I Reject, I Affirm. ''Raising the Black Flag'' in an Age of Devilry. - Page 68 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

An atheist-free area for those of religious belief to discuss religious topics.

Moderator: PoFo Agora Mods

Forum rules: No one line posts please. Religious topics may be discussed here or in The Agora. However, this forum is intended specifically as an area for those with religious belief to discuss religion without threads being derailed by atheist arguments. Please respect that. Political topics regarding religion belong in the Religion forum in the Political Issues section.
#15256839
Rich wrote:Some say it would be unfair to say that the Babylonians invented nothing, but they invented next to nothing. Some say the ancient Greeks were very open to new ideas. Some say they rejected nothing. What stood between the ancient Greeks and the modern mathematical, scientific and technological revolution? Some say they lacked nothing.


@Rich ,

The premodern had slavery, and thus no need for machines. Once the elites of tomorrow succeed in their attempt to fuse with their technology, the fate of those who used to labor and serve will be that of extermination, being superfluous in their eyes.
#15256852
I have delayed the re-reading Revelation for quite literally years. I just don’t think I was ready for it; and by IT, I mean my own private critical analysis. An analysis that will no longer be influenced by past indoctrination.

Damn you Pageau *shakes fist*
#15256880
ness31 wrote:I have delayed the re-reading Revelation for quite literally years. I just don’t think I was ready for it; and by IT, I mean my own private critical analysis. An analysis that will no longer be influenced by past indoctrination.

Damn you Pageau *shakes fist*


@ness31 :

The best way to understand is to believe. " apocalypse" means to " reveal", after all, and is embedded within the larger context of the eschatological themes of Scripture.

Once I looked at things with a cool detachment because it was hard to see how the things I claimed to be curious about was of particular relevance to me. It's why ultimately I had stopped posting on PoFo to begin with in my earlier posting phase because I saw the Apocalypse unfolding but was utterly sunk in sin, the pages were still not " transparent" to me, so to speak. As it is, in my heart I know where all of this is headed, the tragedy of evil and all, but the words just don't get written down anymore. It is as if despite my personal vileness as a human being, I live in a different conceptual consensus reality than the most innocent children of the other " reality". The reality I live in is the same one as that of St John, whom Our Lord loved, broken as I am however.

So I write of the clash and interplay of two " realities", how one is misdirection and a kind of magical sleight of hand, an illusionist spell, while the other is grounded in the Truth of things. For that too was predicted, a kind of near universal deception of the meaning of the most basic elementary facts.
#15256917
annatar1914 wrote:By the way, what is an American Indian, with Pre Columbian roots, to make of Modernity and being " Othered" on their own land? Is this the edge of the world to them as well? From what I know, they are stranger to the whole Narrative but have internalized it. Same likewise with the descendants of imported Slaves: what is their place, their ontological center? Is this part or whole of the reasons for conflict within New World societies?


Each human being is capable of their own thinking, they have intellect and moral will. A good man is someone with a strong intellect guided by their moral will, that is to say a person who can discern right from wrong and has the strength to be a good person based on such an understanding. Every American is capable of thinking about the world around them and drawing their own conclusions about it. They can then decide how to relate to this world and choose what ideological thinking suits them best, they can analyse and understand, feel with their heart what is right and wrong. A narrative imposed on them is not necessarily the one they have to believe in, and this is the same in any country. It's not only the smaller nationalities within the United States that can choose to reject or accept the established narratie of their state, even Americans of an Anglo-Saxon background have intellect and moral will. Why then do the American people, as people everywhere, seem for the most part incapable of critical thinking?

Do you believe a person can choose their ontological centre? Perhaps not, in my personal view, but at the very least I think mankind is capable of making a collective choice. So often I'm struck by how differently my compatriots see the world and how everyone speaks in pre-fabricated ideological verbiage. The runaway social liberalism, materialism and missionary zeal with which Westerners want to spread their civilisation is surely all choice to a large extent. Why then do they choose this particular narrative?

annatar1914 wrote:It is indeed an irony and an inverted reality when you have American " Christians" who oddly appear to restore Jerusalem to the center of their Eschatological cosmos, but in practice make America and its iteration
of Western civilization the central axis around which their world turns


The need to make America the centre of global civilisation is very strange. What about America makes it more naturally suited to being the world anchor, I can't think of very much. It's history only began in the Early Modern period, it's civilisation came from somewhere else. This is not to put down America or Americans, but why would we pick America to be the leader of Western civilisation and not Australia or Brazil? Perhaps they claim it's because America is the most free, the arsenal of democracy and has a responsibility to protect global democracy. They possess a notion of a civilising mission, to convert the world to democracy and liberal social values. The world does not want to be converted, the world will take from America what they see useful to themselves, but the Americans and collective West won't teach this to them by coercion. I think the Americans would do well to borrow from other civilisations as well.

If I were American I would not want to be the centre of Western civilisation or the world, I'd be quite content living in some small overcast grey town just living my quiet life. In my perception I see emigration from Old World to New World as a way of living an émigré existence in a new land, to maintain one's heritage in a new country while being loyal to the new land and supporting it in maintaining its own culture and traditions. In countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America the Europeans should have a duty of pastoral care towards the native peoples.

annatar1914 wrote:But America, the entire New World, never appears to be the center of the cosmic drama of Monotheism, despite the attempts of Mormonism to make it so. Is it possible that to an true American, the only worldview that makes sense from a Modern perspective is the essentially Luciferian ( or Mormon) one? What is the true perception of space and time in this context of the Real, the Modern or the Pre Modern? What for example is the role of America in the mental topography of a devout Muslim from the Old World in the present day?


I believe the true America is a land of good and honest people, they work hard and want the highest good. However, the Americans became deceived by excesses and need to rediscover themselves again. Why in America do we see the worst cultural excesses? I don't know. We know there are many good Americans and that the best American is not what we see in the media.

And to that end Americans need to start seeing themselves through the eyes of others, they need to start thinking of how the Old World Muslim sees them and start caring about it. Americans and the other Westerners need to learn to think once more! Think deeply about who they are, who they want to be and to pursue the highest good.

annatar1914 wrote:Is America being " Othered" in reaction along with the West as a whole out of some ontological necessity of universal human value and concern? Is this the reason for the significant antipathy between America and the Islamic Republic of Iran? China and Russia versus America? The shuddering fear and hysteria of recent years seems to bear it out.


A lot of Westerners fail to understand how they are perceived by the others, and how excessive many elements of the contemporary Western culture appear to peoples in the rest of the world.

annatar1914 wrote:Furthermore, is this the real root of the present day Syrian and Ukrainian conflict? How odd can it be, as another example, to have American troops in Syria in the manner that they are? And Russian, even, as an extension (because of Petrinism) of the Western world? It certainly appears that those old Western colonies, the American Republic, are now colonizing the whole World.


There's definitely an element of this, the East is starting to find the West too much and not wanting much to do with it. Many Westerners are naïve when it comes to differences in values, and this is not on the basis of something immutable, but on the basis of a collective choice Western civilisation is making together. The controversy over the World Cup in Qatar has been particularly interesting in this regard.

annatar1914 wrote:Either America becomes the center of a World Government and Planetary Civilization, the Culmination of Copernican and every other Modern Revolution, the " End of History ", or it doesn't.


The Americans need to relax and stop thinking they need an empire, the entire American culture needs to just calm down and go back to being itself once more. There's a definite element of mania in America at the moment, at least that's the way it comes across to a foreigner who's never been there. It's like the Americans are a little crazy, but out of their own confusion. It's as though they are in some type of massive existential confusion. A lot of other Western countries are similar, however.
#15256955
@Political Interest :

Dear friend, thank you for your well thought out and impassioned replies, it is greatly appreciated, I'm certain that I can learn from you, as I try to do:


"Each human being is capable of their own thinking, they have intellect and moral will. A good man is someone with a strong intellect guided by their moral will, that is to say a person who can discern right from wrong and has the strength to be a good person based on such an understanding. Every American is capable of thinking about the world around them and drawing their own conclusions about it. They can then decide how to relate to this world and choose what ideological thinking suits them best, they can analyse and understand, feel with their heart what is right and wrong. A narrative imposed on them is not necessarily the one they have to believe in, and this is the same in any country. It's not only the smaller nationalities within the United States that can choose to reject or accept the established narratie of their state, even Americans of an Anglo-Saxon background have intellect and moral will. Why then do the American people, as people everywhere, seem for the most part incapable of critical thinking?"

I think it lies in the will, which influences the intellect to rationalize and justify the evils people and their loved ones engage in.

"Do you believe a person can choose their ontological centre? Perhaps not, in my personal view, but at the very least I think mankind is capable of making a collective choice. So often I'm struck by how differently my compatriots see the world and how everyone speaks in pre-fabricated ideological verbiage. The runaway social liberalism, materialism and missionary zeal with which Westerners want to spread their civilisation is surely all choice to a large extent. Why then do they choose this particular narrative?"

I think that the mystery of free will and predestination is resolved to a degree by a measure of compatibility. People are moved to do what they desire to do unless they are given help to will new desires, perhaps better ones, more ordered together.



"The need to make America the centre of global civilisation is very strange. What about America makes it more naturally suited to being the world anchor, I can't think of very much. It's history only began in the Early Modern period, it's civilisation came from somewhere else. This is not to put down America or Americans, but why would we pick America to be the leader of Western civilisation and not Australia or Brazil? Perhaps they claim it's because America is the most free, the arsenal of democracy and has a responsibility to protect global democracy. They possess a notion of a civilising mission, to convert the world to democracy and liberal social values. The world does not want to be converted, the world will take from America what they see useful to themselves, but the Americans and collective West won't teach this to them by coercion. I think the Americans would do well to borrow from other civilisations as well."

I think that it's because America is lacking in organic development, but does not lack at all a vast reservoir of ideological notions and assumptions. Reality will prove the rightness or wrong of them

"If I were American I would not want to be the centre of Western civilisation or the world, I'd be quite content living in some small overcast grey town just living my quiet life. In my perception I see emigration from Old World to New World as a way of living an émigré existence in a new land, to maintain one's heritage in a new country while being loyal to the new land and supporting it in maintaining its own culture and traditions. In countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America the Europeans should have a duty of pastoral care towards the native peoples."

A normal everyday existence without illusions is best, I agree. Best of all, to not be meddled with, or meddle in the affairs of others.

"I believe the true America is a land of good and honest people, they work hard and want the highest good. However, the Americans became deceived by excesses and need to rediscover themselves again. Why in America do we see the worst cultural excesses? I don't know. We know there are many good Americans and that the best American is not what we see in the media."

The Media in the West tends to share in the same basic assumptions of the Western elites and exist as their megaphone.

"And to that end Americans need to start seeing themselves through the eyes of others, they need to start thinking of how the Old World Muslim sees them and start caring about it. Americans and the other Westerners need to learn to think once more! Think deeply about who they are, who they want to be and to pursue the highest good."

It is the way of the world that most imperial nations only learn through a series of catastrophic military defeats, economic hard times, and social upheaval.

"A lot of Westerners fail to understand how they are perceived by the others, and how excessive many elements of the contemporary Western culture appear to peoples in the rest of the world."

Western civilization has this universalizing and totalizing element. I do think that it doesn't have a natural origin to this impetus.


"There's definitely an element of this, the East is starting to find the West too much and not wanting much to do with it. Many Westerners are naïve when it comes to differences in values, and this is not on the basis of something immutable, but on the basis of a collective choice Western civilisation is making together. The controversy over the World Cup in Qatar has been particularly interesting in this regard."

I have been watching the games and chatter around them with interest.



"The Americans need to relax and stop thinking they need an empire, the entire American culture needs to just calm down and go back to being itself once more. There's a definite element of mania in America at the moment, at least that's the way it comes across to a foreigner who's never been there. It's like the Americans are a little crazy, but out of their own confusion. It's as though they are in some type of massive existential confusion. A lot of other Western countries are similar, however."

This mania and confusion is real, and I suspect that it stems from insecurity, the fear of the general trends and intellectual and spiritual currents being flat wrong, and even being a path to self destruction. Will pride win out or will humility and reflection? I don't know.
#15257192
Watched the original " Battlestar Galactica 1980" episodes recently, and noted again an even greater political and even theological message than the earlier iteration of the series. Once our space brethren arrive secretly to Earth, their command resolves to covertly and patiently infiltrate society, displaying a disappointment at our backwards ways and lack of a world government of free societies to work with (and through).

Interesting, at least to me. Displays the hubris and wishful thinking of an earlier time which perhaps has soured today in America now, at least somewhat.

I had mentioned before the influence of Mormonism on the show's creators, but this is not the main thrust of this post, merely the occasion or opportunity to riff off of a set of observations just mentioned.

The dream of a " Philosophical Republic" or " Empire of Liberty" in America as the nucleus of a " United States of the World" is an old one there, in which nations around the world would become states in the United States as easily as Texas did, which was an independent republic, a sovereign nation, for 15 years before annexation and statehood. Implicit too was the progressive notion that regions and even whole continents would form their own federated unions before the world became one federated union of all at last.

The genius ( in the worldly sense) of Mormonism's founders lay with their sacralization of these American and Western Faustian Civilization principles, as well as the adaptability of the sacralization of the other common principles of the Modern revolutionary era. Theocratic representative democracy, and so forth, is the aim

But what does that mean? People can hardly be motivated to do much because of or for an abstraction. But a spiritual motivation behind it can move mountains in comparison, something to give their efforts, rightfully or not, a teleological reason for doing them.

As I've mentioned before, I don't think that Western Europe can survive without America. But America in turn cannot survive without a spiritual impulse that perfectly fits the inner drive of the whole civilization, including the desire towards collective self deception.

I also believe that, as an Orthodox Christian, the Western collective fall from grace as a result of the Latin Schism is an ongoing thing. So, the religion of the civilization will increasingly be further and further away from Orthodox Christianity as time goes on. Civilizations too need foundational myths which claim to explain the circumstances around the origination of that foundation. Those myths need not be true, but only need appear so for a desperate elite to seize opon and use. And such elites need a religion fitting that pattern.

All of which confirms and strengthens instead of weakens my fundamental belief in the essential Antichristian and Satanic nature of Western civilization from the onset, but only recently fully flowering.
#15257549
annatar1914 wrote:@Rich ,

The premodern had slavery, and thus no need for machines. Once the elites of tomorrow succeed in their attempt to fuse with their technology, the fate of those who used to labor and serve will be that of extermination, being superfluous in their eyes.

You seemed to miss the point I was making. When I said some people say the Hindus invented nothing, I was of course talking about the invention of zero. Zero was rejected by both the Ancient Greeks and the Christians. If you want to return to the world of the early Christians then you're going to have to find some way to forget about zero.
#15257557
Rich wrote:You seemed to miss the point I was making. When I said some people say the Hindus invented nothing, I was of course talking about the invention of zero. Zero was rejected by both the Ancient Greeks and the Christians. If you want to return to the world of the early Christians then you're going to have to find some way to forget about zero.

Forget nothing. :)
#15257562
Just to clarify, when I said that some people say the Babylonians invented next to nothing. I was of course referring to their invention of the zero place holder. So they had the concept of being next to zero, but as far as I'm aware they didn't have a true Zero which could stand on its own.
#15257568
Rich wrote:Just to clarify, when I said that some people say the Babylonians invented next to nothing. I was of course referring to their invention of the zero place holder. So they had the concept of being next to zero, but as far as I'm aware they didn't have a true Zero which could stand on its own.

Your fate is to be forever misunderstood, @Rich. However, a word to the wise: if you have to explain to others how clever you've been because they didn't understand it the first time, then your cleverness is a river flowing into sand.... :)
#15257628
Potemkin wrote:Your fate is to be forever misunderstood, @Rich. However, a word to the wise: if you have to explain to others how clever you've been because they didn't understand it the first time, then your cleverness is a river flowing into sand.... :)


@Potemkin , and @Rich :

I understood, I just had a short moment I get them sometimes.

On perhaps another note, you two might remember me saying on a few occasions that the Modern is under a kind of spell. Well, I mean that literally in the sense that a professional magician or confidence trickster might call it . People are largely easily fooled and desire a stupid story with an agreeable narrative put before them. Misdirection becomes a collaborative effort, just as with hypnosis and confidence jobs. Slight of hand makes people not see things happening literally right before their eyes, because they interpret it in a preselected manner suggested by a consensus narrative. It's the same with domesticated animals being led about, as obnoxious as that analogy might appear to some. Or if you want to hear it out nicer, Theatre.
#15257731
annatar1914 wrote:@Potemkin , and @Rich :

I understood, I just had a short moment I get them sometimes.

On perhaps another note, you two might remember me saying on a few occasions that the Modern is under a kind of spell. Well, I mean that literally in the sense that a professional magician or confidence trickster might call it . People are largely easily fooled and desire a stupid story with an agreeable narrative put before them. Misdirection becomes a collaborative effort, just as with hypnosis and confidence jobs. Slight of hand makes people not see things happening literally right before their eyes, because they interpret it in a preselected manner suggested by a consensus narrative. It's the same with domesticated animals being led about, as obnoxious as that analogy might appear to some. Or if you want to hear it out nicer, Theatre.


@Potemkin , @Verv , and @Political Interest :

Now, with this commentary in mind, I recall recently also reading an article on JRR Tolkien and his concept of " Sub Creation" and the " Primary and Secondary Worlds", where world building is a form of Art, the highest in fact.

Now i considered that this fantasy world building and various forms of theatre and entertainment is very much a feature of Modernity, so much so that I thought upon the capacity of the human mind to be able to unconsciously distinguish between the Primary and Secondary Worlds, that perhaps it cannot.

Is the narrative of the Modern world itself a Secondary World, an act of artistic human sub Creation as Tolkien might put it? And so therefore a Secondary World being passed off as the Primary World which it is laid over? Are some of the sub creators consciously aware that it is untrue, or are most if not all building on a false Secondary World narrative they believe to be true?

Think of all of Tolkien's writings, and imagine as a thought experiment, a society whose elites decided to teach everyone all the Middle Earth stories as historical facts. Tell me I beg, that it couldn't be done....

Now understand that this is not what I'm literally suggesting, but only an example. Some narratives might be easier or harder to impose, granted that it would probably get easier as time went on, not harder.

Now consider my previous post, where it was decided on my part that any con or magical misdirection or hypnosis can be imposed. Can it be done at a mass collective level, via public education as it's called? All the entertainment and media industries, and scientific and cultural institutions?
#15257734
annatar1914 wrote:@Potemkin , @Verv , and @Political Interest :

Now, with this commentary in mind, I recall recently also reading an article on JRR Tolkien and his concept of " Sub Creation" and the " Primary and Secondary Worlds", where world building is a form of Art, the highest in fact.

Now i considered that this fantasy world building and various forms of theatre and entertainment is very much a feature of Modernity, so much so that I thought upon the capacity of the human mind to be able to unconsciously distinguish between the Primary and Secondary Worlds, that perhaps it cannot.

Is the narrative of the Modern world itself a Secondary World, an act of artistic human sub Creation as Tolkien might put it? And so therefore a Secondary World being passed off as the Primary World which it is laid over? Are some of the sub creators consciously aware that it is untrue, or are most if not all building on a false Secondary World narrative they believe to be true?

Think of all of Tolkien's writings, and imagine as a thought experiment, a society whose elites decided to teach everyone all the Middle Earth stories as historical facts. Tell me I beg, that it couldn't be done....

Now understand that this is not what I'm literally suggesting, but only an example. Some narratives might be easier or harder to impose, granted that it would probably get easier as time went on, not harder.

Now consider my previous post, where it was decided on my part that any con or magical misdirection or hypnosis can be imposed. Can it be done at a mass collective level, via public education as it's called? All the entertainment and media industries, and scientific and cultural institutions?

What you are describing is essentially what Marx meant when he used the word “ideology”. Althusser defined the Marxist concept of ideology very well when he called it “the subject’s set of imaginary relations with their material reality”. Note that, for Marx, all ‘ideology’ is imaginary, make-believe, fantasy. As St Paul put it, we currently see things “through a glass, darkly”, but in the light of truth, we will see things and each other clearly, for the first time. There will be no more need for ideology, no more need for “sub-creation”. No more need for the lies we tell ourselves to get through the night….
#15257735
While I think a lot of what cones to be accepted as true knowledge is indeed the mere passing of opinions from trust persons: https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunde ... theory.pdf

It is also the case that people have experiences in reality and that ideas find their resonance through reality. It is why some ideas and inclinations can never die.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/articles/marxist-leninist.htm
The question for Marx arose in the following form: Is it possible (and if so, precisely how) to resolve the conflicts in the development of private property in the soil of that private property itself? “Peacefully?” This again is not the position of a communist. But it is the position of a theoretician and it retains within itself the possibility of transferring to the communist position.
This position employed a wholly objective, fearless, ruthless and critical analysis of the social situation that was developing in the world of private property, especially in those countries where private initiative bad secured the utmost freedom from any external, legal kind of regulation, namely, in England and France. And so the criticism of communist ideas, so far as Marx considered it a serious-theoretical matter and not a demagogical-idealistic one, became a criticism of the actual conditions of life that gave birth to these ideas and aided their dissemination.
The opinion that the wide dissemination of these or other ideas could be explained by the activity of evil agitators had been alien to Marx from the very beginning, even when the ideas themselves were distasteful to him. Marx believed (and I think his opinion can be justified today) that only those ideas that correspond to reality win sympathy and a growing audience and that these ideas must arise from the social demands of a more or less wide category of the population. Otherwise the most beautiful and alluring idea will never get a hearing in the consciousness of the masses, for the masses will remain deaf to it.
It is this very point concerning the dissemination of communist ideas in France and England that Marx assessed as a symptom of the real conflict ripening in the bosoms of those countries where private property bad received maximum freedom of development in all its facets and all legal restraints had been removed from it.
Therefore communism was even viewed by the young Marx as an ideological current arising out of private property itself. Thus the criticism of communism finally became a criticism of private property as the foundation of communist ideas.


And in emphasizing practice I tend to think that institutions are the merely ideology or scientific, that they are social practices that do hold truths even if distorted. When I read of a retelling of indigenous Australians experience of what was correlated to a Dutch ship arriving on the coast of now Western Australia, it clarified that many things are the same experience in a way but interpreted through different concepts available to people. While language describes reality, it is not reality itself.

Of course the fewer in our postmodernist age is that we are so drowned in images and the like we have little experience with reality and instead are insulated somewhat.

I am suspicious of Althusser on this account as he struggles to differentiate ideology in social practices from science which is also a social practice even while it develops knowledge.

There are two things which make me suspect in that the antihumanist position simply denies the agency of the working class and frames the subject as one entirely subordinated to ideology without any outside space to resist and theorists of science are simply tools to realize facts but its to be hidden rather than disseminated because ideology helps one manipulate the population for the greater good. This contradicts Marx theses on fuerbach in which one treats people as passive objects of manipulation and does not see them as subjects with views and values to realize that need not be subordinated to a dominant ideology like a child who is defenseless against ideas told to them ny a parent.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/althusser.htm
But of course the two opposite meanings of the word “subject” have quite different genealogies. Descartes, criticising Aristotle, used the Latin translation of Aristotle’s upokeimenon (hypokeimenon), subjectum, to mean the substance (substantia) to which all attributes adhered, i.e., (for Descartes) the individual self-consciousness and cogito; Kant went on to define this subject as the sovereign individual, the “free subjectivity, a centre of initiatives, author of and responsible for its actions.” This meaning of the word “subject” has continued in use, but exclusively within philosophical discourse and only in fairly recent times has it penetrated a broader audience.
On the other hand, “subject” entered the English language in the 14th century in the sense of someone under the dominion of or owing allegiance to a sovereign power, being subject to its laws, enjoying its protection. At this time, “subjectum” was understood in the Aristotlean sense, prior to Descartes’ transformation of the subject into an active agent within a philosophical discourse. In ordinary usage, “subject” retained this passive meaning, and took on further usages, such as being the subject of a poem or an accusation or being subjected to taxes, and so on.
Rather than an ambiguity, what we have is effectively two different words, two different concepts. The connection between the two meanings of “subject” is historical, not logical. It is nothing more than a structuralist trick to suggest a necessary connection to being a subject (i.e., a self-conscious, knowing author of one’s own actions) and being subjected to a higher authority. The two meaning, while not absolutely incompatible, are opposite in their meaning and have different contexts.

Althusser’s solution to this riddle entails the conception that while he, Althusser, is but a humble subject, nevertheless, as a scientist, he is able to participate in and be mouthpiece or vehicle for science. Science in his conception is not an Ideology, but truth, and as such is a process without a subject; it is subjectless, an objective process. But its truths find their way into print via the pens of humble subjects who should not delude themselves about having made a discovery or having been responsible for creating anything. This despite the claim that science is only possible “from a proletarian class viewpoint, and with the new practice of philosophy that follows from it.” [Althusser 1971]

This leads to the absurd and reactionary position that Althusser must teach his students a scientific point of view, namely that history is a process without a subject, but at the same tell them that the working class can rise only to the level of socialist humanism, an ideology, and encourage his readers to keep science to themselves, and propagate ideology to the workers instead.


Nevertheless, it would seem hard to see why a ‘scientific concept’ which does ‘provide us with a means of knowing’ existing relations, cannot also function as the ‘relay whereby ... the relation between men and their conditions of existence is lived to the profit of all’. Are we really “bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society” (to quote Marx’s description of materialism in “Theses on Feuerbach” No. 3)?
The problem here is that communism is not for Althusser a struggle for self-emancipation, but rather just a process without a subject, a process leading from one set of institutions to another, and under such conditions, the very notion of ‘emancipation’ is meaningless.

The idea that every aspect culture in capitalist societies is completely determined by bourgeois ideology, leaving no room at all for social movements which genuinely challenge capitalism, was a powerful idea in its day; an idea which both expressed and supported the strength of bourgeois society. The idea that the only threat to capitalism came from an entrenched bureaucracy in the USSR and China, was also plausible in its day, being expressive of mainstream bourgeois ideology and an important prop for capitalism. The idea that humanist criticisms of Stalinism and capitalism were just unscientific delusions, whilst truth was available only thanks to the work of a privileged stratum of ‘scientists’ expressed the spirit of certain social layers for a time. Nothing could better express the ethos of contemporary capitalism (from the point of view of those suffering its injustices) than a theory that explains that individuals are nothing but deluded pawns of the system and that if there is anything to be done about the situation at all, then it has to be left to the experts.

Here subjects are entirely captured by institutional discourses:
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/weedon.pdf
Poststructuralism sees that “subject position” is an aspect of a person’s mental state which is very crucial to their social activity, but of course, is not determined autonomously by a person, but rather they are subjected to it, not by the institutions and social practices in which they are participating via discourse, but subject to it by discourse. This is descriptive of the life of a reader, or television-watcher, a consumer of the symbol-producing industry; we have the philosophy of consumerism here.

And what is more, as we have seen, what is called “subject position” is at a more fundamental level actually an “object position.”
...
It is also oppressive. Those whose social position has not equipped them for discursive practice are oppressed by the dogma that any discourse has as much claim to truth as any other. Poststructuralist theory would be therefore a means of subordinating those with an inferior formal education.


The poststructtualist critique of the cartesian us next while true is only a negative result because it doesn't understand concrete universals, to see the essential properly in appearances.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/foucaul1.htm
A critique of Foucault is particularly important, because he expresses in clear, well-argued form - and has been very influential in this - the rejection of "grand narratives", the rejection of the possibility of grasping from the universe of appearances, periods, tendencies, sequences and so on; in short, the possibility of finding within history that which is Essential. Essence is important, because Essence exists not just behind Appearance, in some beyond, but exists materially in its own right, side-by-side with the inessential. Unless we can see what is essential in the system of oppression we confront, then it is impossible to fight against it.
...
The essential methodological error which is common to positivism, structuralism and post-structuralism is the inability to perceive the essence of processes and to understand and distinguish between Essence and the abstract quantitative reflection of the data of perception; the inability to work with true Notions rather than abstract universals.


I resist the sense that while people may be subjected to hegemony, that they can't resist it and develop practices in critique of current norms.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/sen-critical-voice.pdf
Critical voice is the capacity of a person living ‘inside’ a society to form views available from a position ‘outside’ that society:
... virtually every society tends to have dissenters, and even the most repressive fundamentalist regimes can ‒ and typically do ‒ have dissenters .... Even if the perspective of the dissenters is influenced by their reading of foreign authors, the viewpoints and critical perspectives of these members are still ‘internal’ to the society. (Sen, 2002a, p. 476-77.)
Critical agency refers “not only to the freedom to act but also to the freedom to question and reassess.”


https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Article_on_Teleology.pdf
The sociologist Anthony Giddens claimed that the predictability manifested in social life is largely ‘made to happen’ by strategically placed social actors, not in spite of them or ‘behind their backs’. Far from people being driven to do what they do by remote or invisible ‘structural forces’, Giddens showed that “all explanations will involve at least implicit references both to the purposive, reasoning behavior of agents and to its intersection with constraining and enabling features of the social and material contexts” (1984, p. 179). Giddens’ research shows that individuals are generally well aware of the possible consequences of their actions, and are experts in the often lamentable situations in which they find themselves.
...
Any given social arrangement has an inherent ‘logic’ which constrain the actions of all the particular actors; no-one ‘forces’ any actor to act in a certain way (indeed they would not be actors at all if they were forced), but the social arrangements constrain them in what can be called ‘logical necessity’: “You don’t have to do X, but look at your options. You’d be well advised to do X.” But it does not stop there; people endeavor to change arrangements which do not suit them. Responses to institutional arrangements are a kind of practical critique of the concept on which the institution was based. Institutional arrangements will be changed in response to such critique and the changes decided upon by rational deliberations, however imperfect, will respond to the practical critique explicitly in the form of thinking and argument. Institutional change in modern societies is not like crowd behavior, but takes place according to what is found to be necessary in the circumstances. Institutions try to do what they have to do according to their concept, rather than simply striving to maintain a status quo.


People act upon reasons, a logical causality in practices.
As Marx says men act but not as they please. Gramsci’s hegemony is more apt than a totalizing ideology where there is no resistance or escape. Foucault and such only render a sense of being overwhelmed with no escape hi, reiinforcing passivity and inability to resist. Often losing sight of the material reality.

Now if course people can be misguided by those they trust, which is why to convince someone you need a relationship with them where you collaboraborte and prove trust worthy. People will not be told what to do from the peaks as much as they will from a friend. In this regard there are those who know better but a know it all is useless without the social skills and solidarity with people. So against anarchist antibierarchy views, some are good leaders.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/habermas-review.htm
It seems to me that the counterfactual element of everyone’s word having equal sway and the force of argument only carrying weight needs to be given some consideration. In real life, the word of people who have greater experience or a proven record in some domain counts for more. Is this inherently elitist? I don’t think so. For example, I have a right to make claims about activities with which I am intimately concerned over the word of others who have no such involvement.


The point is that a leader should seek to support a people and actually lead and not fall into tailism for what people think spontaneously.
https://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/555/7/Blackledge%20on%20MacIntyre%20for%20ACPQ%20Submitted%20Version.pdf
Far from allowing Lukács to slip back towards a form of dualism, it opened a space within which he was able to conceptualise socialist political intervention within the class struggle in a non-emotivist but yet activist way by means of the generalisations about class interests that could be made on the basis of the history of workers’ struggles. For instance, to say that workers have an objective interest in challenging racism even in the absence of an anti-racist movement does not imply imposing the idea of anti-racism onto the working class. Rather, it functions as a generalisation about objective interests made on the basis of previous moments of struggle. This way of thinking about politics opens the door to an interventionist conception of political leadership that escapes the emotivist substitutionism of self-appointed vanguards without liquidating the left into a (retreating) movement.73
Last edited by Wellsy on 03 Dec 2022 14:26, edited 1 time in total.
#15257737
annatar1914 wrote:Dear friend, thank you for your well thought out and impassioned replies, it is greatly appreciated, I'm certain that I can learn from you, as I try to do:


Thank you very much, Annatar, I am always learning from you as well.

annatar1914 wrote:I think it lies in the will, which influences the intellect to rationalize and justify the evils people and their loved ones engage in.


I believe most of the peoples of the West are fundamentally good people, and the excesses of the West can find fertile soil in many eastern lands as well. To this end all humanity has a choice as to what it believes but most people in the world don't really give much thought to their beliefs as thinking is tiring and often doesn't produce comfortable conclusions. The superstructure of a society provides the system and framework in which people live, it does in many ways shape their culture and individual beliefs. The superstructure of a Confucian or Islamic society is different to that of an English speaking or French one. It just so happens that the superstructure of the Anglosphere countries is acculturating the people into a state of decline and decadence. The intellectual and media classes in most English speaking countries are actively involved in this. Going back to antiquity we see that the elite of any polity or empire set the language, ideology and religion of their subjects, the mass of commoners had very little choice. It is no different today. But the people, every day man and woman have a choice! And most of them more than not are rather cynical about the excesses of post-modernism.

annatar1914 wrote:I think that the mystery of free will and predestination is resolved to a degree by a measure of compatibility. People are moved to do what they desire to do unless they are given help to will new desires, perhaps better ones, more ordered together.


A lot of people don't know that what they are doing is wrong, they don't understand or don't want to hear their conscience.

annatar1914 wrote:I think that it's because America is lacking in organic development, but does not lack at all a vast reservoir of ideological notions and assumptions. Reality will prove the rightness or wrong of them


But given that the American people are largely educated and literate why do they have such abysmal politics and and ideological choices? The USA has a strange combination of social and economic liberalism, even the Democrats are barely leftists. America has no legally binding sick leave which I find unbelievable.

annatar1914 wrote:A normal everyday existence without illusions is best, I agree. Best of all, to not be meddled with, or meddle in the affairs of others.


This obsession with spreading democracy around the world has in our lifetimes led to the destruction of several countries.

annatar1914 wrote:The Media in the West tends to share in the same basic assumptions of the Western elites and exist as their megaphone.


I have met people from Africa and Asia who seemed to think that Westerners are like something out of an American sitcom, the reality is far different of course. The American lifestyle as portrayed on TV is very attractive to some within the Global South, it is part of why they choose to emigrate, the pull of American popular culture.

annatar1914 wrote:It is the way of the world that most imperial nations only learn through a series of catastrophic military defeats, economic hard times, and social upheaval.


America's participation in WWII was heroic and necessary, however after 1991 and the collapse of Communism it was necessary to take a new direction.

annatar1914 wrote:Western civilization has this universalizing and totalizing element. I do think that it doesn't have a natural origin to this impetus.


This is true, but are not all civilisations universal to some extent?

annatar1914 wrote:I have been watching the games and chatter around them with interest.


The silly part is that Qatar was chosen by people who knew full well that Qatar is not a Western liberal democracy.

annatar1914 wrote:This mania and confusion is real, and I suspect that it stems from insecurity, the fear of the general trends and intellectual and spiritual currents being flat wrong, and even being a path to self destruction. Will pride win out or will humility and reflection? I don't know.


We can see this in the social media culture and now 'hussle' culture. I've heard many stories of essentially crazy people on the streets of American cities.

annatar1914 wrote:Now, with this commentary in mind, I recall recently also reading an article on JRR Tolkien and his concept of " Sub Creation" and the " Primary and Secondary Worlds", where world building is a form of Art, the highest in fact.

Now i considered that this fantasy world building and various forms of theatre and entertainment is very much a feature of Modernity, so much so that I thought upon the capacity of the human mind to be able to unconsciously distinguish between the Primary and Secondary Worlds, that perhaps it cannot.

Is the narrative of the Modern world itself a Secondary World, an act of artistic human sub Creation as Tolkien might put it? And so therefore a Secondary World being passed off as the Primary World which it is laid over? Are some of the sub creators consciously aware that it is untrue, or are most if not all building on a false Secondary World narrative they believe to be true?

Think of all of Tolkien's writings, and imagine as a thought experiment, a society whose elites decided to teach everyone all the Middle Earth stories as historical facts. Tell me I beg, that it couldn't be done....

Now understand that this is not what I'm literally suggesting, but only an example. Some narratives might be easier or harder to impose, granted that it would probably get easier as time went on, not harder.

Now consider my previous post, where it was decided on my part that any con or magical misdirection or hypnosis can be imposed. Can it be done at a mass collective level, via public education as it's called? All the entertainment and media industries, and scientific and cultural institutions?


It has been this way through history, look at how the press of a country have always been able to fire up the people within their borders to support a certain cause or idea. Even today the vast majority of the populace have their opinions formed by journalists and increasingly by online pundits. An Englishman in 1935 would have a certain worldview informed by his press, radio and other communications, just as would a German and a Soviet, or Japanese, all peoples would be influenced by the mass media machine and still are.

Today narratives are in mass abundance, especially with the rise of the internet. There is a type of virtual reality forming where people can pick and choose facts to believe in a pre-packaged narrative or to create their own narratives. People are living in simulacra of reality, divorced from grounded and essential truth.

Potemkin wrote:Now, with this commentary in mind, I recall recently also reading an article on JRR Tolkien and his concept of " Sub Creation" and the " Primary and Secondary Worlds", where world building is a form of Art, the highest in fact.

Now i considered that this fantasy world building and various forms of theatre and entertainment is very much a feature of Modernity, so much so that I thought upon the capacity of the human mind to be able to unconsciously distinguish between the Primary and Secondary Worlds, that perhaps it cannot.

Is the narrative of the Modern world itself a Secondary World, an act of artistic human sub Creation as Tolkien might put it? And so therefore a Secondary World being passed off as the Primary World which it is laid over? Are some of the sub creators consciously aware that it is untrue, or are most if not all building on a false Secondary World narrative they believe to be true?

Think of all of Tolkien's writings, and imagine as a thought experiment, a society whose elites decided to teach everyone all the Middle Earth stories as historical facts. Tell me I beg, that it couldn't be done....

Now understand that this is not what I'm literally suggesting, but only an example. Some narratives might be easier or harder to impose, granted that it would probably get easier as time went on, not harder.

Now consider my previous post, where it was decided on my part that any con or magical misdirection or hypnosis can be imposed. Can it be done at a mass collective level, via public education as it's called? All the entertainment and media industries, and scientific and cultural institutions?


This is why I despise narratives and ideology, it's all based on immutable, theoretical and structural thinking. I too have an ideology but it's based on material reality, preservation of material conditions and global peace as opposed to fairy tales of the left or right. I suppose that is also an ideology in and of itself. But what we need are warm homes, a safe environment for families and safe streets where you won't be beaten up or accosted by the local thugs round the corner. People need stable material conditions and we need a stable peaceful world where the great powers aren't on the brink of rubbing each other out. Instead our chattering glasses of multiple countries prattle on endlessly with their narratives.
#15257813
@Potemkin , @Wellsy , and @Political Interest :

I'll try (as I'm fighting off an infection) to respond to all with one post that hopefully covers the amazing and enlightened replies you have made, thank you.

The Primary World is of course the real world, and it can never be fully denied and in fact rather forces itself to be seen and sensed. When it does, it means the end of fantasy, of ideology, of politics as we have known it.

Trump is the end of politics. As is Kanye West. ISIS is the end of politics, and so to is the conflict in the Ukraine and throughout the Middle East. I'd like to discuss the how and why of my assertion, but let's just look at what happened in America on January 6th 2020 as an example:

A mob of people came within a hairs breadth of doing violence to the US Congress and the Vice President of the United States, and an attempt to stop the results of what they believed to be a fraudulent election. They do not believe that there will be anymore free and fair elections in the United States by the political establishment... " Welcome to the desert of the Real".
#15258095
Political Interest wrote:There's no rush. Get well soon!


@Political Interest :

Thank you! Actually I'm home down with COVID, so posting something might help me. I'll get over it, God willing and He knows best.

I thought I would post something about the geopolitical situation from a metahistorical perspective, inspired by something I saw from literal Luciferian types who think that Hitler was the greatest European if not the greatest man who ever lived. These people have been reading Miguel Serrano, so I'll notify @Potemkin and @Verv too, especially.

I have been writing a lot over Western Civilization, and not so much about the Civilizations that are resisting assimilation by the West. I think that the nexus of resistance lies in Eurasia, and always has been. So I believe that the model as described by Lev Gumiliev and Alexander Dugin and others, of a Russian/Tatar/Turkic node of cultures, both composing Orthodox Christian and Islamic and Buddhistic/Shamanic religions, is at this core, an essentially Magian core both symbolized and concretized by the " third capital of Russia" Kazan, it's history and way of life.

For those drawn to this vision, of Kitezh but also the cry: " better the Turban than the Tiara!" and exemplified by St. Prince Alexander Nevsky focusing on the Teutonic Knights and Swedes as a threat and being loyal to the Khan (even though the battle to free Moscovy from the Golden Horde was right and glorious), then it seems that today's geopolitical and spiritual and cultural fault lines offers a stark choice in the immediate future. In this, let us also include the Jews. I was appalled by recent events regarding Kanye West, who is being used to push anti semitic themes at a critical period in Jewish history. Their home is" Jerusalem ", not " Athens ", anyway, so this warning sound should be heeded
#15258347
Today I, still recovering from COVID, was reminded by the harm that a godless state can do, since it only represents the powerful and wealthy few at the expense of the many.

I was reminded of " Propination", which was a process in Eastern Europe of the nobility selling alcohol and tobacco to their serfs, which they had to buy, a certain shortfall would impell the noble to send the alcohol or tobacco directly to the serfs and they'd squeeze the money to pay for it out of them:

" We're going to make you drunken addicts, against your will or not, and we'll take everything else you have from you to pay for it."

And of course there were middlemen of various sorts and origins, who had their own fees and scams and loansharking businesses, who often doubled as proprietors of drinking establishments.

And that's just one sort of outrage. And then ignorant people wonder why there are rebellions and revolutions in the world...I wonder and marvel that there aren't more of them.
#15258349
annatar1914 wrote:Today I, still recovering from COVID, was reminded by the harm that a godless state can do, since it only represents the powerful and wealthy few at the expense of the many.

I was reminded of " Propination", which was a process in Eastern Europe of the nobility selling alcohol and tobacco to their serfs, which they had to buy, a certain shortfall would impell the noble to send the alcohol or tobacco directly to the serfs and they'd squeeze the money to pay for it out of them:

" We're going to make you drunken addicts, against your will or not, and we'll take everything else you have from you to pay for it."

And of course there were middlemen of various sorts and origins, who had their own fees and scams and loansharking businesses, who often doubled as proprietors of drinking establishments.

And that's just one sort of outrage. And then ignorant people wonder why there are rebellions and revolutions in the world...I wonder and marvel that there aren't more of them.

The wealthy and powerful are supposed to be stewards of the Earth, holding it in trust for God, its creator and ultimately its only owner, but they are despoilers of the Earth. And they are supposed to be shepherds of the flock, but they are ravening wolves, preying on those they should be protecting and nurturing. They think only of their own personal advantage, their own material gain. And no matter how much they have, it is never enough for them; and no matter how little others have, it is always too much. They are unfit to rule.
  • 1
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 91

No, it's not that he "may" have partici[…]

Commercial foreclosures increase 97% from last ye[…]

People tend to forget that the French now have a […]

It is easy to tell the tunnel was made of pre fab[…]