I Reject, I Affirm. ''Raising the Black Flag'' in an Age of Devilry. - Page 59 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15222253
annatar1914 wrote:@Potemkin :

Yes indeed, well said. You mentioned Abraham, so with him I'll illustrate an example of what we're talking about: Abraham and Sarah go down into Egypt during hard times and Abraham tells Pharaoh that Sarah is his sister to avoid being murdered by the Egyptians to take her for Pharoah's wife. Long story short, Pharoah finds out and sends them on their way unharmed.

Then there's Jacob's deception of Isaac and Esau, and so on. Themes of hiddeness and trickery, as when Moses was raised by Pharoah's daughter in the midst of the slaughter of the Hebrew male children by the Egyptians, with his real mother as his wet nurse...

And so of course I expect further from God in the future of this nature.

Our pitiful ethics and morality seem to come from somewhere else

The morality of the world has always been based on the belief that “might is right” - that the strong and the wealthy and the wise have been blessed by the gods, the proof of which is the fact that they are strong, wealthy and wise of course. Judaism and then Christianity broke open this smug circular logic, and asserted the opposite - that it is the weak and the poor and the ignorant who have been blessed by God, who are “God’s children”. This is the ethics and morality which have come from “somewhere else”, and are not of this world.
#15222346
noemon wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(philosophy)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnosophists


@noemon, @Potemkin , @Verv , and @Political Interest:

Yes. But, in my opinion that reminds me of what Blaise Pascal once said:

" Evil is easily discovered: there is an infinite variety: good is almost unique. But some kinds of Evil are almost as difficult to discover as that which we call good. It needs even a certain greatness of soul to attain to this".

Fallen Angels take their perfection of being with them into the eternal darkness.
#15222347
Potemkin wrote:The morality of the world has always been based on the belief that “might is right” - that the strong and the wealthy and the wise have been blessed by the gods, the proof of which is the fact that they are strong, wealthy and wise of course. Judaism and then Christianity broke open this smug circular logic, and asserted the opposite - that it is the weak and the poor and the ignorant who have been blessed by God, who are “God’s children”. This is the ethics and morality which have come from “somewhere else”, and are not of this world.


@Potemkin :

" smug circular logic" indeed. They don't think they need God or man, only use them from time to time. Esau was " hated" by God:

" Jacob have I loved but Esau I have hated".

In that, God hated what was inside the evil Esau, that on an important level WAS Esau. This is the mystery of both predestination and free will, but nonetheless is true. But to the evil, like me, the ways of mercy and divine life are strange. We feel tricked, conned, but like a mark in three card monte, we can't quite figure out how.

Esau loses his birthright, doesn't care about it. He loses his blessings, doesn't care about that so much. What he cares about is that he was tricked by his brother, proving Jacob's favour with God by Esau losing what one should never lose in the first place. Esau is revealed for who he is.
#15222473
And then there's Haman. Haman is described as an " Agagite", that is an Amalekite descendant of King Agag, the people who are permanently at war with the Jews and who the Jews must always be at war with.

Haman is high in the government in the Persian Empire, and in the Book of Esther plots to kill all the Jews, and in keeping with God's " trickery" against the evil ones, is killed by the very hanging he intended for the Jew Mordecai, and Hamans sons and followers are fought and killed by the Jews. The Persian king calls Haman a " Macedonian " because he sees that he must have been an enemy of the Persian Empire itself, ultimately. Quite a reversal and undoing because of Esther, through her, a theme with God.

So Haman had an entirely negative philosophy, just to kill the Jews? Hardly, nobody with 10 sons has just that as an aim. Power too, is important to the Hamans of the world. Again, a Giant....No doubt, this touches upon esoteric themes, and even with regards to the Book of Esther, an eschatological dimension.
#15222475
When we let go of our expectations of the world, and really true to see politics from a super-Christian perspective, I see how we get to the point of something like 'Christian communitarianism' that transcends both liberalism & conservatism.

I think my eyes could not open fully to this until I started to really criticize Capitalism.

For a long time, I thought of Capitalism as natural: because government control of the economy deteriorates into totalitarianism, a sort of default Capitalism must exist. I would have also suggested that the mixed economies of prosperous W. European nations were basically Capitalist in nature, and I do not think this is an entirely wrong stance now either, but this is very incomplete. :knife:

But it really changes when you understand that:

- People must be protected from the government.
- People must be protected from corporations/oligarchs.
- People must be protected from individual criminals.
- People must be protected from mobs.

And, a very sad truth in addition to all of this:
- People must even be protected from the excesses of the clergy, the journalists, the educators; every kind of do-gooder.

This has turned me more interested into seeing what we can do to massively decentralize and minimize the influence of all of these forces. I think there are several models that can be used, so I am interested in a post-left, post-right model.

What if... California is California, and Oklahoma is Oklahoma... one is post-left, one is post-right. And they both actively cancel the excesses of the Federal Government, the mega-corporations, etc.

What if even outside of Los Angeles there is a conservative Catholic Mexican-American community that is reflective of their culture & norms, and speaks Spanish... and near it there is a community of lefty hippies... and dozens of communities with many variations exist all about. One of them pays money for a program to rehabilitate homeless drug addicts via their hippie new age ideas & vegetarianism... Another tries to rehabilitate alcoholics through Christianity. What if they all help each other, and do not try to interfere with their affairs, and they really are not so different. The key to peace can be that no one manipulates them into a position where they compete for power over one another -- the right to set an agenda for the other community.

We could start new paradigms of how we interact... and at no point do I have to view myself as a competitor with people who are different from me.

Part of the key to this is "de-politicization" on the national & state scale, so that we can have "re-socialization" through building more local communities...

You do not have to say "Oh geez, screw you guys, you want to tell me how to live here and totally take over my tax dollars for your own projects." You can start to say... "We are going to live in a very different way in our community and employ different education and health care schemes... But I am really interested in observing what you do and implementing everything I like about it."
#15222552
Verv wrote:When we let go of our expectations of the world, and really true to see politics from a super-Christian perspective, I see how we get to the point of something like 'Christian communitarianism' that transcends both liberalism & conservatism.

I think my eyes could not open fully to this until I started to really criticize Capitalism.

For a long time, I thought of Capitalism as natural: because government control of the economy deteriorates into totalitarianism, a sort of default Capitalism must exist. I would have also suggested that the mixed economies of prosperous W. European nations were basically Capitalist in nature, and I do not think this is an entirely wrong stance now either, but this is very incomplete. :knife:

But it really changes when you understand that:

- People must be protected from the government.
- People must be protected from corporations/oligarchs.
- People must be protected from individual criminals.
- People must be protected from mobs.

And, a very sad truth in addition to all of this:
- People must even be protected from the excesses of the clergy, the journalists, the educators; every kind of do-gooder.

This has turned me more interested into seeing what we can do to massively decentralize and minimize the influence of all of these forces. I think there are several models that can be used, so I am interested in a post-left, post-right model.

What if... California is California, and Oklahoma is Oklahoma... one is post-left, one is post-right. And they both actively cancel the excesses of the Federal Government, the mega-corporations, etc.

What if even outside of Los Angeles there is a conservative Catholic Mexican-American community that is reflective of their culture & norms, and speaks Spanish... and near it there is a community of lefty hippies... and dozens of communities with many variations exist all about. One of them pays money for a program to rehabilitate homeless drug addicts via their hippie new age ideas & vegetarianism... Another tries to rehabilitate alcoholics through Christianity. What if they all help each other, and do not try to interfere with their affairs, and they really are not so different. The key to peace can be that no one manipulates them into a position where they compete for power over one another -- the right to set an agenda for the other community.

We could start new paradigms of how we interact... and at no point do I have to view myself as a competitor with people who are different from me.

Part of the key to this is "de-politicization" on the national & state scale, so that we can have "re-socialization" through building more local communities...

You do not have to say "Oh geez, screw you guys, you want to tell me how to live here and totally take over my tax dollars for your own projects." You can start to say... "We are going to live in a very different way in our community and employ different education and health care schemes... But I am really interested in observing what you do and implementing everything I like about it."


@Verv :

On one level I agree with you my friend: massive decentralization would be nice. But I don't think that it is within fallen human nature to allow that to willingly happen. However, even in 1900 AD, the whole world was incredibly decentralized compared to the way it is in 2022 AD. I think that technology is to blame in my opinion. But again, technological decline is never a position willingly entered into collectively speaking.

Willingly.

But perhaps that decline is inevitable, that we reached a point before the Flood of high civilization, declined in it until about 1492 AD, and are now close to where we were before the Catastrophe?

I believe so. I don't think that Modernity is sustainable now or before back in the days of Noah either.

You of course know my economic system position, in lieu of a pre modern societal return.
#15222713
A reflection for Lazarus Saturday, and apropos of what I've been writing before. It may not seem connected, but it is most certainly.

Death is unnatural, for Christ wept beholding Lazarus in his tomb. But Love is stronger than Death, and the Incarnation is proof of that. A great mystery, one can only sing the liturgy which reflects this mystery of God's unification with mankind:

From the Akathist to Our Most Holy Lady the Bogoroditsa, Ekos 9:

" We see most eloquent orators mute as fish before thee, O Bogoroditsa, for they are at a loss to tell how thou remainest a Virgin and couldest bear a child. But we, marvelling at this mystery, cry out faithfully:"

" Rejoice, receptacle of the Wisdom of God!"
"Rejoice, treasury of His Providence!"
"Rejoice, thou who showest philosophers to be fools!"
"Rejoice, thou who exposest the learned as irrational!"
"Rejoice, for the clever critics have become foolish!"
" Rejoice, for the writers of myths have faded away!"
" Rejoice, thou who didst rend the webs of the Athenians!"
" Rejoice, thou who didst fill the nets of the fishermen!"
" Rejoice, thou who drawest us from the depths of ignorance!"
" Rejoice, thou who enlightenest many with knowledge!"
" Rejoice, ship for those who wish to be saved!"
"Rejoice, harbour for sailors on the sea of life!"
"Rejoice, thou Bride Unwedded!"

Once you accept this, you can believe that nothing is impossible to God, even life from the dead.

Other things flow from this. In this world, for one thing, hatred of the Jews and of Orthodoxy go together, you will find them at the core with the same enemy.
#15222806
Today is Palm Sunday for many:

A paradoxical triumph of Christ into Jerusalem, replete with themes of humility that we have discussed before. God upon His throne and riding upon an asses' colt. His disciples being instructed to find their room for the feast by finding a man drawing water like a woman would ordinarily be doing. A procession into the city where the people acknowledge Christ as Christ, and His enemies are strangely helpless to stop Him or them.
#15222832
Verv wrote:When we let go of our expectations of the world, and really true to see politics from a super-Christian perspective, I see how we get to the point of something like 'Christian communitarianism' that transcends both liberalism & conservatism.

I think my eyes could not open fully to this until I started to really criticize Capitalism.

For a long time, I thought of Capitalism as natural: because government control of the economy deteriorates into totalitarianism, a sort of default Capitalism must exist. I would have also suggested that the mixed economies of prosperous W. European nations were basically Capitalist in nature, and I do not think this is an entirely wrong stance now either, but this is very incomplete. :knife:

But it really changes when you understand that:

- People must be protected from the government.
- People must be protected from corporations/oligarchs.
- People must be protected from individual criminals.
- People must be protected from mobs.

And, a very sad truth in addition to all of this:
- People must even be protected from the excesses of the clergy, the journalists, the educators; every kind of do-gooder.

This has turned me more interested into seeing what we can do to massively decentralize and minimize the influence of all of these forces. I think there are several models that can be used, so I am interested in a post-left, post-right model.

What if... California is California, and Oklahoma is Oklahoma... one is post-left, one is post-right. And they both actively cancel the excesses of the Federal Government, the mega-corporations, etc.

What if even outside of Los Angeles there is a conservative Catholic Mexican-American community that is reflective of their culture & norms, and speaks Spanish... and near it there is a community of lefty hippies... and dozens of communities with many variations exist all about. One of them pays money for a program to rehabilitate homeless drug addicts via their hippie new age ideas & vegetarianism... Another tries to rehabilitate alcoholics through Christianity. What if they all help each other, and do not try to interfere with their affairs, and they really are not so different. The key to peace can be that no one manipulates them into a position where they compete for power over one another -- the right to set an agenda for the other community.

We could start new paradigms of how we interact... and at no point do I have to view myself as a competitor with people who are different from me.

Part of the key to this is "de-politicization" on the national & state scale, so that we can have "re-socialization" through building more local communities...

You do not have to say "Oh geez, screw you guys, you want to tell me how to live here and totally take over my tax dollars for your own projects." You can start to say... "We are going to live in a very different way in our community and employ different education and health care schemes... But I am really interested in observing what you do and implementing everything I like about it."


@Verv :

With my last quote of your post, I don't want you to think I just blithely dismissed the position you have taken or suggested.

What I'm coming to think, in fact, is that personally as an Orthodox Christian your position of de facto libertarianism and community self government is the correct and right one.

Error, heresy, they thrive historically in conjunction with the power of the State, of civil society. This is the case without exception.

We may just find the State useful for peaceful existence or co existence, but ultimately true Christians do not need the State at least in its present modernized form.
#15223089
@Verv , @Potemkin , and @Political Interest :

Tuesday of Holy Week, home with kidney stones today. And that segues into my next reflection:

Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England and feared throughout Europe, felled by a kidney stone in his ureter which could not be taken out safely....

Giants felled by stones.

How do human beings respond to frailty and weaknesses in ourselves and in others? It is a reminder of our contingency as creatures, of our absolute dependence, of our mortality. It can also hopefully create empathy for others, their thoughts and feelings and conditions in life.

Our first parents made for themselves coats of leaves to cover themselves from each other and from God in the shame and guilt of what they had done, and what they had failed to do. But the true Giants have no shame or guilt, feel, or pretend to feel, no weakness. Only strength and vitality, beauty and perceptions of goodness. What they also have is an inhuman lack of empathy.

They obviously don't believe in any ancestral or original sin, a fall. Rather the reverse, that ideas on sin and guilt are the modern calamity in the way of building a better world.

I seem to recall in George Steiner's " Portage to San Christobal of A.H.", his " Hitler" ranting against the Jews because of the notion of a conscience, " Jesus, Marx, and Freud."...

I think that it is high time genuine Monotheistic persons, Jews and Christians, and even secularized Commies and Socialists and real Liberals, see the peril and see what their diametrically opposed enemies believe about them. How many are familiar with an Evola or Nietzsche, Ludovici or Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi?

Does familiarity threaten belief? Hardly. In me it has strengthened what I know and believe.
#15223122
annatar1914 wrote:@Verv , @Potemkin , and @Political Interest :

Tuesday of Holy Week, home with kidney stones today. And that segues into my next reflection:

Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England and feared throughout Europe, felled by a kidney stone in his ureter which could not be taken out safely....

Giants felled by stones.

How do human beings respond to frailty and weaknesses in ourselves and in others? It is a reminder of our contingency as creatures, of our absolute dependence, of our mortality. It can also hopefully create empathy for others, their thoughts and feelings and conditions in life.

Our first parents made for themselves coats of leaves to cover themselves from each other and from God in the shame and guilt of what they had done, and what they had failed to do. But the true Giants have no shame or guilt, feel, or pretend to feel, no weakness. Only strength and vitality, beauty and perceptions of goodness. What they also have is an inhuman lack of empathy.

They obviously don't believe in any ancestral or original sin, a fall. Rather the reverse, that ideas on sin and guilt are the modern calamity in the way of building a better world.

I seem to recall in George Steiner's " Portage to San Christobal of A.H.", his " Hitler" ranting against the Jews because of the notion of a conscience, " Jesus, Marx, and Freud."...

I think that it is high time genuine Monotheistic persons, Jews and Christians, and even secularized Commies and Socialists and real Liberals, see the peril and see what their diametrically opposed enemies believe about them. How many are familiar with an Evola or Nietzsche, Ludovici or Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi?

Does familiarity threaten belief? Hardly. In me it has strengthened what I know and believe.


Because at the end point of it all we have the End Times Satanism, where the world worships not only the Beast, but the Dragon who is the Beasts animating principle: " who is like unto the Beast, and who can fight with him?"

Brute force receives worship.
#15223270
I have been thinking about a change of intellectual pace in order to highlight a " problem " which somewhat parallels the civilizational trajectory of the West, that is, the Far East/Indian Subcontinent region or the World Island people like Dugin are eager to get Russia bound to.

Influenced by G.K. Chesterton, I can say that in Asia, Islam is almost a type of Christianity in comparison to the native beliefs. In Asia, the universal pagan teachings of an eternal universe, karma/dharma, cyclical space/time, matter as evil or an illusion, gods and goddesses and so forth, and reincarnation/transmigration of souls, are all regarded as bedrock truth without question.

This is not the Magian cultural cluster.

So if my critique of Paganism and Pagan Philosophy is universal and applies consistently, should it not apply ten fold to the East? Today's East, even more than the West?
#15223617
Orthodox Good Friday, Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Troparion:

" when the glorious disciples were enlightened at the washing of the feet, then Judas was stricken and darkened with the love of silver. And unto the lawless judges did he deliver Thee, the righteous Judge. Behold, o lover of money, him that for the sake thereof did hang himself; flee from that insatiable soul that dared such things against the Master. O Thou Who art good unto all, glory be to Thee."

The true opposite of Christ, the Antichrist, is simply not an infernally grand figure to somehow match the Son of God, but:

An entirely materialistic and this worldly figure, banal, Bourgeoisie. Shallow and indifferent.
#15223728
Holy Saturday. From the Troparia, second tone:

" The noble Joseph, having taken Thy most pure Body down from the Tree and wrapped It in pure linen and covered It with spices, laid It in a new tomb. "

" When Thou didst descend unto death, O Life Immortal, then didst Thou slay Hades with the lightning of Thy Divinity. And when Thou didst also raise the dead out of the nethermost depths, all the Hosts of the Heavens cried out: O Lifegiver, Christ Our God, glory be to Thee!"

" Unto the Myrrh bearing women, did the angel cry out as he stood by the grave: Myrrh is meet for the dead, but Christ has proved a stranger to corruption "

A few thoughts, a couple in all humility stand out:

Hades is a location with a temporal and spatial reality in some manner in this material cosmos.

Death is a substance, has being itself, which places it in Union with Sin and Hades, also substantial.

Christ had a mission in Hades, which He could only do if He died. Which mission was one of the primary aims of the first coming of the Incarnation.
#15223933
Christ is Risen!

Christ is risen, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!

Shine, shine O new Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee: dance now and be glad O Zion, and do thou exult, O pure Bogoroditsa, in the arising of Him Whom thou didst bear!

O how divine, how loving, how sweet is Thy voice! For Thou hast truly promised to be with us unto the end of the age, O Christ; having this foundation of hope, we faithful rejoice!

Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered

A Pascha sacred today hath been shown unto us: a Pascha mystical, a Pascha all-venerable! A Pascha that is Christ the Redeemer: a Pascha Immaculate, a great Pascha: a Pascha of the faithful: a Pascha that hath opened up the gates of Paradise to us: a Pascha that doth sanctify all the faithful.

As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish.

Come from the vison O ye women, bearers of good tidings, and say ye unto Zion: Receive from us the good tidings of the Resurrection of Christ: adorn thyself, exult, and rejoice O Jerusalem, for thou hast seen Christ the King, like a bridegroom come forth from the tomb.

So let sinners perish at the presence of God, and let the righteous be glad.

It is the day of Resurrection, let us be radiant for the feast, and let us embrace one another. Let us say brethren, even to them that hate us, let us forgive all things on the Resurrection, and thus let us cry out: Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on the tombs bestowing life!

Happy Pascha to all my Orthodox brother and sisters!
#15224303
@Potemkin , @Verv , @Political Interest :

Tuesday of Bright Week, my friends. Today's reflection is running off the insight that we have just been living through a number of Black Swan events. Not one, but several. This is true when societies are under considerable pressure or even are in a state of undergoing a collapse. We often think in terms of grand sweeping events, when most people are only vaguely aware that they're living through such a period at all. Unfortunately I never had that relative luxury of non awareness.

But, Pascha reminds me of having a proper perspective without despair.

This conflict that has erupted in 2022 AD will soon bring to a culmination what has been in fermentation since 1492 AD. Now, America hereafter will be openly colonizing Europe.

Border regimes on the periphery of a civilization wind up running that civilization, like Rome with the Greco Roman iteration of the West, Assyria with Mesopotamia, Magadha with India, the Seljuks with the Islamic, etc...America will be no different. Yet if it is unable, Europe is likely to become entirely Islamic.
#15224471
Wednesday of Bright Week.

There's a story in Scripture about the division of Israel from Judah after King Solomon's death. His son managed to lose the 10 northern tribes, but it was something that was meant to be, the workings of Divine Providence although prophesied to be a schism that would be mended in the later days.

And so it is with other evil events even today, such terrible misfortunes. Having had more time to contemplate it, I can even understand why, ro an imperfect degree.

One has to try to see it in the light of the Resurrected Christ. This is because He is returning soon. Just a while longer, watch.
#15224662
Thursday of Bright Week.

So many reactions from one flag, one scarlet banner. For some, the banner dipped in blood from the victims of the apocalyptic Red Beast. For others, the banner practically of the Holy Spirit. I've been seeing it a lot lately. Seeing quite a few Tsarist flags too. Two aspects of the same reality. Which is true and which is false? It's more complicated than that.

This is the end of " Globalization ". This is the end of liberalism. What I saw in 2013 with the rise of ISIS punching a hole in the false reality of Sykes-Picot and much else besides, is almost complete by 2022. In 2013-15, the US and Russia were upholding the false reality of the Middle East, separately but together all the same. Now, I think not.

Turkey gets a pass, for now, with its Special Military Operation in northern Iraq...The whole world is being remodeled
#15224779
@Verv , @Potemkin , and @Political Interest :

So, the metaphysical elephant in the room on this thread is not so much the metaphysical element to anti semitism, but the nature of the Jew in the world as a Jew, the Holocaust, the Exile, and the State of Israel/Zionism.

We're familiar now on this thread with themes of Divine trickery, of miracles and of surprises, so I tend to think of this when thinking of the Jews.

What I do sense is a re normalization of anti semitism in the modern world, that itll be " cool" again to be an anti semitic. And racist. This trend will only grow and develop, I think. And then there's the eschatological aspect of it.

But these days most discussion on this is sterile, political. Caught at the Modern/Premodern juncture. One may doubt that it is capable of a discussion at all.

But on the contrary, I believe that it is of the most vital importance. God is, after all not only the God of the Jews but Jewish Himself, as many believe around the world. And so the battle in its essence comes down to Hitlerites forces versus our Monotheism
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