Jeez, another one already! How time flies...my tab bar still has some of last week's selections. This is fast becoming one of the essential series on here. Does anyone else get the feeling that we're cresting to a consummate peak right now? A sort of idyllic moment where everything feels vibrant and exciting and essential, a small untouched corner of the internet, bristling with authenticity and interesting digressions. A lighthouse at the edge of the map, away from the creeping madness of the world. Such things don't last, you know. It's only a matter of time. Close your eyes, breath it in, exhale, and enjoy it while it lasts. These elysian days are surely numbered, we might as well enjoy them while they last.
It feels like early days yet, to me ... A chaotic ferment, yet to gel into something tangible, but full of potential ... like a word at the tip of your tongue.
That's true, but I'm a cynic. And I know that generally when something feels too good to be true, it usually is, and it's the moment right before the fall. It's almost certain the "higher ups" are going to screw this up, sell us out, or something else will happen. After all, as someone else (or was it you? I can't remember) recently said, when the ADL declares war on this place, you know that "changes" are soon to come: https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/antisemitism-false-information-and-hate-speech-find-home-substack-0
Maybe. Substack basically ignored the wokians when they tried demanding censorship a couple of months ago, however. And they've so far ignored the ADL. I get the sense their commitment to an open platform is genuine, and informed by the events of the last decade. Let's not forget they held firm during the height of COVID.
I'm definitely hoping that's all true and they stand firm. But it seems everyone we put our faith into ends up disappointing. Last few months saw a lot of double crosses, from Fox firing Tucker to Veritas firing O'Keefe, now Musk playing games on Twitter censorship, etc., it's a hectic time that's for sure.
I pray that you are right, John. I held off even creating a substack for a long time because I kept waiting for them to give in to the demands of the censor-craving, woke communist scum.
Eventually I figured I might as well give it a go because they held out longer than I expected them to do so.
It's tough not to have that kind of cynicism. I was reminded of that pattern (everything that feels too good to be true inevitably falls apart) when I read the blurb about BlackBerry in this roundup: BlackBerry was so much better than Android/Apple in every way, which is probably why the BlackBerry model got ground up and spit out in the push for convergence around a black-mirror model of passive scrolling, conformist consumption, and endless data harvesting on those Chinese-slave-labor-produced Androids and iPhones.
I wish Linux were really viable. I know about pineos, but something that was truly open and easy for the masses to use. It's still not there yet, but I keep hoping one day it will be and then people would have an open alternative.
Blackberry also made the mistake of standing still. They could have progressed their product BEFORE iOS and Android took off, but they did not do so, and thus lost market share to those who did.
I had heard something about Musk possibly buy substack a while ago, but then nothing seemed to happen. If he buys it and merges it with Twitter, this place is doomed!
I hope you are wrong, Simplicius, I really do. I understand what you are saying, but I have become comfortable here, as one does when one is among friends. I like talking to the people here, and writing on this platform.
I do not wish for it go away and for all of us to have to abandon it and go somewhere else. And where would we go? To Twitter? To some other writing platform? I cannot think of another one as good as substack, but let me know if you know of one.
So far substack has not engaged in egregious censorship that I am aware of and I pray that they continue this way. However, if they even go to where Twitter is now, it will be the beginning of the end of their success. Elon only got rid of the worst of twitter's censorship, but there is much that remains that makes that platform not worth the time.
I agree, this is the first place I've ever felt so homey in before, but that's why my spidey senses are already tingling and telling me 'we can't have good things' and that something will snatch it up soon. After all, I already started to feel a sense of dread when Substack announced their new 'Notes' feature and that they're trying to turn this place into a new Twitter. That already doesn't bode well for me
I think it resembles Twitter, but I don't think it will be exactly the same in terms of culture. They are starting with a community of writers, and that will be the locus of their service. Twitter has writers on it, but it goes way beyond that and long ago lost the sense of intimacy that exists here.
That's one reason why I don't bother posting on twitter. It's like shouting into the void unless you are a large account. Not worth the time, and if you dare to say anything such as "trannies are insane mental cases" you will get a time out and be forced to remove your tweet. Even with Musk, they still censor over there.
Hey Simplicius, I've tried reaching out to you before seeing as we cover the same topics and yet have such diametrically opposed viewpoints on the state of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
I was just wondering whether you were aware of this or not? If so, are you deliberately avoiding having the discussion?
I feel like that consummate peak that you mentioned in your comment above would have to be bloggers like yourself who promote Z-triumphalism finally engaging with Z-doomers like myself instead of pretending that all is well in the candy land of Moscow and that there are only two sides to discussion: pro-NATO or pro-Kremlin.
If you're willing to engage with people who do not share your conclusions, but are suspicious of myself, why not have someone like John Carter mediate a discussion between us?
I don't want to lump you in with Z-trumphalists who are afraid to defend their ideas or engage with anyone who breaks from the Z-narrative, so I thought I'd extend the offer to have a cordial discussion in whatever format you prefer and see if we can't hash things out.
Remind me what your answer was then? Also, you have a chance to reply right now, don't you?
What do you think? You seem very confident in your analysis and I commend you on your output. I'm sure you will have no trouble defending your positions.
So, I'll ask you a third time: I extend the offer to have a cordial discussion in whatever format you prefer and see if we can't hash things out.
Jun 3, 2023·edited Jun 3, 2023Liked by John Carter
Both outlooks are required to prevail. If everyone was a smileyfaced hope-peddler, we'd be as dead in the water as if everyone was a doomsaying cynic. Uncertainty is a prerequisite to action, and so we'd want the best cases for hope and doom to be built so that some fraction of us caught in the middle (foolish to the blackpilled, invincible to the sunshiners) will be spurred to find the answer.
I knowthe feeling, I often get it when hiking in the fjells here. You crest a ridge and see the landscape before you, overwhelming you with beauty and challenge.
Then you raise your head and see - this wasn't the peak. There's another higher ridge yonder the horizon.
Wow, what an honor. Thank you for such high praise John. There's a huge amount of quality here, both in your commentary and the original works. Love to see it.
Thank you for keeping at this, Jeddak Carter. To echo other sentiments across the past few weeks, it's one of those jobs that became necessary, but required a degree of regular sacrifice that few (if any?) seemed willing to make.
Thanks for the links, John, but I must say that Briggs' headline beats anything else I've ever seen on substack!!!!! Priceless!!!! If I weren't undead already, I'd be dying over here!!!! 😂 😂 😂
'Pagan' is just urbanite hatred, it means hick hillbilly aka 'backwards' ruralite. Much like communism christianity spread quickly in the cities but slowly elsewhere... and if Zeus is the god of the abrahamics the term becomes even more worthless. All dissidents are pagans, with the DEI being our new theocracy. Much like the medieval catholics it demands total submission... lay down and DEI. To those who are (not) about to DEI, we dissidents salute you.
Meek = disciplined warrior, a powerful yet humble figure who only uses violence when necessary. Conan would make for a good example of meekness
''Who is more noble in the grand scheme of life, he who is incapable of violence, or he who is capable, but abstains? If you are too weak to do harm, is your abstention from it attributable to the goodness within you?''
All accurate, and yet, regardless of its historical origin, pagan is the word we have to describe the spiritual beliefs and practices of the pre-Christian Aryan world. AFAIK they didn't even have a specific word for it themselves, it was just 'religion' to them.
Anyone who has been in Greece at Easter time, especially among the more remote peasants, must have been struck by the emotion of suspense and excitement with which they wait for the announcement "Christos anestê," "Christ is risen!" and the response "Alêthôs anestê," "He has really risen!" I have referred elsewhere to Mr. Lawson's old peasant woman, who explained her anxiety: "If Christ does not rise tomorrow we shall have no harvest this year" (Modern Greek Folklore, p. 573). We are evidently in the presence of an emotion and a fear which, beneath its Christian colouring and, so to speak, transfiguration, is in its essence, like most of man's deepest emotions, a relic from a very remote pre-Christian past. Every spring was to primitive man a time of terrible anxiety. His store of food was near its end. Would the dead world revive, or would it not? The Old Year was dead; would the New Year, the Young King, born afresh of Sky and Earth, come in the Old King's place and bring with him the new growth and the hope of life?
I hardly realized, when writing the earlier editions of this book, how central, how omnipresent, this complex of ideas was in ancient Greek religion. Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Dionysus, and the rest of the "Year Gods" were not eccentric divagations in a religion whose proper worship was given to the immortal Olympians; they are different names given [vi]in different circumstances to this one being who dies and is born again each year, dies old and polluted with past deaths and sins, and is reborn young and purified. I have tried to trace this line of tradition in an article for the Journal of Hellenic Studies for June 1951, and to show, incidentally, how many of the elements in the Christian tradition it has provided, especially those elements which are utterly alien from Hebrew monotheism and must, indeed, have shocked every orthodox Jew.
The best starting point is the conception of the series of Old Kings, each, when the due time comes, dethroned and replaced by his son, the Young King, with the help of the Queen Mother; for Gaia or Earth, the eternal Wife and Mother of each in turn, is always ready to renew herself. The new vegetation God each year is born from the union of the Sky-God and the Earth-Mother; or, as in myth and legend the figures become personified, he is the Son of a God and a mortal princess.
We all know the sequence of Kings in Hesiod: First Uranus (Sky), King of the World, and his wife Gaia (Earth); Uranus reigns till he is dethroned by his son Cronos with the help of Gaia; then Cronos and Rhea (Earth) reign till Cronos is dethroned by his son Zeus, with the help of Rhea; then Zeus reigns till . . . but here the series stops, since, according to the orthodox Olympian system, Zeus is the eternal King. But there was another system, underlying the Olympian, and it is to that other system that the Year-Kings belong. The Olympians are definite persons. They are immortal; they do not die and revive; they are not beings who come and [vii]go, in succession to one another. In the other series are the Attis-Adonis-Osiris type of gods, and especially Dionysus, whose name has been shown by Kretschmer to be simply the Thracian Deos or Dios nysos, "Zeus-Young" or "Zeus-the-son." And in the Orphic tradition it is laid down that Zeus yields up his power to Dionysus and bids all the gods of the Cosmos obey him. The mother of Dionysus was Semelê, a name which, like Gaia and Rhea, means "Earth." The series is not only continuous but infinite; for on one side Uranus (Sky) was himself the son of Gaia the eternal, and on the other, every year a Zeus was succeeded by a "Young Zeus."
The Young King, bearer of spring and the new summer, is the Saviour of the Earth, made cold and lifeless by winter and doomed to barrenness by all the pollutions of the past; the Saviour also of mankind from all kinds of evils, and bringer of a new Aion, or Age, to the world. Innumerable different figures in Greek mythology are personifications of him, from Dionysus and Heracles to the Dioscuri and many heroes of myth. He bears certain distinguishing marks. He is always the son of a God and a mortal princess. The mother is always persecuted, a mater dolorosa, and rescued by her son. The Son is always a Saviour; very often a champion who saves his people from enemies or monsters; but sometimes a Healer of the Sick, like Asclepius; sometimes, like Dionysus, a priest or hierophant with a thiasos, or band of worshippers; sometimes a King's Son who is sacrificed to save his people, and mystically identified with some sacrificial animal, a lamb, a young bull, a horse or a fawn, whose blood has [viii]supernatural power. Sometimes again he is a divine or miraculous Babe, for whose birth the whole world has been waiting, who will bring his own Age or Kingdom and "make all things new." His life is almost always threatened by a cruel king, like Herod, but he always escapes. The popularity of the Divine Babe is probably due to the very widespread worship of the Egyptian Child-God, Harpocrates. Egyptian also is the Virgin-Mother, impregnated by the holy Pneuma or Spiritus of the god, or sometimes by the laying on of his hand.
Besides the ordinary death and rebirth of the vegetation year god, the general conclusion to which these considerations point has many parallels elsewhere. Our own religious ideas are subject to the same tendencies as those of other civilizations. Men and women, when converted to a new religion or instructed in some new and unaccustomed knowledge, are extremely unwilling, and sometimes absolutely unable, to give up their old magical or religious practices and habits of thought. When African negroes are converted to Christianity and forbidden to practise their tribal magic, they are apt to steal away into the depths of the forest and do secretly what they have always considered necessary to ensure a good harvest. Not to do so would be too great a risk. When Goths were "converted by battalions" the change must have been more in names than in substance. When Greeks of the Mediterranean were forbidden to say prayers to a figure of Helios, the Sun, it was not difficult to call him the prophet Elias and go on with the same prayers and hopes. Not difficult to continue your prayers to [ix]the age-old Mother Goddess of all Mediterranean peoples, while calling her Mary, the Mother of Christ. Eusebius studied the subject, somewhat superficially, in his Praeparatio Evangelica, in which he argued that much old pagan belief was to be explained as an imperfect preparation for the full light of the Gospel. And it is certainly striking how the Anatolian peoples, among whom the seed of the early Church was chiefly sown, could never, in spite of Jewish monotheism, give up the beloved Mother Goddess for whom mankind craves, or the divine "Faithful Son" who will by his own sacrifice save his people. Where scientific knowledge fails man cannot but be guided by his felt needs and longings and aspirations.
The elements in Christianity which derive from what Jews called "the Gôyim" or "nations" beyond the pale, seem to be far deeper and more numerous than those which come unchanged from Judaism. Even the Sabbath had to be changed, and the birthday of Jesus conformed to that of the Sun. Judaism contributed a strong, though not quite successful, resistance to polytheism, and a purification of sexual morality. It provided perhaps a general antiseptic, which was often needed by the passionate gropings of Hellenistic religion, in the stage which I call the Failure of Nerve.
If you are interested in paideia, check out David Hicks. Norms and Nobility is short but meaty, maybe the only good book on education that I have ever read. Here's a short essay from him, on page 34:
Jun 5, 2023·edited Jun 5, 2023Liked by John Carter
We can turn any philosophies on their heads. But the dualistic Philosophy of Descartes has spawned an epidemic of materialism, effete dualism, bad science and hubristic techno biology. We have used Descartes to misunderstand ourselves.
Yes and our misunderstanding has led us to misunderstand even our own very biology, physiology and evolution. Wish me luck Iam upside down in a essay about this - not really about Descartes but about where our misconceptions about dualism have led us. Thanks for your note and comment.
Wow! So much good stuff in here! Thanks for compiling all this!
<<"Has that pesky racial IQ gap gone away thanks to improvements in the standard of living? Steve Sailer takes a look at data from the absolutely massive Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study in Mind The Gap and finds that … no, no it hasn't. Blacks remain stubbornly 1 standard deviation below whites; Asians continue to be ⅓ of a standard deviation higher than whites. Shocking, I know. Eventually liberals are going to have to admit they've been wrong about this for the last few generations. C'mon guys - stop being science deniers. I want my society back.">>
This reminds me of why free-speech platforms like Substack are so valuable. The Left's war against reality can only work when they limit the conversation to mindless regurgitations of wokeist talking points. Here we have an elephant in the room, causing all kinds of chaos and destruction in our culture, and the only politically correct options we're supposed to have all involve putting more elephants into more rooms. The Left wants a reckoning on race. Okay, let's have it. Because if we don't acknowledge and account for unpleasant realities, the backlash will only get worse, the longer it is delayed. Right now, I think we can still salvage things and push for enforcing good, race-neutral standards, but by preventing that from happening, the Left will only guarantee that real racists (the likes of which they have not had to seriously contend with in decades) will gain control of the conversation. Of course, the Left would rather hold onto power than have a productive conversation about anything, which is why free speech platforms are so important, because without a productive conversation, we'll have only unproductive ones, which will ineluctably lead to a brutal backlash. And this pattern holds across a large number of issues, not just race.
I find "racist" to be an almost useless term at this point. It conflates grumpy grampas who don't want mixed grandkids with genocidal maniacs and everything in between, and then tries to put the former on the same moral plane as the latter. Racial noticing is lumped together with racial chauvinism which is balled up with racial supremacy. It's become an empty word, much like 'fascist' or 'democracy'.
Also, the american understanding of the term and how it is used differs from ours over here, though thanks to US cultural imperialism (remember when that was the big boogeyman for marxists?) we also use the american meaning, despite it being wrong for the european context.
There are 8 500 000 of my people on this planet. That's a rounding-error in the census bureaus of some nations. If my people are not allowed or able to hold on to our territory meaning limiting migration to a tiny trickle of people from cultures (or races as you say in the US) we will become extinct.
So if one is pro-mass migration to small nations with small populations, one is effectively endorsing genocide; can't really be more racist than that, can you?
For USA it is much different, as there's no one people that's "american", just a lot of people having citizenship. That's not the same as being of a nation, and that's why the understanding and terminology is mixedup resulting in really bad outcomes over here when we adopt the US attitude to migration/citizenship.
The only way to be of my people is to be born one.
As I say to people being angry at statements like the above: "Right. Just swap out Sweden for Israel and Palestine."
At which point they become incoherent, since they realise they are actual real racists no matter what side they're on in that conflict.
Sweden, Ireland, Finland, Scotland ... Europe is full of numerically tiny peoples who can be swamped by immigration from the south. It is indeed genocidal.
The same is true in the New World. There are only a few million Quebecois, for instance. But somehow it is racist for all of us to simply wish to persist. Odd that.
If you want a good eye-roll and perhaps a chuckle, look up "race play" in the urban dictionary. All the attempts of the woke communists to censor and control language and behavior around race have resulted in...a new sex fetish! 😂
And of course, it only ever goes one way. Blacks can openly practice in-group preferences and discriminate against whites, and that's celebrated as some sort of progress. But whites complain that they're being discriminated against, and they're accused of being "racists." It's as you said in your note a few weeks back: "racist" pretty much only functions as a racial slur against whites.
Denethor despaired because he saw only what the Enemy showed him (I think Gandalf says that after Denethor's death, but I may misremember). The lesson isn't that Denethor chose despair or gave up, but that death on the pyre - choosing his own time and manner of dying - became the only act of freedom and defiance he could see.
So, never let your enemy define your choices.
Ragnarök comes, it is certain. Yet Allfather fights with all his cunning against it. What is the kenning in there?
That only the living and the free fight; to fight is to be free and to live. That your flocks and herds may die, that your friends and family may die, that you also may die - it matters not. Doom over dead man's name does not die.
(Yep, paraphrasing from Hávámal, verse 77 in Erik Brate's transcription. Doom in Old Norse and also modern swedish may be understood as judgement, doom, fate, and verdict all in one - which important to understand the text. All of the Edda and the rest of the surviving materials are written as kennings; layer upon layer of meaning using very few words. By studying them, you water wisdom with the sweat of effort, making wisdom grow.)
Whoeth! Reading all these would take a month's worth of my spare time. But I will read a few.
And I did just read the one on consumption of marijuana. I call bullshit. Marijuana in regular use is harmful, most definitely. But it doesn't render people submissive. The character "The Dude" in "The Big Lebowski" is utterly unlike every longtime pot smoking political activist that I have ever met, and I have met a LOT. Common symptoms of excessive longterm pot smoking include anger, conspiracy theorizing, and not being able to shut up and let anyone else talk.
Traditionally, the U.S. military establishment hated marijuana for good reasons. Stimulants, including nicotine, are useful for sustaining concentration. Alcohol is a useful stress reliever and memory dampener. A good drinking binge after a horrible experience is probably useful against PTSD. And alcohol also encourages bravery by dampening fear.
Marijuana, on the other hand, does not produce the same reckless behavior as alcohol, and it does something far, far, worse from the point of view of someone training soldiers: marijuana reduces the ability to put of with bullshit. The laziness associated with marijuana use is really more refusal to work for The Man, than work per se. They can still do self-motivated work. During my days of on the ground political activism, many of the best workers were serious potheads.
And do note that during the days of America's industrial decline, there was one American industry that continued to dominate the world -- to the point that the world complained just like we used to complain about Japanese imports and now complain about Chinese imports. That industry is the entertainment industry, which is dominated by potheads.
And, by the way, Elon Musk has been known to toke. He isn't lazy and has been know to buck the system. And there is also evidence that George Washington partook. He was separating the male and female hemp plants on his farm.
And finally, the Levites of the Old Testament were probably some pretty serious stoners. The priestly ointment included "qanah besem", which gets translated as "sweet cane" or "sweet calamus", but the Strong's pronunciation of the original sound suspiciously like cannabis. Those Levites were very un-Dude like.
---
Something other than pot is poisoning us. SSRIs have an effect more similar to Plato's passive diet. Both increase serotonin levels. Prozac DOES make people more Dude like. At least older people. Some evidence that the teenage brain can overcompensate and go into murderous rampage mode.
I used to smoke weed. I stopped for good reason. Used habitually, it makes people lazy and incoherent, splitting their thoughts into a thousand different directions until they fuzz out into a blur of irrelevance with the illusion of profundity. Like any other drug, in moderation it's fine, but potheads don't use it in moderation and governments encouraging its use are not acting in our best interests.
It should not be encouraged -- agreed. But I'd rather have people smoke dope than have a government which storms into people's homes at 3am in order to seize their stashes.
The problem with government trying to discourage pot misuse through "education" is that the government threw away its credibility long ago through exaggerated claims.
Reactions to drugs vary. Personally, I struggle with caffeine. Coffee gives me super powers for a day or too. Then the negatives outweigh the positives, but I'm already hooked. I have gotten truly high from marijuana exactly once: the first time. After that, it merely made me sleepy and hungry. If I was on cancer treatment, I would definitely look to weed. And I'd consider it as an occasional sleep aid if I lived in a legal dope state. But as a high it just doesn't work -- for me. There are channels on somafm.com that are far more powerful than weed.
And while I know a fair number of habitual pot smokers, I also know a LOT of people who toked in college and then easily quit. For most people, pot is less addictive than alcohol, caffeine, or nicotine. (But pot is addictive to *some* people.)
Hemp seed interests me as an alternative to corn for feeding chickens. Hemp seed is high in protein and high in omega 3 oils. Hemp for cloth and paper are also interesting. Should the happy day that I could afford it arrive, I'd buy myself a hemp suit.
Jeez, another one already! How time flies...my tab bar still has some of last week's selections. This is fast becoming one of the essential series on here. Does anyone else get the feeling that we're cresting to a consummate peak right now? A sort of idyllic moment where everything feels vibrant and exciting and essential, a small untouched corner of the internet, bristling with authenticity and interesting digressions. A lighthouse at the edge of the map, away from the creeping madness of the world. Such things don't last, you know. It's only a matter of time. Close your eyes, breath it in, exhale, and enjoy it while it lasts. These elysian days are surely numbered, we might as well enjoy them while they last.
It feels like early days yet, to me ... A chaotic ferment, yet to gel into something tangible, but full of potential ... like a word at the tip of your tongue.
I agree. At worst, this feels like "the end of the beginning." The next stages will be difficult, but we have been honed.
That's true, but I'm a cynic. And I know that generally when something feels too good to be true, it usually is, and it's the moment right before the fall. It's almost certain the "higher ups" are going to screw this up, sell us out, or something else will happen. After all, as someone else (or was it you? I can't remember) recently said, when the ADL declares war on this place, you know that "changes" are soon to come: https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/antisemitism-false-information-and-hate-speech-find-home-substack-0
Maybe. Substack basically ignored the wokians when they tried demanding censorship a couple of months ago, however. And they've so far ignored the ADL. I get the sense their commitment to an open platform is genuine, and informed by the events of the last decade. Let's not forget they held firm during the height of COVID.
I'm definitely hoping that's all true and they stand firm. But it seems everyone we put our faith into ends up disappointing. Last few months saw a lot of double crosses, from Fox firing Tucker to Veritas firing O'Keefe, now Musk playing games on Twitter censorship, etc., it's a hectic time that's for sure.
Fox was never on our side though. Veritas ... I think less a betrayal than a coup.
The culture is still predicated on the worship of money.....
We are all pods in the Matrix.
I pray that you are right, John. I held off even creating a substack for a long time because I kept waiting for them to give in to the demands of the censor-craving, woke communist scum.
Eventually I figured I might as well give it a go because they held out longer than I expected them to do so.
It's tough not to have that kind of cynicism. I was reminded of that pattern (everything that feels too good to be true inevitably falls apart) when I read the blurb about BlackBerry in this roundup: BlackBerry was so much better than Android/Apple in every way, which is probably why the BlackBerry model got ground up and spit out in the push for convergence around a black-mirror model of passive scrolling, conformist consumption, and endless data harvesting on those Chinese-slave-labor-produced Androids and iPhones.
Indeed, but it's a valuable reminder that there are alternatives, if we can find the will to pursue them.
I wish Linux were really viable. I know about pineos, but something that was truly open and easy for the masses to use. It's still not there yet, but I keep hoping one day it will be and then people would have an open alternative.
Blackberry also made the mistake of standing still. They could have progressed their product BEFORE iOS and Android took off, but they did not do so, and thus lost market share to those who did.
I had heard something about Musk possibly buy substack a while ago, but then nothing seemed to happen. If he buys it and merges it with Twitter, this place is doomed!
I hope you are wrong, Simplicius, I really do. I understand what you are saying, but I have become comfortable here, as one does when one is among friends. I like talking to the people here, and writing on this platform.
I do not wish for it go away and for all of us to have to abandon it and go somewhere else. And where would we go? To Twitter? To some other writing platform? I cannot think of another one as good as substack, but let me know if you know of one.
So far substack has not engaged in egregious censorship that I am aware of and I pray that they continue this way. However, if they even go to where Twitter is now, it will be the beginning of the end of their success. Elon only got rid of the worst of twitter's censorship, but there is much that remains that makes that platform not worth the time.
I agree, this is the first place I've ever felt so homey in before, but that's why my spidey senses are already tingling and telling me 'we can't have good things' and that something will snatch it up soon. After all, I already started to feel a sense of dread when Substack announced their new 'Notes' feature and that they're trying to turn this place into a new Twitter. That already doesn't bode well for me
I think it resembles Twitter, but I don't think it will be exactly the same in terms of culture. They are starting with a community of writers, and that will be the locus of their service. Twitter has writers on it, but it goes way beyond that and long ago lost the sense of intimacy that exists here.
That's one reason why I don't bother posting on twitter. It's like shouting into the void unless you are a large account. Not worth the time, and if you dare to say anything such as "trannies are insane mental cases" you will get a time out and be forced to remove your tweet. Even with Musk, they still censor over there.
Hey Simplicius, I've tried reaching out to you before seeing as we cover the same topics and yet have such diametrically opposed viewpoints on the state of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
I was just wondering whether you were aware of this or not? If so, are you deliberately avoiding having the discussion?
I feel like that consummate peak that you mentioned in your comment above would have to be bloggers like yourself who promote Z-triumphalism finally engaging with Z-doomers like myself instead of pretending that all is well in the candy land of Moscow and that there are only two sides to discussion: pro-NATO or pro-Kremlin.
If you're willing to engage with people who do not share your conclusions, but are suspicious of myself, why not have someone like John Carter mediate a discussion between us?
I don't want to lump you in with Z-trumphalists who are afraid to defend their ideas or engage with anyone who breaks from the Z-narrative, so I thought I'd extend the offer to have a cordial discussion in whatever format you prefer and see if we can't hash things out.
Let me know what you think.
Simplicius states that he is a pessimist, rather odd that he is into 5D Judo.
Didn't you reach out to me in my comments section long ago? I replied to you didn't I? But now you claim I avoided you? Lol.
Yes! Glad you remember!
Remind me what your answer was then? Also, you have a chance to reply right now, don't you?
What do you think? You seem very confident in your analysis and I commend you on your output. I'm sure you will have no trouble defending your positions.
So, I'll ask you a third time: I extend the offer to have a cordial discussion in whatever format you prefer and see if we can't hash things out.
Ukraine will shortly be shoved down the memory hole, like all the others. Don't want it cluttering up the ChinaChinaChina narrative do we?
There is money to be made on the next new thing and that's all there is to it.
All the strategic aptitude of bacteria racing across a petri dish, when the banks are left to pull the strings.
Both outlooks are required to prevail. If everyone was a smileyfaced hope-peddler, we'd be as dead in the water as if everyone was a doomsaying cynic. Uncertainty is a prerequisite to action, and so we'd want the best cases for hope and doom to be built so that some fraction of us caught in the middle (foolish to the blackpilled, invincible to the sunshiners) will be spurred to find the answer.
I knowthe feeling, I often get it when hiking in the fjells here. You crest a ridge and see the landscape before you, overwhelming you with beauty and challenge.
Then you raise your head and see - this wasn't the peak. There's another higher ridge yonder the horizon.
Another and another and another.
Wow, what an honor. Thank you for such high praise John. There's a huge amount of quality here, both in your commentary and the original works. Love to see it.
Thank you John, it's an honor to be featured. Enjoying all of the other pieces you've highlighted here as well - it's a great service you're doing.
Thank you for keeping at this, Jeddak Carter. To echo other sentiments across the past few weeks, it's one of those jobs that became necessary, but required a degree of regular sacrifice that few (if any?) seemed willing to make.
I will not lie - it is a time-consuming, but so far not a thankless task.
Honored as always. And always impressed with the amount of effort you put into these roundups
Thanks for the links, John, but I must say that Briggs' headline beats anything else I've ever seen on substack!!!!! Priceless!!!! If I weren't undead already, I'd be dying over here!!!! 😂 😂 😂
It was glorious. I really should have an award just for best headline, it would have won it for sure.
How about "Headline of the Week" or something like that? You could inaugurate it with Brigg's headline. Or maybe call it "Briggs Headline Award?"
And just like that, it's done.
'Pagan' is just urbanite hatred, it means hick hillbilly aka 'backwards' ruralite. Much like communism christianity spread quickly in the cities but slowly elsewhere... and if Zeus is the god of the abrahamics the term becomes even more worthless. All dissidents are pagans, with the DEI being our new theocracy. Much like the medieval catholics it demands total submission... lay down and DEI. To those who are (not) about to DEI, we dissidents salute you.
Meek = disciplined warrior, a powerful yet humble figure who only uses violence when necessary. Conan would make for a good example of meekness
https://identitydixie.com/2020/02/11/the-meek-shall-inherit-nothing-%EF%BB%BF/?sfw=pass1685804117
''Who is more noble in the grand scheme of life, he who is incapable of violence, or he who is capable, but abstains? If you are too weak to do harm, is your abstention from it attributable to the goodness within you?''
All accurate, and yet, regardless of its historical origin, pagan is the word we have to describe the spiritual beliefs and practices of the pre-Christian Aryan world. AFAIK they didn't even have a specific word for it themselves, it was just 'religion' to them.
A good book on the origins of Western Civ;
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30250/30250-h/30250-h.htm
FIVE STAGES OFGREEK RELIGION
BY GILBERT MURRAY
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
Anyone who has been in Greece at Easter time, especially among the more remote peasants, must have been struck by the emotion of suspense and excitement with which they wait for the announcement "Christos anestê," "Christ is risen!" and the response "Alêthôs anestê," "He has really risen!" I have referred elsewhere to Mr. Lawson's old peasant woman, who explained her anxiety: "If Christ does not rise tomorrow we shall have no harvest this year" (Modern Greek Folklore, p. 573). We are evidently in the presence of an emotion and a fear which, beneath its Christian colouring and, so to speak, transfiguration, is in its essence, like most of man's deepest emotions, a relic from a very remote pre-Christian past. Every spring was to primitive man a time of terrible anxiety. His store of food was near its end. Would the dead world revive, or would it not? The Old Year was dead; would the New Year, the Young King, born afresh of Sky and Earth, come in the Old King's place and bring with him the new growth and the hope of life?
I hardly realized, when writing the earlier editions of this book, how central, how omnipresent, this complex of ideas was in ancient Greek religion. Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Dionysus, and the rest of the "Year Gods" were not eccentric divagations in a religion whose proper worship was given to the immortal Olympians; they are different names given [vi]in different circumstances to this one being who dies and is born again each year, dies old and polluted with past deaths and sins, and is reborn young and purified. I have tried to trace this line of tradition in an article for the Journal of Hellenic Studies for June 1951, and to show, incidentally, how many of the elements in the Christian tradition it has provided, especially those elements which are utterly alien from Hebrew monotheism and must, indeed, have shocked every orthodox Jew.
The best starting point is the conception of the series of Old Kings, each, when the due time comes, dethroned and replaced by his son, the Young King, with the help of the Queen Mother; for Gaia or Earth, the eternal Wife and Mother of each in turn, is always ready to renew herself. The new vegetation God each year is born from the union of the Sky-God and the Earth-Mother; or, as in myth and legend the figures become personified, he is the Son of a God and a mortal princess.
We all know the sequence of Kings in Hesiod: First Uranus (Sky), King of the World, and his wife Gaia (Earth); Uranus reigns till he is dethroned by his son Cronos with the help of Gaia; then Cronos and Rhea (Earth) reign till Cronos is dethroned by his son Zeus, with the help of Rhea; then Zeus reigns till . . . but here the series stops, since, according to the orthodox Olympian system, Zeus is the eternal King. But there was another system, underlying the Olympian, and it is to that other system that the Year-Kings belong. The Olympians are definite persons. They are immortal; they do not die and revive; they are not beings who come and [vii]go, in succession to one another. In the other series are the Attis-Adonis-Osiris type of gods, and especially Dionysus, whose name has been shown by Kretschmer to be simply the Thracian Deos or Dios nysos, "Zeus-Young" or "Zeus-the-son." And in the Orphic tradition it is laid down that Zeus yields up his power to Dionysus and bids all the gods of the Cosmos obey him. The mother of Dionysus was Semelê, a name which, like Gaia and Rhea, means "Earth." The series is not only continuous but infinite; for on one side Uranus (Sky) was himself the son of Gaia the eternal, and on the other, every year a Zeus was succeeded by a "Young Zeus."
The Young King, bearer of spring and the new summer, is the Saviour of the Earth, made cold and lifeless by winter and doomed to barrenness by all the pollutions of the past; the Saviour also of mankind from all kinds of evils, and bringer of a new Aion, or Age, to the world. Innumerable different figures in Greek mythology are personifications of him, from Dionysus and Heracles to the Dioscuri and many heroes of myth. He bears certain distinguishing marks. He is always the son of a God and a mortal princess. The mother is always persecuted, a mater dolorosa, and rescued by her son. The Son is always a Saviour; very often a champion who saves his people from enemies or monsters; but sometimes a Healer of the Sick, like Asclepius; sometimes, like Dionysus, a priest or hierophant with a thiasos, or band of worshippers; sometimes a King's Son who is sacrificed to save his people, and mystically identified with some sacrificial animal, a lamb, a young bull, a horse or a fawn, whose blood has [viii]supernatural power. Sometimes again he is a divine or miraculous Babe, for whose birth the whole world has been waiting, who will bring his own Age or Kingdom and "make all things new." His life is almost always threatened by a cruel king, like Herod, but he always escapes. The popularity of the Divine Babe is probably due to the very widespread worship of the Egyptian Child-God, Harpocrates. Egyptian also is the Virgin-Mother, impregnated by the holy Pneuma or Spiritus of the god, or sometimes by the laying on of his hand.
Besides the ordinary death and rebirth of the vegetation year god, the general conclusion to which these considerations point has many parallels elsewhere. Our own religious ideas are subject to the same tendencies as those of other civilizations. Men and women, when converted to a new religion or instructed in some new and unaccustomed knowledge, are extremely unwilling, and sometimes absolutely unable, to give up their old magical or religious practices and habits of thought. When African negroes are converted to Christianity and forbidden to practise their tribal magic, they are apt to steal away into the depths of the forest and do secretly what they have always considered necessary to ensure a good harvest. Not to do so would be too great a risk. When Goths were "converted by battalions" the change must have been more in names than in substance. When Greeks of the Mediterranean were forbidden to say prayers to a figure of Helios, the Sun, it was not difficult to call him the prophet Elias and go on with the same prayers and hopes. Not difficult to continue your prayers to [ix]the age-old Mother Goddess of all Mediterranean peoples, while calling her Mary, the Mother of Christ. Eusebius studied the subject, somewhat superficially, in his Praeparatio Evangelica, in which he argued that much old pagan belief was to be explained as an imperfect preparation for the full light of the Gospel. And it is certainly striking how the Anatolian peoples, among whom the seed of the early Church was chiefly sown, could never, in spite of Jewish monotheism, give up the beloved Mother Goddess for whom mankind craves, or the divine "Faithful Son" who will by his own sacrifice save his people. Where scientific knowledge fails man cannot but be guided by his felt needs and longings and aspirations.
The elements in Christianity which derive from what Jews called "the Gôyim" or "nations" beyond the pale, seem to be far deeper and more numerous than those which come unchanged from Judaism. Even the Sabbath had to be changed, and the birthday of Jesus conformed to that of the Sun. Judaism contributed a strong, though not quite successful, resistance to polytheism, and a purification of sexual morality. It provided perhaps a general antiseptic, which was often needed by the passionate gropings of Hellenistic religion, in the stage which I call the Failure of Nerve.
G. M.
September 1951.
[x]
Thanks again John.
Do you have more pictures of that blonde?
I love your round-ups. They always give me such good suggestions for what to read next.
If you are interested in paideia, check out David Hicks. Norms and Nobility is short but meaty, maybe the only good book on education that I have ever read. Here's a short essay from him, on page 34:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230605230126/https://issuu.com/circeinstitute/docs/_current-web
We can turn any philosophies on their heads. But the dualistic Philosophy of Descartes has spawned an epidemic of materialism, effete dualism, bad science and hubristic techno biology. We have used Descartes to misunderstand ourselves.
Indeed, and I also thought of Descartes this way, which is why I found Tólma's treatment so compelling - we have misunderstood Descartes entirely.
Yes and our misunderstanding has led us to misunderstand even our own very biology, physiology and evolution. Wish me luck Iam upside down in a essay about this - not really about Descartes but about where our misconceptions about dualism have led us. Thanks for your note and comment.
Great piece. I really like your weekly write ups. They continue to get better every week.
Cheers!
Thanks so much for the shout out. Now I wish I’d thought of calling academic activism “problematic.” LOL.
Wow! So much good stuff in here! Thanks for compiling all this!
<<"Has that pesky racial IQ gap gone away thanks to improvements in the standard of living? Steve Sailer takes a look at data from the absolutely massive Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study in Mind The Gap and finds that … no, no it hasn't. Blacks remain stubbornly 1 standard deviation below whites; Asians continue to be ⅓ of a standard deviation higher than whites. Shocking, I know. Eventually liberals are going to have to admit they've been wrong about this for the last few generations. C'mon guys - stop being science deniers. I want my society back.">>
This reminds me of why free-speech platforms like Substack are so valuable. The Left's war against reality can only work when they limit the conversation to mindless regurgitations of wokeist talking points. Here we have an elephant in the room, causing all kinds of chaos and destruction in our culture, and the only politically correct options we're supposed to have all involve putting more elephants into more rooms. The Left wants a reckoning on race. Okay, let's have it. Because if we don't acknowledge and account for unpleasant realities, the backlash will only get worse, the longer it is delayed. Right now, I think we can still salvage things and push for enforcing good, race-neutral standards, but by preventing that from happening, the Left will only guarantee that real racists (the likes of which they have not had to seriously contend with in decades) will gain control of the conversation. Of course, the Left would rather hold onto power than have a productive conversation about anything, which is why free speech platforms are so important, because without a productive conversation, we'll have only unproductive ones, which will ineluctably lead to a brutal backlash. And this pattern holds across a large number of issues, not just race.
I find "racist" to be an almost useless term at this point. It conflates grumpy grampas who don't want mixed grandkids with genocidal maniacs and everything in between, and then tries to put the former on the same moral plane as the latter. Racial noticing is lumped together with racial chauvinism which is balled up with racial supremacy. It's become an empty word, much like 'fascist' or 'democracy'.
Also, the american understanding of the term and how it is used differs from ours over here, though thanks to US cultural imperialism (remember when that was the big boogeyman for marxists?) we also use the american meaning, despite it being wrong for the european context.
There are 8 500 000 of my people on this planet. That's a rounding-error in the census bureaus of some nations. If my people are not allowed or able to hold on to our territory meaning limiting migration to a tiny trickle of people from cultures (or races as you say in the US) we will become extinct.
So if one is pro-mass migration to small nations with small populations, one is effectively endorsing genocide; can't really be more racist than that, can you?
For USA it is much different, as there's no one people that's "american", just a lot of people having citizenship. That's not the same as being of a nation, and that's why the understanding and terminology is mixedup resulting in really bad outcomes over here when we adopt the US attitude to migration/citizenship.
The only way to be of my people is to be born one.
As I say to people being angry at statements like the above: "Right. Just swap out Sweden for Israel and Palestine."
At which point they become incoherent, since they realise they are actual real racists no matter what side they're on in that conflict.
Sweden, Ireland, Finland, Scotland ... Europe is full of numerically tiny peoples who can be swamped by immigration from the south. It is indeed genocidal.
The same is true in the New World. There are only a few million Quebecois, for instance. But somehow it is racist for all of us to simply wish to persist. Odd that.
If you want a good eye-roll and perhaps a chuckle, look up "race play" in the urban dictionary. All the attempts of the woke communists to censor and control language and behavior around race have resulted in...a new sex fetish! 😂
That is not even remotely surprising.
And of course, it only ever goes one way. Blacks can openly practice in-group preferences and discriminate against whites, and that's celebrated as some sort of progress. But whites complain that they're being discriminated against, and they're accused of being "racists." It's as you said in your note a few weeks back: "racist" pretty much only functions as a racial slur against whites.
Yep.
Racist and White Supremacist mean ''shut up and DEI''
DEIUS VULT
Denethor despaired because he saw only what the Enemy showed him (I think Gandalf says that after Denethor's death, but I may misremember). The lesson isn't that Denethor chose despair or gave up, but that death on the pyre - choosing his own time and manner of dying - became the only act of freedom and defiance he could see.
So, never let your enemy define your choices.
Ragnarök comes, it is certain. Yet Allfather fights with all his cunning against it. What is the kenning in there?
That only the living and the free fight; to fight is to be free and to live. That your flocks and herds may die, that your friends and family may die, that you also may die - it matters not. Doom over dead man's name does not die.
(Yep, paraphrasing from Hávámal, verse 77 in Erik Brate's transcription. Doom in Old Norse and also modern swedish may be understood as judgement, doom, fate, and verdict all in one - which important to understand the text. All of the Edda and the rest of the surviving materials are written as kennings; layer upon layer of meaning using very few words. By studying them, you water wisdom with the sweat of effort, making wisdom grow.)
Whoeth! Reading all these would take a month's worth of my spare time. But I will read a few.
And I did just read the one on consumption of marijuana. I call bullshit. Marijuana in regular use is harmful, most definitely. But it doesn't render people submissive. The character "The Dude" in "The Big Lebowski" is utterly unlike every longtime pot smoking political activist that I have ever met, and I have met a LOT. Common symptoms of excessive longterm pot smoking include anger, conspiracy theorizing, and not being able to shut up and let anyone else talk.
Traditionally, the U.S. military establishment hated marijuana for good reasons. Stimulants, including nicotine, are useful for sustaining concentration. Alcohol is a useful stress reliever and memory dampener. A good drinking binge after a horrible experience is probably useful against PTSD. And alcohol also encourages bravery by dampening fear.
Marijuana, on the other hand, does not produce the same reckless behavior as alcohol, and it does something far, far, worse from the point of view of someone training soldiers: marijuana reduces the ability to put of with bullshit. The laziness associated with marijuana use is really more refusal to work for The Man, than work per se. They can still do self-motivated work. During my days of on the ground political activism, many of the best workers were serious potheads.
And do note that during the days of America's industrial decline, there was one American industry that continued to dominate the world -- to the point that the world complained just like we used to complain about Japanese imports and now complain about Chinese imports. That industry is the entertainment industry, which is dominated by potheads.
And, by the way, Elon Musk has been known to toke. He isn't lazy and has been know to buck the system. And there is also evidence that George Washington partook. He was separating the male and female hemp plants on his farm.
And finally, the Levites of the Old Testament were probably some pretty serious stoners. The priestly ointment included "qanah besem", which gets translated as "sweet cane" or "sweet calamus", but the Strong's pronunciation of the original sound suspiciously like cannabis. Those Levites were very un-Dude like.
---
Something other than pot is poisoning us. SSRIs have an effect more similar to Plato's passive diet. Both increase serotonin levels. Prozac DOES make people more Dude like. At least older people. Some evidence that the teenage brain can overcompensate and go into murderous rampage mode.
I used to smoke weed. I stopped for good reason. Used habitually, it makes people lazy and incoherent, splitting their thoughts into a thousand different directions until they fuzz out into a blur of irrelevance with the illusion of profundity. Like any other drug, in moderation it's fine, but potheads don't use it in moderation and governments encouraging its use are not acting in our best interests.
It should not be encouraged -- agreed. But I'd rather have people smoke dope than have a government which storms into people's homes at 3am in order to seize their stashes.
The problem with government trying to discourage pot misuse through "education" is that the government threw away its credibility long ago through exaggerated claims.
Reactions to drugs vary. Personally, I struggle with caffeine. Coffee gives me super powers for a day or too. Then the negatives outweigh the positives, but I'm already hooked. I have gotten truly high from marijuana exactly once: the first time. After that, it merely made me sleepy and hungry. If I was on cancer treatment, I would definitely look to weed. And I'd consider it as an occasional sleep aid if I lived in a legal dope state. But as a high it just doesn't work -- for me. There are channels on somafm.com that are far more powerful than weed.
And while I know a fair number of habitual pot smokers, I also know a LOT of people who toked in college and then easily quit. For most people, pot is less addictive than alcohol, caffeine, or nicotine. (But pot is addictive to *some* people.)
Hemp seed interests me as an alternative to corn for feeding chickens. Hemp seed is high in protein and high in omega 3 oils. Hemp for cloth and paper are also interesting. Should the happy day that I could afford it arrive, I'd buy myself a hemp suit.