I Reject, I Affirm. ''Raising the Black Flag'' in an Age of Devilry. - Page 22 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15094142
@Godstud ;

Well, I disagree a bit with you, regarding the "burkini", since being modest isn't that bad a thing, when you consider some of the bathing suits women wear.


Well, modesty is certainly a huge component of traditional attire, male or female.

You saw the wetsuit, and yet no one would say a word about that, would they? Religious prejudice is at play.


A secular modernist can look at this issue in two ways, one in my opinion being the more internally consistent one. One way is to see this as like an ''artistic statement'', a view of such traditional religious people as strange and counter-cultural, as museum relics of a bygone era. Groups within the Western world such as the Amish or Old Believers come to mind. Few will become like such people out of the larger society, and everyone realizes that on all sides

The other way which I find to be one that takes the issue more seriously is one that realizes that the Modernist powers-that-be cannot easily control some groups, like the Muslims, and either tries to pulverize the Islamic ''threat'' or bribes and panders to it, sometimes simultaneously...The Muslims are too powerful to contain or co-opt like other religious groups in a secular society.

Also, what if it's their choice to wear a bathing suit that covers most of their body? The truth lies somewhere in the middle as per most things.


Anecdotally, I have spoken to Western women who because of travel and business reasons, had to cover themselves up in a largely Islamic dominated societies. What I heard from them all, once the oddness of wearing traditional garb wore off somewhat, was a general sense of relief from not having to endure being publicly 'scanned' constantly by everyone else around them for one reason or another.

I think the "Pendulum effect" is at play, most of the time.


I agree, and I'm going to be talking about the swing of the Pendulum a bit I think.
#15094503
The ''Swing of the Pendulum'' involves notions of Truth, and Culture/Spirituality, with Culture being the fountain from which Politics flows.

It involves Tradition, which does not equal ''Conservatism'', and said Tradition always confounds conservatism as being a reactive element of Modernity.

Consider the thought forms of Faustian culture/civilization, and the Western devotion to the Roman Catholic conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her ''Immaculate Heart''... Now consider the Western revulsion to the image of someone who almost certainly looks a great deal like the Blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of God, and who certainly dresses a great deal like her;

Image

at least, a good deal more than this;

Image

Race is important to Western Civilization. Why this is so is very much tied up with this discussion that I've been having, but so far have not touched upon.
#15094788
annatar1914 wrote:
Race is important to Western Civilization. Why this is so is very much tied up with this discussion that I've been having, but so far have not touched upon.


The spiritual gracelessness that has developed in the West after 1054 AD allowed for the Western natural man to reassert himself, and thus notions of ''Blood and Soil'', Environment and Heredity, Progress and Evolutionary Development, increasingly occupied the collective Western mind.

Where there is not these familiar and accepted notions in the thought-world of Western Faustian Man, outside the boundaries of the Faustian worldview, lies the Other. And upon the Other is projected the Antithesis... Bad Environment, Bad Heredity, De-Evolution and Regression. The desire then is to ''heal'' the Other, or exploit the Other, or to kill and/or drive away the Other. At no point is the Other allowed to work out his destiny without being co-opted into acceptance of the Western worldview.
#15094998
annatar1914 wrote:The spiritual gracelessness that has developed in the West after 1054 AD allowed for the Western natural man to reassert himself, and thus notions of ''Blood and Soil'', Environment and Heredity, Progress and Evolutionary Development, increasingly occupied the collective Western mind.

Where there is not these familiar and accepted notions in the thought-world of Western Faustian Man, outside the boundaries of the Faustian worldview, lies the Other. And upon the Other is projected the Antithesis... Bad Environment, Bad Heredity, De-Evolution and Regression. The desire then is to ''heal'' the Other, or exploit the Other, or to kill and/or drive away the Other. At no point is the Other allowed to work out his destiny without being co-opted into acceptance of the Western worldview.


Of course, one of the problems of being the Non-Western ''Other'' is that Western culture has engulfed a good deal of the Non-Western World and it is easy to play into becoming the Antithetical Other in the context of living in a Western or Westernizing society. Hence, the popularity of Lumpenprole criminalized underclass behavior worldwide, reinforced by what passes for ''art'' and ''music'' and other stultified forms of degenerate and immoral cultural expression in such circles.
#15095000
That's actually a big draw of Eastern culture, as it doesn't have the same TV, music, etc. It's different in what people are interested in, in humour and entertainment.

Family values, respect of elders, etc., are extremely strong here, and one reason why I a now so attracted to the Eastern cultures.

In short, the East hasn't actually been Westernized(most of it). It's only a veneer.
#15095026
Godstud wrote:That's actually a big draw of Eastern culture, as it doesn't have the same TV, music, etc. It's different in what people are interested in, in humour and entertainment.

Family values, respect of elders, etc., are extremely strong here, and one reason why I a now so attracted to the Eastern cultures.

In short, the East hasn't actually been Westernized(most of it). It's only a veneer.


I've noticed that too in my own journeys and involvement with people from Eurasia, Africa, and the Middle East. It's a ''veneer'', as you say, the overlaying of Western/Faustian Civilization on top of an Eastern foundation.
#15095993
Some time ago I mused that American Liberals are really Anarchists at heart for the most part, incapable of governing because they can barely govern themselves much less help conduct the affairs of others for the common good. Feckless and incompetent libertines... Recent events have added some weight to my thoughts.

Fact is, the entire American political spectrum though, is almost Anarchist in fact if not in theory, American Conservatives are little better in that respect, and often themselves Libertarian at their core. To be an open Statist in America is tantamount to being called and thought a ''Communist/Socialist'' and a ''Totalitarian'' or ''Fascist'' of some sort.

But in the Beginning, was the State. For the first Family was the first State, and before that, the Creator of All was and still is Monarch of the Universe.

Jacob Burkhardt once said that ''power is evil''. But power isn't evil, evil is evil, a perversion of the good and a disorder rather than a thing in itself. What is evil is Lawlessness, whether from brutal and lawless Anarchists in uniform or their blood-brother Anarchists in the streets.

And Anarchy or weak government is the opposite of Freedom and Liberty as much as Tyranny is, for it is the Tyranny of all individual wills straining against each other and pulling society apart.

Again, the Luciferian and Promethean roots of our Western Civilization, what Spengler called the ''Faustian'' culture. It was not always thus in the West, and we must change or much will eventually perish.
#15097962
So how does one like myself thread the needle of being a Statist and devoted to Civilization, and rejecting Modernity as a worldview? What does it mean to reject Modernity as a worldview? Rejecting Trump and Capitalism while rejecting the Anarchic and Nihilistic forces against him? Would not a rejection of Modernity, the Western/Frankish/Faustian worldview, necessarily mean an essential identity in practice with the same people who are burning everything down, provoking a Fascist response?

True Statism presupposes a development of Communitarian and Democratic forces, a truly free people is also one that develops a more Egalitarian and Collective way of life. You don't have any of it without all of it. Heirarchy is generally both meritocratic and gerontocratic in such societies, which are at once more traditional, pre-modern, and ''Socialistic'' in essence.

Modern life on the other hand is individualistic, and necessarily gravitates to the kind of atomistic and selfish worldview expressed by the philosophy of Ayn Rand, Objectivism. There's no real place for any other existence in Modern life except that with Rand's ''John Galt'' as the Ideal model. No Libertarian, and on a bedrock level no real Liberal, is truly anything other than an Objectivist at heart, a follower of Ayn Rand. And such an Objectivist is close to Anarchism. Fascism likewise is at it's foundation a Promethean iteration of Randian will-to-power and striving for solitary individual Anthropic excellence, and the very real privatization of all social and governmental relationships, dissolved into feudalistic leadership cults.

The antipathy of modern life and it's factions towards each other is generally an illusion. There's little essential difference in the politics of the Western world between the parties. Look beyond the personalities, what is said and seen in Media and Entertainment and Government. Look at the actions, or failures to act. Kabuki theater, a puppet show, people caught up in the solitary moments divorced from context and pushed and prodded this way and that by their fears and desires and disordered passions.
#15098007
annatar1914 wrote:The antipathy of modern life and it's factions towards each other is generally an illusion. There's little essential difference in the politics of the Western world between the parties. Look beyond the personalities, what is said and seen in Media and Entertainment and Government. Look at the actions, or failures to act. Kabuki theater, a puppet show, people caught up in the solitary moments divorced from context and pushed and prodded this way and that by their fears and desires and disordered passions.

This is simply another way of saying that we live in a world without God, a society which has rejected any and all transcendent or spiritual values. The people no longer have even what Marx called their spiritual "opium". Instead, consumerism is their new opium, and is an opium which is more consistent with the capitalist mode of production rather than that relic of the feudal mode of production, Christianity. Which is fine when times are good, but leaves these Modern people with nothing if they can no longer be happy consumers when times are hard. If they can no longer be consumers, then they are literally nothing and there is simply no point even drawing breath. Take away their accumulated consumer goods with which they surround themselves and form their sense of identity, take away their ability to consume, and they will find a tall building and jump off it....
#15098008
annatar1914 wrote:Consider the thought forms of Faustian culture/civilization, and the Western devotion to the Roman Catholic conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her ''Immaculate Heart''... Now consider the Western revulsion to the image of someone who almost certainly looks a great deal like the Blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of God, and who certainly dresses a great deal like her;

Image

That woman you think looks like the Virgin Mary looks more like Representative Ilhan Omar, a freshman Democrat from Minnesota, that married her brother. See below:
Image
#15098060
Potemkin wrote:This is simply another way of saying that we live in a world without God, a society which has rejected any and all transcendent or spiritual values. The people no longer have even what Marx called their spiritual "opium". Instead, consumerism is their new opium, and is an opium which is more consistent with the capitalist mode of production rather than that relic of the feudal mode of production, Christianity. Which is fine when times are good, but leaves these Modern people with nothing if they can no longer be happy consumers when times are hard. If they can no longer be consumers, then they are literally nothing and there is simply no point even drawing breath. Take away their accumulated consumer goods with which they surround themselves and form their sense of identity, take away their ability to consume, and they will find a tall building and jump off it....

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Something_worth_dying_for.pdf
Commitment to a life-project, be that a Church, a political career, a capitalist firm or the army, brings with it an entire ethos, moral code and a theory of the world which may be quite at odds with the loose ethos which pervades public life. That “loose ethos” (Heller 1988) cannot give meaning to life however well it supports a liberal, tolerant, multicultural bourgeois society. Our children are more likely to commit suicide if we raise them to be contented shoppers than if we raise them to be passionate idealists, and more likely to do something worthwhile with their lives. But it is always a risk.

To find something greater than our hedonistic desires/pleasures is where real happiness is found, even in suffering for such purpose/meaning. Because we gladly suffer for that which we love.

I have my suspicions that whilst the liberal thin ethos does dominate whether or not their are basis for resistance against such a tendency as found in peoples commitment to things greater than pleasure. A necessity if we’re ever to over turn a world based in mutual instrumental use of one another.
#15098100
Well said my friend, thanks;

This is simply another way of saying that we live in a world without God, a society which has rejected any and all transcendent or spiritual values. The people no longer have even what Marx called their spiritual "opium".


Modernity creates a ''zone'' denuded of the sense of the sacred which fills the traditional/pre-modern life. I'll mention later the contention that we Moderns actually lack true Cities, and thus Civilization, because we do not have the human sensibility of the sacred boundary, the ''Terminus'' of the Romans and others, which also denotes what God said to Saint Moses; ''take the shoes off your feet; for you are walking on holy ground''.

Instead, consumerism is their new opium, and is an opium which is more consistent with the capitalist mode of production rather than that relic of the feudal mode of production, Christianity.


As true Christianity is a a complete and eternal way of life, only the heresies which strive to conform to the trends of the world which come and go can be considered ''relics''... In my belief anyway ;)

But your point is well taken. Consumerism, the religion of Babylon and Tyre and Carthage, is what is ascendant today.


Which is fine when times are good, but leaves these Modern people with nothing if they can no longer be happy consumers when times are hard. If they can no longer be consumers, then they are literally nothing and there is simply no point even drawing breath.


Created things are good as far as the ends for which they're made are concerned. But they do not and cannot last in this life.

Take away their accumulated consumer goods with which they surround themselves and form their sense of identity, take away their ability to consume, and they will find a tall building and jump off it....


It's the ''Despair'' Kirkegaard mentioned, the sickness unto death that these persons aren't even aware of the crisis they are entirely enmeshed in, precisely because they are enmeshed in it. Sometimes people, shocked out of this despairing complacency, can recover their human form.
#15098101
Hindsite wrote:That woman you think looks like the Virgin Mary looks more like Representative Ilhan Omar, a freshman Democrat from Minnesota, that married her brother. See below:
Image


It's likely that you missed my point, for which I am surely at fault as I didn't go too far into what I was trying to say. Simply that the Mother of God when truly seen, is a darker skinned Woman than many realize and that combined with her humble and modest traditional attire, would likely make some confuse her, the Blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of God, with a cousin of Ilhan Omar's from the Horn of Africa region.
#15098113
annatar1914 wrote:Race is important to Western Civilization. Why this is so is very much tied up with this discussion that I've been having, but so far have not touched upon.


And yet the West is becoming more and more diverse in ways many parts of the east are not.

Race was a Western obsession from early times and now this is coming back to bite Western civilisation. Concepts like white privilege and critical race theory came from the West, the same places that produced segregation laws and race politics. The obsession with race is creating tremendous instability in Western countries.
#15098119
@Political Interest

And yet the West is becoming more and more diverse in ways many parts of the east are not.



I agree, and that in itself is a good conversation to have, as to the possible reasons why. I suspect though that with the universalization of Western civilization (or rather, the unique drive of Western civilization to universalize it's concepts and worldviews), those peoples who have settled in the West who are not Western in origin are willingly or unwillingly being absorbed into the Western culture.

Race was a Western obsession from early times and now this is coming back to bite Western civilisation.


I believe that's true also, attributing the spiritual origins of this obsession to the loss of Christian grace, and thereby a return to dwelling on the issues of environment and heredity to explain man's anthropological condition, ''blood and soil''. And, an obsession with the feared ''Other'' who must be fought, placated, exploited, groveled before, enslaved, murdered, lusted after... But never dealt with in relative natural equality before God as a fellow man identical in essence to Western mankind.


Concepts like white privilege and critical race theory came from the West, the same places that produced segregation laws and race politics. The obsession with race is creating tremendous instability in Western countries.


Since Western man isn't reproducing himself, rather aborting and contracepting himself out of existence, the future of the West isn't much in doubt, it lies with religious groups who believe in a future and therefore positively take steps to ensure a future.
#15098290
annatar1914 wrote:I agree, and that in itself is a good conversation to have, as to the possible reasons why. I suspect though that with the universalization of Western civilization (or rather, the unique drive of Western civilization to universalize it's concepts and worldviews), those peoples who have settled in the West who are not Western in origin are willingly or unwillingly being absorbed into the Western culture.


Many are being absorbed into it, in the process often losing a frame of reference to their ancestral culture. It is apparently quite a disorienting experience.

annatar1914 wrote:I believe that's true also, attributing the spiritual origins of this obsession to the loss of Christian grace, and thereby a return to dwelling on the issues of environment and heredity to explain man's anthropological condition, ''blood and soil''. And, an obsession with the feared ''Other'' who must be fought, placated, exploited, groveled before, enslaved, murdered, lusted after... But never dealt with in relative natural equality before God as a fellow man identical in essence to Western mankind.


There is an obsession with converting others to the Western way of life and belief system. Colonialism never offered the colonised people equality under such a system, however. Western culture was to be imposed on the other but not allow them equal participation in it.

It is most likely that this awkward relationship with the 'other' has always been due to the fundamental ethnocentrism of many elements within Western culture and a refusal to view other civilisations as anthropologically equivalent.

There has always been the argument that this type of racism arose as a result of needing to justify colonialism. This could be true. Non-colonial European empires do not seem to have been as racist, i.e. Habsburg Empire or the Holy Roman Empire. Unfortunately anti-Slavic sentiment was present, although when this arose and how I am unsure. It is not clear whether this was present from the Middle Ages or arose at a later point.

annatar1914 wrote:Since Western man isn't reproducing himself, rather aborting and contracepting himself out of existence, the future of the West isn't much in doubt, it lies with religious groups who believe in a future and therefore positively take steps to ensure a future.


Europe has only itself to blame for its declining birthrates.

The lack of even a passing interest in religion suggests that there is a huge problem.

But one needs only look at the state of contemporary Western popular and high culture, as well the general state of intellectual life to see how many problems it has.
#15098302
The concern to me is whether it is desirable or even plausible to have a return to conditions of faith or whether we must push through the shallowness of modernity and in a sense realize our humanity in an earthly sense, the sense of Marx where we’re no longer dominated by alienated fetishisms?
https://www.bu.edu/cura/files/2016/04/Laidlaw-paper.pdf
MacIntyre is not the only great exponent of virtue ethics who has argued recently that moral philosophy ought to be an historical and anthropological enterprise. Two others have been Charles Taylor and Bernard Williams. There is a passage where Williams reflects on the fact that he was the odd one out in this trio, because the other two were practising Roman Catholics. Williams commented,

‘I used to find this a disquieting fact but no longer do. All three of us, I could say, accept the significant role of Christianity in understanding modern moral consciousness, and adopt the three possible views about how to move in relation to that: backward in it, forward in it, and out of it’.

By ‘forward in it’, Williams refers to Taylor, and his view that much in what we nowadays think of as secular values are directly descended from Christianity, including the value we place on sincerity, the individual, and the sanctity of everyday life. And Taylor thinks that our modern moral imaginaries will be deepened and enriched if we more fully reflect on and acknowledge that Christian inheritance. By ‘out of it’, Williams refers to his own contrary (but not strictly contradictory) view that persistent Christian ideas are among the more disabling features of modern morality: the idea that morality should be opposed to self-interest, the idea of the moral will, and an overemphasis on intention in our thinking about responsibility. Williams saw much of merit in Nietzsche’s injunction to accept that God is dead, and undertake the almost unbearably hard work of rethinking our values in light of that fact.
MacIntyre’s preference for trying to move ‘back in it’, to try to re-wind history and undo the Enlightenment, along with the Reformation, is undoubtedly the
least sociologically and politically realistic of the three possibilities Williams refers to. But none seems wholly possible on its own, and we probably need elements of them all.


Religion has always changed with the conditions of life and so it isn’t separate from mans social existence/relations. Hence the fall of religion in the west.
#15098343
@Political Interest ;

Thanks for the reply! I had a bit of a rough evening, there are things that I intensely dislike about the modern ''Left'', but I must admit I lost some objectivity in the course of last night's discussions (George Floyd, etc...). America was founded as a European Plantation, America is in many respects still a European Plantation, it must be admitted if there is any healing to be done. It relates directly to the whole theme of this thread, the process of Modernity stripping us of our humanity;

Many are being absorbed into it, in the process often losing a frame of reference to their ancestral culture. It is apparently quite a disorienting experience.


No doubt about that. In fact, I suspect that the process of Westernization is disorienting to everyone including European-ancestry Westerners unless one is part of the Elites that directly benefit from the structures of Modernity.


There is an obsession with converting others to the Western way of life and belief system. Colonialism never offered the colonised people equality under such a system, however. Western culture was to be imposed on the other but not allow them equal participation in it.


Right, Left, or Center, the conversion of the Other into a Spenglerian member of the ''Faustian'' Civilization is a definite cultural obsession. The Western obsession with machines and technology is part of that; people are rendered into objects, machines themselves, with a place dictated within the overall system itself, to make it ''work''.

It is most likely that this awkward relationship with the 'other' has always been due to the fundamental ethnocentrism of many elements within Western culture and a refusal to view other civilisations as anthropologically equivalent.


Well, the only ones who can truly ''get'' the West are Westerners themselves, and the essence of the West is infinite possibility in infinite space and time. A Westerner is always trying to ''improve'' something or someone, the idea that this isn't necessary or even possible rarely factors into the discussion. Only the West truly wanted to land a man on the Moon, because he thought that he could, and because it's there as a possibility. Other civilizations and cultures might view it almost as a kind of desecration, a hubristic challenge to God and offense to the poor and sick right here on Earth. Reminds me of this song;



There has always been the argument that this type of racism arose as a result of needing to justify colonialism. This could be true. Non-colonial European empires do not seem to have been as racist, i.e. Habsburg Empire or the Holy Roman Empire. Unfortunately anti-Slavic sentiment was present, although when this arose and how I am unsure. It is not clear whether this was present from the Middle Ages or arose at a later point.


It was present from the Middle Ages.

I am partly an ethnic Sorb, the last tribe of Slavs in what is now Eastern Germany, after over a 1000 years of slaughter, conquest, colonization, and Germanization. It began in the woods east of the Elbe, German raiding parties capturing Slavs to sell in Venice and Genoa and elsewhere to the slave markets of the Middle East and giving the word for us; ''Slav''and making it ''Slave''.

Europe has only itself to blame for its declining birthrates.

The lack of even a passing interest in religion suggests that there is a huge problem.

But one needs only look at the state of contemporary Western popular and high culture, as well the general state of intellectual life to see how many problems it has.


Indeed. If only there were a change of heart. Today is Pentecost and Holy Trinity Sunday in the Orthodox Christian calendar. I have to believe change for the better can happen, a mercy and a gift from above.
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