So picking one gilded straw from the stack of golden ones, this stood out to me:
"I don't think the feminists are really thinking this through to the logical end."
Let me unravel that one.
1) Feminists do not think, they feel and associate their way to truth. Everything they say and do support this claim. Look at how feminism define sexual assault/rape: if the woman (if victim, not if perpetrator) claims it happened, it is so, because her feelings about an alleged event are truth.
(Here, sadly, one always need the disclaimer that any claim of a crime committed is simply an allegation unless proven so; which is really just another point serving to show that people afflicted by feminism cease to think andinstead only feel-associate according to conditioning.)
2) "Thinking through2 means having or developing both the ability and will to think in more steps than the immediate one in front of you; if you only use reactive/recursive emotion-association patterns as per your conditioning, you will only ever be ever to escalate and to arrive at preporgrammed conclusions. Witch-trials being the most obvious parallell here, where the accusation is itself tantamount to sentening. (In the actual historical witch-trials, women were virtually always the accusers and the driving force behind the hysteria, while the male clergy and secular powers tried desperately to put a stop to it. Then as well as now, the women egging it on used children as truth-wintessess" to shield themselves from criticism and accusations of malicious slander.)
A more modern parallel is psychiatry, where there is always the danger of pathologising the patients words and behaviours as proof positive of the diagnosis.
3) Logic is inherently non-emotional, and given the above, logic therefore presents a problem for feminists as logic simply does not yield to emotion - being its own thing (in the Kantian sense) it must be understood by first submitting to its nature. Since willing submission or apprenticeship in order to learn and master takes a conscious will, a little humility and also willingness to be proven wrong - well, compare those conditions to the typical feminist personality and it should be obvious why they hate logic with a passion.
A personal anecdote: when I did basic level logic (as in, the "learn how to crawl"-level of it) our professor used very simple day-to-day material examples. Such as this: "A competely red object can never be blue".
Cue the class feminists, bedecked in parkas, DMs, weird hair, palestine-style shawls, et cetera - your basic campus dumpster-hippie - piping up: "But what if it's blue on the inside?"
Prof: "Well no, because then it wouldn't be [completely] red would it?"
Fems: "But maybe it is blue to me1?"
Prof: "No, you can't make up your own defintions post hoc just to " Here he was interrupted.
Fems: "Maybe it is blue in a different way and you just can't see it?"
The feminist coterie then descended in self-affirming babble of more of the above.
This was not last year. This was in the mid-1990s. Reading the wife's books, I came to understand that that kind of thinking (?) has been central to feminism since the 1920s.
4) Being by nature both progressive and static, feminism/-ists have no end in sight. All progressivism always must fall victim to the paradox of always having to complete half the remaining distance before being able to reach the goal. This is so because the theoretical goal is a static state of being: a utopian society. if it is perfect it cannot change, but since becoming perfect means changing into the state of perfection and perfection being a static state, it can never happen.
Like a salmon not able to jump, all it does is it expends resources until the salmon dies, without proecrating.
Apologies for errors, my keyboard is breaking down.
That classroom anecdote is hilarious and somewhat frightening. I've had experiences of that nature myself, where I go from rolling my eyes at their clownish, self-important absurdity to a queasy sense of unease as it sinks in that they really do believe this.
The problem is that the essential fallacy, treating ideals as absolute, goes to the core of the Western paradigm, monotheism.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images and narratives played out on it.
Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. The village totem or alter is an ideal. When we assume them to be absolute, as in universal and total, then there can be no questions asked.
So every little pivot point, or center of social gravitation becomes a god.
To this cultural manifestation, good and bad are some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, but in nature, good and bad are the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental, the 1/0 of sentience. It is nuance, not black and white.
So every ideology has to proclaim its universality, irrespective of any contrasting viewpoints.
Feminism, wokism, TDS, etc. are simply modern expressions of this logical fallacy.
It would be like arguing with the Catholic Church a thousand to five hundred years ago.
As for red being red, that's a tautology. Argue it all you want, but if you don't even recognize a tautology, maybe you should be in church, not school.
'"A personal anecdote: when I did basic level logic (as in, the "learn how to crawl"-level of it) our professor used very simple day-to-day material examples. Such as this: "A competely red object can never be blue".'
It does not say "red being red".
I have no problems with ideals being absolute and relative at the same time: there's no conflict since ideals are always theoretical, never material.
If you want to, consider studying the Sagas, the Voluspa, Havamal and the other remains from my ancestors. Every line, every piece of advice, every kenning grounded in reality - not theoretical ideals. Comes with living where it may snow in the summer.
Can you name an ideal that is absolute and universal?
Say truth. It is a term, but what are specific applications? We could say 1+1=2 is a truth, but it's also a tautology. That's what = means. In fact it's an abbreviation, that taken literally is wrong, since if you actually add things together, you have one of something larger. What it really means is that adding two sets of one, equals one set of two.
Soo unless you are willing to tie up every loose end, you have to deal with the fact that there is no omniscient omniscience, at least that we have access to. That every point of view is inherently subjective and if you want to try to reason with the emotional, you will simply be shouted down. Equally if you want to argue with someone against their interests, they will find ways to either shout you down, cancel you, or ignore you.
My argument is that we will eventually have to step back from these tactical debates and really try to understand the basic processes going on, or just accept the system collapsing.
Given that this system is burning through a couple hundred millions years of fossil fuels, there will be no do-over.
Regarding the AfD and "our democracy" we must understand that when our rulers invoke "our democracy" what they mean is progressive liberalism, not democracy.
I concur that the AfD will be declared an illegal organisation and there is precedent not just in Greece but also in Belgium where Vlaams Belang was leading in all the opinion polls before being declared unconstitutional and, effectively, banned. What will happen afterwards? Nothing. It worked in Belgium, it worked in Greece and it will work in Germany too. To some extent, it has worked in the USA too, where Donald Trump is going to be dragged through the lawfare system in order to curtail any future possible challenge from him (not that he was actually a challenge but they perceive him to be one and that's enough).
There is no way to fight back through electoral politics because every lever of power is controlled by the enemy class and they will never, never, ever simply acquiesce to the public will or allow power to slip from their grasp voluntarily.
The weakness of the populist movements lies in the fact that their votaries actually believe in democracy while their enemy class protagonists merely believe in power.
Such tactics work until they don't. They rely on buy in from the population, who implicitly agree that the system is legitimate. When the system is perceived as being fully rigged, it ceases to be legitimate. At that point things become much more interesting.
Indeed. It may well reach a point where the entire edifice simply loses legitimacy. It could happen very suddenly too. There's an old saying that reputation builds glacially but falls in an avalanche. The question is, when?
I think we're already pretty well there, but I could be wrong. We'll see. Key issue is that people aren't sure who else to listen to. In the absence of a credible alternative, everyone keeps playing make believe. But people are now actively looking for an alternative en masse, while others are actively looking for ways to build a new elite.
Actually, Germany may or may not prove to be pivotal. If they do try to ban the AfD (and I think they will) then let's see how German respond. If they simply shrug and return to business-as-usual, then we know that we are not there yet.
Indeed. Notably, the Belgian party the was banned was just a separatist party, and the Golden Dawn really were actual Nazis. The AfD are not by any means the latter, and the problem they're addressing is rather more existential than Belgium being a fake country.
Simply inviting them over to the other side of the aisle only works for some. The problem is that liberalism tends to appeal to the young and emotional and there is a never ending supply of both. The power of conservatism is that it does offer a stable cultural and civil framework. The problem there is that it also serves as a device for social control, manipulation and subservience. Consider Rome adopted a monotheistic sect as state religion around the time the Empire was rising from he ashes of the Republic. Basically validating The Big Guy Rules. Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. Basically the family/community as godhead.
At what point do we step back and seriously ask wtf is really going on?
Or do we just let the current neofeudalism crumble into warlordism?
Do you see a mechanism to turn the tide? The march through the institutions is complete with a few notable holdouts which will be crushed in time. There are relatively few of us and we are not united on foundational principles. There are also relatively few true believers among the progressives as well but they are generally united around the will to power. They offer the illusion of quiet and ease to the sheep and most are more than happy to be led.
The wave is going to crash. The rot goes to the core. The question is figuring out how a healthy society functions.
A big part of the problem is that we apply a linear, object oriented paradigm, from monotheism and monetization, to particle physics, to a dynamic, cyclical, feedback generated reality. The opposing binary of a yin and yang would be a more mentally useful basis than assuming reality as a singular entity, from God Almighty, to the universe as finite.
I've tried covering some points in the several essays I've posted to Substack, yet I'm really trying to just expand the current Overton windows.
The fact is that to be part of any conversation, we are confined by the various points of agreement and they tend to be policed quite effectively. It's just a fact of social interaction. Yet when that big train wreck does occur, those windows are going to be cracked, if not smashed. Then we will have to wander out in the wilderness and try to develop other frames of reference.
Having grown up around more animals than people, mostly cattle and horses, nature communicates primarily as vibes, with the boxes as secondary. We build them up and break them down, so it is inherent.
So if you want my take on how to break down some of the various boxes, I try to in the essays.
For a community to thrive, let alone survive, there must be a common core. We once had that in this nation and it was foundational. Uniformity is not required, nor sustainable but unity is. That is gone. Barring a Great Awakening, I do not see a good ending to the coming wilderness experience.
You are welcome, but I hope you streamline these roundups and take some of the heat off of yourself. I love your other articles, so compress these if you need to do so to free up bandwidth and time for original articles of your own.
BTW, I also got SCREAMED at by my editor. I couldn't resist adding commentary so my roundups were HUGE. At one point she made me submit them to her before pubbing, and would rake me over the coals until I learned to keep everything short before putting the link in.
I like to babble, so you can imagine how hard this was for me. 😂
Maybe cut your commentary to one or two sentences maximum? That would lighten the load. I used to do similar roundups in a different content niche, and I initially did the same thing as you, but I had to learn to keep my descriptions/commentary short or it would take a huge amount of time and energy.
If you find yourself unable to stop, tell me and I will pretend to be my bitchy editor:
JOOOOOOOOHN WTF IS THIS SHIT? I TOLD YOU TO CUT THE DAMNED COMMENTARY!!! FROM NOW ON YOU WILL SUBMIT ALL ARTICLES TO ME BEFORE PUBLISHING! I WANT BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS TO THE DAMN STORY, I DO NOT WANT A DISSERTATION FROM YOU ABOUT WHY YOU LIKED IT OR DIDN'T! AM I MAKING MYSELF CLEAR, JOHN? AM I GETTING THROUGH TO YOU????
They're both great books. And they're the core of his works on war. They're just not representative of his complete philosophy. Too early in the corpus of his work.
Yes, it makes sense that his thought would evolve, in fact it would be a point against him if it had not, and you made a very convincing case that it did so.
I still think the most effective strategy is not to frame it as a left/right issue, but to understand the real power is that mass of people in the middle, starting with the progressives realizing they are being gaslit and do not like the direction the Woke are leading them. You don't have to be conservative to feel queasy about 50 year old drag queens flaunting it in front of school kids.
Sex is a binary that predates the split between fora and fauna, a biological yin and yang. With people, all various billions of us, falling along the spectrum. As electrical beings, more than just material bodies, we are repulsed as easily as attracted.
Equally there are serious numbers of genuinely conservative folk that don't want to see the extremes of goose stepping automatons chopping the heads off everyone not a member of their Master Race/cult/creed.
Life is that fluctuation between the anarchies of desire and the tyrannies of judgement. The heart and the head. As Robert Frost put it, "If you are not liberal when you are young, you have no heart. If you are not conservative when you are old, you have no head." Motor and steering.
The powers that be most definitely do not want this mass of the population recognizing their common interests and rationally sorting through the mess being created. Thus they much prefer it divided and focused on the crazies on the other side, as opposed to peeling off the scab of our current consumer culture and trying to find what is vital within.
So picking one gilded straw from the stack of golden ones, this stood out to me:
"I don't think the feminists are really thinking this through to the logical end."
Let me unravel that one.
1) Feminists do not think, they feel and associate their way to truth. Everything they say and do support this claim. Look at how feminism define sexual assault/rape: if the woman (if victim, not if perpetrator) claims it happened, it is so, because her feelings about an alleged event are truth.
(Here, sadly, one always need the disclaimer that any claim of a crime committed is simply an allegation unless proven so; which is really just another point serving to show that people afflicted by feminism cease to think andinstead only feel-associate according to conditioning.)
2) "Thinking through2 means having or developing both the ability and will to think in more steps than the immediate one in front of you; if you only use reactive/recursive emotion-association patterns as per your conditioning, you will only ever be ever to escalate and to arrive at preporgrammed conclusions. Witch-trials being the most obvious parallell here, where the accusation is itself tantamount to sentening. (In the actual historical witch-trials, women were virtually always the accusers and the driving force behind the hysteria, while the male clergy and secular powers tried desperately to put a stop to it. Then as well as now, the women egging it on used children as truth-wintessess" to shield themselves from criticism and accusations of malicious slander.)
A more modern parallel is psychiatry, where there is always the danger of pathologising the patients words and behaviours as proof positive of the diagnosis.
3) Logic is inherently non-emotional, and given the above, logic therefore presents a problem for feminists as logic simply does not yield to emotion - being its own thing (in the Kantian sense) it must be understood by first submitting to its nature. Since willing submission or apprenticeship in order to learn and master takes a conscious will, a little humility and also willingness to be proven wrong - well, compare those conditions to the typical feminist personality and it should be obvious why they hate logic with a passion.
A personal anecdote: when I did basic level logic (as in, the "learn how to crawl"-level of it) our professor used very simple day-to-day material examples. Such as this: "A competely red object can never be blue".
Cue the class feminists, bedecked in parkas, DMs, weird hair, palestine-style shawls, et cetera - your basic campus dumpster-hippie - piping up: "But what if it's blue on the inside?"
Prof: "Well no, because then it wouldn't be [completely] red would it?"
Fems: "But maybe it is blue to me1?"
Prof: "No, you can't make up your own defintions post hoc just to " Here he was interrupted.
Fems: "Maybe it is blue in a different way and you just can't see it?"
The feminist coterie then descended in self-affirming babble of more of the above.
This was not last year. This was in the mid-1990s. Reading the wife's books, I came to understand that that kind of thinking (?) has been central to feminism since the 1920s.
4) Being by nature both progressive and static, feminism/-ists have no end in sight. All progressivism always must fall victim to the paradox of always having to complete half the remaining distance before being able to reach the goal. This is so because the theoretical goal is a static state of being: a utopian society. if it is perfect it cannot change, but since becoming perfect means changing into the state of perfection and perfection being a static state, it can never happen.
Like a salmon not able to jump, all it does is it expends resources until the salmon dies, without proecrating.
Apologies for errors, my keyboard is breaking down.
That classroom anecdote is hilarious and somewhat frightening. I've had experiences of that nature myself, where I go from rolling my eyes at their clownish, self-important absurdity to a queasy sense of unease as it sinks in that they really do believe this.
The problem is that the essential fallacy, treating ideals as absolute, goes to the core of the Western paradigm, monotheism.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images and narratives played out on it.
Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. The village totem or alter is an ideal. When we assume them to be absolute, as in universal and total, then there can be no questions asked.
So every little pivot point, or center of social gravitation becomes a god.
To this cultural manifestation, good and bad are some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, but in nature, good and bad are the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental, the 1/0 of sentience. It is nuance, not black and white.
So every ideology has to proclaim its universality, irrespective of any contrasting viewpoints.
Feminism, wokism, TDS, etc. are simply modern expressions of this logical fallacy.
It would be like arguing with the Catholic Church a thousand to five hundred years ago.
As for red being red, that's a tautology. Argue it all you want, but if you don't even recognize a tautology, maybe you should be in church, not school.
You should consider re-reading this part:
'"A personal anecdote: when I did basic level logic (as in, the "learn how to crawl"-level of it) our professor used very simple day-to-day material examples. Such as this: "A competely red object can never be blue".'
It does not say "red being red".
I have no problems with ideals being absolute and relative at the same time: there's no conflict since ideals are always theoretical, never material.
If you want to, consider studying the Sagas, the Voluspa, Havamal and the other remains from my ancestors. Every line, every piece of advice, every kenning grounded in reality - not theoretical ideals. Comes with living where it may snow in the summer.
The "you" was rhetorical, not personal.
Can you name an ideal that is absolute and universal?
Say truth. It is a term, but what are specific applications? We could say 1+1=2 is a truth, but it's also a tautology. That's what = means. In fact it's an abbreviation, that taken literally is wrong, since if you actually add things together, you have one of something larger. What it really means is that adding two sets of one, equals one set of two.
Soo unless you are willing to tie up every loose end, you have to deal with the fact that there is no omniscient omniscience, at least that we have access to. That every point of view is inherently subjective and if you want to try to reason with the emotional, you will simply be shouted down. Equally if you want to argue with someone against their interests, they will find ways to either shout you down, cancel you, or ignore you.
My argument is that we will eventually have to step back from these tactical debates and really try to understand the basic processes going on, or just accept the system collapsing.
Given that this system is burning through a couple hundred millions years of fossil fuels, there will be no do-over.
Regarding the AfD and "our democracy" we must understand that when our rulers invoke "our democracy" what they mean is progressive liberalism, not democracy.
I concur that the AfD will be declared an illegal organisation and there is precedent not just in Greece but also in Belgium where Vlaams Belang was leading in all the opinion polls before being declared unconstitutional and, effectively, banned. What will happen afterwards? Nothing. It worked in Belgium, it worked in Greece and it will work in Germany too. To some extent, it has worked in the USA too, where Donald Trump is going to be dragged through the lawfare system in order to curtail any future possible challenge from him (not that he was actually a challenge but they perceive him to be one and that's enough).
There is no way to fight back through electoral politics because every lever of power is controlled by the enemy class and they will never, never, ever simply acquiesce to the public will or allow power to slip from their grasp voluntarily.
The weakness of the populist movements lies in the fact that their votaries actually believe in democracy while their enemy class protagonists merely believe in power.
Such tactics work until they don't. They rely on buy in from the population, who implicitly agree that the system is legitimate. When the system is perceived as being fully rigged, it ceases to be legitimate. At that point things become much more interesting.
Indeed. It may well reach a point where the entire edifice simply loses legitimacy. It could happen very suddenly too. There's an old saying that reputation builds glacially but falls in an avalanche. The question is, when?
I think we're already pretty well there, but I could be wrong. We'll see. Key issue is that people aren't sure who else to listen to. In the absence of a credible alternative, everyone keeps playing make believe. But people are now actively looking for an alternative en masse, while others are actively looking for ways to build a new elite.
Actually, Germany may or may not prove to be pivotal. If they do try to ban the AfD (and I think they will) then let's see how German respond. If they simply shrug and return to business-as-usual, then we know that we are not there yet.
Indeed. Notably, the Belgian party the was banned was just a separatist party, and the Golden Dawn really were actual Nazis. The AfD are not by any means the latter, and the problem they're addressing is rather more existential than Belgium being a fake country.
So how do you separate the votaries from their abusers?
We can't. The best we can do is provide them with an alternative they can grasp so that they can separate themselves.
Simply inviting them over to the other side of the aisle only works for some. The problem is that liberalism tends to appeal to the young and emotional and there is a never ending supply of both. The power of conservatism is that it does offer a stable cultural and civil framework. The problem there is that it also serves as a device for social control, manipulation and subservience. Consider Rome adopted a monotheistic sect as state religion around the time the Empire was rising from he ashes of the Republic. Basically validating The Big Guy Rules. Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. Basically the family/community as godhead.
At what point do we step back and seriously ask wtf is really going on?
Or do we just let the current neofeudalism crumble into warlordism?
Do you see a mechanism to turn the tide? The march through the institutions is complete with a few notable holdouts which will be crushed in time. There are relatively few of us and we are not united on foundational principles. There are also relatively few true believers among the progressives as well but they are generally united around the will to power. They offer the illusion of quiet and ease to the sheep and most are more than happy to be led.
The wave is going to crash. The rot goes to the core. The question is figuring out how a healthy society functions.
A big part of the problem is that we apply a linear, object oriented paradigm, from monotheism and monetization, to particle physics, to a dynamic, cyclical, feedback generated reality. The opposing binary of a yin and yang would be a more mentally useful basis than assuming reality as a singular entity, from God Almighty, to the universe as finite.
I've tried covering some points in the several essays I've posted to Substack, yet I'm really trying to just expand the current Overton windows.
The fact is that to be part of any conversation, we are confined by the various points of agreement and they tend to be policed quite effectively. It's just a fact of social interaction. Yet when that big train wreck does occur, those windows are going to be cracked, if not smashed. Then we will have to wander out in the wilderness and try to develop other frames of reference.
Having grown up around more animals than people, mostly cattle and horses, nature communicates primarily as vibes, with the boxes as secondary. We build them up and break them down, so it is inherent.
So if you want my take on how to break down some of the various boxes, I try to in the essays.
For a community to thrive, let alone survive, there must be a common core. We once had that in this nation and it was foundational. Uniformity is not required, nor sustainable but unity is. That is gone. Barring a Great Awakening, I do not see a good ending to the coming wilderness experience.
Thanks, John. Good roundup. 👍🏻
Thank you!
You are welcome, but I hope you streamline these roundups and take some of the heat off of yourself. I love your other articles, so compress these if you need to do so to free up bandwidth and time for original articles of your own.
It is very likely that this will happen. Mainly I need to discipline myself in terms of how much time I spend each day working on these.
BTW, I also got SCREAMED at by my editor. I couldn't resist adding commentary so my roundups were HUGE. At one point she made me submit them to her before pubbing, and would rake me over the coals until I learned to keep everything short before putting the link in.
I like to babble, so you can imagine how hard this was for me. 😂
Maybe cut your commentary to one or two sentences maximum? That would lighten the load. I used to do similar roundups in a different content niche, and I initially did the same thing as you, but I had to learn to keep my descriptions/commentary short or it would take a huge amount of time and energy.
Tbh most of the time is in the reading, I think. Although sending arranging the various bits into something coherent also takes a while.
If you find yourself unable to stop, tell me and I will pretend to be my bitchy editor:
JOOOOOOOOHN WTF IS THIS SHIT? I TOLD YOU TO CUT THE DAMNED COMMENTARY!!! FROM NOW ON YOU WILL SUBMIT ALL ARTICLES TO ME BEFORE PUBLISHING! I WANT BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS TO THE DAMN STORY, I DO NOT WANT A DISSERTATION FROM YOU ABOUT WHY YOU LIKED IT OR DIDN'T! AM I MAKING MYSELF CLEAR, JOHN? AM I GETTING THROUGH TO YOU????
😂
If all of us have to die so a mermaid like that can live...then it's not the worst thing in the world.
Thank-you, will now restack.
Thank you!
They expected Storm of Steel.
That and On Pain are unironically the ones I'm most interested in reading.
They're both great books. And they're the core of his works on war. They're just not representative of his complete philosophy. Too early in the corpus of his work.
Yes, it makes sense that his thought would evolve, in fact it would be a point against him if it had not, and you made a very convincing case that it did so.
I still think the most effective strategy is not to frame it as a left/right issue, but to understand the real power is that mass of people in the middle, starting with the progressives realizing they are being gaslit and do not like the direction the Woke are leading them. You don't have to be conservative to feel queasy about 50 year old drag queens flaunting it in front of school kids.
Sex is a binary that predates the split between fora and fauna, a biological yin and yang. With people, all various billions of us, falling along the spectrum. As electrical beings, more than just material bodies, we are repulsed as easily as attracted.
Equally there are serious numbers of genuinely conservative folk that don't want to see the extremes of goose stepping automatons chopping the heads off everyone not a member of their Master Race/cult/creed.
Life is that fluctuation between the anarchies of desire and the tyrannies of judgement. The heart and the head. As Robert Frost put it, "If you are not liberal when you are young, you have no heart. If you are not conservative when you are old, you have no head." Motor and steering.
The powers that be most definitely do not want this mass of the population recognizing their common interests and rationally sorting through the mess being created. Thus they much prefer it divided and focused on the crazies on the other side, as opposed to peeling off the scab of our current consumer culture and trying to find what is vital within.