I Reject, I Affirm. ''Raising the Black Flag'' in an Age of Devilry. - Page 45 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15187198
@Potemkin , @Political Interest , @Verv , and others;

You might appreciate this post, let's see, maybe I can spin a good conversation off of this.

It is for whatever reason, rare to encounter someone on the Right, even the ''Far Right'', who is quite educated, intelligent, and has a coherent world view that is logical, even if I happen to disagree with them.

On the other hand, it is easy to encounter someone on the Left, even the ''Far Left'', who is educated and intelligent and has a coherent logical worldview even if I disagree with what they're saying.

But my post here is more about the former, not the latter. What I discover, quite frequently with genuine Right Wing Intellectuals, is that they subscribe to what is practically an esoteric doctrine and an exoteric doctrine. And the outer expressed beliefs (while explained by the genuine hidden ones)seem to be not exactly in full synchronicity with the observable truth and known facts. They will talk about the Pillow Guy and the 2020 stolen election, and somewhere in there there will be a coded reference to something Juilus Evola wrote, for example. I was briefly submerged in the Far Right, so I know. But it's the distinction between inner and outer doctrines which is interesting to me.

On the Left, they will say; ''well, the people can't see the truth, but maybe someday perhaps they will'', and the doctrine is open to see for all.

On the Right, the attitude seems to be; ''well, they can't handle the truth, but this is something which we need to proceed with regardless of popularity or not". And the ''Truth'', told in strict confidence, turns out to be something like ''You know, the Holocaust didn't happen, at least like they say it did'', or '' I think we both understand that some races are inferior to others, it's obvious''. That kind of talk.

I could be wrong, but to me it appears that the outer beliefs are just a kind of tactical arrangement, which may or may not bear any relation to reality, to the truth and the known facts, while the inner and more hidden beliefs are the ones which are static and unyielding and provide a foundation to build the rest upon. Or is this a feature not just of the Right, but all across the modern political spectrum?

I ask this because frequently Right-Wingers project this very esoteric and exoteric belief arrangement onto the Left, making almost every Liberal out to be a secret Communist or Socialist of some kind. Or is that sort of the truth also, maybe not so much affiliation but in sympathies?

Of course, I do understand that most people on the political fringes know that their views are not too acceptable with most people, and that to be politically active at all means that at least publically they have to present a more ''moderate'' political front. But-I think-I'm trying to hit on something a little deeper than that...
#15187278
By definition right-wing politics is about maintaining the parts of status quo beneficial to their supporters, inadvertently leading to reactionary belief (seeing every call for change as an attempt to undermine them). It is hard for them to behave otherwise.
#15187626
Patrickov wrote:By definition right-wing politics is about maintaining the parts of status quo beneficial to their supporters, inadvertently leading to reactionary belief (seeing every call for change as an attempt to undermine them). It is hard for them to behave otherwise.


@Patrickov , nonetheless, I'm speaking more about the ideological framework that ''justifies'' reaction. It of necessity has to be more than; ''what is, is right''. But again, this justification by it's very nature cannot be popular, nor exposed to public view. Therefore, an exoteric outer doctrine would exist, tailored to nationalist and populist tropes, while an inner esoteric doctrine would likewise exist, from the intellectual strata of these groups.
#15187769
Every once in a while, the Russian Eurasianist thinker Alexander Dugin will write something I can agree with, even if he is nebulous at times and meanders off his point into something that might even contradict what he's said earlier. That said, he's an interesting thinker. He wrote this recently;

https://katehon.com/en/article/true-dem ... al-parties

''The problem with the Russian elections is that the idea of ​​representative democracy and especially party representative democracy is completely alien to Russian political culture and tradition. At the same time, Zemskaya democracy, the election of village elders, and before the schism and parish priests, has a long history in Russia. At the most critical moments – as, for example, at the end of the Time of Troubles – the people even chose a king, a new dynasty. And before that, it was the popular decision to form a militia – especially the second, which saved the country. But the Russians never really chose parties. They chose people – their own people, acquaintances, or those they believed. They were always chosen personally, not in bulk. The Russian tradition is personal. She wants to see a person as a political figure. He wants to understand him, know him, trust him. And sometimes hate him, despise him, punish him. But always it is a person. Our view of the world is deeply human. And about politics too.

Russian people do not understand parties. This is something alien, impersonal, abstract. And for this reason alone, something false, fake, vicious. Something that would not have been better.

The very word “party” does not sound in Russian and does not have a Russian meaning. This is the “part.” Russians want to see the whole in everything. Therefore, the choice of a party from other parties is already fragmented and dismembered. Party democracy for the Russian person is something like a maniac, ready to dismember society, people, country. And the parties themselves, as it were, confirm this: they split from within, split, fight for sole leadership. The party is disgusting. Including aesthetically. And no effort can make us give up our disgust.

It’s another matter when there is only one party. We like this much more. Choose one of them. Here’s a real Russian choice. Once and for all, they choose a faith, a fatherland, a spouse. Once and for all: one of the same, but one and only. Our ethic is this: beautiful is what is worth being faithful to all your life. The rest is temptation and fall. Therefore, in Russia, either there should be no parties at all – there is a state, there is a church, there is a people, and the Zemstvo should be added to this, or there should be one. But one party is no longer a party, not apart. This whole, this is the people themselves or the state itself. This model is sustainable and has a future. The rest is not.

The rule of the Communist Party during the Soviet period was not only imposed from above but also demanded from below. The people and society wanted unity and wholeness. The Slavophiles, above all Khomyakov, wrote about integrity as the highest Russian ideal. And at the head of the party and the state again one person – the leader-father. His face, his intonations, his gestures are known and felt by everyone.

Many parties participate in modern elections. This alone is disgusting. Where do they climb, why … It’s unpleasant. And everything becomes unpleasant, wants to cover all faces with medical masks. The Russian person has a feeling: all these active fussing figures are crushing the country. They are up to something bad.

Only two parties are exceptions – United Russia and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Both of them are important because in them one can recognize the very one single party that the people unconsciously await.

With the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, everything is clear: it is the ghost of the only old party – the CPSU. In the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, people see Soviet unity – powers, peoples, society, classes. Of course, today it is just a simulacrum, a museum piece, but it works. And if the CPRF were allowed to turn around, this nostalgia alone could have worked out a lot – up to the figures that the CPRF had in the 90s, when they were in the majority in the Duma. But they don’t. Because there is another united party. It is called United Russia. If it was just a name, then this is not enough. But United Russia is something else. This is the party of today’s state. And she has a face – this is the leader-father Vladimir Putin. No matter how he formulates his attitude towards United Russia, this is his party, since this is his state. He is the father of Russia, which means he is the father of everything.

In these elections, United Russia acted in the most direct way. Its list is headed by those who embody the best aspects of modern Russian statehood – the army, foreign policy, and doctors. This time there are no industrialists, no bankers, no monopolists, no oligarchs, no sportsmen. Rather, they are all there, but in the lower positions. In the shadow. And that’s all the same. The United Russia troika is addressing the people: vote not for the party and parties, vote for the state, for the power. We do not seduce or bribe you. Power is serious. And his best sides are the army (Shoigu), foreign policy sovereignty (Lavrov), doctors who, at the cost of their lives, save yours (Protsenko). And above this is the Russian Father. The State itself goes to the elections – more precisely, its best light side. The shadow side hides behind a beautiful three. And at the top of the pyramid is Putin. And here the name begins to work – “United Russia”, which reads as “United Party of United Russia”.

Critical voices will protest with indignation: this is a swindle, this is a pre-election trick … But what about “crooks and thieves”? What about the corrupt officials and the oligarchy that has merged with the authorities? What about life that we don’t like? What about the injustice and cynicism of the elites? This dark side, in fact, is. But … the state is a whole. Everything casts a shadow. You can, of course, measure who has a long shadow, someone blacker, but not in relation to the state. Not with regard to the Russian father. To consider the faults and miscalculations of the father as the sin of Ham in the ark. Noah got drunk and stumbled, but Ham did something more terrible: he tried to break up the family … Why did Ham call the brothers to look at his father, who was in a disadvantageous state? He wanted to create a party! All parties were created by boors. O Noah the ark was created. Shem and Japheth did the right thing: they chose a father, not a brother. They chose the Ark, not the idea of ​​taking it apart into planks and then selling it. They chose the state, not the party. And they did the right thing. The land of the damned, “Canaan”, is named after Ham.

The path of party democracy in Russia is a puppet game not because “the authoritarian government seeks to rule everything.” But because in Russia no party has and cannot have real legitimacy. Parties in Russia are a boorish masquerade from the very beginning. Either all or all but one. But this one party must be the State itself. And if the state does not want to play democracy anymore, then it would be possible to start creating a real – zemstvo – democracy – without parties, but with full-fledged and meaningful elections, where there will be responsibility, observance of the scale elders), openness and honesty. Qualitative selection of the best has nothing to do with the liberal representative democracy of the Western type. It only gets in the way. In one-party China, the rotation of elites is larger, fuller, and more dynamic than in any Western country. And there is no parliament in China. And the party there is essentially a state. Father Xi Jianping. And it has a shadow, but it’s worth starting with yourself and purifying yourself. This is how a real communist patriotic Chinese democrat thinks. And he reasoned correctly because this (or approximately so) said, Confucius.''


As I said, interesting. But true? In some respects. I'll have to examine it some more. For one thing, I think that the CPSU had itself already-like China's CP-transformed itself into ''essentially a state'' after the 1930's purges.
#15187786
annatar1914 wrote:Every once in a while, the Russian Eurasianist thinker Alexander Dugin will write something I can agree with, even if he is nebulous at times and meanders off his point into something that might even contradict what he's said earlier. That said, he's an interesting thinker. He wrote this recently;

https://katehon.com/en/article/true-dem ... al-parties



As I said, interesting. But true? In some respects. I'll have to examine it some more. For one thing, I think that the CPSU had itself already-like China's CP-transformed itself into ''essentially a state'' after the 1930's purges.

I would say that the Bolshevik Party had already made itself "essentially a state" by 1921 - the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War was so overwhelming, and that war had been so brutal and vicious, that no political organisation outside the Party was even thinkable. And after the purges of the 1930s, things went even further - the CPSU transformed itself into essentially the civil society itself. All human interactions, all clubs and associations and groups were mediated through the Party. This was "partinost" - the unity of the Party was the unity of civil society itself, not just the unity of the state. And the keystone of it all was the figure of Stalin himself, the "Red Monarch".
#15187906
Potemkin wrote:I would say that the Bolshevik Party had already made itself "essentially a state" by 1921 - the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War was so overwhelming, and that war had been so brutal and vicious, that no political organisation outside the Party was even thinkable. And after the purges of the 1930s, things went even further - the CPSU transformed itself into essentially the civil society itself. All human interactions, all clubs and associations and groups were mediated through the Party. This was "partinost" - the unity of the Party was the unity of civil society itself, not just the unity of the state. And the keystone of it all was the figure of Stalin himself, the "Red Monarch".


@Potemkin , yes indeed, the first and last of his line (unless one were to take some certain rumors about Stalin and the previous Tsarist Romanov regime seriously). This would then place him, Stalin, as the the very apex of Russia's Petrine Westernization, but also Stalin as the firm assurance that Russia's future trajectory would be different from the West, and return to it's life-giving Source.
#15187909
annatar1914 wrote:@Potemkin , yes indeed, the first and last of his line (unless one were to take some certain rumors about Stalin and the previous Tsarist Romanov regime seriously). This would then place him, Stalin, as the the very apex of Russia's Petrine Westernization, but also Stalin as the firm assurance that Russia's future trajectory would be different from the West, and return to it's life-giving Source.

The Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War represented the final victory of the Westernisers over the Slavophiles, a struggle which had first seriously kicked off under Peter the Great. As the poet Maximilian Voloshin so rightly wrote: "Peter the Great was the first Bolshevik." And Stalin was the last.
#15187914
Potemkin wrote:The Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War represented the final victory of the Westernisers over the Slavophiles, a struggle which had first seriously kicked off under Peter the Great. As the poet Maximilian Voloshin so rightly wrote: "Peter the Great was the first Bolshevik." And Stalin was the last.


@Potemkin ,

I don't know about ''final'', but I can agree with the overall thinking behind what you're saying. Tsar Peter was indeed a godless Bolshevik, and I wonder if even Stalin was more a believer than he was in reality (Stalin's bodyguard recounts private moments where Stalin silently mumbled prayers and crossed himself, when he thought nobody was around or looking, whereas Tsar Peter publicly seemed pious much of the time while privately was an obvious Infidel).

But perhaps this is a reflection of the working of Divine Providence, where absolutely anything is possible, where there is no ''natural cycle'' that can be discerned by finite human minds, another possible error of Philosophy in this regard. People are too complex-we with difficulty can only at times understand ourselves, rarely other persons.

This is possibly why it turns out that the reactionary Joseph de Maistre was right to praise Napoleon at the time. Why it was more traditional and in keeping with the national will to defy Kolchak, defy the Whites and go with the Reds, or at least not obstruct them. For the Tsar's officers to listen to General Brusilov's appeal and rally to the Red Banner in 1920 against the Polish invasion. To rally in 1941 at Stalin's appeal for the same reason. It's like the riots in Moscow and elsewhere against Yeltsin in 1993; thousands of Red Banners carried by the protestors, and the Black/Gold/White flags of the Tsarist Russia too...

To look at these issues on a personal basis, of good and evil in a situational sense, employing discernment...This is where I think a greater understanding can be reached.
#15188775
@Potemkin , @Political Interest , and @Verv , you might enjoy this, could even start a discussion, but I'm going to comment on a video i'd like to ask you to watch;



Now, H.P. Lovecraft, the famous author of the ''Cthulhu Mythos'' works of cosmic horror, was an Atheist, a Nihilist, who posited a philosophy of cosmic indifference that when exposed to it's reality, drives men mad when they see the horrific actual beings who populate the universe, far greater than we. To him, if they sleep and/or are unknown to us, all more the better, for their return is an end to everything Lovecraft saw as good; reason, science, secular civilization with it's progress and it's technology. It's a lampoon of Monotheism and it's ''madness'' as Lovecraft and others would see it, complete with monsters and strange cultists gone raving mad.

I agree with the narrator of the video, in that this is an inversion of the true reality, that the veil we think is reality hides the infinite greatness and holy goodness of God's Glory, that it is our sin and ignorance that darkens reality.

But what I am going to say, is that the Atheist and Nihilist, being entirely darkened by modernity, really do see God and His Holy Ones as Lovecraftian Cosmic Horrors like ''Cthulhu'' and ''Azathoth'' and ''Yog-Sothoth'', etc... Their minds see in this inversion, the projected horror of their guilty consciences, and the horror of the coming Judgement that awaits them. God seems evil and insane to them, a horrific monster. They deny Him because He and His commandments absolutely terrify them and He and His followers judge what they say and do and think and feel. In the pathetic magic of denial, maybe He won't exist, maybe He'll ''go away''and not try to heal them...

Still, it is nonetheless reality that true religion is something that instills a kind of un-neutered, unmediated and unfiltered ''Holy Terror'' and Awe within even believers, because we are all sinners and fall short of the Glory of God, and God will always even in Blessedness be infinitely beyond our comprehension. His fire heals or burns, depending on the perspective, presaging an Abyss of Light or of Darkness.

What do you think?
#15188829
Potemkin wrote:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=40KcrrfbJ6o

"Jeder Engel ist schrecklich." - Rilke, Duino Elegies


@Potemkin ;

I can dig it :D .

But seriously, that kind of Terror is pretty much the norm. I don't think we ordinarily can function properly around Angels without a gibbering terror at their holiness, unless given that grace. I probably would be more suspicious of such beings should they assume a milder and fairer form I could tolerate.
#15188831
annatar1914 wrote:@Potemkin ;

I can dig it :D .

But seriously, that kind of Terror is pretty much the norm. I don't think we ordinarily can function properly around Angels without a gibbering terror at their holiness, unless given that grace. I probably would be more suspicious of such beings should they assume a milder and fairer form I could tolerate.

Anyone who is not terrified by the Divine doesn't really believe in its existence. It is the Lacanian 'Real', the aporia in the continuity of the mundane which reveals its falsity and transience. It is the Abyss into which Nietzsche gazed, and which gazed back at him. Modern Christianity in the West has been castrated and domesticated to avoid making nice middle-class church-goers feel uncomfortable. Someday there will be a reckoning for this.
#15188874
@Potemkin , you wrote;

Anyone who is not terrified by the Divine doesn't really believe in its existence. It is the Lacanian 'Real', the aporia in the continuity of the mundane which reveals its falsity and transience. It is the Abyss into which Nietzsche gazed, and which gazed back at him. Modern Christianity in the West has been castrated and domesticated to avoid making nice middle-class church-goers feel uncomfortable. Someday there will be a reckoning for this.


Note that the general first remark of Angels and the other Holy Ones when meeting regular people is; ''fear not!''. (I can't bring myself to ''fear'' the Angels of Raphael the Italian artist, not of the Archangel he's named after, ironically). But modernity has made most of us kind of unsure of our feelings in the moments the Divine might come upon us. I myself have had those feelings of combined joy and horror, awe and fearful terror, at seeing and sensing some very strange things in my life, the un-explainable by rationalist thought.

The Modern bourgeoisie man is jaded and inert, he's seen the Marvel Universe movies and CGI and all that, he presumes that if he sees anything strange on a video clip, it's ''probably'' fake;



Hmm....I don't know...

People will think they're in ordinary times right up to the edge of the cataclysmic event; ''marrying and being given into marriage''... Point being, you're right, there is a Lacanian ''real Real'' that doesn't lend itself well to human attempts at symbolic rational categorizing.

Some will say that human freedom is jeopardized by these types of conversations we're having, that today's Bourgeoisie existence is only possible with a creed of rationalism and radical secular human self-autonomy (with important exceptions) and self-definition.

But I do not say that. I say that human freedom is cramped and hollowed out by these Modernist creeds, that the very concept of what it means to be human is being obliterated by these concepts. I in fact long for it's passing away. hopefully it's slow for the sake of those within it though, this ''passing away'', a gradual change of mind and heart, mild and merciful. Old Rome took centuries to fall. But I knew people who knew Robert Lincoln, whose father Abraham Lincoln knew men who were in the American Revolutionary War. Things aren't going all that slowly.

In any event, it appears that the Real doesn't care about the refuge of Bourgeoisie rationalist concepts, that IT IS and cannot be abolished, by definition. The real freedom is in knowing that as Dostyoevsky remarked; ''everything is possible''. Apropos of this, I find it interesting however that the ''real Real'' is clothed in the ordinary and mundane quite a bit. Why, the Archangel Raphael (to come back to him) spends most of the story in the book of Tobit disguised as a common human being, just a normal guy who offered to accompany the young lad on his journey, and help him out.

That implies that really we don't have a fucking clue as to what's really going on around us, every single moment of every day. Our attempts at seeing regularity (pushed to an extreme today) and ''natural'' experiences in modernity are really just a veil to keep most of us from absolutely losing our shit, collectively speaking. Would anyone prior to say, even 1800 AD have lost their minds about it? Absolutely not, I think. a good deal of my thinking is searching that dividing line out, the before and after.
#15188949
@Potemkin , @Potemkin , @Verv , @Wellsy , and my other friends;

9-11, COVID-19, those have been the only ''real Real'' events that have ever intruded upon the modern mind in recent decades, from the Modernist Bourgeoisie perspective, and that's only because of their innate power. To deny them is madness, sheer lunacy, but with both events we were caught flat-footed with the significant numbers of post-reality post-truth majority populations.

Try arguing the basic more or less official stories on either, as I do (but with important differences of another type), and see what happens. Nobody wants the REAL in today's Western narrative frame;

That we are more or less defenseless against raids of Jihadis who do not mind dying, so long as they can terrorize the infidel. And so we have the rebuttal;

''what?! They like coca cola and cell phones and toyota trucks but want to destroy the West? That doesn't make sense, it must all be a government conspiracy!"


And that we have been dealing with a modern-day pandemic, that for all our science and technology has killed millions of people around the world, as pandemics too. But then we have those who say;


''it must be a scam, a fake, it's both a Chinese and NWO conspiracy to kill us all, AND a mere mild case of the flu. The vaccines are the real killer''...


Cognitive dissonance. Conspiracy theory is very Modern, filling the void where Heaven and Hell once existed in men's minds. Governments tolerate them because at least they are represented as almost superhuman in their power, and these conspiracy theories offer an alternative to truths we won't allow ourselves to confront....

COVID 19 is real, and so is the positive medical marvel of the vaccines. We will get through this, and few people will have to die if this is understood. But people have to wake up. The response has been dreadful because the pandemic laid bare the basic Modernist ideological contradictions shared between rulers and ruled.


9-11 happened. And devout Muslims carried out the attacks. The government didn't plan 9-11, rather for all it's power, it was neither prepared for the attacks, nor was it later carrying out a serious and intelligent response to those attacks afterwards. We definitely know this now. But it's ideology that it shares with the Western masses gave it no choice in the matter.


And it would be too easy to dismiss these people who think otherwise as stupid. Many of them are not. Some conspiracy theories they don't fall for, while others do. Nor are they unevenly distributed along the political spectrum. Some of them are naive and fall into a particular modern mindset and worldview. Some of them are sick and evil bastards who spread malicious and false stories, for ideological, monetary, and psycho-sexual gratification reasons.

Upon whom the Lord have mercy.
#15189019
annatar1914 wrote:People will think they're in ordinary times right up to the edge of the cataclysmic event; ''marrying and being given into marriage''... Point being, you're right, there is a Lacanian ''real Real'' that doesn't lend itself well to human attempts at symbolic rational categorizing.

Some will say that human freedom is jeopardized by these types of conversations we're having, that today's Bourgeoisie existence is only possible with a creed of rationalism and radical secular human self-autonomy (with important exceptions) and self-definition.

But I do not say that. I say that human freedom is cramped and hollowed out by these Modernist creeds, that the very concept of what it means to be human is being obliterated by these concepts.

This concept of "human freedom" is often a mere empty formality, a superficial legalistic freedom, a symbolic freedom (in the Lacanian sense of the 'Symbolic'). As the famous witticism has it, the law, in its majestic impartiality, forbids the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under railway arches. Lol.

No, human freedom, to be meaningful and active in people's actual lives, must be freedom in a real sense, in the sense of the Lacanian 'Real' - freedom, in its radical sense, is essentially traumatic and cannot be encompassed by symbolic thought-forms or abstract legal 'rights'. The Existentialists understood this point perfectly well, though most bourgeois liberals theorists do not.

I in fact long for it's passing away. hopefully it's slow for the sake of those within it though, this ''passing away'', a gradual change of mind and heart, mild and merciful. Old Rome took centuries to fall. But I knew people who knew Robert Lincoln, whose father Abraham Lincoln knew men who were in the American Revolutionary War. Things aren't going all that slowly.

If you look at it in the broad sweep of human existence, all 200,000+ years of it, we are in the middle of a Revolution right now, a revolution which began about 10,000 years ago with the first farming communities, and which has been ongoing ever since. As Walter Benjamin put it, "A storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.... We call this storm 'Progress'."

In any event, it appears that the Real doesn't care about the refuge of Bourgeoisie rationalist concepts, that IT IS and cannot be abolished, by definition. The real freedom is in knowing that as Dostyoevsky remarked; ''everything is possible''. Apropos of this, I find it interesting however that the ''real Real'' is clothed in the ordinary and mundane quite a bit. Why, the Archangel Raphael (to come back to him) spends most of the story in the book of Tobit disguised as a common human being, just a normal guy who offered to accompany the young lad on his journey, and help him out.

That implies that really we don't have a fucking clue as to what's really going on around us, every single moment of every day. Our attempts at seeing regularity (pushed to an extreme today) and ''natural'' experiences in modernity are really just a veil to keep most of us from absolutely losing our shit, collectively speaking. Would anyone prior to say, even 1800 AD have lost their minds about it? Absolutely not, I think. a good deal of my thinking is searching that dividing line out, the before and after.

The Real is hidden behind the veil of the Symbolic, just as the Divine is hidden behind the veil of the mundane. And just as the veil concealing the Holy of Holies was torn asunder at the moment of Christ's death, the veil of symbolic appearances will be torn away to reveal the Real, the Divine, at the moment the trumpets' blast heralds the Last Judgement. And there will be a new heaven and a new earth....
#15189056
@Potemkin , you replied in such a manner that I have to compliment you. You understand both the Western and the Russian/Magian Civilizations quite well. You said that;

This concept of "human freedom" is often a mere empty formality, a superficial legalistic freedom, a symbolic freedom (in the Lacanian sense of the 'Symbolic'). As the famous witticism has it, the law, in its majestic impartiality, forbids the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under railway arches. Lol.


And this too is where Western Civilization reveals it's flaws quite well; ''freedom'' is understood in a atomized individualistic sense, not in the personalist/collectivist sense of human beings never fully being free in this life unless all in the group are seen to. Freedom without common economic freedom isn't real. As you say, formalized for the intrepid individual to seize in an anti-social sense, which is why everyone honors clever thieves and outlaws in this Western civilization.

No, human freedom, to be meaningful and active in people's actual lives, must be freedom in a real sense, in the sense of the Lacanian 'Real' - freedom, in its radical sense, is essentially traumatic and cannot be encompassed by symbolic thought-forms or abstract legal 'rights'. The Existentialists understood this point perfectly well, though most bourgeois liberals theorists do not.


Yes, it's hard to express in formal terms, isn't it? Even the Russian Anarchist Prince Kropotkin's work cannot be understood without his very Russian assumption that people cooperate in his scheme, not compete, they aren't individualist Anarchists like the West has produced, such as Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, Max Stirner of course, and to a degree, Ayn Rand (to whom the State is a vestigial afterthought in her individualist utopia). No, one would have to turn to Dostyoevsky to express it better, if not formalized by him in a manifesto.

If you look at it in the broad sweep of human existence, all 200,000+ years of it, we are in the middle of a Revolution right now, a revolution which began about 10,000 years ago with the first farming communities, and which has been ongoing ever since. As Walter Benjamin put it, "A storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.... We call this storm 'Progress'."


My dates may differ perhaps, but the general trend is real and similar enough. Contrasting with the Pagan notion of their being no progress at all in an eternal cycle that goes on forever, We have a society that values genuine progress, genuine justice, in this life because it's simply the right thing to do. This of course engenders a reaction. This is to be expected.

The Real is hidden behind the veil of the Symbolic, just as the Divine is hidden behind the veil of the mundane. And just as the veil concealing the Holy of Holies was torn asunder at the moment of Christ's death, the veil of symbolic appearances will be torn away to reveal the Real, the Divine, at the moment the trumpets' blast heralds the Last Judgement. And there will be a new heaven and a new earth....


It's that expectation that marks out a clear difference between worlds, the worlds that people live in. Western ''Progress'' is exemplified or embodied in the ideal of ''Social Democracy'' or Liberalism, where a individualist anthropocentrism dominates. As if a 40 hour workweek could satisfy the human soul...

No. Rather truly free men will shatter the whole thing and leave it behind them. How this fits (keeping in mind your suggestion of it's eschatological dimensions) with Orthodoxy and it's salvific aims I'll try to cover soon.
#15189292
@Political Interest , @Potemkin , @Wellsy , @Verv ;


I always liked the writings of Lev Shestov, the Russian philosopher who despised philosophy, the Jew who converted to Christ, the writer of a philosophy of existential despair who had a boundless optimism for anything being possible, with God. But... He makes me uneasy, it's hard to stand right where he stands;

19 - ABRAHAM AND SOCRATES

When God says to Abraham, "Leave your country, your friends and your father's house, and go to the land that I will show you," Abraham obeys and "leaves without knowing where he is going." And it is said in Scripture that Abraham believed God, Who imputed it to him for righteousness. All this is according to the Bible. But common sense judges quite otherwise. He who goes without knowing where he is going is a weak and frivolous man, and a faith which is founded on nothing (now faith is always founded on nothing, for it is faith itself that wishes to "found") cannot be in any way "imputed for righteousness." The same conviction, clearly and neatly formulated and raised to the level of method, reigns in science, which was born of common sense. Science, in fact, is science only so long as it does not admit faith and always demands of man that he realize what he is doing and know where he is going. Scientific philosophy, or to put it another way, the philosophy which utilizes in its search for its truths the same methods that science employs in its search for its truths also wishes to know where it is going and where it is leading its adherents. It follows from this that faith is distinguished from science, above everything else, by its methods.

The believer goes forward, without looking to the right or to the left, without asking where he is going, without calculating. The scientist will not take a step without looking around him, without asking, and is afraid to budge from his place. He wishes to know beforehand where he will arrive. Which of these two methods leads us to "truth?" One can discuss this matter, but it is beyond doubt that he alone will be able to attain the promised land who, like Abraham, decides to go forward without knowing where he is going. And if philosophy wishes to attain the promised land (Kant himself, you will recall, said that metaphysics must reveal for man God, freedom and the immortality of the soul), it must adopt the method of Abraham and not that of Socrates and teach men at all events to go forward without calculating, without seeing anything beforehand, without even knowing where they are going.

Is it possible that such a philosophy should become the philosophy of the future? Or is this rather the philosophy of a far-off, forever lost past - the philosophy of the ancient and blessed wise men who (to recall once more the terms of Plato) were better than we and lived closer to God?



Or these frightful words;

9 - THE SOURCE OF METAPHYSICAL TRUTHS

Ipse conditor et creator mundi semel jussit, semper paret. "The Master and Creator of the world Himself commanded once and obeys always," says Seneca - repeating, as is his custom, the words of others. But if this is so, if God commanded once in order thereafter to content Himself with obeying this single order, then, even in that case, the fact that He commanded, be it only once, is much more important for Him and for us than the obedience to which He has ever since kept.

It is not obedience that characterizes the power of God and His role in the universe. The weakest of beings, even the inanimate objects of the inorganic world, are also capable of obedience. And yet our knowledge is devoted exclusively to the study of the laws of phenomena, as if free creation were something criminal or shameful, so that men and God Himself must not think of it or, at the very least, must not speak of it any more. All truth for us flows from the parere, even metaphysical truth. And yet, the only source of metaphysical truth is the jubere; and as long as men will not participate in the jubere it will seem to them that metaphysics is impossible. Kant turned away from metaphysics only because he had caught in it a glimpse of the terrible jubere, that jubere which he translated (and rightly) by a term which everyone holds in horror - "the arbitrary."


I reflect on his words particularly on Neitzsche;

28 - ON THE SOURCES OF CONCEPTIONS OF THE WORLD

The appearance of man on earth is an impious audacity. God created man in His own image and likeness and, having created him, blessed him. If you accept the first of these two theses, your philosophical task will be catharsis (purification) or, to put it another way, you will try to kill in yourself your particular being, your so-called "ego," and aspire to be dissolved in the "supreme" idea. The fundamental problem for you will be the ethical problem, and ontology will be in a way a derivative of the ethical. Your ideal will become the kingdom of reason to which all who are prepared to renounce the primordial jubere (the right to command) and to see the destiny of man in the parere (obedience) free access.

If, on the other hand, you accept the second thesis, the fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil will cease to tempt you; you will aspire to that which is "beyond good and evil." The anamnesis, the remembrance of that which your ancestor Adam contemplated in paradise, will not stop troubling you. Hymns to the glory of reason will appear tiresome, and in the midst of your self-evidences you will feel yourself as if in prison. Plato felt himself shut up in a cave; Plotinus was ashamed of his body; the men of the Bible were ashamed and afraid of their reason.


There is every reason to believe that Nietzsche turned away from Christianity because the Christians, taught by Aristotle and the Stoics, completely forgot the primordial jubere and remembered only the parere which follows it. That is why Nietzsche spoke of the morality of slaves and the morality of masters. He could have, he should have, spoken as well of the truth of masters (of men to whom it is given to command) and the truth of slaves (of those whose destiny is to obey).


I could also mention in this connection Dostoevsky, but no one will believe me. Everyone is convinced, in fact, that Dostoevsky wrote only the several dozen pages devoted to the starets Zossima, to Alyosha Karamazov, etc., and the articles in the Journal of a Writer where he explains the theories of the Slavophiles. As for Notes from the Underground, as for The Idiot, as for The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, as for the nine-tenths of all that constitutes the complete works of Dostoevsky - all that was not written by him but by a certain "personage with a regressive physiognomy" and only in order to permit Dostoevsky to cover him with shame.

So profound is our faith in the parere (that is what we express in affirming that everything happens "naturally"), so great is our fear of everything, no matter what it may be, that recalls even from afar the jubere (the miraculous, the supernatural)!



And Shestov says the ''quiet part'' of the philosophers out loud;

32 - THE HUMAN TRUTH AND THE LIE TO GOD

Descartes affirmed that God could not be a deceiver, that the commandment "Thou shalt not lie" is observed by God also. However, God does deceive man. That is a fact. He shows man a sky - a blue, solid crystalline dome - which does not exist. Thousands of years have been required for man to free himself from this lie and to recognize the real truth. God often deceives us, and how difficult it is to escape from these deceptions! Yet, if God never deceived us, if no man ever saw the blue sky but knew only an infinite space, empty or filled with ether, if, instead of hearing sounds, men only counted waves - it is probable that they could not have gained much. It may even be that they would have ended by feeling disheartened by their truths and would have agreed to recognize that God may violate His own commandment.

Or would they not have agreed to this? Is the truth above all? Perhaps another idea would then have come to their minds: Is the truth really that which men themselves find, while that which God shows them is only a lie? To put it another way, may it not be that the sky is nevertheless a crystalline dome, the earth is flat, and sounds themselves exist and are essentially different from movement? May it not be that colors obey, not the laws of physics, but the will of God? Is it not possible that man may one day be called to this "knowledge," that he may renounce his demonstrated truths and return to the indemonstrable truths? And - who knows - will he not then find that the commandment "Thou shalt not lie" has only a relative and temporary value? No, it is not better to die than to speak falsehood, even if it be only once, as Kant taught; but it is better not to be born at all than to live in the world of our truths. In other words, a time perhaps will come (Plato many times spoke of it, but no one listened to him) when the "better" will triumph over our truths and our self-evidences.



Here in fact is as he said; ''Athens and Jerusalem''.

Spengler's ''Apollonian'' and ''Faustian'' civilization against the ''Magian'' or Monotheist civilizational group. This is how the Barbarian cuts the Gordian Knot which so vexxed the Philosophers, the Riddle of the Sphinx solved by a greater than Orpheus...
#15189580
annatar1914 wrote:Recently by some strange twist of fate, I have been reading Lev Shestov (as an aside, Potemkin Verv, you guys might be familiar with him too) , and had a 'weird' urge to familiarize myself with his arguments against modern philosophy all the way down to the Greeks and Socrates....

I then entered into, again by an unplanned twist of fate, a kind of private polemic with a gentleman who is something of a modern conservative philosopher, who as it turns out practically worships the Greek Philosophers... It did not end well.

And reading your replies Political Interest, it strikes me that I have been talking past people when confronting the problem of Modernity....Socrates and his ilk built Modernity, 2400 years ago It began. It is not a revival of ''Paganism'' as such, and Hellenism is the construction of Greco-Roman Philosophy. It unsettles all relations. The Athenians who executed Socrates had a point.

Greek Philosophy blasphemously asks if anything is good because the holy gods decree it,or are the gods holy because they follow ''the good'' out of an iron Necessity which they themselves cannot change. I can tell you that nobody before Socrates believed in the latter.


It always struck me as blaphemous how they could question whether gods were good merely because they followed the good outside themselves. My understanding is that the good comes from the Lord Himself, and by definition He cannot be anything but good or the source of all good. Good is what is defined by God Almighty and that by definition will always be just and true. We know that what He decrees is good for the simple reason that if we were to live by the commands of the Lord we would be able to live a dignified life. All of the commands of the Lord exist for the dignity and edification of mankind, none of them reduce us. We can recognise this good in nature, the good that the Lord enjoins on us is within the realm of what naturally appeals to us in the realms of love, stability and the depth of man's soul, for example.

If there is some type of nebulous good outside the realm of the gods then what is its source and what defines it? And if the gods decided to stop following it we would all be in severe trouble.

But then you know that the Socratic dialogue tends to spiral without necessarily reaching any conclusions. There is an irony in this in that it illustrates a lack of concrete certainty in the world, that is to say logic does not always lead to the truth, even by Socratic standards of discourse. There is always a "But, what if," in these types of discussions, or some type of counter factual.

annatar1914 wrote:Dostyoevsky said somewhere that ''with God all things are possible'', that with God, nothing is impossible to Him.


And this is the basis of monotheism.

annatar1914 wrote:Who the Devil are we to limit the possible and the real? To shorten the Hand of God, however else we may think and believe of Him?


Logic is not the only measure of reality. It could be that reality is beyond our full grasp, certainly beyond logic. There are many aspects of life and the universe that we can't understand with a logical mind and so why would the fundamental nature of reality be grasped by logic. Even in day to day life there is not always a logical conclusion to what we think. If we were to think in purely logical terms, if reality were purely logical we would not be human. The human experience is not linear and so why would the nature of the reality or even the divine necessarily be linear. It is even more blapshemous to think that we could reduce a discussion over the nature of the divine and what the Lord is capable of to the mere framework of logic. There is something even profane and worldly in logic.

You mentioned Shestov and although I'm not very well read in philosophy, or of arguably much else, having read nothing of him either, it looks like he believed that life is paradoxical. My own empirical experience of reality has taught me this is true. I get no answers for many questions of why the world is the way it is or why events happen in our lives or in the wider world. It just is, and we can't explain it. Sometimes life feels like we are being dragged through a storm. There is a feeling that the world cannot be fully understood, reasoned with or grasped. According to Wikipedia Shestov was appreciated by Albert Camus and Camus' concept of the Absurd looks vaguely similar.

Shestov has expressed very well a lot of what I think and feel. Just simply "Why?" but then receiving no answer to such a question, both on the level of the human person in one's own lived experience and the wider nature of the world.

There is however a consolation, and that consolation is Christ.

annatar1914 wrote:Political Interest, what we discuss is a sealed book, is it not?

The implications are staggering. As you've been saying, no basis in actual reality, am I right? They can speak of''material conditions'' but fail to understand the ontological and vital dimension that provides the foundation for what they call ''matter''. They live in a different and in my opinion highly unreal Cosmos. There then can be no common polity or social order with them. I used to make fun of the thinkers of the traditionalist school, ambiguous and nebulous their thought seemed. But they're saying the same thing many people have always said, most of Humanity; ''what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?''


A lot of the philosophies of the modern era are impositions based on false assumptions. They're dogma that is repeated again and again, and people listen to this because it becomes popular or gains traction in intellectual circles.

The Anglo-American intelligentsia love grand explanations and theories (sociology etc). This of course includes the British and American intellectual classes, academics and intelligentsia. They always need grand theories and explanations of the how and why. This explains why Structuralism is so popular in the USA and UK, as well as in other Anglophone countries. The thinking is sequential, and there is always an underlying necessity to all issues and questions. For example, they always believe that a person is the product of his background, that culture and class and all of these other factors shape a person to an almost immutable level. They can't understand someone choosing a decision or idea outside what they would expect them to do. They think in the realm of the theoretical, through frameworks and grand narratives. Yes, the academics and intellectuals love narratives. In many cases these theories don't work when applied because they are not scientific but the academics of a lot of these Western countries view them as such. It's pure virtuality in a lot of cases.

annatar1914 wrote:Again with Lev Shestov, (as with Tertullian and others), about the trials of St. Job (in an essay about Kirkegaard) ;

Thank God that God vindicated St. Job's point of view and specifically condemned his philosopher friends, restoring St. Job himself and everything and everyone else back to him, with interest!


It's a type of necessity that leads to humiliation.

annatar1914 wrote:What does that mean now, with COVID and the vaccines and the role of government, the geopolitics? I took the vaccine as a gesture out of love for my fellow man, and as a medicine made by healers. It's that simple. It no longer has to do with mental categories that have become universalized and allegedly reified in the world. But none of that exists.''Necessity/Fate'' is just a Social Construct.


The politicisation of vaccines has created a type of necessity in the characterisation of pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine.

annatar1914 wrote:
Emphasis in bold.

1. follow Democracy and not one-man rule

2. don't believe in Fate/Necessity

3. Believe in ''One Lord of All'' Who determines what is to be.

4. Have barbarian simplicity of character and are not base or evil-doers

Hmm, one might think these are connected traits?


These types of peoples didn't follow grand elaborate dogmas that had no basis in reality. The simplicity of their world view was derived from lived reality, it wasn't constructed in universities or in a philosopher's study.

annatar1914 wrote:@Potemkin , @Political Interest , this post is directed at you guys, because I am having a problem with (as you know) with Philosophy, but specifically with the ''Law'' of Non-Contradiction;


''That 'A' and 'Not-A' cannot be identical in the same time and place''


I am really offended by It, the more I ponder upon it, especially as a Christian. Are Marxists with their dialectic offended by It too? It says that everything bows down to ''Necessity''even God, that that which is dead remains dead, that ''out of Nothing, Nothing comes'' (and that therefore there cannot have been a creation from nothing, and thus the cosmos is eternal in duration in some form or another), and that all the heresies of Christianity and Islam and Judaism have stemmed from the Greek logic and philosophy so-called, a devotion to rationalist principles by the wise and learned and the great instead of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I'm seeing the outlines of a discussion where it's not just misanthropes like Nietzsche and Ludovici and Rand that are the problem on the Right (yes, these are the ''Right''!), but Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Kant and Hegel are too.

I'm having problems with all of them really, the so-called ''laws of thought'';

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_th ... ional_laws

''Whatever is, is''.

'Everything must either be or not be.

"two or more contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time"


Perhaps in the realm of logic, yes, but the fundamental nature of the universe is not necessarily logical. If God wills that A and Not-A be identicial in the same time and place who are we to protest? The Lord Almighty is the origin of the nature of being is He not?

annatar1914 wrote:You might appreciate this post, let's see, maybe I can spin a good conversation off of this.

It is for whatever reason, rare to encounter someone on the Right, even the ''Far Right'', who is quite educated, intelligent, and has a coherent world view that is logical, even if I happen to disagree with them.

On the other hand, it is easy to encounter someone on the Left, even the ''Far Left'', who is educated and intelligent and has a coherent logical worldview even if I disagree with what they're saying.

But my post here is more about the former, not the latter. What I discover, quite frequently with genuine Right Wing Intellectuals, is that they subscribe to what is practically an esoteric doctrine and an exoteric doctrine. And the outer expressed beliefs (while explained by the genuine hidden ones)seem to be not exactly in full synchronicity with the observable truth and known facts. They will talk about the Pillow Guy and the 2020 stolen election, and somewhere in there there will be a coded reference to something Juilus Evola wrote, for example. I was briefly submerged in the Far Right, so I know. But it's the distinction between inner and outer doctrines which is interesting to me.

On the Left, they will say; ''well, the people can't see the truth, but maybe someday perhaps they will'', and the doctrine is open to see for all.

On the Right, the attitude seems to be; ''well, they can't handle the truth, but this is something which we need to proceed with regardless of popularity or not". And the ''Truth'', told in strict confidence, turns out to be something like ''You know, the Holocaust didn't happen, at least like they say it did'', or '' I think we both understand that some races are inferior to others, it's obvious''. That kind of talk.

I could be wrong, but to me it appears that the outer beliefs are just a kind of tactical arrangement, which may or may not bear any relation to reality, to the truth and the known facts, while the inner and more hidden beliefs are the ones which are static and unyielding and provide a foundation to build the rest upon. Or is this a feature not just of the Right, but all across the modern political spectrum?

I ask this because frequently Right-Wingers project this very esoteric and exoteric belief arrangement onto the Left, making almost every Liberal out to be a secret Communist or Socialist of some kind. Or is that sort of the truth also, maybe not so much affiliation but in sympathies?

Of course, I do understand that most people on the political fringes know that their views are not too acceptable with most people, and that to be politically active at all means that at least publically they have to present a more ''moderate'' political front. But-I think-I'm trying to hit on something a little deeper than that...


The leftists have a very broad body of theory, it is much more laid out and perhaps even academic. That is perhaps because it's basis is quite material, tangible, including questions over the means of production. The right wing, especially of the sort you mentioned in your post seems much more mystical. There was a lot the right wing had to hide from the people during the 20th century because a lot of it would have been extremely unpalatable to most sane people.

annatar1914 wrote:Now, H.P. Lovecraft, the famous author of the ''Cthulhu Mythos'' works of cosmic horror, was an Atheist, a Nihilist, who posited a philosophy of cosmic indifference that when exposed to it's reality, drives men mad when they see the horrific actual beings who populate the universe, far greater than we. To him, if they sleep and/or are unknown to us, all more the better, for their return is an end to everything Lovecraft saw as good; reason, science, secular civilization with it's progress and it's technology. It's a lampoon of Monotheism and it's ''madness'' as Lovecraft and others would see it, complete with monsters and strange cultists gone raving mad.

I agree with the narrator of the video, in that this is an inversion of the true reality, that the veil we think is reality hides the infinite greatness and holy goodness of God's Glory, that it is our sin and ignorance that darkens reality.

But what I am going to say, is that the Atheist and Nihilist, being entirely darkened by modernity, really do see God and His Holy Ones as Lovecraftian Cosmic Horrors like ''Cthulhu'' and ''Azathoth'' and ''Yog-Sothoth'', etc... Their minds see in this inversion, the projected horror of their guilty consciences, and the horror of the coming Judgement that awaits them. God seems evil and insane to them, a horrific monster. They deny Him because He and His commandments absolutely terrify them and He and His followers judge what they say and do and think and feel. In the pathetic magic of denial, maybe He won't exist, maybe He'll ''go away''and not try to heal them...

Still, it is nonetheless reality that true religion is something that instills a kind of un-neutered, unmediated and unfiltered ''Holy Terror'' and Awe within even believers, because we are all sinners and fall short of the Glory of God, and God will always even in Blessedness be infinitely beyond our comprehension. His fire heals or burns, depending on the perspective, presaging an Abyss of Light or of Darkness.

What do you think?


If a person is to be truly religious there must be an element of fear, because it is not a casual interest or subject of conversation. It concerns the question of eternity and the place of an individual within such an eternity. And it is a question of the moral quality of man, whether he is good or bad, whether he is redeemed or condemned. These are not light questions. Of course the fear should not be absolute or so consuming that there is no hope, but it should be enough to keep a person on the straight and narrow. Perhaps serious atheists are this way because as you've said, they are fearful of such spiritual realities.
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@Political Interest , thank you for your thoughtful reply, my friend. Ishall try to give your thoughts the attention they deserve. You said regarding Socrates old question about the holiness of the gods that;

It always struck me as blasphemous how they could question whether gods were good merely because they followed the good outside themselves. My understanding is that the good comes from the Lord Himself, and by definition He cannot be anything but good or the source of all good. Good is what is defined by God Almighty and that by definition will always be just and true. We know that what He decrees is good for the simple reason that if we were to live by the commands of the Lord we would be able to live a dignified life. All of the commands of the Lord exist for the dignity and edification of mankind, none of them reduce us. We can recognise this good in nature, the good that the Lord enjoins on us is within the realm of what naturally appeals to us in the realms of love, stability and the depth of man's soul, for example.


When you bring in the internal state of being of the Holy Ones, the ''gods'', so to speak, it becomes just how clearly blasphemous it really is. God by definition as you say is All-Good, else He isn't God.

If there is some type of nebulous good outside the realm of the gods then what is its source and what defines it? And if the gods decided to stop following it we would all be in severe trouble.


Indeed, but dispassion is one of their traits. Once they make a choice, that choice is made irrevocably because they have all the intellect to understand all the ramifications of their choices.

But then you know that the Socratic dialogue tends to spiral without necessarily reaching any conclusions. There is an irony in this in that it illustrates a lack of concrete certainty in the world, that is to say logic does not always lead to the truth, even by Socratic standards of discourse. There is always a "But, what if," in these types of discussions, or some type of counter factual.


I think it says somewhere that the wicked ''go about in circles'', never quite having an ability or desire to get to resolve the issues. They much prefer ''truth'' as an ideal, not Truth, as a Person. Pilate said to Christ; ''what is truth?'', in the manner of Pagan philosophy, not ''Who is Truth?'' which is the Monotheist question of Questions.

On ''all things are possible with God'', you said;


And this is the basis of monotheism.


It is indeed. Man and his ''reason'' wants to restrict God if not abolish Him altogether, because then they become the masters and arbiters of reality, not Him.


Logic is not the only measure of reality. It could be that reality is beyond our full grasp, certainly beyond logic. There are many aspects of life and the universe that we can't understand with a logical mind and so why would the fundamental nature of reality be grasped by logic. Even in day to day life there is not always a logical conclusion to what we think. If we were to think in purely logical terms, if reality were purely logical we would not be human. The human experience is not linear and so why would the nature of the reality or even the divine necessarily be linear. It is even more blapshemous to think that we could reduce a discussion over the nature of the divine and what the Lord is capable of to the mere framework of logic. There is something even profane and worldly in logic.


I agree that it's Blasphemous, questions like ''could God create a weight too heavy for Him to lift?'' and similar nonsense.

You mentioned Shestov and although I'm not very well read in philosophy, or of arguably much else, having read nothing of him either, it looks like he believed that life is paradoxical. My own empirical experience of reality has taught me this is true. I get no answers for many questions of why the world is the way it is or why events happen in our lives or in the wider world. It just is, and we can't explain it. Sometimes life feels like we are being dragged through a storm. There is a feeling that the world cannot be fully understood, reasoned with or grasped. According to Wikipedia Shestov was appreciated by Albert Camus and Camus' concept of the Absurd looks vaguely similar.


I take a certain comfort in it, I truly do. I ravaged my brain and my health even, seeking to know everything that I could possibly know. I realized with ''The Preacher'' in the Book of Ecclesiastes that it's all vanity and vexation of spirit. You can't know everything or control everything. It's brought back Wonder into my life, Mystery.

Shestov has expressed very well a lot of what I think and feel. Just simply "Why?" but then receiving no answer to such a question, both on the level of the human person in one's own lived experience and the wider nature of the world.

There is however a consolation, and that consolation is Christ.


Shestov wrote a book called ''in Job's Balances'', which goes some length into aspects of that. You know, Job's friends said everything the world would say; on some level, Job had it coming to him, somehow. But he didn't deserve what happened to him nor the aftermath, Job's persecution by his friends. And God vindicated him His faithful servant, and not their Philosophy.


A lot of the philosophies of the modern era are impositions based on false assumptions. They're dogma that is repeated again and again, and people listen to this because it becomes popular or gains traction in intellectual circles.


Oh sure, people are ready enough to accept opinions which help rationalize what they're doing at the moment.

The Anglo-American intelligentsia love grand explanations and theories (sociology etc). This of course includes the British and American intellectual classes, academics and intelligentsia. They always need grand theories and explanations of the how and why. This explains why Structuralism is so popular in the USA and UK, as well as in other Anglophone countries. The thinking is sequential, and there is always an underlying necessity to all issues and questions. For example, they always believe that a person is the product of his background, that culture and class and all of these other factors shape a person to an almost immutable level. They can't understand someone choosing a decision or idea outside what they would expect them to do. They think in the realm of the theoretical, through frameworks and grand narratives. Yes, the academics and intellectuals love narratives. In many cases these theories don't work when applied because they are not scientific but the academics of a lot of these Western countries view them as such. It's pure virtuality in a lot of cases.



Deceiving and being deceived.


It's a type of necessity that leads to humiliation.


Sure, man cannot live as a cog in a senseless machine, to no higher purpose in life.


The politicisation of vaccines has created a type of necessity in the characterisation of pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine.


It has. I wonder how long this will last after the Pandemic itself is gone?


On the early Slavs and other barbarians, and what they were known for;

These types of peoples didn't follow grand elaborate dogmas that had no basis in reality. The simplicity of their world view was derived from lived reality, it wasn't constructed in universities or in a philosopher's study.


Absolutely, closer to reality and less easy to fool.


On the basic ''axioms'' of logic and philosophy;

Perhaps in the realm of logic, yes, but the fundamental nature of the universe is not necessarily logical. If God wills that A and Not-A be identicial in the same time and place who are we to protest? The Lord Almighty is the origin of the nature of being is He not?


Exactly so, glad you agree! If God is free, since He commands, His people and servants are free also!


On the intellectuals of the Right;

The leftists have a very broad body of theory, it is much more laid out and perhaps even academic. That is perhaps because it's basis is quite material, tangible, including questions over the means of production. The right wing, especially of the sort you mentioned in your post seems much more mystical. There was a lot the right wing had to hide from the people during the 20th century because a lot of it would have been extremely unpalatable to most sane people.


Well put, I think that's the case.

On the Lovecraftian terror of God;

If a person is to be truly religious there must be an element of fear, because it is not a casual interest or subject of conversation. It concerns the question of eternity and the place of an individual within such an eternity. And it is a question of the moral quality of man, whether he is good or bad, whether he is redeemed or condemned. These are not light questions. Of course the fear should not be absolute or so consuming that there is no hope, but it should be enough to keep a person on the straight and narrow. Perhaps serious atheists are this way because as you've said, they are fearful of such spiritual realities.


These are questions of serious people, and perhaps not in the state of leisurely repose of the philosophers either, but people living out in the real world, closer to God.
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