I Reject, I Affirm. ''Raising the Black Flag'' in an Age of Devilry. - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14991835
Hindsite wrote:Freedom and Capitalism is the only system that has been tried that produces wealth. A socialist or communist government has never worked when tried because it reduces freedom and depends on Capitalism to fund it. It seems good until it runs out of other people's money, which we see happening again in Venezuela. We can disagree with human greed, as did Jesus, without rejecting the only system that produces wealth to reduce poverty and suffering.
Praise and glory to the Lord.


1. Venezuela isn't Socialist, it is Capitalist/Corporatist. In other words, an Elite both public government and private wealth work together closely to enrich each other and keep working people down while possibly also bribing them a little with social welfare programs. To be more exact, a form of Populist-Nationalist Fascism in Venezuela's case.

2. Capitalism doesn't produce wealth, it extracts it from Labor and creates more poverty and more suffering. You just don't see it because of Globalization, where Labor works for slave wages in faraway lands to lower production costs and increase profits.

3. Justice and Equity are the proper aims of society, not Riches and Power,
#14991840
annatar1914 wrote:1. Venezuela isn't Socialist, it is Capitalist/Corporatist. In other words, an Elite both public government and private wealth work together closely to enrich each other and keep working people down while possibly also bribing them a little with social welfare programs. To be more exact, a form of Populist-Nationalist Fascism in Venezuela's case.

2. Capitalism doesn't produce wealth, it extracts it from Labor and creates more poverty and more suffering. You just don't see it because of Globalization, where Labor works for slave wages in faraway lands to lower production costs and increase profits.

3. Justice and Equity are the proper aims of society, not Riches and Power,

You are very ignorant on socialism, capitalism, and economics. In my opinion, there can be no justice and equity without riches and power. It seems to me that God has already determined that.
#14991843
Hindsite wrote:You are very ignorant on socialism, capitalism, and economics. In my opinion, there can be no justice and equity without riches and power. It seems to me that God has already determined that.


You can leave now and stop shitting on this thread. Did Christ when He was Incarnate as a Poor Man of Nazareth have ''riches and power''? And yet He is the very Model of Justice and Equity, you wicked man.
#14991845
annatar1914 wrote:You can leave now and stop shitting on this thread. Did Christ when He was Incarnate as a Poor Man of Nazareth have ''riches and power''? And yet He is the very Model of Justice and Equity, you wicked man.

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
(Matthew 28:18 KJV)

Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all.
1 Chronicles 29:12 KJV)

HalleluYah
#14991847
Hindsite wrote:And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
(Matthew 28:18 KJV)

Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all.
1 Chronicles 29:12 KJV)

HalleluYah


The Devil can quote Scripture, and does. What you said is true, but does not speak to what we are discussing, for Christ Himself;


…6Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross.…


Philippians Chapter 2

And what did Christ say of the Rich Wealthy Ruler (who is ideal to you and to the world! But not to God);

Matthew 19:16-26 New International Version (NIV)
The Rich and the Kingdom of God

16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

18 “Which ones?” he inquired.

Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,’[a] and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’

20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
[b]
21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”


22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”


25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”

26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”


Emphasis in bold.

God Himself has different standards than you do. Now, kindly leave. I won't have someone talking on a thread I start and insult me without a complete apology to my satisfaction, you Heathen.
#14991849
annatar1914 wrote:The Devil can quote Scripture, and does.

Yes, just as you do. But tell me, when Jesus emptied Himself, did the Jews and the Romans give him justice and equity by crucifying him? I think not.

annatar1914 wrote:God Himself has different standards than you do. Now, kindly leave. I won't have someone talking on a thread I start and insult me without a complete apology to my satisfaction, you Heathen.

God has higher standards than both of us. However, my point is that your propaganda on socialism, capitalism, and economics is false. I apologize that my opinion appears to you as an insult, but I believe truth triumphs.
Praise the Lord.
#14991851
Anyway, back on track.

I will be looking at things from a different perspective than what I have called the ''Faustian'' Culture, or the Western/Modern Civilization, which began in the 11th century and which dominates the 21st century.

Actually maybe different than the way I have expressed things in the past, but basic to my own faith and understanding of the world. And of all the modern thinkers in recent times, the one who has best differentiated between cultures and expressed their inner being in an accessible way has been Oswald Spengler. For a time, I will be quoting from him and commenting on his insights, while remaining very true to Patristic Christianity. It will be interesting at least to me, and will serve I think to illuminate how very distant modern western Christianity is from it's roots.

I am an Orthodox Christian, and from my vantage point I can see that even with their unfortunate errors, Islam, Judaism, Zoroasterianism, and other smaller groups are much closer in spirit and style to the meanings of Christianity than the Western varieties, because Christianity grew out of a worldview shared across a common cultural zone, which Spengler calls; the ''Magian''.

The Germanic peoples who conquered and settled in the Western half of the Roman Empire managed over a period of about 500 years later, to make another Christianity which while very much the most common around the world, has less to do with the genuine Christianity in it's original form. It is probably an irony of history that a devout Muslim in some ways, perhaps in the Western world, might theoretically be more in tune with the true faith of Christianity if exposed to it, than some ''church'' in the West run by some TV huckster preacher pushing a strange and egoistic self-help ''Gospel''...

So, that will be my task for a little while.
#14991855
Yes, just as you do. But tell me, when Jesus emptied Himself, did the Jews and the Romans give him justice and equity by crucifying him? I think not.


I'm talking about Christ's Justice and Equity, and how as Christians we are called to follow Him and His Example. The Rich throughout Scripture, if they are regarded well it is in spite of their wealth, not because of it. Plus, we should know as adult Christians that a man's true wealth is in his goodwill to others, his wisdom, and the exercise of the Beatitudes.

God has higher standards than both of us. However, my point is that your propaganda on socialism, capitalism, and economics is false. I apologize that my opinion appears to you as an insult, but I believe truth triumphs.


Truth does triumph, and as President Lincoln said once; ''Right is Might'', so we'll put it all to the test of real world action. Again, i'm on the side of the Poor Man, Who showed His solidarity with the working man by becoming one of us, not one of them. As the Mother of God said;


“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
47
my spirit rejoices in God my savior.
48
For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness;
behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.
49
The Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50
His mercy is from age to age
to those who fear him.
51
He has shown might with his arm,
dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.
52
He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones
but lifted up the lowly.
53
The hungry he has filled with good things;
the rich he has sent away empty.

54
He has helped Israel his servant,
remembering his mercy,
55
according to his promise to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”




Praise the Lord.


I would ask you that if you post on my threads in the future, please refrain from putting this after your remarks, especially those of an explicitly political nature. I am happy to share my own prayer and worship forms, but modern secular politics is at heart a dirty and messy business, full of strife and contention, and it just doesn't sit well with me personally. You'll note I don't talk much about American politics, there's a reason for that.

But I do praise the Lord at all times, especially the ''Jesus Prayer'', yet silently;

''Lord Jesus Christ, Only Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner''. Which is probably the earliest prayer in the Christian Faith there is. But I do it silently, lest I be taken for a Pharisee who trumpets about to be seen by others. They have their reward in this life, but not the next. No accusation there, but I ask that you respect me as a human being in this matter. Thank you.
#14991920
@Potemkin, @Victoribus Spolia, @Political Interest;

I promised at least a small reflection on the work of Oswald Spengler, and I was struck by this quote;

(Quote from: Spengler vol I p.378-379)

Theoria means image, vision, and it is this that makes a Nature-law out of a figure-and-letter formula. Everything exact is in itself meaningless, and every physical observation is so constituted that it proves the basis of a certain number of imaged presuppositions; and the effect of its successful issue is to make these presuppositions more convincing than ever. Apart from these, the result consists merely of empty figures. But in fact we do not and cannot get apart from them. Even if an investigator puts on one side every hypothesis that he knows as such, as soon as he sets his thought to work on the supposedly clear task, he is not controlling but being controlled by the unconscious form of it, for in living activity he is always a man of his Culture, of his age, of his school and of his tradition. Faith and "knowledge" are only two species of inner certitude, but of the two faith is the older and it dominates all the conditions of knowing, be they never so exact. And thus it is theories and not pure numbers that are the support of all natural science.


So, we find in a ''Faustian'' or ''Western'' Culture, that since the primary thought form of that Culture is Infinite soaring extension of the ''I'' into Space and Time, the Cosmology and the measurement of that Culture's Cosmology is one of infinite worlds circling infinite suns in a Copernican dance, the Universe of Giordano Bruno, with the Earth as an infinitely small speck by comparison. The goal of Faustian/Western Man is to pierce that Void and explore that infinite space forever, with our machines and technology making us gods ourselves as we exploit the limitless cornucopia of the Cosmos to feed all our desires....

Impressive in it's Titanism, it's Promethean, even Luciferian, scope isn't it? Doesn't make it true.
#14991939
For those of us who are at best a little rusty on their Spengler, he looks mainly at three different cultures to examine their differences and their similarities; the ''Apollonian'', or Ancient Greek. The ''Faustian'', or Western Man, and the ''Magian'' or sometimes ''Arabian'' Culture, which covers the Middle Eastern Culture zone. A brief introduction of them and their thought-forms;

Quote from: Spengler vol I p.183

Quote:
Henceforth we shall designate the soul of the Classical Culture, which chose the sensuously-present individual body as the ideal type of the extended, by the name (familiarized by Nietzsche) of the Apollinian. In opposition to it we have the Faustian soul, whose prime-symbol is pure and limitless space, and whose "body" is the Western Culture that blossomed forth with the birth of the Romanesque style in the loth century in the Northern plain between the Elbe and the Tagus. The nude statue is Apollinian, the art of the fugue Faustian. Apollinian are: mechanical statics, the sensuous cult of the Olympian gods, the politically individual city-states of Greece, the doom of Oedipus and the phallus-symbol. Faustian are: Galileian dynamics, Catholic and Protestant dogmatics, the great dynasties of the Baroque with their cabinet diplomacy, the destiny of Lear and the Madonna-ideal from Dante's Beatrice to the last line of Faust II. The painting that defines the individual body by contours is Apollinian, that which forms'space by means of light and shade is Faustian this is the difference between the fresco of Polygnotus and the oil painting of Rembrandt. The Apollinian existence is that of the Greek who describes his ego as soma and who lacks all idea of an inner development and therefore all real history, inward and outward; the Faustian is an existence which is led with a deep consciousness and introspection of the ego, and a resolutely personal culture evidenced in memoirs, reflections, retrospects and prospects and conscience. And in the time of Augustus, in the countries between Nile and Tigris, Black Sea and South Arabia, there appears aloof but able to speak to us through forms borrowed, adopted and inherited the Magian soul of the Arabian Culture with its algebra, astrology and alchemy, its mosaics and arabesques, its caliphates and mosques, and the sacraments and scriptures of the Persian, Jewish, Christian, "post-Classical" and Manichasan religions.


Now, I happen to believe that it is entirely possible to have individual throwbacks even within a single culture, where you might find persons with a ''Magian'', ''Faustian'', or ''Apollonian'' worldview. I myself identify true Orthodox Christians as being ''Magian'', and in the depths of Western Civilization, I find persons who are entirely of the sort described by Spengler as being ''Apollonian'', as Ancient Greco-Roman types.

But let's journey with Spengler further, as he basically contrasts the original ''Magian'' Culture and Christianity with the Modern Western Culture and Christianity;

Arabian art brought the Magian world-feeling to expression by means of
the gold ground of its mosaics and pictures. Something of the uncanny wizardry
of this, and by implication of its symbolic purpose, is known to us through
the mosaics of Ravenna, in the work of the Early Rhenish and especially North
Italian masters who were still entirely under the influence of Lombardo-
Byzantine models, and last but not least in the Gothic book-illustrations of
which the archetypes were the Byzantine purple codices.

In this instance we can Study the soul of three Cultures working upon very
similar tasks in very dissimilar ways. The Apollinian Culture recognized as
actual only that which was immediately present in time and place — and thus
it repudiated the background as pictorial element. The Faustian strove through
all sensuous barriers towards infinity — and it projected the centre of gravity
of the pictorial idea into the distance by means of perspective. The Magian
felt all happening as an expression of mysterious powers that filled the world-
cavern with their spiritual substance — and it shut off the depicted scene with
a gold background, that is, by something that stood beyond and outside all
nature-colours. Gold is not a colour. As compared with simple yellow, it
produces a complicated sense-impression, through the metallic, diffuse reful-
gence that is generated by its glowing surface. Colours — whether coloured
substance incorporated with the smoothed wall-face (fresco) or pigment ap-
plied with the brush — are natural. But the metallic gleam, which is practi-
cally never found in natural conditions, is unearthly. 1 It recalls impressively
the other symbols of the Culture, Alchemy and Kabbala, the Philosophers'
Stone, the Holy Scriptures, the Arabesque, the inner form of the tales of the
"Thousand and One Nights." The gleaming gold takes away from the scene,
the life and the body their substantial being.



Everything that was taught in
the circle of Plotinus or by the Gnostics as to the nature of things, their in-
dependence of space, their accidental causes — notions paradoxical and almost
unintelligible to our world-feeling — is implicit also in the symbolism of this
mysterious hieratic background. The nature of bodies was a principal subject
of controversy amongst Neo-Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists, as it was later
in the schools of Baghdad and Basra. Suhrawardi distinguishes extension, as
the primary existence of the body, from width and height and depth as its acci-
dents. Nafcfcam pronounced against the corporeal substantiality and space-fill-
ing character of the atom. These and the like were the metaphysical notions
that, from Philo and Paul to the last great names of the Islamic philosophy,
manifested the Arabian world-feeling. They played a decisive part in the dis-
putes of the Councils upon the substantiality of Christ. 2 And thus the gold
background possesses, in the iconography of the Western Church, an explicit
dogmatic significance. It is an express assertion of the existence and activity of
the divine spirit. It represents the Arabian form of the Christian world-con-
sciousness, and with such a deep appropriateness that for a thousand years this
treatment of the background was held to be the only one metaphysically — and
even ethically — possible and seemly in representations of the Christian legend.


When "natural" backgrounds, with their blue-green heavens, far horizons and
depth perspective, began to appear in early Gothic, they had at first the appear-
ance of something profane and worldly. The change of dogma that they implied
was, if not acknowledged, at any rate felt, witness the tapestry backgrounds
with which the real depth of space was covered up by a pious awe that disguised
what it dared not exhibit. We have seen how just at this time, when the
Faustian (German-Catholic) Christianity attained to consciousness of itself
through the institution of the sacrament of Contrition — a new religion in the
old garb — the tendency to perspective, colour, and the mastering of aerial
space in the art of the Franciscans 1 transformed the whole meaning of
painting.

The Christianity of the West is related to that of the East as the symbol of
perspective to the symbol of gold-ground — and the final schism took place
almost at the same moment in Church and in Art. The landscape-background
of the depicted scene and the dynamic infiniteness of God were comprehended at
the same moment; and, simultaneously with the gold ground of the sacred
picture, there vanished from the Councils of the West that Magian, ontological
problem of Godhead which had so passionately agitated Nicasa, Ephesus,
Chalcedon and all the Councils of the East.


Emphasis on the text in bold. I'll stop for there for now and allow my thoughts to digest. Other opinions are welcome to be sure.
#14991942
Heh, I can't resist, I find this quote by Spengler to be rather timely;

"Again and again there appears this type of strong-
minded, completely non-metaphysical man, and in the hands of this type lies
the intellectual and material destiny of each and every "late" period."


Seems to me he could be talking about our period in history;

The man of action is often limited in his vision. He is driven without knowing the
real aim. He might possibly offer resistance if he did see it, for the logic of destiny
has never taken human wishes into account. But much more often he goes astray
because he has conjured up a false picture of things around and within him.


Or this;

The further we advance into the Caesarism of the Faustian world, the more clearly
will it emerge who is destined ethically to be the subject and who the object of
historical events. The dreary train of world-improvers has now come to an end of
its amble through these centuries, leaving behind it, as sole monument of its
existence, mountains of printed paper. The Caesars will now take its place. High
policy, the art of the possible, will again enter upon its eternal heritage, free from
all systems and theories, itself the judge of the facts by which it rules, and
gripping the world between its knees like a good horseman.


And as i've tried to tell people, the ''Party'' is over, pun intended;

The Caesarism of the future fights solely for power,
for empire, and against every description of party
#14991962
Time....

I mentioned earlier that I am generally opposed to the Western concept of Time as a striving through an infinite distant goal. Nor do I live in an ever renewed ''Present'' which is the only important Time there is. What my Time is is a deterministic Time, irrevocably ordained by God from the Beginning and fated to be exactly what He has wished it to be, a Beginning and an End to ''This Day'' with all it's material contents in Space, down to the smallest detail, having a concrete meaning. Everything has it's exact time, so there is no need for the rushing about, or worry and lack of trust, which characterizes the Western world, the Faustian Man who imagines that he is the master of his own fate and time is only what he makes of it. I reject that. I affirm Fate, and Destiny, with all the specific forces (including freedom from external compulsion with some, that constitutes a measure of earthly liberty) by which men are moved to do what they do, willingly or otherwise.

The great question of my type of Mankind is ''When?'', not ''How?'', and the ''When?'' issues forth from the ''Where?'', as in; Heaven.
#14991977
annatar1914 wrote:Time....

I mentioned earlier that I am generally opposed to the Western concept of Time as a striving through an infinite distant goal. Nor do I live in an ever renewed ''Present'' which is the only important Time there is. What my Time is is a deterministic Time, irrevocably ordained by God from the Beginning and fated to be exactly what He has wished it to be, a Beginning and an End to ''This Day'' with all it's material contents in Space, down to the smallest detail, having a concrete meaning. Everything has it's exact time, so there is no need for the rushing about, or worry and lack of trust, which characterizes the Western world, the Faustian Man who imagines that he is the master of his own fate and time is only what he makes of it. I reject that. I affirm Fate, and Destiny, with all the specific forces (including freedom from external compulsion with some, that constitutes a measure of earthly liberty) by which men are moved to do what they do, willingly or otherwise.

The great question of my type of Mankind is ''When?'', not ''How?'', and the ''When?'' issues forth from the ''Where?'', as in; Heaven.

Man proposes; God disposes.
#14991986
annatar1914 wrote:Time....

I mentioned earlier that I am generally opposed to the Western concept of Time as a striving through an infinite distant goal. Nor do I live in an ever renewed ''Present'' which is the only important Time there is. What my Time is is a deterministic Time, irrevocably ordained by God from the Beginning and fated to be exactly what He has wished it to be, a Beginning and an End to ''This Day'' with all it's material contents in Space, down to the smallest detail, having a concrete meaning. Everything has it's exact time, so there is no need for the rushing about, or worry and lack of trust, which characterizes the Western world, the Faustian Man who imagines that he is the master of his own fate and time is only what he makes of it. I reject that. I affirm Fate, and Destiny, with all the specific forces (including freedom from external compulsion with some, that constitutes a measure of earthly liberty) by which men are moved to do what they do, willingly or otherwise.

The great question of my type of Mankind is ''When?'', not ''How?'', and the ''When?'' issues forth from the ''Where?'', as in; Heaven.

This sounds like you believe that God did not give man free will.
#14991992
Potemkin wrote:Man proposes; God disposes.


Exactly so :)

In regards to this, I am reminded that Karl Marx was a descendant of a ''Magian'' tribe, the Jews, and in his ''Atheism'' rejected (in my view) not so much the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so much as the ''God'' of Martin Luther... Which was the Western ''God'' he was raised to believe in. I look at his dialectical materialism, and in it i'm also reminded of the same thought forms that produced the Old Testament, and centuries of Jewish religious works-the Talmud and the Cabbalistic writings of the Rabbis (Marx came from a long line of Rabbis, his father converted to Lutheranism) , being perhaps an at least unconscious influence.
#14991994
Hindsite wrote:This sounds like you believe that God did not give man free will.


No, not exactly my position. This involves a discussion on free will and grace, predestination, etc.. But I assure you that Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism are both condemned by the Orthodox Church.

All the Ancients, Christians included, believed that ''Liberty'' was a freedom from restrains put on a person externally, like bad weather keeping someone from flying a kite. They did not believe that it was the ability to defy God's will.
#14992001
@Potemkin , we had been talking about Revolution and it's metaphysics when the forum crapped out, thought I'd share this excerpt from ''First Things'', an article about Leon Bloy;

There is no element in Bloy’s thought more purely biblical than his conviction that true love for the poor must express itself as, among other things, an unyielding condemnation of the wealthy. Here he proved himself an heir not just to the prophets of Israel, with their ringing denunciations of the predatory rich, but to the evangelists and the apostles. Of course, Christian culture has spent the better part of two millennia studiously avoiding the plain meaning of the New Testament’s numerous pronouncements on the spiritual state of the wealthy, and refusing to acknowledge Christ’s more or less exclusive concern for the ptōchoi, the abjectly destitute. To Bloy, this willful forgetfulness was perhaps the greatest scandal of Christian history; and he adopted a rhetoric toward the rich that, for all its fierceness, is no more terrifying than the language of the New Testament: the Magnificat’s prophecy of the condign downfall of the privileged (Luke 1:53); Christ’s explicit prohibition upon storing up earthly treasure (Matthew 6:19–20); his command that his disciples divest themselves of all possessions (Luke 12:33); his assurance that no one who clings to his property can be his disciple (Luke 14:33); the deprivations that he promises will befall the rich in the age to come (Luke 6:24–25; cf. 16:25); James’s fiery accusations of the rich as oppressors of the poor now facing the wrath of God (James 1:9–11; 2:5–7; 5:1–6); and so on.

For Bloy, the rich man seeking admission into the Kingdom really did have only about as good a chance of gaining entry as the camel had of passing through the needle’s eye; and more than once he limned hilarious psychological portraits of those decent prosperous Christians who are absolutely convinced that God truly adores the rich, and that any apparent scriptural statements to the contrary have been misunderstood or distorted in transmission. One of his most brilliantly acid and yet oddly moving witticisms was his suggestion that the builders of the Tower of Babel were seeking to storm heaven not merely by rising to its threshold, but chiefly ascending high above “the naked angels” thronging the streets below. To Bloy’s mind, the most witheringly contemptuous name he could assign to the devil was that of Le Bourgeois—the eternal Bourgeois, in fact, who is a murderer from the beginning. To be honest, his language at times verges on a kind of Manichean or gnostic dualism, with the rich cast in the roles of the Archons of this aeon, under whose power the whole cosmos languishes in torment and darkness. To his mind, the disproportionate wealth of the fortunate few, having been extracted from labor and common resources, is not theirs by right, even if it is also the product of their industry and ingenuity; still worse, to the degree that it is withheld from the poor it is nothing less than theft and slaughter. This is a moral, not an economic, claim; Bloy did not speak as if the world’s wealth were some sort of fixed quantity, or as if one man’s surfeit is necessarily another’s scarcity; he merely believed that those who are wealthy and who keep their wealth for themselves, even as the poor continue to suffer and perish, are in God’s eyes the murderers of their brothers and sisters. It is in this sense only that he claimed that the joy of the rich is the suffering of the poor, and that—to cite one of his most famous images—the gold of the rich is the blood of the poor, flowing through the institutions and estates of the propertied few. Great wealth is the ultimate vampirism, the most ubiquitous of cannibalisms. And yet, says Bloy, from the diabolical vantage of this age it is poverty that is the greatest shame, the one truly immeasurable guilt; and so Christ in becoming a man assumed also the real material poverty of the forgotten and exploited, and thereby assumed also the “guilt” of all men and women. In his reading of the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Lazarus is Christ himself, left to die in the dust, pitied only by the dogs. And this mysticism of poverty plumbs the deepest fathoms of Bloy’s faith. More to the point, his picture of our social world as a Satanic economy of sacrifice, fed by the ceaselessly spilled blood of the destitute—as astonishing as it may be in its sheer uncompromising intensity—is an expression not only of his “genius for hatred,” but also of his heroic capacity for love. And (for what this is worth) it also happens to be true.


Although I am no longer a Roman Catholic, Bloy is still a close spiritual kinsman, and I find even more anti-Bourgeoisie sentiments in the Orthodox Christian literature as well.

This is my Tradition too.
#14992068
annatar1914 wrote:Exactly so :)

In regards to this, I am reminded that Karl Marx was a descendant of a ''Magian'' tribe, the Jews, and in his ''Atheism'' rejected (in my view) not so much the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so much as the ''God'' of Martin Luther... Which was the Western ''God'' he was raised to believe in. I look at his dialectical materialism, and in it i'm also reminded of the same thought forms that produced the Old Testament, and centuries of Jewish religious works-the Talmud and the Cabbalistic writings of the Rabbis (Marx came from a long line of Rabbis, his father converted to Lutheranism) , being perhaps an at least unconscious influence.

Indeed, and Walter Benjamin explored this aspect of Marx's thought very thoroughly and very profoundly - Benjamin's work is the meeting point of the Marxist dialectic and Jewish eschatology.

Walter Benjamin wrote:A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Wreckage piled upon wreckage....

Theses on the Philosophy of History
#14992069
annatar1914 wrote:@Potemkin ,

When the Time comes, it will come of it's own God-infused Necessity. Indeed, the Time has already come, and very mysteriously awaits it's fulfillment.

I agree. That Time can be called "the Revolution", or "the Day of Judgement", or whatever you will, but it is coming and it is here and it has always-already been here. Some have borne witness to that Day, and have died to bear witness to it. Walter Benjamin was one such martyr, and Osip Mandelstam was another.


Osip Mandelstam

Memorial bees swarm around his ruined,
Hellenic head. The weathered stone is dry.
The storm that blew from Paradise has passed.

The path was clear. A ghost among the living,
he took his leave. He told them: `I am ready.'
Caesar's wounded pride could not be healed -
no blade could cut more keenly than a poem.

He read Dante in exile. His awkward finger
traced the slow spiral of descent
on scraps of paper. At night, he dreamed of trains,
ice and betrayal. He waited for some word.

Give us their names. Confess the truth. Sign it.
A black sun will rise to bleach our bones
in the cold ossuary of history.
#14992230
When one sees just how much is conditioned in one's worldview by what one believes is expected of a human being in one's culture, it can be insightful to discover how provisional the bounds of that culture are.

Born and bred in the West, from a Western family, never a Westerner. In the Modern forms of discourse, such as the political, even my Socialism was not the Socialism of a Revolutionary, but of someone who generally goes through my life without deep attachments to things personally.

I never felt a strong urge to be a ''world improver'', or ran my life according to the Kantian imperative, with the ''Ought/Is'' distinction, etc... Never felt the Ego or ''I'' that one presumably is expected to have. Rarely made the sort of personal confessions that presuppose a strong Ego . A non-individualist in a society and culture predicated on individualism. That's why my insights are not so much about myself, as the relational aspect of how a person like me tries to negotiate a path through such a collection of concentrated Wills without colliding into one daily...
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