[Potemkin]

Dear Alexander Blok who helped to promote Sergei Yesenin's career in his early days. Truly a great Russian persona.

Indeed. He was an example of the best of the Russian bourgeoisie at the time of the Revolution. He was a diamond glittering in a garbage heap.

What I like about this poem is that through it is a constant appeal, the appeal for brotherhood. It was these barbarians who saved Europe in 1945. We must never forget this, along with the Americans, who themselves for the most part were once upon a time also barbarians.

Europe must rediscover its barbarian self. Not to plunder or destroy but to learn to be itself again, to go back to the roots. All of Europe's errors and mistakes arose after it became fully civilised and became what it is today.

Indeed. We have forgotten who we truly are. We like to think we are the heirs of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but in fact we are the heirs of the Germanic barbarians who sacked Rome. We forget this fact at our peril.

I believe Western civlisation today is completely alienated from its true self. It does however need some frame of reference from the east to rediscover what it is and what it could be, how to free itself from the unfortunate trajectory it has taken. The West could benefit for example from Confucianism.

This is, in part, what the counter-culture of the 1960s was about - the younger generation looked to the East for answers to Western cultural and civilisational problems. With mixed results, it has to be said.

Some time ago I saw a video of a Russian expert, I think it may have been Andrei Fursov, who said that he saw cathedrals in Europe and it occurred to him that Europe would never build anything like that ever again.

We have lost a shared faith, which means we have lost our shared, communal identity, which made the great medieval cathedrals possible.

And speaking of cathedrals, could it be that for a civilisation to keep progressing (if you will permit me to use this word, in perhaps the most ironic of senses) it must be driven by some spiritual or religious life, some type of transcendental foundations?

The concept of progress is a form of teleology, and, like any teleology, it must come from outside itself. This is what Walter Benjamin referred to as the "storm blowing out of Paradise"....

Who are the proletariat in our civilisation today would you say?

The proletariat are the proletariat. Lol.

Perhaps what people don't understand is that life is not always about being happy. Sometimes you are not in the mood to be happy. The way in which you approach religion may not be in a happy mood. Who said that religion's purpose was to make us happy?

Samuel Butler foresaw a time when being unhappy would be regarded as a medical condition requiring treatment, and physical illnesses would be regarded as moral failings. Perhaps he was more prescient than he knew.

[annatar1914]

@Political Interest , you give me much food for thought, thank you! You replied;

Dear Alexander Blok who helped to promote Sergei Yesenin's career in his early days. Truly a great Russian persona.

What I like about this poem is that through it is a constant appeal, the appeal for brotherhood. It was these barbarians who saved Europe in 1945. We must never forget this, along with the Americans, who themselves for the most part were once upon a time also barbarians.

I'm reminded of what a group of German Generals interviewed by British Officers as POW's said to their questioners as to their dreadful fear of the Russians, that ''they were savages!''. To which one British Officer replied; ''you should not have invaded them in 1941.''...

Europe must rediscover its barbarian self. Not to plunder or destroy but to learn to be itself again, to go back to the roots. All of Europe's errors and mistakes arose after it became fully civilised and became what it is today.

Yes, something has dried up in the West, it took the wrong course centuries ago and has not 'course corrected' yet so far. I am hoping that it will before it's too late. I think a certain naivete and faithful trust and simplicity of life and character would do a lot of Westerners some good.

I'm sorry to keep replying so late in the piece. Thank you for your very detailed and interesting response in kind.

No need to be sorry, I'm rather late in my own response to you, plus I wanted to think clearly about what you have said and contributed.

There is most certainly a class element to such disdain, where it exists.

And perhaps there is just sheer naivety, naivety that exists along with sincere respect for soldiers but which blinds them to the real human costs of these wars.

If our leaders served, as we've discussed before, they would understand because the experience would change them, hopefully for the better.

On the years between 1989 and 2001;

That was a sort of honeymoon period where we were all meant to become good neo-liberals.

The fabled ''end of history''. Such hubris!

The 'barbarians' seem to revive declining civilisations. I can't comment about the state of China or Korea at the time of the Mongol conquests but the Western Roman Empire was certainly in a state of rapid decline.

The West Roman Empire's citizenry were very unwarlike in the cities and towns and offered little resistance to marauding bands of barbarians and the ''Bagaudae'', runaway slaves and peasants who infested more wild regions of the Empire and who frequently rose up in rebellions. Plus there was quite a bit of political instability; court intrigues, usurpers claiming the throne, military composed of mainly barbarians taking sides in those intrigues...

I believe Western civlisation today is completely alienated from its true self. It does however need some frame of reference from the east to rediscover what it is and what it could be, how to free itself from the unfortunate trajectory it has taken. The West could benefit for example from Confucianism.

Yes, it really could.

Maybe the 'barbarians' can save the West.

At this stage when to be a normal human being is to be one of those 'barbarians', I think they're the only ones who can; we and our ''superstition' and retrograde, vulgar, and ''brutal'' ways..

Some time ago I saw a video of a Russian expert, I think it may have been Andrei Fursov, who said that he saw cathedrals in Europe and it occurred to him that Europe would never build anything like that ever again.

He's one I've enjoyed watching speak. And he's right about the Cathedrals, although it comes from a spirituality that I cannot abide because it is an earlier stage (albeit a glorious one in human terms) of what is wrong with the West.

And speaking of cathedrals, could it be that for a civilisation to keep progressing (if you will permit me to use this word, in perhaps the most ironic of senses) it must be driven by some spiritual or religious life, some type of transcendental foundations?

To truly do so, I think that it would have to.

Who are the proletariat in our civilisation today would you say?

I am thinking without being too Marxist about it, those who toil and labor in a society. But since I don't think that the term is exhausted by Marx's definitions, I'd go with Arnold Toynbee, who suggested that it encompasses all those who are ''in'' but not truly ''of'' a society, persons alienated from the Elites, an ''Internal Proletariat''. He also went on to say that a barbarian society on the fringes and margins of a greater and more civilized society can be considered an ''external proletariat'' as well. Toynbee believed that usually the two often wind up overthrowing the more civilized society over time and form a new one.

On the Halloween article I posted;

That is a beautiful article, thank you for sharing it.

You're quite welcome. I rather unironically agree with the gentleman knowing that he is well aware of the effect that such a belief system in the modern age illicits. It's part of the reason, that effect upon modern more civilized and sophisticated seculars out there, that I post on this thread now.

I have previously been called morbid as well and all through my life I have had people ask me why I don't smile much, even why I look morose.

Perhaps what people don't understand is that life is not always about being happy. Sometimes you are not in the mood to be happy. The way in which you approach religion may not be in a happy mood. Who said that religion's purpose was to make us happy?

Perhaps not always ''happy'' all the time in a worldly sense anyway.

When we cry it is not always because we are happy. But often when we cry it is because we see that which moves us to tears. Is this provoked by love? Till today I do not know the answer. I hope I can understand the spiritual implications of this.

I don't understand what this is where I see something that is not happy but yet it provokes me in some way.

I think we catch glimpses of the unseen realities near us, and it moves us with a longing similar to homesickness, because it is.

Many years ago I could listen to this composition and it would make me feel tearful. I am not ashamed to admit it. The music is not happy music, but yet it is beautiful.

I have also felt moved to tears looking at icons, especially the icons depicting Christ and the Virgin Mary.

There is a Russian movie about the last days of the Romanovs and at the end we see them depicted in an icon. There is a church service, perhaps the icon is in the church. The music and the icon in which they are depicted, as well as the service are extremely powerful to watch. I do not think I could watch it in public.

I think I understand that somewhat. I felt something like that the first time I was in Russia after a few days of going here and there in a typically modern Russian city, and out in the countryside sometime later I saw a dense forest as far as my eyes could see, and heard the tolling of an Orthodox church bell. I went down to my knees and grabbed the black earth under my hands and wept.

A friend told me; ''now you are quite Russian, you poor man''.

[Potemkin]

Maybe the 'barbarians' can save the West.

You should beware of placing too much reliance on the barbarians coming to save us. Sorry to quote another poem at you, but I think this one is very apposite....


Waiting for the Barbarians
by C. P. Cavafy


What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.


Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.


Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.


Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.


Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.


Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.


Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

[annatar1914]

This is a sermon from a Anti-Zionist Evangelical Pastor and sometime Presidential candidate on the Constitution Party ticket, Chuck Baldwin. He is a Never-Trumper and doesn't support Biden either;

It's definitely worth a listen.

[Political Interest]

Indeed. He was an example of the best of the Russian bourgeoisie at the time of the Revolution. He was a diamond glittering in a garbage heap.

But don't you think that the Russian bourgeoisie of that era were for the most part good people? They did what they tried to do but it was too little too late. They could not keep up with the spread of revolutionary ideas.

My reading of 1917 is that the Russian elite simply could not act quickly enough to meet the aspirations of the working proletariat and peasantry.

All revolutions it would seem are a failure of the elite class to realise the demands of the people.

Indeed. We have forgotten who we truly are. We like to think we are the heirs of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but in fact we are the heirs of the Germanic barbarians who sacked Rome. We forget this fact at our peril.

That we are the descendants of those peoples is probably a reason why our society is having problems. We are not meant to be so civilised that our life loses meaning. Barbarians without meaning are aimless and dangerous.

This is, in part, what the counter-culture of the 1960s was about - the younger generation looked to the East for answers to Western cultural and civilisational problems. With mixed results, it has to be said.

Unfortunately they looked to the less accesible elements of Eastern thinking. Many appeared to be drawn to Indian thinking but this was often in a less than orthodox fashion. I don't think they ever read or attempted to apply Confucius. Of what they did take from the East I don't think they did so in an authentic form, they modified it and changed it, diluted its true essence.

We have lost a shared faith, which means we have lost our shared, communal identity, which made the great medieval cathedrals possible.

And without that communal identity all forms of collective activity become impossible, even Marxism.

The concept of progress is a form of teleology, and, like any teleology, it must come from outside itself. This is what Walter Benjamin referred to as the "storm blowing out of Paradise"....

The result of which is to alienate ourselves from our own being.

Although the progress of which some people speak is not actually any real progress at all, it's actually leading to regression. We are I venture to say less progressive and less advanced than we were in 1965.

Perhaps it is not so much the concept of progress but of a very type of progress that the society has come to adopt. It's its own dogma.

Honestly speaking, I wouldn't like to be living in times without modern medicine, transport and building materials. I think I'd like the 1950s.

The proletariat are the proletariat. Lol.

Are they the majority?

Samuel Butler foresaw a time when being unhappy would be regarded as a medical condition requiring treatment, and physical illnesses would be regarded as moral failings. Perhaps he was more prescient than he knew.

I have seen a lot of stupid mistakes made in the name of happiness. The truth is that happiness is fleeting. No one is truly happy all the time and what makes adults happy is generally never permanent and highly tenuous at best. Happiness is in the moment and life ideally will be filled with many happy moments.

you give me much food for thought, thank you!

You're most welcome.

I'm reminded of what a group of German Generals interviewed by British Officers as POW's said to their questioners as to their dreadful fear of the Russians, that ''they were savages!''. To which one British Officer replied; ''you should not have invaded them in 1941.''...

I've also heard an account where a German soldier reported that the Russians use 'underhanded' tactics in battle such as encircling and then attacking from behind. Rather rich to complain about this when they were invading to enslave and exterminate.

Yes, something has dried up in the West, it took the wrong course centuries ago and has not 'course corrected' yet so far. I am hoping that it will before it's too late. I think a certain naivete and faithful trust and simplicity of life and character would do a lot of Westerners some good.

Undoubtedly so.

No need to be sorry, I'm rather late in my own response to you, plus I wanted to think clearly about what you have said and contributed.

Not at all.

If our leaders served, as we've discussed before, they would understand because the experience would change them, hopefully for the better.

It would hopefully change them in more ways than one and make them more empathetic, heighten their emotional intelligence perhaps.

The fabled ''end of history''. Such hubris!

A highly depressing concept.

The West Roman Empire's citizenry were very unwarlike in the cities and towns and offered little resistance to marauding bands of barbarians and the ''Bagaudae'', runaway slaves and peasants who infested more wild regions of the Empire and who frequently rose up in rebellions. Plus there was quite a bit of political instability; court intrigues, usurpers claiming the throne, military composed of mainly barbarians taking sides in those intrigues...

This seems to be happening again today in a sense.

He's one I've enjoyed watching speak. And he's right about the Cathedrals, although it comes from a spirituality that I cannot abide because it is an earlier stage (albeit a glorious one in human terms) of what is wrong with the West.

A very intelligent person.

I am thinking without being too Marxist about it, those who toil and labor in a society. But since I don't think that the term is exhausted by Marx's definitions, I'd go with Arnold Toynbee, who suggested that it encompasses all those who are ''in'' but not truly ''of'' a society, persons alienated from the Elites, an ''Internal Proletariat''. He also went on to say that a barbarian society on the fringes and margins of a greater and more civilized society can be considered an ''external proletariat'' as well. Toynbee believed that usually the two often wind up overthrowing the more civilized society over time and form a new one.

It is therefore anyone who for whatever reasons is not a part of the mainstream society?

You're quite welcome. I rather unironically agree with the gentleman knowing that he is well aware of the effect that such a belief system in the modern age illicits. It's part of the reason, that effect upon modern more civilized and sophisticated seculars out there, that I post on this thread now.

I'll never understand why someone would find such a belief system strange.

Perhaps not always ''happy'' all the time in a worldly sense anyway.

Even worldly happiness is somewhat tenuous.

I think we catch glimpses of the unseen realities near us, and it moves us with a longing similar to homesickness, because it is.

This is quite possible.

I think I understand that somewhat. I felt something like that the first time I was in Russia after a few days of going here and there in a typically modern Russian city, and out in the countryside sometime later I saw a dense forest as far as my eyes could see, and heard the tolling of an Orthodox church bell. I went down to my knees and grabbed the black earth under my hands and wept.

A friend told me; ''now you are quite Russian, you poor man''.

Ah, yes, I remember you telling me this and it was a deeply impressive occurrence.

Fundamentally it seems that it is an issue of profound meaning. Profound meaning does not always need to be happy or light hearted. That article did seem to address this from my reading of it, that light and happy is not always useful perhaps.

In any case, I hope all goes well with the elections tomorrow!

You should beware of placing too much reliance on the barbarians coming to save us. Sorry to quote another poem at you, but I think this one is very apposite....


Waiting for the Barbarians
by C. P. Cavafy


What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.


Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.


Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.


Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.


Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.


Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.


Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

Am I to read this poem correctly when I understand its meaning is that without the barbarians nothing gets done and there are no solutions without them?

[annatar1914]

@Political Interest , you replied with regard to German tales of Russian barbarism that;

I've also heard an account where a German soldier reported that the Russians use 'underhanded' tactics in battle such as encircling and then attacking from behind. Rather rich to complain about this when they were invading to enslave and exterminate.

Yes, apparently more upset that they lost than that they dared such a brazen attempt at conquest as they did.

Regarding the meanings of the term ''Proletariat'';

It is therefore anyone who for whatever reasons is not a part of the mainstream society?

I think Toynbee then would have agreed with that expansion of the word. It comes originally from the Latin ''Proletarius'' or ''producing offspring'', those whose ''wealth'' was in having children (''Proles'') and little else when listed in the Roman census, because they had no property at a time when there was a property qualification for military service-they were at the bottom possible rung of Roman society, marginally above a slave.

With regard to the traditional Christian worldview as expressed in a Blogger's Halloween article I posted;

I'll never understand why someone would find such a belief system strange.

I'm finding the scoffer's worldview a bit more strange and bizarre. If God is God, where is the problem with visualizing and sensing this reality?

On my personal journey of getting in touch with my inner alienation from Western society;

Ah, yes, I remember you telling me this and it was a deeply impressive occurrence.

Fundamentally it seems that it is an issue of profound meaning. Profound meaning does not always need to be happy or light hearted. That article did seem to address this from my reading of it, that light and happy is not always useful perhaps.

In any case, I hope all goes well with the elections tomorrow!

Thank you! I will have to trust in God's allowing of what will happen and in what will not happen.

[annatar1914]

You should beware of placing too much reliance on the barbarians coming to save us. Sorry to quote another poem at you, but I think this one is very apposite....


Waiting for the Barbarians
by C. P. Cavafy


What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.


Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.


Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.


Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.


Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.


Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.


Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

I think that there is a fear among hyper-civilized people that ennui and even hopelessness that would set in if they didn't have the ''Other'' to contend with, if everyone winds up basically being of this same effete, cosmopolitan, deracinated, and soft sort.

Fortunately, There is the Greatest Barbarian of all Who is coming again soon someday... Consider the horror of some elite Greco-Roman people at the very thought of some cult about a Barbarian God that grew out of the religion of a Barbarian people conquered but always contrary to the Hellenic ideal.

I suspect their descendants are horrified still. And how much of our Western understanding of them is colored by primarily 19th century German Bourgeoisie historiographical scholarship as it is?

[Potemkin]

I think that there is a fear among hyper-civilized people that ennui and even hopelessness that would set in if they didn't have the ''Other'' to contend with, if everyone winds up basically being of this same effete, cosmopolitan, deracinated, and soft sort.

Fortunately, There is the Greatest Barbarian of all Who is coming again soon someday... Consider the horror of some elite Greco-Roman people at the very thought of some cult about a Barbarian God that grew out of the religion of a Barbarian people conquered but always contrary to the Hellenic ideal.

I suspect their descendants are horrified still. And how much of our Western understanding of them is colored by primarily 19th century German Bourgeoisie historiographical scholarship as it is?

Precisely. The Second Coming would and could only ever be experienced by our bourgeois Western civilisation as a horrifying attack on the core values of that civilisation, as a disruptive and destructive 'barbaric' assault. Rather like a revolution, in fact. As Rilke pointed out, "Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich" - Every angel is terrifying. And I strongly suspect that our elites would try to nail Christ to the Cross a second time, and hope that he would stay there this time. Christ is only useful to them while he is safely dead (or in Heaven, which amounts to the same thing as far as they're concerned). A living Christ would be their sworn enemy.

[annatar1914]

@Potemkin , you said;

Precisely. The Second Coming would and could only ever be experienced by our bourgeois Western civilisation as a horrifying attack on the core values of that civilisation, as a disruptive and destructive 'barbaric' assault.

That's why Fyodor Dostyoevsky was so brilliant with his story-within-the-story in ''Brothers Karamazov'', the ''Legend of the Grand Inquisitor'' where the character tells Christ that His Return is unwelcome and unnecessary and would be opposed whether He was God or not...

Rather like a revolution, in fact.

Yes, the great change and transmutation of life with a ''New Heavens and a New Earth''. Our rulers would rather have us see that everything is as it is now into the remote past and out into the future as well.

As Rilke pointed out, "Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich" - Every angel is terrifying.

''Fear not'' is not something you'd expect to hear from an Angel that looks like something out of a painting by Raphael or one of the other returners to Hellenism, a effeminate androgyne with wings or a roly-poly childlike figure. Rather, those words come from the terror the truly Holy Angels impart us mortals with their true physical appearances (another indication of physicality of some sort in my opinion, by the way).

And I strongly suspect that our elites would try to nail Christ to the Cross a second time, and hope that he would stay there this time. Christ is only useful to them while he is safely dead (or in Heaven, which amounts to the same thing as far as they're concerned). A living Christ would be their sworn enemy.

That's why they embrace false ''Christs'', Antichrist in fact.

[annatar1914]

@Potemkin and @Political Interest , @Local Localist , @Wellsy , @Rancid , @Sivad , @Wulfschilde , @Black Consequense , @Verv ;

On Barbarism and Civilization.

The true ideal of this world is itself, this world and this world alone. So in keeping with this world and it's values, men build cities and create ever more complex laws so that everyone gets something of the material goods in life, but especially the clever ones, the powerful and wealthy.

But all along the way, there are those who doggedly refuse to accept this ''progress'' and are thus branded as unintelligent brutes, the ''Bar-bar'', those who do not speak as rational human beings do, the ''Other''. They are remarked upon as being superstitious, vulgar, crude, criminal, outlaws, followers of strange cults and anti-social movements.

Edward Gibbon saw this clearly as an ''Enlightenment'' scholar writing of the fall of the Roman Empire as the ''triumph of the Barbarians and Religion'' over civilization.

I do too, but hardly shed a tear over it these days. For what I've realized is that the ideals of the ''Common Good'' and the ideals of Civilization are in fact antithetical to each other. Man's law is frequently contrary to God's laws shown as revealed religion and against the natural law itself that men of goodwill of all times and places have held to. ''Science'' is a Bed of Procrustes that itself masks an agenda of powerful people. Justice is perverted by special interests connected by birth and wealth. Legalism and casuistry enable degeneracy, foolishness and vice to flourish, while healthy instincts are ruled illegal or at the very least, to be erased by social pressures.

The Barbarian either flees from such wickedness in the short term, or reaches for his weapon. He knows that Right is Might, and a display of Might will ultimately keep the forces of darkness at bay in their impotence and nullity, and sets at naught the feeble audacity of the Demons. He thinks of Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, even if he breaks those rules he still believes they exist independently of him and are part of the very structure of reality. If he's in Civilization, he often finds himself in jail, or distant from the larger urban areas, or in roles which enable him to live his barbarian life on terms more to his liking in relation to the Civilized.

The Civilized man on the other hand doesn't even know Demons exist, and carries on in his deracinated, materialistic, irreligious, and clever way, thinking only of his own self-interest. He doesn't regard right or wrong, good or evil, only legal or illegal, and the understanding that those are provisional concepts that can be changed. He cannot exist in Barbarian lands, and seeks to tame and subdue and exploit them in any manner possible.

The Barbarian only thinks in terms of personal and social relations, while the Civilized thinks in terms of abstractions. He creates a Gordian Knot of tangled complications, whereas a Barbarian like Alexander the Great takes out his sword and cuts the knot in two, undoing the false problem which bedevils the ''wise'' of Civilization.

And so it goes on today, the Barbarian and the Civilized, gazing at each other in mutual incomprehension.

[Political Interest]

I think Toynbee then would have agreed with that expansion of the word. It comes originally from the Latin ''Proletarius'' or ''producing offspring'', those whose ''wealth'' was in having children (''Proles'') and little else when listed in the Roman census, because they had no property at a time when there was a property qualification for military service-they were at the bottom possible rung of Roman society, marginally above a slave.

Such a definition seems to reduce the working class to those who are living in complete poverty. In that case there would be few in contemporary Western society who meet this definition surely?

Thank you! I will have to trust in God's allowing of what will happen and in what will not happen.

I think the American people have been presented with two choices that do not represent them or their interests.

Let us always trust in the Lord.

On Barbarism and Civilization.

The true ideal of this world is itself, this world and this world alone. So in keeping with this world and it's values, men build cities and create ever more complex laws so that everyone gets something of the material goods in life, but especially the clever ones, the powerful and wealthy.

But all along the way, there are those who doggedly refuse to accept this ''progress'' and are thus branded as unintelligent brutes, the ''Bar-bar'', those who do not speak as rational human beings do, the ''Other''. They are remarked upon as being superstitious, vulgar, crude, criminal, outlaws, followers of strange cults and anti-social movements.

Edward Gibbon saw this clearly as an ''Enlightenment'' scholar writing of the fall of the Roman Empire as the ''triumph of the Barbarians and Religion'' over civilization.

I do too, but hardly shed a tear over it these days. For what I've realized is that the ideals of the ''Common Good'' and the ideals of Civilization are in fact antithetical to each other. Man's law is frequently contrary to God's laws shown as revealed religion and against the natural law itself that men of goodwill of all times and places have held to. ''Science'' is a Bed of Procrustes that itself masks an agenda of powerful people. Justice is perverted by special interests connected by birth and wealth. Legalism and casuistry enable degeneracy, foolishness and vice to flourish, while healthy instincts are ruled illegal or at the very least, to be erased by social pressures.

The Barbarian either flees from such wickedness in the short term, or reaches for his weapon. He knows that Right is Might, and a display of Might will ultimately keep the forces of darkness at bay in their impotence and nullity, and sets at naught the feeble audacity of the Demons. He thinks of Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, even if he breaks those rules he still believes they exist independently of him and are part of the very structure of reality. If he's in Civilization, he often finds himself in jail, or distant from the larger urban areas, or in roles which enable him to live his barbarian life on terms more to his liking in relation to the Civilized.

The Civilized man on the other hand doesn't even know Demons exist, and carries on in his deracinated, materialistic, irreligious, and clever way, thinking only of his own self-interest. He doesn't regard right or wrong, good or evil, only legal or illegal, and the understanding that those are provisional concepts that can be changed. He cannot exist in Barbarian lands, and seeks to tame and subdue and exploit them in any manner possible.

The Barbarian only thinks in terms of personal and social relations, while the Civilized thinks in terms of abstractions. He creates a Gordian Knot of tangled complications, whereas a Barbarian like Alexander the Great takes out his sword and cuts the knot in two, undoing the false problem which bedevils the ''wise'' of Civilization.

And so it goes on today, the Barbarian and the Civilized, gazing at each other in mutual incomprehension.

But it would appear that even among the civilised world there are still barbarians so to speak, the outcasts and those who have not bought into the hyper-materialism and utilitarian attitudes.

There is a type of person who does not live for money, not all is lost.

The barbarians were not deceived by false ideas created at universities or by modes of existence that inclined them towards solely commercial activity. A barbarian who moves to the civilised world will become civilised eventually, his existence in a certain type of society will compel him to become this way. This could explain why why there still persist people with barbarian tendencies even in the civilised world, it is still in their nature.

Naturally barbarians are close to nature. There are no discussions about how many genders there are when you are surrounded by forests, deserts and jungle. The abstract ideas you speak of only arise out of universities and urban dwelling intellectuals. They are very much constructions of metropolitan lands, the centres of empires. This seems to suggest that there is some level of acculturation into civilisation, or ideological conditioning that is the product of a polity's guiding philosophies and ideologies. A man could be a descendant of the Vikings or Baltic tribes but he will adopt the ideology of the society in which he lives. It does not matter whether he is in China, England or Central America.

[annatar1914]

@Political Interest , you replied in response to the literal Latin definition of ''Proletarius'' that;

Such a definition seems to reduce the working class to those who are living in complete poverty. In that case there would be few in contemporary Western society who meet this definition surely?

Well as you mentioned earlier, you believe that there are entire societies that are pretty much the world's ''Bourgeoisie'', and I'm not disagreeing entirely. I can settle on a broader definition of a member of the ''Proletariat'' being someone who is entirely dependent on the private or public use of their labor, on their employment, in order to provide for their existence.

The Bourgeoisie then would be those who are entirely free and independent of that necessity of employment, having private ownership of sufficient Capital to do so, and would be the ultimate employers of everyone else. We would then be talking about very few people in a given society actually, but it is their values and leadership that give direction to the rest of society.

On the US 2020 election;

I think the American people have been presented with two choices that do not represent them or their interests.

It has been that way for a rather long time, certainly in my lifetime I have not seen it.

Let us always trust in the Lord.

Yes, it's human to doubt and to grumble perhaps, but I'm not truly worried. A lot of this is Theater, truly. We do not see much of what is truly going on in reality.


On my other post, on ''Barbarism and Civilization'';

But it would appear that even among the civilised world there are still barbarians so to speak, the outcasts and those who have not bought into the hyper-materialism and utilitarian attitudes.

Yes, to tie in to the conversation about the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie, the Barbarian type brought into Civilization is usually, but not always, among the Proletariat. They cannot survive without selling their labor, labor in some fashion, although the effort sometimes pushes them to the lower margins, or as strange outliers (like a religious sect that sells homemade products to a larger market), or into criminality.

There is a type of person who does not live for money, not all is lost.

Truly.

The barbarians were not deceived by false ideas created at universities or by modes of existence that inclined them towards solely commercial activity. A barbarian who moves to the civilised world will become civilised eventually, his existence in a certain type of society will compel him to become this way. This could explain why why there still persist people with barbarian tendencies even in the civilised world, it is still in their nature.

I agree, I think it can persist in strange ways for generations.

Naturally barbarians are close to nature. There are no discussions about how many genders there are when you are surrounded by forests, deserts and jungle. The abstract ideas you speak of only arise out of universities and urban dwelling intellectuals. They are very much constructions of metropolitan lands, the centres of empires. This seems to suggest that there is some level of acculturation into civilisation, or ideological conditioning that is the product of a polity's guiding philosophies and ideologies. A man could be a descendant of the Vikings or Baltic tribes but he will adopt the ideology of the society in which he lives. It does not matter whether he is in China, England or Central America.

Historically, many times Barbarians who settle and even conquer civilized lands take to the worst most decadent and degenerate behavior of that societies' previous ruling classes and out-do them in wretched excess.

Not all though; i've seen Mongol herders in Mongolia who live much as their ancestors did, descendants of those who did not settle in China to rule and be absorbed by the Chinese after Ghengis Khan conquered them.

But yes, this closeness to nature, to reality, is a sign of that particular human type's survival in the midst of Hyper-Civilization.

[annatar1914]

Nothing seems superficially more rational in our Civilization than voting, but in reality nothing is in truth less rational and prone to superstition, more prone to the influence of oligarchy and the rule of those with wealth and personal power. Even if it appears to not be a question of good versus evil, it actually still is, with so-called ''rationalism'' and ''democracy'' coming out on the side of darkness in fact.

One says by one's vote in at least a formal sense that; ''I accept the outcome of the vote, regardless of whether my candidate wins or loses, and decisions can be made by the same means for particular issue put up for a vote''. If that perception fails, then other means are used to try to seat a ruler or enforce a particular political position. Also therefore is the implicit understanding that all the questions in life can potentially be subject to resolution by means of a vote.

Is it really all that hard to see that all this is a delusion? All the more a delusion because it's most fervent devotees are always quite willing to use brute force or fraud to carry out their wills in an election or prevent others from the same, when there's a fear that the side one is opposed to could come into power or remain in power?

No, all of this strife and nonsense is from the Devil, for man's destruction and death. The Barbarism of a true Monarchy is preferable.

[annatar1914]

Nothing seems superficially more rational in our Civilization than voting, but in reality nothing is in truth less rational and prone to superstition, more prone to the influence of oligarchy and the rule of those with wealth and personal power. Even if it appears to not be a question of good versus evil, it actually still is, with so-called ''rationalism'' and ''democracy'' coming out on the side of darkness in fact.

One says by one's vote in at least a formal sense that; ''I accept the outcome of the vote, regardless of whether my candidate wins or loses, and decisions can be made by the same means for particular issue put up for a vote''. If that perception fails, then other means are used to try to seat a ruler or enforce a particular political position. Also therefore is the implicit understanding that all the questions in life can potentially be subject to resolution by means of a vote.

Is it really all that hard to see that all this is a delusion? All the more a delusion because it's most fervent devotees are always quite willing to use brute force or fraud to carry out their wills in an election or prevent others from the same, when there's a fear that the side one is opposed to could come into power or remain in power?

No, all of this strife and nonsense is from the Devil, for man's destruction and death. The Barbarism of a true Monarchy is preferable.

And yet...

If true power resided with the people, with the proper spiritual development, the self-governance of a truly democratic and socialistic society would be ideal insofar as anything can be in this fallen sinful world.

[Rancid]

The election thread has brought me here.

So what has allowed this age of devilry to set in?

[Wellsy]

What do you think might be a bridge between a person of faith and an atheist?

There used to be discussions framed between a believer and non-believers but I think I struggle with the sense of the world truly religious people have as I have no concept of it. I am largely untouched by religion despite living in a world shapes by it's influence.
I would listen to inmates express their faith in things but we both knew that I wasn't a believer. It was once even the source of great conflict in a romantic interest who was a Christian while I couldn't pretend to believe. Is it simply an essential opposition? It seems to require more than toe dipping but a dive into the deep of a religious way of living to help one grasp the concepts. As concepts don't just come through the mind or observation but experiencing. In the way some speak of spiritual experiences yet there is no means of conveying it in a way that really shares it's understanding.

I am simply alien to a sense of things coloured by a religious outlook and despite some cracks I open kindness doubt it'll ever be me without a radical change of self.

[annatar1914]

The election thread has brought me here.

So what has allowed this age of devilry to set in?

That was a bit of a rhetorical flourish, but essentially it's a specifically Western ideal rooted in the classical Greco-Roman pagan culture that revived during the Renaissance and came to full flower in the ''Enlightenment'' period; ''man as the measure of all things''. Man as gods.

[annatar1914]

@Wellsy , you asked;

What do you think might be a bridge between a person of faith and an atheist?

We both live in the world, and if one has a conscience implanted in them with a sense of right and wrong, and a love for the truth wherever it leads them, one will see that that good that is expressed has a living Source. True Christianity, like everything else is experiential, not a dry intellectual conversation. But it begins with living the Good in one's life, taking it into your heart, not just talking about it as admittedly I can be prone to do.

There used to be discussions framed between a believer and non-believers but I think I struggle with the sense of the world truly religious people have as I have no concept of it. I am largely untouched by religion despite living in a world shapes by it's influence.

Most of man's ''religion'' at all times and everywhere is primarily transactional, like a business offer; ''do for me and i'll honor you in return, as long as things are going my way''. It is my experience that living true Christianity is deeply personal and very alien to the transactional pagan model

I would listen to inmates express their faith in things but we both knew that I wasn't a believer. It was once even the source of great conflict in a romantic interest who was a Christian while I couldn't pretend to believe. Is it simply an essential opposition? It seems to require more than toe dipping but a dive into the deep of a religious way of living to help one grasp the concepts. As concepts don't just come through the mind or observation but experiencing. In the way some speak of spiritual experiences yet there is no means of conveying it in a way that really shares it's understanding.

Kirkegaard was right indeed that Christianity is to be taken as a leap, fully, and is a way of life, not just a process one engages in at certain small times and places. I can tell you perhaps that this enlightenment is gradual, even life-long, and grows the more one focuses on the Person and what He is and wishes for you and your life.

I am simply alien to a sense of things coloured by a religious outlook and despite some cracks I open kindness doubt it'll ever be me without a radical change of self.

I think perhaps you sell yourself, and God, rather short. Maybe I'm not so good at elucidating this more clearer, but my own spiritual journey as so far been one of more patience and increasing humility. Embrace the good and be open to hearing God, and speaking to Him as well, and don't give up either.

[Verv]

@Potemkin and @Political Interest , @Local Localist , @Wellsy , @Rancid , @Sivad , @Wulfschilde , @Black Consequense , @Verv ;

On Barbarism and Civilization.

The true ideal of this world is itself, this world and this world alone. So in keeping with this world and it's values, men build cities and create ever more complex laws so that everyone gets something of the material goods in life, but especially the clever ones, the powerful and wealthy.

But all along the way, there are those who doggedly refuse to accept this ''progress'' and are thus branded as unintelligent brutes, the ''Bar-bar'', those who do not speak as rational human beings do, the ''Other''. They are remarked upon as being superstitious, vulgar, crude, criminal, outlaws, followers of strange cults and anti-social movements.

Edward Gibbon saw this clearly as an ''Enlightenment'' scholar writing of the fall of the Roman Empire as the ''triumph of the Barbarians and Religion'' over civilization.

I do too, but hardly shed a tear over it these days. For what I've realized is that the ideals of the ''Common Good'' and the ideals of Civilization are in fact antithetical to each other. Man's law is frequently contrary to God's laws shown as revealed religion and against the natural law itself that men of goodwill of all times and places have held to. ''Science'' is a Bed of Procrustes that itself masks an agenda of powerful people. Justice is perverted by special interests connected by birth and wealth. Legalism and casuistry enable degeneracy, foolishness and vice to flourish, while healthy instincts are ruled illegal or at the very least, to be erased by social pressures.

The Barbarian either flees from such wickedness in the short term, or reaches for his weapon. He knows that Right is Might, and a display of Might will ultimately keep the forces of darkness at bay in their impotence and nullity, and sets at naught the feeble audacity of the Demons. He thinks of Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, even if he breaks those rules he still believes they exist independently of him and are part of the very structure of reality. If he's in Civilization, he often finds himself in jail, or distant from the larger urban areas, or in roles which enable him to live his barbarian life on terms more to his liking in relation to the Civilized.

The Civilized man on the other hand doesn't even know Demons exist, and carries on in his deracinated, materialistic, irreligious, and clever way, thinking only of his own self-interest. He doesn't regard right or wrong, good or evil, only legal or illegal, and the understanding that those are provisional concepts that can be changed. He cannot exist in Barbarian lands, and seeks to tame and subdue and exploit them in any manner possible.

The Barbarian only thinks in terms of personal and social relations, while the Civilized thinks in terms of abstractions. He creates a Gordian Knot of tangled complications, whereas a Barbarian like Alexander the Great takes out his sword and cuts the knot in two, undoing the false problem which bedevils the ''wise'' of Civilization.

And so it goes on today, the Barbarian and the Civilized, gazing at each other in mutual incomprehension.

This is probably the best written thing I have seen on PoFo in 2020.

This is a good revisiting of the idea of the noble savage from a Christian perspective, and it definitely falls in line with how various intellectuals in Christendom also perceive worldly Kingdoms. Adding the barbarian idea to this is truly splendid, because it particularly speaks to Westerners today who feel that they are out of touch with their own nation and society.

One might even imagine that the great popularity of TV series like Vikings or even Game of Thrones is this growing desire of modern men in this particular age to turn their back on modernity.

The big issue, of course, is that the bulk of these people do not understand this in the context of Christianity, but only in a simple rejection of a system that they instinctively know to be wrong.

[Rancid]

Reading through this thread makes me feel ashamed of myself.