in the (classical) Renaissance and is now stronger than it ever was before.

[annatar1914]

Greek philosophy began with the Pre-Socratic philosophers. They debated with each other concerning what the fundamental substance was out of which the cosmos was made, whether water, fire or atoms, and so on. In fact, they actually all agreed with each other about what that fundamental substance was - to them all, the cosmos, reality, was made of stuff which can be understood. Socrates, I think, realised this point, which is why he didn’t bother speculating about what fundamental substance the world was made of. He just assumed the world could be understood, and that was that. This was the founding moment of Western civilisation - the assumption of the understandability of the world, and the drive to understand it by posing questions, whether to others or to the world itself (through scientific experiments). We assume that no mystery can ever escape our understanding for long. We will chase it down with our questions, and slay it. Christianity, with its Middle-Eastern desert mysticism, modified that attitude and seemed to occlude it for a thousand years, but it had never gone away, and re-emerged again in the (classical) Renaissance and is now stronger than it ever was before.

@Potemkin :

Yes, I can see that quite well now, thank you. Did Socrates " Daimon" tell him that, I wonder?

But here's the issue in relation to this earlier thread: Alexander was being used as my barbarian exemplar regarding the Gordian Knot, because he destroyed the Mystery, at least that behind the Gordian Knot.

But I wasn't clear in my own thinking then on this thread, because this disciple of Aristotle who was disciple of Plato who was disciple of Socrates, Alexander, engaged in what is an essentially civilizational act, a Promethean or even Luciferian act of fundamental black Magick, you see? An act of intellectual Will, physically expressed, to impose an alleged rational Order in place of a mystical " Chaos". Alexander might have believed himself a kind of Olympian god, but to borrow from his own mythos to illustrate, his attempts in his life to demonstrate that belief were comparable to more like those of the giants or Typhon, etc... to scale Olympus and battle the gods themselves.

I don't see barbarians historically eager to do that, unless out of some expression of the concept of a holy or sacred war. Granted, Alexander had me fooled on precisely this point of holy war (as in his case, against the Persians), but it was a war of his " holiness" , after all.

I don't recall if Nietzsche ever wrote about Alexander, curiously enough it doesn't stand out to me as memorable, but if there was ever an example of Nietzsche's " Superman", Alexander the Great was it. He bewitches and fascinates the West to this day, and even Muslims try to incorporate him as a pre Muhammadan prophet (" dul carnain", although many try not to have Alexander as that particular prophet).

I recall then something brought up before here, by I don't recall who precisely: (note first that Alexander believed himself to be descended of his Homeric hero, the demigod Achilles. )Homer laid a seed of Western Civilization in the fact that Achilles refused to obey the King Agememnon and throughout the Trojan War, carried out his own will and no one else's, did what he alone felt to be right.

Again, you don't read of barbarians (which is a spiritual/cultural/political concept which is only a slur on the civilized side) going out of their way to act in this manner (aside from sometimes destroying and looting a city and it's temples entirely after storming it) and it's worthy of note that the Roman Vergil's Trojan Aeneas is a real contrast to Achilles: he is a non Greek Trojan barbarian who always obeys the gods.

I'm reminded then of other matters which could be enlightening, mysteries like that of Mithras and his Phyrgian Cap, etc...

[Potemkin]

@annatar1914 - Indeed. Alexander was definitely not a "barbarian". He was educated by Aristotle, who was taught by Plato, who was taught by Socrates. You can't get more "civilised Greek" than that. Demosthenes cast aspersion on Alexander's status as a civilised Greek, but that was wartime propaganda. We should ignore it as the nonsense it is.

[annatar1914]

@annatar1914 - Indeed. Alexander was definitely not a "barbarian". He was educated by Aristotle, who was taught by Plato, who was taught by Socrates. You can't get more "civilised Greek" than that. Demosthenes cast aspersion on Alexander's status as a civilised Greek, but that was wartime propaganda. We should ignore it as the nonsense it is.

@Potemkin :

Sure, that's not to say that the common Macedonians were all that Hellenized necessarily (nor do I want a digression on today's political ethnic issues), but Alexander was as Greek as can be. At least, Greek Philosopher in action. And none should disagree with me on that last point: he created the Hellenistic era in the World, which gave rise to the West once Rome was Hellenized.

[annatar1914]

Greek philosophy began with the Pre-Socratic philosophers. They debated with each other concerning what the fundamental substance was out of which the cosmos was made, whether water, fire or atoms, and so on. In fact, they actually all agreed with each other about what that fundamental substance was - to them all, the cosmos, reality, was made of stuff which can be understood. Socrates, I think, realised this point, which is why he didn’t bother speculating about what fundamental substance the world was made of. He just assumed the world could be understood, and that was that. This was the founding moment of Western civilisation - the assumption of the understandability of the world, and the drive to understand it by posing questions, whether to others or to the world itself (through scientific experiments). We assume that no mystery can ever escape our understanding for long. We will chase it down with our questions, and slay it. Christianity, with its Middle-Eastern desert mysticism, modified that attitude and seemed to occlude it for a thousand years, but it had never gone away, and re-emerged again in the (classical) Renaissance and is now stronger than it ever was before.

@Potemkin :

I wanted to mention and expand on what you said about Christianity and it's " middle eastern desert mysticism". That is, the connection between what I see as Monotheism and the Magian culture complex of Oswald Spengler.

I was reading perhaps not coincidentally, the early Church Father Sextus Julius Africanus who was a 2nd century convert and older contemporary of Origen, a native of Emmaus in the Holy Land but as it is said, " Ethiopian", Black.... Anyway, he's the father of traditional Christian chronology and universal history, although only fragments of his writings remain. Anyway from what he was told he noted the records of the Persians about the Magi and their visit to see The Newborn Christ in Bethlehem, visiting the star. It's recounted, as an aside, that of the Theotokos the Blessed Virgin Mary that she had long fingers and a roundish face, with a complexion the colour of wheat....The Magi have an Icon painted of the Mother and Child, dedicated as I recall:

" To Jupiter Mithra, to the Sun God, to King Jesus, the Persian Empire makes this dedication".

There's much else in the literature.

Magian. Alchemy and Astrology and transformation of things by Divine power, signs in the heavens and on the earth and prophesies. Idols speaking and declaring the end of their power over men and the manifestation of the " God of gods" as human, Creator and Creation in the process of reconciliation.

This isn't the West of Western Civilization for sure, but then even the West wasn't even close to being what it is now. Alexander Molossus the uncle of Alexander the Great, said that in Asia the young king of Macedonia was fighting ' women' while he the king of Epirus was in Italy fighting men, the barbarian Italic tribes. Rome wasn't Hellenistic then either, as the other nephew of Molossus, Pyrrhus, discovered shortly there after the death of Alexander Molossus.

The limits of personal individual genius, skill and talent.... Of Will. We're truly guided, like those 12 Magi from the East following an " star" that was a " formation of "Urano-Diurnal force" as Bishop Diodorus of Tarsus said in the 300s AD....

[Verv]

I came here partly wondering if Annater was going to do a digital, no-posting fast for his Lent as he has done in previous years, and felt bothered that this may be the case and I would not have at least wished him a productive great lenten fast...

But hey maybe you can modify it so that this is the only place where you post since your content here is always on point and, I believe, within the spirit of Lent. But, of course, I understand the need to efface the ego and curb desire...

[usermention=9101]Real Civilization, the Western and Greco Roman, is based on being able to solve everything, know everything, have everything.

Barbarism is based on the contrary, on a point of Mystery, of reverent unknowing, no matter how technically proficient in practical sciences the barbarians might become, and even there they wind up lagging behind sooner or later, at least in the minds of the civilized.

So I'm on my old thread with the old troubling problems with myself and desiring the roots of things. Itself a trouble similar to Alexander and Westernized persons would expect

This is really fascinating and Potemkin's comment on this also was really great... So, part of my reply to you will also my excerpt of his...

So, I really love the contrast of the hubris of civilization versus the humility of barbarism. It also reminds me of a great vignette from the life of St. Paisios:

TAKING SURPLUS FOR GRANTED

Elder Paisios recalls: “In the cell of Saint Episteme in Sinai, where I used to live, there was very little water. Not far from the cell, water was dripping slowly through a crevice in a rock. I fitted a small vessel, and I could collect up to three litres of water each day. When I came for the water, I put under the crevice an iron tin and read the Akathist to the Holy Theotokos while it was filling up.

I put some water on my head – just the forehead, as one doctor had recommended, took some water to drink, and filled a small jar for the mice and birds that were living in my cell. I also used the water from the cave to wash my clothes and for other such needs. What great joy I felt to have this small amount of water, and how grateful I was to have it! I praised the Lord for the water that I had.

Later, when I came to the Holy Mount and settled for a short time in the Iberian Skete, I forgot about the scarcity – water was abundant there, for the skete stood on the sunny side. The water was overflowing from a tank that stood nearby. I revelled in the abundance. I washed my hair and feet in it and soon forgot about my life in Sinai. There, I used to cry with gratefulness for the drops of water that I could have, while here in the skete, I forgot all about it because of the surplus. So I left my cell and settled further away, where a tiny water tank stood some eighty metres down the lane.

How confused and how oblivious can we all become in abundance!”

In a world with a lot of demystification, supply, and convenience, we tend to think the entire world is figured out and subjugated. But we are never more than a few weeks away from total chaos - just ask those in the Donbass and the Ukraine (God bless them all on all sides).

Greek philosophy began with the Pre-Socratic philosophers. They debated with each other concerning what the fundamental substance was out of which the cosmos was made, whether water, fire or atoms, and so on. In fact, they actually all agreed with each other about what that fundamental substance was - to them all, the cosmos, reality, was made of stuff which can be understood. Socrates, I think, realised this point, which is why he didn’t bother speculating about what fundamental substance the world was made of. He just assumed the world could be understood, and that was that. This was the founding moment of Western civilisation - the assumption of the understandability of the world, and the drive to understand it by posing questions, whether to others or to the world itself (through scientific experiments). We assume that no mystery can ever escape our understanding for long. We will chase it down with our questions, and slay it. Christianity, with its Middle-Eastern desert mysticism, modified that attitude and seemed to occlude it for a thousand years, but it had never gone away, and re-emerged again in the (classical) Renaissance and is now stronger than it ever was before.

I think the ultimate thing to do would be to emphasize that for civilization to be truly beneficial, it must be balanced like in the above. And that is why I wrote earlier of the need to have two sides of the coin - the rational and discovering, the legally enshrined, the bureaucratic, the pragmatic, the rational... and then all the elements of the barbarous that we have talked about, where the world is still enshrouded in mystery, everyone is free from the tyranny of bureaucracy and government, and the community is above the individual and his 'rights.'

It seems contradictory to honor two conflicting things, but it is actually something you learn about in Civics class 101: "Checks & balances."

In a very real sense... there has to be tension and conflicting purposes in a single community for it to function well. There has to be multiple ways to view who we are and what we should be, because different people need to go through different paths in lives. We can actually harmonize these differences and come to a position where we actively serve one another through our different gifts from God and different perspectives... Which is why we need to decentralize as much as possible, I think, and allow certain regions within the Empire to be almost completely untethered from the values & perspectives of the capital...

And these regions breath life into the "civilized" part, while the civilized returns the favor with the structure, institutions, and just raw modernity that is also needed by the countryside for just basic medical, legal, and social infrastructure...

The atheist University professor whose head is full of great learning and needs to occasionally take a vacation to the mountains where he sits down and intermingles with mountain men, monastics, simple country people with big families and customs he finds strange...

And a lot of those kids need to go spend some time in the city and even learn from the rationalist professors...

Everyone learning to respect one another's boundaries.

This is also the best way to convert the atheist, and the best way to soften the dogmatism and rigor of the fanatics in the hinterland...

[Potemkin]

So, I really love the contrast of the hubris of civilization versus the humility of barbarism. It also reminds me of a great vignette from the life of St. Paisios:

[…]

In a world with a lot of demystification, supply, and convenience, we tend to think the entire world is figured out and subjugated. But we are never more than a few weeks away from total chaos - just ask those in the Donbass and the Ukraine (God bless them all on all sides).

Civilisation gives us an abundance of everything, and instils the hubris that goes with that abundance - the hubris of the civilised, the hubris of the rich. But the poor, having so little, are grateful for what little they do have and are not “confused and oblivious” in the same way that the rich and the civilised are. This is why the vow of poverty taken by the monastic orders is so important. The poor, as Marx pointed out, are the barbarians within the heart of civilisation, who have the power to ultimately overturn it…. They are the dialectical shadow of the rich and the civilised, the shadow cast by the rich and the civilised, just as the rich are the dialectical shadow cast by the toiling poor, by whose labours the rich exist.

I think the ultimate thing to do would be to emphasize that for civilization to be truly beneficial, it must be balanced like in the above. And that is why I wrote earlier of the need to have two sides of the coin - the rational and discovering, the legally enshrined, the bureaucratic, the pragmatic, the rational... and then all the elements of the barbarous that we have talked about, where the world is still enshrouded in mystery, everyone is free from the tyranny of bureaucracy and government, and the community is above the individual and his 'rights.'

It seems contradictory to honor two conflicting things, but it is actually something you learn about in Civics class 101: "Checks & balances."

In a very real sense... there has to be tension and conflicting purposes in a single community for it to function well. There has to be multiple ways to view who we are and what we should be, because different people need to go through different paths in lives. We can actually harmonize these differences and come to a position where we actively serve one another through our different gifts from God and different perspectives... Which is why we need to decentralize as much as possible, I think, and allow certain regions within the Empire to be almost completely untethered from the values & perspectives of the capital...

And these regions breath life into the "civilized" part, while the civilized returns the favor with the structure, institutions, and just raw modernity that is also needed by the countryside for just basic medical, legal, and social infrastructure...

The atheist University professor whose head is full of great learning and needs to occasionally take a vacation to the mountains where he sits down and intermingles with mountain men, monastics, simple country people with big families and customs he finds strange...

And a lot of those kids need to go spend some time in the city and even learn from the rationalist professors...

Everyone learning to respect one another's boundaries.

This is also the best way to convert the atheist, and the best way to soften the dogmatism and rigor of the fanatics in the hinterland...

You are thinking dialectically, @Verv. You finally get it.

[annatar1914]

@Verv , and @Potemkin :

Thank you. Verv I figure on posting right here when applicable through Great Lent, I realize that I need the outlet during this time

Perhaps germane to our discussion: there was a terrible storm which knocked out the power last night. I take care of my elderly parents, who are used to better things in this modern life. They had a hard evening and morning until the power was restored. I had plenty of candles in reserve because of my Icons, so we didn't lack that seemingly more natural lighting. For them it might as well had been pitch blackness, not knowing what to do without television while I read by candlelight. They went through hell as far as they were concerned, while I coped with a kind of contentment and even ease I rarely get to enjoy these days.

The darkness was as the light for me, the softer lines of shapes in the dim candlelight with a soft and un-harsh glow appeared pleasant. I reflected that this aspect of the natural world is often lost to the conscious mind. It seemed more real and simultaneously, gave an aspect of illusion to what we've accepted as commonplace in today's life

I thus reflected upon not only the disconnect between the natural world and civilization, but that civilization precisely IS a unconscious attempt to banish that Fairie Realm that the World truly is, to create a new reality that is self determined by the Will, collective or otherwise.

I cannot help but to feel that in the coming years, there will be a " decline", as the younger people experience a sense of the " Satanism" of it all as Oswald Spengler prophetically wrote, and as natural resources dwindle and the whole ediface slowly comes down. A victim of its own unsustainable hypercomplexity.

I can't say where we'll be exactly because of that, but that the following generations for a time will not be very conscious of not living " as well" as the generation before it, much as most people during Rome's fall were not very aware of a civilizational collapse on an everyday level either. Like Rome, it might take centuries. In fact it might have already have been happening for a hundred years or so already. Hence the " 1914" in my username, as I believe that to be a correct intuition as to when this new Dark Ages began.

But why be pessimistic, really? People live and love, have children and grow old in turn, and in these times they cling more to each other for survival, and recall the eternal verities. The more Barbarian, the more Poor, the more closer to the really Real of life without all the nonsense, the better off they are. With little to lose, they lose less than those who had more. The elites rotate and are replaced to a degree. Issues are resolved. It's not all bad.

[noemon]

So, I really love the contrast of the hubris of civilization versus the humility of barbarism. It also reminds me of a great vignette from the life of St. Paisios

How do you know of Elder Paisios, Verv?

I remember him well. My mother has been a fan for as long as I remember, especially as they both hail from Cappadokia.

My mother takes a lot of pride from the fact that her family carried the Theotokos icon and the relics of St John the Russian from the church of St George in Prokopi, Cappadokia to Euboia.

Elder Timotheos who passed away over a year ago(god bless him) was a disciple of Elder Paisios and a very good and close friend of ours. We spent quite a bit of time together when I was 14-18 as he visited our home 3-4 times a week. He sort of became like an extended uncle of mine. There is a story about how and why this came to be, but not for here.

We debated scripture, the Trinity and Orthodox theology together for years when I was in high school(lyceum) and still in Greece. I only learned of his death yesterday, unfortunately.

[annatar1914]

Delete

[annatar1914]

@Verv , dear friend, I want to thank you for your reply, I do want to carry these themes further, even if the results aren't quite predictable for me. You said:


"I think the ultimate thing to do would be to emphasize that for civilization to be truly beneficial, it must be balanced like in the above. And that is why I wrote earlier of the need to have two sides of the coin - the rational and discovering, the legally enshrined, the bureaucratic, the pragmatic, the rational... and then all the elements of the barbarous that we have talked about, where the world is still enshrouded in mystery, everyone is free from the tyranny of bureaucracy and government, and the community is above the individual and his 'rights.'

It seems contradictory to honor two conflicting things, but it is actually something you learn about in Civics class 101: "Checks & balances."

In a very real sense... there has to be tension and conflicting purposes in a single community for it to function well. There has to be multiple ways to view who we are and what we should be, because different people need to go through different paths in lives. We can actually harmonize these differences and come to a position where we actively serve one another through our different gifts from God and different perspectives... Which is why we need to decentralize as much as possible, I think, and allow certain regions within the Empire to be almost completely untethered from the values & perspectives of the capital...

And these regions breath life into the "civilized" part, while the civilized returns the favor with the structure, institutions, and just raw modernity that is also needed by the countryside for just basic medical, legal, and social infrastructure...

The atheist University professor whose head is full of great learning and needs to occasionally take a vacation to the mountains where he sits down and intermingles with mountain men, monastics, simple country people with big families and customs he finds strange.."

I got to looking at the the framework for an proper Orthodox Christian State, or not quite, at least the best form of a State to reflect the truth of the State in Symphonia with the truth that is Orthodoxy. And I go back to what I now believe to be the truth of the world, so to speak. This is that, failing an truly Orthodox state over time and human sin, at least let us be granted to not have interference in our way of life and worship in self sufficient and autonomous communities, from which we can be the best subjects of any other government or even hardly none at all.

It sounds like well worn material, but for anything conclusive to be brought forward, it bears repeating that while empires are brought low internally, it is this internal poison that enables external invaders to win and conquer.

Does a network of such communities as we've been discussing in fact provide what turns out to be the protection and prosperity not only of the Orthodoxy but also society at large? And can these communities in fact to some measure provide the necessary safeguards for the larger society as a whole against the effects of the subversion of a State for reasons of force and fraud against the larger population?

And indeed, it seems too to provide for this reason the balance between Civilization and Barbarism as well. After all, my goal primarily is to struggle against my own sins and disordered passions, not so much other people. Left largely to deal with their own issues, the threat of a certain idea of civilization from taking hold could be thwarted.