The Neo Fascist Approach to Humanity

What say you? This is a real winner, isn't it? Uplifting and a edifying. The horror of it is, these nihilists know very well the memes of this stuff find their through the culture, into people's minds, spreading their evil message. Ideas have consequences.



Brilovett on the Objectivist dating site Braincrave has an article up with a few gems on ecofascism. It's a "posthumous" interview with Ayn Rand. Here's one:

We don't need the government to protect the environment?

[Playboy 23] My position is fully consistent. [Obj 977] In the Middle Ages, man's life expectancy was 30 years. If it were true that industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent "Thank you" to the nearest, sootiest smokestacks you can find. (...)

Read it all >>>



from member:

Art Without Objective Value

The process in which our world is being deconstructed is the following. It is best made visible in art and culture, but through its anti philosophy it slowly permeates every walk of life, until one day we find ourselves plunged into the black hole of nihilism.

Narrative: "Morality is relative and depends on your point of view; the same is true of beauty and any other value; our values are middle class; values are evil, Western constructs; objective art (science, music (tones), drama, literature (language, letters) ballet (movement), culture, education, gender, family, religion, etc.) must be liberated from the constraints put upon it by evil, Western, objectivists; old culture must be attacked and destroyed."

This process of the hatred of the good for being good cannot go on forever without consequences.

City Journal: "Beauty and Desecration - We must rescue art from the modern intoxication with ugliness", by Roger Scruton

At any time between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked an educated person to describe the goal of poetry, art, or music, “beauty” would have been the answer. And if you had asked what the point of that was, you would have learned that beauty is a value, as important in its way as truth and goodness, and indeed hardly distinguishable from them. Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form. And no Romantic painter, musician, or writer would have denied that beauty was the final purpose of his art.

At some time during the aftermath of modernism, beauty ceased to receive those tributes. Art increasingly aimed to disturb, subvert, or transgress moral certainties, and it was not beauty but originality—however achieved and at whatever moral cost—that won the prizes. Indeed, there arose a widespread suspicion of beauty as next in line to kitsch—something too sweet and inoffensive for the serious modern artist to pursue. In a seminal essay—“Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” published in Partisan Review in 1939—critic Clement Greenberg starkly contrasted the avant-garde of his day with the figurative painting that competed with it, dismissing the latter (not just Norman Rockwell, but greats like Edward Hopper) as derivative and without lasting significance. The avant-garde, for Greenberg, promoted the disturbing and the provocative over the soothing and the decorative, and that was why we should admire it. (...) >>>

Related:

- Stephen Hicks: "Why Art Became Ugly"

Armistice and Veteran's Day 2008

For Armistice Day we have attempted to collect a few edifying morsels of interest.

This is a lot less easy than it sounds. Most of what is available are isolated video snippets; or there's a choice of the pacifist anti-war stuff, of either the hefty Gothic, or of the sentimental tear-jerk variety.

However, given the current upsurge of interest - primarily in the US - we've unearthed some intriguing, if highly emotionally charged footage on the Weimar Republic, and the German Revolution that followed the chaos of World War I. It's got some rare historical material, as well as background information on whatever fateful constellation of events led to such a profound and total collapse of morality. (For more reading here's the Wiki on Christopher Isherwood.)

The music would certainly not have been our initial choice; we felt however as its message grew, that it serves the purpose of conveying some of the nihilism and the obsession with surreal horror that is so typical for the period, and that led to its inevitable outcome in World War II.

In this respect we can also refer you to earlier postings on the subject of the German interbellum: "Resist Commie Prop, Support Indy", "The Postmodern Anti-War Hero, the Red Baron", "The German Revolution".



From the cultural angle, we proudly present a collection of World War I propaganda posters from all countries involved in the Great War. The entire site is rather a gem and worthy of further exploration. For example, Prose and Poetry reads ...

"More than any other conflict, the Great War inspired writers of all generations and classes, most notably among combatants. (...) This section profiles the more renowned authors and contains samples of their work. Also available in this section are extended features, including a profile of Robert Graves - and, more unusually but nevertheless intriguing, a piece on literary ambulance drivers... There are also two articles written about the author of the war's most famous poem: In Flanders Fields. The 1917 collection of wartime poetry The Muse in Arms has also been republished here in its entirety. (...) >>>

An index of authors - including Sir Winston Churchill - is attached.

Next there's World War I American Legacy, a DVD documentary directed by Mark Bussler.

Wall Street Journal has a reality check for the US. "Soldiers of the Great War" lays an provocative link with the present: "(...) the victors failed to prevent the rise of the totalitarian regimes in Russia and Germany, the fascists in Italy and the militarists in Japan (...) the U.S. withdrew from its global responsibilities. (...) Now we are at a similar pass in Iraq, where the U.S. has effectively defeated Sunni and Shiite insurgents on the battlefield. But whether this costly achievement will hold depends largely on our willingness to support the Iraqi government and steel it against its own fascistic challengers, particularly Iran. If there's one lesson to be learned on this Armistice Day, it's of the price that's paid when we allow victory to slip from our grasp. >>>

One of the blessings of living part of one's life in cyberspace is the human connection one gets with people you will never know on a personal level. Following document was made by someone who remains anonymous, in commemoration of his great grandfather Aaron Kennett who fought in the Great War. He flourished from 1887 to 19187. May God bless them both, and all who fought and continue to fight for freedom, against barbarism and oppression.

The music accompanying the touching family document is the hymn "I Vow to Thee my Country", created in 1921 when a poem by Cecil Spring-Rice was set to music by Gustav Holst. It expresses the unconditional love, loyalty and self-sacrifice that was once unquestioningly devoted to one's country. It is a victory of the Postmodern One Worlders that these words - while warm and patriotic only a few years back when played at my father's funeral - now sound strangely surreal.

But make no mistake: whereas giving one's life for a state in Europe today seems unthinkable and alien, a renewed fight for individual freedom against neotot pocket potentates is certainly not. The same forces taunting national colours and hymns also whisper of collectives and the redundancy of democracy, suggesting that the value of 'enlightened dictators' is somewhat underrated. Ignore them at your peril ...





- Filed on Articles in "History Compiled" -

Relativism on the Couch with Dr Pat (I)

In these pages I've often expressed bewilderment over what's gotten into some people - since roughly - the turn of the millennium. On really bad days you start to distrust even your own sanity, if you know what I mean.

Radicalized Muslims stand out as one such group, if only by the amount of decibels they produce over matters, other people don't even come out of their chairs over. Adherents to post-modern pseudo-philosophies like relativism (including its derivatives, such as multi-culturalism, deconstructionism, reductionism, nihilism, subjectivism, etc.) are another such group, taking dizzying heights in the distortion of reality and the denial of truth.

This group is mostly concentrated on the Leftist side of the political spectrum - more's the pity if they happen to be ruling your country, or even your continent! But it is primarily the Leftist Elite (a.k.a. The Intelligentsia) that actively promote these pernicious ideas out of a habitual wish to destroy the West. After communism and so many varieties of socialism - all of them failing, ask Hugo Chavez, who's going to give it just one more go), they thought up this creepy piece of fuzzy sophistry to undermine sane civilization, as tradition prescribes it: a curse disguised as humanity's Mister Nice Guy.

The lucky convergence with others on the scene that harbour the same wish, albeit with opposite ultimate objectives (theocracy) and coming from the opposite ideological angle (religion), gives way to particularly revolting displays of cooperation. But since the end justifies the means, principles as well as consistency need to be set aside sometimes, but this is done merrily and abundantly, all in a good cause.

Relativism and its derivatives meanwhile permeate almost the entire capillary system of society, in such a creepy way that by now it is the subconscious practice and thought process of just about anyone under a certain age, left, right and centre. The only way to rid ourselves of it, is to make it conscious and deal with it, if at all possible, nuclearly.

Last week - that is, after we stopped wondering if the law of nature perhaps allows spontaneous time-travel after all - we could feast our eyes on real live hippy grannies and granddads, complete with grizzly beards, placards, peace signs and other bric-a-brac of the period, filling America's streets in protest of The War - this time happily for those of us that are musically gifted - in a country the name of which they can actually pronounce, given they suppress the inclination to substitute the ee for an aï.

At such times you just wish you had taken that abbreviated course in psychology after all, or had put more time, effort and/or money into the subject. But now there's help at hand, from Dr Sanity.

To be continued.

The long awaited book review

It's about time I'm giving you the review on the best available book on natural philosophy around at the moment, Science before Science by Dr Anthony Rizzi (Press of The Institute for Advanced Physics). The subtitle he has chosen is A Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century, which isn't an overstatement.
On the Amazon review site I have written to the effect that 1. every living being with a immaterial soul should read this book; 2. the road to Wisdom is worth travelling; 3. the crux of the subject matter is, the awareness not to confuse the hardware with the software, which you might think obvious, but you'd be surprised how many serious scientists keep forgetting.
It is not an easy book to digest, but Wisdom isn't instant and comes at a price. But then Dr Rizzi is a brilliant scientist who contributed to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity by formulating the definition of angular momentum. In 2003 he founded The Institute for Advanced Physics. His c.v. is readily available on the site.
I am writing at length about this book as it is of the utmost importance for the contemporary discourse, if not because of the offences that are committed against Reason, sometimes with hilarious results, other times with disastrous consequences.
It is certainly not the only point Dr Rizzi is making, but for me the crux of the matter is not to confuse the thermometer with the temperature, and that the physical world and censorial perception must be the starting point of any train of thought, whatever the subject matter. Otherwise the outcome is of the realm of Idealism, giving rise to all matter of error.
To one such mistake Albert Einstein once remarked "Do you really believe the world is not there, when you're not looking at it?". That's the sort of thing we're talking about (not to mention the two membranes and thirties parallel universes I've seen tabled recently by serious scientific sources). But also the very thought that if something exists only potentially, it does in fact not exist at all (see my recent post on the Irish court case involving frozen embryos). Natural philosophy learns that Being is Prime and there IS such a thing as Truth, contrary to what followers of Relativism think (each his own truth and who are we to pronounce judgment on an other's).
This book marks for me personally the end of the era of nihilism and cynicism, which is a disaster for the world and a tragedy for humanity. It is reminding us of the richness and depth of Western civilization, a culture which has given us the arts, Reason, Christianity and science and which has shaped our mentality over 2500 years, only to fly off the rails at the event of post-modernity. After the experiments of the last forty odd years it's about time we went back and claimed our heritage. We are greatly in Dr Rizzi's debt for reminding us and I hope Science before Science sells well, truckloads at a time.