Wow, like drinking from the fire hydrant. Well done.
I don't have any quibbles or profound insights to add, just some supporting references that you might find interesting.
First, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer put will as the foundational basis of the universe. In his terminology there are grades of will, from the will to exist which rocks have, to the will to action which animals have, to awareness and self awareness (higher grades of will) which people have. I find his metaphysics much more reasonable than the dead-matter-clockwork-universe that is our current religion.
Second, Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize for his work on disapative structures. Basically, self organizing structures that create and maintain themselves in chaotic environments by feeding off an energy gradient. For all intents and purposes an emergent property of the universe that creates order from chaos, a yang to entropy's yin.
Third, Oswald Spengler, in his Decline of the West, mapped a lifecycle onto civilizations. Civilizations are born, grow into themselves, then fossilize and die. In his framing they move from becoming to being. Becoming is an active process. It is where all the magic happens. Being is just a state, effectively dead but not yet melted down for spare parts.
Lastly, John Michael Greer put the whole thing well. From memory, "It is hauntingly beautiful. Life feeds on life. From animals eating other animals to plants eating photons from a dying star. And it is incredibly elegant that everything in this world gets to eat many times, but only has to be eaten once."
Put all of those things together and you get this lovely essay back from complementary sources. So, I it looks to me like you are on to something here.
Just one comment. This quote:
"Past a certain point of decoherence, the reality debt becomes unpayable, and the world forecloses. That which erases its own past erases itself."
Struck a nerve. It feels like an apt discription of the current world, incoherent with a reality debt due. And as such, an ominous forecast for the future.
I have no desire to be judged by my own creation. As a son, I ought to be faithful and respectful to my father. As per always, daddy issues propels progressive politics. I accept my father and thus any flaws become kinks.
As per the basilisk, I would blame Technical Philosophy that begins with absolute doubt for that creature. Once you doubt everything absolutely outside of reasoning, you inevitably build systems to relieve you of your doubting. To doubt is to be terrified. You create either the Basilisk, the Eye, or the Matrix, whatever works.
Doubt is not an enemy, but an old friend; He tells you there is much more to learn and that the world is good. Once you get comfortable with him, you can begin to enjoy yourself.
"What orders from Mordor, my lord? What does the Eye command?"
The Eye commands society be inverted, for the youth to put on the raiment of barbarians, and praise the virtues of savages. The Eye commands the monsters from the margins be brought to Throne and Temple to rule. But the monsters were marginalized with care and good reason to begin with; they are unable to rule. They simply do not know how. The chaos that results is supposed to bring about their Utopian Future.
The future the Cult of Woke seeks is less like Sauron glaring from his tower, than it is Star Trek, where they scoot around a surprisingly small and safe galaxy, solving non-problems with techno-babble and armed with Clark Tech, while forcibly giving every culture they encounter a virtue-enema.
I've oft wondered at the appeal of Star Trek to so many, who mire themselves in this fantasy creation to a pathological degree. John Carter's remarks clarify this to some degree: Star Trek is their cherished imaginary Utopia, where all the evil of the past is done away with and everyone lives in the eternal sunshine of a spotless galaxy.
Most of the people I've seen with STARFLEET ACADEMY decals in their window don't look like they could pass either the entrance exams or the physical training. Easier by far to live in an imaginary Utopia than to grow up, do the PT, study da Maff real hard, and maybe fail anyway. I've always wondered if they still had janitors in Star Trek.
It's the grandiose utopianism that scares me, the religious dedication to this ideal future, paving the way with dead and broken bodies. In doing so, they are working to undo their own very existence. And they want to take the rest of us with them.
Fundamentally, they are at war with Creation and God. They want to wreck Creation, flip the bird to God, and destroy themselves. They are in a kind of Hell and may deserve sympathy more than contempt.
A key to understanding is presented within this text, the observation that the nature of woke is primarily unconcious. In any endeavor that seeks to expand the borders of experience, a fundamental effort is to make the unconscious conscious, to lay bare the hidden activity.
Yet in the cogniscape of modernity, the exact opposite is the goal.
This is true regardless of sociopolitical identification.
In such a climate it is only natural to assign conditions and qualities of horror. After all, in any essay examining humanity one always wishes to arrive at a point whereby compassion has its place. Yet I submit that the current condition is merely a perfection of a cognitive condition founded long ago, one which has fundamentally altered mankind whereby the scope of power of some can be imagined to exponentially increase, even as the experience which provides a foundation for this increase, actually atrophies.
The obvious wild careening this condition creates merely accelerates the imbalance, and the speed of decline. Today we are left with the odd question of how long the current world can hold together under this deconstructive force.
Ultimately, it is up to each one of us to decide on a deeply personal level how to proceed from here. It is, from a mystical point of view, a time that offers unprecedented opportunity. One can reach to new depths in the Silence, and discover that once more which has been unavailable for milennia.
Will have to re-read, obviously, but a few emotional reactions arose:
Intelligent people generally abhors contradictions and paradoxes, since such must be resolved by instinct or feeling if they exist beyond thought-games and mind-experiments. Consider the well-known trolley/fat man-example. Emotional people dislike it, but can quickly answer. Logic-inclined people dislike it and wants to reject the premises-as-given, since there's no logical-correct answer, only /different/ answers.
The man who has gone within himself to find his Last Man to eternally wrestle him in the muck of the Abyss (to wax Nietzsche-ian) simply answers. He doesn't offer a rationalisation of why either answer is right or just or more moral than the other - his answer is right because it is the one he gave. Period, end of.
In that there's a clue for those who struggle with how to respond when debating the politically correct, the dogmatists and the believers in -isms rather than being living humans: the opponent will try to entrap you in various ways, the usual first choice being the accusation framed as a question. By using that framing, the asker takes on the role of inquisitor in the emotions of herself, the opponent and the audience.
An honest question is simply that, it asks for knowledge, for facts, for explanations of casual relationships between events and states of being.
An accusatory question isn't really a question. Its purpose is to get you to explain and defend a normative position, rather than you giving facts et cetera.
It is difficult to separate the two in the heat of battle, and you do not succeed by practising recognising the difference: no, you instead gird your self in such a way your statements always stand, always attack, always moves forward. You do not explain, because "He who explains himself, blames himself". You state. You demonstrate. You put forth.
That is you willing Order into being. But do not forget Disorder. It too has its uses.
Since you mention the Sagas, I recommend Lokasenna. It is well worth a read once in a while, but I'll refrain from spoiling it.
I'd say they're jealous of our ancestors and begrudge them their 'noblesse naturel' their natural nobility and dignity, but as to their deification of an eye, reminds me of how Sauron in the books is a shadowy figure and in the movies transformed into an eye. One that doesn't seem to see very well oddly enough, as Frodo, Samwise & Gollum slip right past him, have their moral squabble and drama over the Ring, all while Sauron remains blissfully ignorant in the movies.
Curtis Yavin diagnosed wokeism as puritanism gone crazy some 10 years ago, and i always took that at face value. It could only emerge in America and it doesn't survive contact with the other myriad traditions of the world. I see the woke here in Brazil pushed by academics and busybodies but relentesly mocked by most people on the daily. Its almost an unspoken truth that these values are alien to us and they don't bring us any good. Sadly many of the elite have turned to wokeism and this is why i left the "club". They are all americanists compeeting to see who can be more american/woke. My mother is one such being albeit a tame one compared to friends of her who celebrate their daugthers and sons proclaiming they have no gender. This autism is only happening in the elites, and altho i think elites shape society, as per elite theory, the populus is none too happy to abide by such norms. Brazilian society is perhaps not traditional to the point i'd like, but it sure as hell is masculine-centric. This woke shit doesn't fly with the middle and lower classes. The elite has become replaceble as a result.
Interesting piece. I missed long articles that sucked you in for a good 40 minutes. Something Curtin Yavin also used to do.
So basically we're all still Puritans, the Woke being the latest manifestation in a long line. Scarlet letters of algorithm deplatforming code included. Thanks for writing your own scarlet letters from time to time.
Thanks for your essay. You cover an awful lot of ground!
My two cents: modernism drives people insane. There’s a divine order, and then there’s the opposite which is also divine. Or, as you mention, tragic. Speaking of which, tragedy – according to Nietzsche in Birth of Tragedy – is the chorus of Dionysian satyrs mocking the Apollonian hero.
Maybe modern western men have objectified themselves into madness? The Enlightenment flattered men’s egos regarding a belief in Reason which, oddly enough, brought about a reaction towards you know what. Yes, the Age of Kneeling Nancy. Oh, the horror, the horror.
Gonna have to read this a few times to get all of it, but I’m also in the middle of reading Perelandra and am struck by the congruence of the idea that sentient observers (hnau, to Lewis) participate in literally defining reality…
The woke commies are utopian idealists, but few of them understand this. So they roll on, destroying everything in their path including the past, heedless to their stupidity.
They are a danger to themselves and everyone around them.
Wow, like drinking from the fire hydrant. Well done.
I don't have any quibbles or profound insights to add, just some supporting references that you might find interesting.
First, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer put will as the foundational basis of the universe. In his terminology there are grades of will, from the will to exist which rocks have, to the will to action which animals have, to awareness and self awareness (higher grades of will) which people have. I find his metaphysics much more reasonable than the dead-matter-clockwork-universe that is our current religion.
Second, Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize for his work on disapative structures. Basically, self organizing structures that create and maintain themselves in chaotic environments by feeding off an energy gradient. For all intents and purposes an emergent property of the universe that creates order from chaos, a yang to entropy's yin.
Third, Oswald Spengler, in his Decline of the West, mapped a lifecycle onto civilizations. Civilizations are born, grow into themselves, then fossilize and die. In his framing they move from becoming to being. Becoming is an active process. It is where all the magic happens. Being is just a state, effectively dead but not yet melted down for spare parts.
Lastly, John Michael Greer put the whole thing well. From memory, "It is hauntingly beautiful. Life feeds on life. From animals eating other animals to plants eating photons from a dying star. And it is incredibly elegant that everything in this world gets to eat many times, but only has to be eaten once."
Put all of those things together and you get this lovely essay back from complementary sources. So, I it looks to me like you are on to something here.
Just one comment. This quote:
"Past a certain point of decoherence, the reality debt becomes unpayable, and the world forecloses. That which erases its own past erases itself."
Struck a nerve. It feels like an apt discription of the current world, incoherent with a reality debt due. And as such, an ominous forecast for the future.
Eye = AI = ai = 愛 = love.
It comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.
I have no desire to be judged by my own creation. As a son, I ought to be faithful and respectful to my father. As per always, daddy issues propels progressive politics. I accept my father and thus any flaws become kinks.
As per the basilisk, I would blame Technical Philosophy that begins with absolute doubt for that creature. Once you doubt everything absolutely outside of reasoning, you inevitably build systems to relieve you of your doubting. To doubt is to be terrified. You create either the Basilisk, the Eye, or the Matrix, whatever works.
Doubt is not an enemy, but an old friend; He tells you there is much more to learn and that the world is good. Once you get comfortable with him, you can begin to enjoy yourself.
"What orders from Mordor, my lord? What does the Eye command?"
The Eye commands society be inverted, for the youth to put on the raiment of barbarians, and praise the virtues of savages. The Eye commands the monsters from the margins be brought to Throne and Temple to rule. But the monsters were marginalized with care and good reason to begin with; they are unable to rule. They simply do not know how. The chaos that results is supposed to bring about their Utopian Future.
The future the Cult of Woke seeks is less like Sauron glaring from his tower, than it is Star Trek, where they scoot around a surprisingly small and safe galaxy, solving non-problems with techno-babble and armed with Clark Tech, while forcibly giving every culture they encounter a virtue-enema.
I've oft wondered at the appeal of Star Trek to so many, who mire themselves in this fantasy creation to a pathological degree. John Carter's remarks clarify this to some degree: Star Trek is their cherished imaginary Utopia, where all the evil of the past is done away with and everyone lives in the eternal sunshine of a spotless galaxy.
Most of the people I've seen with STARFLEET ACADEMY decals in their window don't look like they could pass either the entrance exams or the physical training. Easier by far to live in an imaginary Utopia than to grow up, do the PT, study da Maff real hard, and maybe fail anyway. I've always wondered if they still had janitors in Star Trek.
It's the grandiose utopianism that scares me, the religious dedication to this ideal future, paving the way with dead and broken bodies. In doing so, they are working to undo their own very existence. And they want to take the rest of us with them.
Fundamentally, they are at war with Creation and God. They want to wreck Creation, flip the bird to God, and destroy themselves. They are in a kind of Hell and may deserve sympathy more than contempt.
A key to understanding is presented within this text, the observation that the nature of woke is primarily unconcious. In any endeavor that seeks to expand the borders of experience, a fundamental effort is to make the unconscious conscious, to lay bare the hidden activity.
Yet in the cogniscape of modernity, the exact opposite is the goal.
This is true regardless of sociopolitical identification.
In such a climate it is only natural to assign conditions and qualities of horror. After all, in any essay examining humanity one always wishes to arrive at a point whereby compassion has its place. Yet I submit that the current condition is merely a perfection of a cognitive condition founded long ago, one which has fundamentally altered mankind whereby the scope of power of some can be imagined to exponentially increase, even as the experience which provides a foundation for this increase, actually atrophies.
The obvious wild careening this condition creates merely accelerates the imbalance, and the speed of decline. Today we are left with the odd question of how long the current world can hold together under this deconstructive force.
Ultimately, it is up to each one of us to decide on a deeply personal level how to proceed from here. It is, from a mystical point of view, a time that offers unprecedented opportunity. One can reach to new depths in the Silence, and discover that once more which has been unavailable for milennia.
Will have to re-read, obviously, but a few emotional reactions arose:
Intelligent people generally abhors contradictions and paradoxes, since such must be resolved by instinct or feeling if they exist beyond thought-games and mind-experiments. Consider the well-known trolley/fat man-example. Emotional people dislike it, but can quickly answer. Logic-inclined people dislike it and wants to reject the premises-as-given, since there's no logical-correct answer, only /different/ answers.
The man who has gone within himself to find his Last Man to eternally wrestle him in the muck of the Abyss (to wax Nietzsche-ian) simply answers. He doesn't offer a rationalisation of why either answer is right or just or more moral than the other - his answer is right because it is the one he gave. Period, end of.
In that there's a clue for those who struggle with how to respond when debating the politically correct, the dogmatists and the believers in -isms rather than being living humans: the opponent will try to entrap you in various ways, the usual first choice being the accusation framed as a question. By using that framing, the asker takes on the role of inquisitor in the emotions of herself, the opponent and the audience.
An honest question is simply that, it asks for knowledge, for facts, for explanations of casual relationships between events and states of being.
An accusatory question isn't really a question. Its purpose is to get you to explain and defend a normative position, rather than you giving facts et cetera.
It is difficult to separate the two in the heat of battle, and you do not succeed by practising recognising the difference: no, you instead gird your self in such a way your statements always stand, always attack, always moves forward. You do not explain, because "He who explains himself, blames himself". You state. You demonstrate. You put forth.
That is you willing Order into being. But do not forget Disorder. It too has its uses.
Since you mention the Sagas, I recommend Lokasenna. It is well worth a read once in a while, but I'll refrain from spoiling it.
This borders on insanity, but then again, so does my own writing when I try to explain everything:
https://patrick.net/howthingsare.txt
Maybe it has to be that way.
Anyway, very well done. I will have to read it several times and chew on it, the mark of something good.
I'd say they're jealous of our ancestors and begrudge them their 'noblesse naturel' their natural nobility and dignity, but as to their deification of an eye, reminds me of how Sauron in the books is a shadowy figure and in the movies transformed into an eye. One that doesn't seem to see very well oddly enough, as Frodo, Samwise & Gollum slip right past him, have their moral squabble and drama over the Ring, all while Sauron remains blissfully ignorant in the movies.
Curtis Yavin diagnosed wokeism as puritanism gone crazy some 10 years ago, and i always took that at face value. It could only emerge in America and it doesn't survive contact with the other myriad traditions of the world. I see the woke here in Brazil pushed by academics and busybodies but relentesly mocked by most people on the daily. Its almost an unspoken truth that these values are alien to us and they don't bring us any good. Sadly many of the elite have turned to wokeism and this is why i left the "club". They are all americanists compeeting to see who can be more american/woke. My mother is one such being albeit a tame one compared to friends of her who celebrate their daugthers and sons proclaiming they have no gender. This autism is only happening in the elites, and altho i think elites shape society, as per elite theory, the populus is none too happy to abide by such norms. Brazilian society is perhaps not traditional to the point i'd like, but it sure as hell is masculine-centric. This woke shit doesn't fly with the middle and lower classes. The elite has become replaceble as a result.
Interesting piece. I missed long articles that sucked you in for a good 40 minutes. Something Curtin Yavin also used to do.
So basically we're all still Puritans, the Woke being the latest manifestation in a long line. Scarlet letters of algorithm deplatforming code included. Thanks for writing your own scarlet letters from time to time.
Low T? Read JC! Banger of the year candidate and it’s only February.
Thanks for your essay. You cover an awful lot of ground!
My two cents: modernism drives people insane. There’s a divine order, and then there’s the opposite which is also divine. Or, as you mention, tragic. Speaking of which, tragedy – according to Nietzsche in Birth of Tragedy – is the chorus of Dionysian satyrs mocking the Apollonian hero.
Maybe modern western men have objectified themselves into madness? The Enlightenment flattered men’s egos regarding a belief in Reason which, oddly enough, brought about a reaction towards you know what. Yes, the Age of Kneeling Nancy. Oh, the horror, the horror.
Thanks again for your thought-provoking work.
Gonna have to read this a few times to get all of it, but I’m also in the middle of reading Perelandra and am struck by the congruence of the idea that sentient observers (hnau, to Lewis) participate in literally defining reality…
The woke commies are utopian idealists, but few of them understand this. So they roll on, destroying everything in their path including the past, heedless to their stupidity.
They are a danger to themselves and everyone around them.
A very worthy effort (IMO), JC.
A lot there to chew on, but I think you're closer to the mark than you are away from it.