Metaphysic, Intuition, Intelligence

[Bobo]

Spiritual to me, in our 'material world', and as far as our activities go, means 'idea' or 'concept'

Cause we are living in a material world and I am a material girl.

To live by high ideas, high ideals, high concepts. I don't know what 'non-matter' is.

Like any Jew thats right. /jk.

Dualism as I would define it is between 'pure nature' (mindless) and the 'high-minded'.

There's no difference between the two.

The best expressions of high-mindedness also always point to or reference themselves in relation to an 'invisible something-or-other' but I can't offer a definition of that. Can you?

Of course I can, the finite is finite. Knowledge is potentially infinite. Of course you Alex never knew the difference between words and the thing itself as no one with SENSE would use so much words.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Interestingly, on this forum and in all conversations of this sort, there will be a constant circling back to Jewish issues and Jewish questions. It is part-and-parcel of European ideation. The issue of Jews, Jewishness and Jewish ethics is ineradicable. So as I see things it has to be brought up just as you brought it up. But the question is what does 'Jew' mean? 'Strike the Jew and kill Man' wrote Kafka. This means, I think, that Judaism defends Man and places special attention there. But that 'concern' has two poles: one quite genuine and necessary, and another that places far too much emphasis on humanness, or the physical vessel, or materialistic concerns. But a more poignant question, Bobo, is what is your relationship? Or What is your problem? There is a new wave now: A permissiveness to speak openly if one has anti-Jewish or anti-Zionist sentiments. But it has to be really articulate and articulated, in my view, and not alluded to, as from the shadows. If it isn't I'd end up guessing what you mean.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Movingalways: Do you remember 'Fahrenheit 451'? I think that is the one where some men are called to remember and to recite a whole book in a world where books are outlawed. I make the reference to Bradbury only because it seems to me that each one of us, from the very first moment we open our mouths, speak from and elucidate a 'darshana': a point of view. Since we cannot change our essential nature, and shouldn't, all we do is to bring others into our 'school' (or give them reasons to reject our school!).

It seems to me that someone with your view and focus has the role of explaining to others how to arrive at, to achieve, what you have achieved. You are not interested---apparently---in the social and cultural dimensions of your realisation but in a very personal and also separate realization. My interest is nearly the opposite: I can only see the logic and importance of translating my realizations into 'tangible products'. As a 'book' that is what I have said, and all that I can say, from the beginning (here on GF). It irks those who desire only conversation on their personal realization.

Yet though this is true I still say that no matter what level of realization one has one is 'obligated' to serve people in their human condition in one way or another. So, an ethical principle operates.

[Bobo]

You brought up your 'jewishness' before, and you brought it up here on the question of ownership as jews may be seen in some way the opposite to what you were trying to say.

"Richard Weaver in Ideas Have Consequences wrote of 'the last metaphysical right': the property that one might own that would represent one's authentic connection, and commitment, to this reality. He was likely speaking of homestead, a place, a piece of land, some authentic (real) segment of the universe linked genuinely to oneself. I take the idea and modify and broaden it and thus make it a refuge for the self."

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

If you work harder to clarify your ideas I might understand you. As it is I do not at all understand you nor where you are going with your argument, if it is an argument.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Metaphysics, intuition, and intelligence are my primary subjects. I have come to feel a greater appreciation for the Genius Forum simply because it made an effort to take a bold stand on some 'metaphysical ground'. Bold stances, for good and for evil, are the only ones that have value in my world. They will inevitably leave a whole mass of people floundering in 'the excluded middle'.

'Discussion of the nature of ultimate reality and the path to enlightenment' is a nice, tight phrase, and it certainly claims a position and by that claim challenges all other positions. But it also encapsulates 'the problem' incorrectly, in my view. The phrase, the stand, the declaration, and the challenge, are therefor mistaken. He who phrased it that way, made/is making a mistake. It requires a rephrasing. The whole problem, and I mean the whole problem, needs to be rephrased and the response rewritten, literally from the ground up. To do this requires an investment of intelligence, and deals on intuited ideas that arise in a realm of knowing above the rational, and yet beyond any doubt touch on metaphysics.

I am sorry to put it this way because I do not wish to offend anyone, but if the reader cannot understand the relevance of the notion of the metaphysic they are simply unprepared for the conversation I desire to have. It is not a question of smarts or the lack of smarts, it is something else. I also must confess, and this is a sort of contemptuous push-back against a contemptuous attitude that comes through the 'spiritual types', that I often have the sense that they have completely missed the boat and literally have no idea what they are talking about, nor what to value, nor how to carry out that valuation. Yet they are filled with contempt for solidly structured ideas and for intelligent discourse. Again, they function with 'acids' and in 'acid'. But there is something to be constructed, not melted away in acid, lack of comprehension of value, and childish arrogance.

No part of this as it pertains to our culture, our history, our society or our world is a simple matter which can be encapsulated in a few terse phrases, nor brushed aside by stupidities. It is a complex and a serious question and problem and can't be approached lightly and without a certain commitment and seriousness. I am thus willing to take a counter-stand and also within forceful terms, forceful declarations that occupy a defensible pole.

I have been listening to Jonathan Bowden (as here in a talk on T. S. Eliot which is about more than just T. S. Eliot) and I find that he describes with eloquence the ideas and the values that I have begun to feel are the most important. Bummer that it requires an hour and a half investment. Such is life.

[Bobo]

It was an attempt of humor, me thinks that you are right in pointing the relation of the thought you are putting forth with totalitarianism, from there to antisemitism is one jump, and zionism, and...

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Explain what you mean and why that is so.

[Bobo]

It isn't difficult to link tradition (and forms of authority derived from it) with bigotry and persecution, and that includes the church in the middle ages and antisemitism.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It isn't difficult to link tradition (and forms of authority derived from it) with bigotry and persecution, and that includes the church in the middle ages and antisemitism.

I suggest that this is an example of 'tabloid thinking'. It is a bogus argument, insofar as it is an argument. Certainly bigotry and persecution exist, and there is no doubt that the Church, and all churches, and all groups, do engage in bigotry and persecution. Yet the function of your statement is to apply a tabloid concept to cover the whole issue and to prejudice one against thinking of 'traditionalism', and even traditionalism which is intolerant, in a positive light. It would seem that you are engaged in and put forward a pretty typical blanket condemnation which, I suggest, has an end in view. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that people generally engage in this sort of 'thinking' and thus never really think about things.

If tradition and authority are then 'bad' as you imply, then it it clear that they have to be done away with. It seems that some people take it this way. And most likely the ones incapable of thinking things through.

But in fact it is a far more veracious statement to say that tradition and authority are normal, necessary and desired, and that we in fact live better with them. And the questions then become: What sort of tradition? What sort of authority? What limit of authority?

Naturally it gets complex when one has defined a metaphysic and a cosmology and one has proposed and recognised 'laws'. All the metaphysical schools that could be named propose strict systems of law. Cosmological law that functions on various planes of existence.

I would point out that the philosophy of Quinn & Co. is a proposition similarly constructed and linked to a 'metaphysic'. It would be impossible to accept its tenets and not (radically) change one's behaviour. If you think it forward I propose you will see that it is quite radical in the sense of limiting, demanding and restrictive.
_______________________________________

I thought of responding, again, with a one-line question. But then I did the math and since today is the 17th of May at the rate of a question and an answer in a 24 hour period it would take 3 months to get anywhere.

Here is the odious work by TS Eliot which Bowden refers to in his talk ('After Strange Gods'). On pages 18-19 and successively there is a nice definition of tradition, as per Eliot's concept, which seems highly considerable. On page 20 he busts out with his now-famous statement about the questionable effect of an abundance of 'free-thinking Jews' in modern society. I did notice, Bobo, your thread on Gamergate. I hope you won't mind me saying that you can be almost completely opaque and I only very slightly understood what you were getting at there and I find that I continue the theme a little bit here, but with different intention. You quoted there if I am not mistaken an article by Martin Jay. He wrote 'The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School'. His article seemed to me to be, pretty much, an attack against any level of critique of the Frankfurt School and thus, again in my view, he shows himself an exponent of it, and thus sort of proves the point of the penetration of 'cultural Marxism' into the Academy, and into pop culture.

In a review of 'The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism' by Jack Jacobs, Benjamin Ivry referred to Max Horkheimer (who I referred to earlier):

• In 1937, in a letter to the German Jewish literary scholar Hans Mayer, Horkheimer claimed that anti-intellectualism 'represents sexual envy and resentment of a pleasurable attitude toward life of which one doesn’t feel oneself capable. Hatred of the Jews has always been hatred of thinking, and naturally the Jews themselves are also in large measure animated by this.'

There is a whole group of reasons why in any conversation on modern themes that the conversation will always circle back to Jews and Jewish ethics and the presence of Jews in European culture. And to all appearances in our world right now it seems almost as much as an issue, even more so in some senses, as it was in Europe prior to the 1930s.

• 'Man schlägt den Juden und erschlägt den Menschen.'

It is a very powerful statement (Kafka, I don't know where). A crisp, incisive sentence with an aphoristic aura.

How do you think you're going to decide it all, Bobo? What is your gut feeling here? Would you describe yourself as antisemite or philosemite? Is there an in-between? A more appropriate 'excluded middle'? ;-)

It seems to me a fair critique to note---merely to note (no round-up action to be taken just yet)---that European Jews have certainly played a significant role in defining socialistic, communistic and perhaps I can say 'hyper-modernist' trends. And then in every area where advancement, remodelling, improving, redefining is needed. It is hard to find traditionalist Jews unless one turns back toward the Shtetl and a pure Orthodoxy. (It is also true that once Jews leave their traditionalist platform it is always on a generational glissando toward assimilation). It is also rather hard, given the experiences of mid-20th century Europe, for many Jews to 'identify' with traditional social and cultural movements, and this for fairly obvious reasons: they tend to disidentify themselves with Jews and Jewish projects! And so it appears that Jews are, to put it a little floridly, chased forward in progressivism since History has proven itself an insecure roost.

What is interesting here, and this bears upon the topic of Marxism (I did indicate a desire to talk about the Frankfurt School) is the Marxian desire to tear down (perhaps too strong a word) any and all traditional forms. Is the idea that as the structure which produced and sustained antisemitism and non-judeophilism (defined as simply no love or appreciation for Jews but no 'hate' necessarily) is the very European structure itself, that by tearing it down and remaking it a better world will come into existence? So, if this is true, the Frankfurt School as a specific group of early 20th century European Jewish thinkers, is involved in a reactive project of tearing down (again perhaps too dramatic a world) all that would produce the barbarous conditions of 20th century Europe. A rather ugly picture overall.

Now again, I present Bowden who is laden with various levels of message: The Grammar of Self-Intolerance.

[Bobo]

I think that a lot of what you are saying is contained in the idea of being after the promissed land. Already there you have this mixture of the material, immaterial, and propertylessness. And if one is going to refer to traditions and property, judaism is not cristianism specially in its more radical forms, and the concept of property changes through the ages.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Close, very close. It all has to do with the Lost Continent of Atlantis. Stay tuned.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

This relates to what I was saying to Alex about living of one's conscience rather than by the manifestos or doctrines of others. Causality is at work in both instances, but for the one who is living of their subject-object enlightenment, there is a clarity and purity of expression that does not exist in the scenario wherein one must stop to consider societal laws, norms and expectations.

________________________________________

I will take the above as my entry-point. Where to begin? The more that I think about things, the closer I feel I move toward the centre of an inexplicable problem.

What happens when the metaphysical model with and upon which a civilisation has constructed itself suddenly collapses? A metaphysical model is a picture, a conception, a 'metaphysical dream' through which one orients oneself, in a total sense, to Reality. Invisible roots extending cosmically and nourished through *meaning*.

In our case---Occidentals---the structure, the woof and weft, the underpinning, the over-arching picture, came to be seen as based in fantasy, in unreliable story. From Adam and Eve right up to Pilate's interview and acid comments to the Incarnated Messiah. Poof. Up in smoke. But the most significant aspect of this was not that the story was toppled, but rather that the metaphysics which the stories expressed, as children's stories express higher truths, began no longer to function.

But Western humanism, and indeed the very self of Western man, had been constructed on the basis of this metaphysic as well as the specific stories. This is no light matter. Although it follows logically that such a thing has happened, time and again perhaps, throughout the universe or multiverses, we are living in the aftermath of the dissolution, the rupture, the breaking apart, of a unified conceptual model. It seems to be the case that if indeed this was what Nietzsche was on about: feeling it, seeing it, prognosticating where it would lead and what would come of it, it makes great sense to me that he opted for madness. (And some say that he did opt for it, but that is another matter).

If the whole project of Occidental Civilisation is, in fact, a false step, based on a false platform, amounting to a false footing, then when it collapses, one collapses back into:

1) void, nihil, chaos, the pagan abyss---meaning the local and non-universal pagan vision which is myopia,

or

2) a required project of redefining, re-articulating, what will have to be a 'non-human' metaphysic, since Hyperman Yahweh and His Projects, His battles against the thwarting Barbarians, has come to a standstill. Do we retreat to a finer, original metaphysic (Atlantis), or advance to it as an Unknown Country? (Heh heh: promised land).

This Yahweh---cruel to be kind, in kindness that is concentrated cruelty---became the human face of Occidental humanism. But with Yahweh and His Child gone up in smoke (with a terrible counterpoint in the ovens of Auschwitz, at least for any 'sensitive modern'), there is no longer a warm human face but only the terrifying Universe that stares back through dead yes, eyes of fathomless and terrifying blackness, utterly cold, and chillingly luminous as the bare starred sky.

Man recoils in psychosis.

The Occidental self---our own self---was constructed from Pagan-Judeo-Greco-Christian alchemy. We have so many faces: Classical faces, Biblical faces, Shakespearian faces. The Occidental achievement, in a significant sense, has much to do with the gestation and the creation of these faces, these possibilities of personality.

Even the Simpson's faces, or telenovela faces, all dramatic faces, or the faces of man when he reduces himself to the absurd, the degenerate, the totally trivial, are still fallings-away from the classical faces, the face of Occidental personality. To be a real Occidental human is to have a 'significant face' as the 'faceless' matter less. Isn't that a curious thing? Three thousand plus persons were annihilated in 9/11, one million 'faceless' in the US attack on Iraq, but it is the face-ful who also have memory. Their loss is as real as their faces are real.

We possess these faces and inhabit them. They allow us, even these degenerated modernist and corrupted faces, a vessel for being. But as degeneration progresses we become more and more superficial, more ridiculous, more valueless, more expendable, contemptible, until each ridiculous face is carried along by a valueless and polluted body, some biological carnage, a mess, a waste. And it begins to be understood that such a level of being is unworthy of life. And thus we assign ourselves, perhaps unconsciously, to deserved annihilation.

The point---if I can be seen as having a valid point---is that the humanism of the human suffered a very hard blow, and the human of humanism became ... a monster. The Grammar of Self-Intolerance is the necessary cage we have had constructed, have constructed around our fearsome self.
_____________________________________

A talk on Heidegger and 'deaths ontology'. Have I tricked myself? Am I Bowden-struck? I think he is really quite good. And I don't sense him as a Jew-Hater.

If we really really REALLY got the bottom of true metaphysical 'reality', what would we really discover? Would it comfort us like a baby's blanket or cause us to utterly freeze up?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

• In Lovely Blueness
  
  Friedrich Holderlin
  
  In lovely blue the steeple blossoms
  With its metal roof. Around which
  Drift swallow cries, around which
  Lies most loving blue. The sun,
  High overhead, tints the roof tin,
  But up in the wind, silent,
  The weathercock crows. When someone
  Takes the stairs down from the belfry,
  It is a still life, with the figure
  Thus detached, the sculpted shape
  Of man comes forth. The windows
  The bells ring through
  Are as gates to beauty. Because gates
  Still take after nature,
  They resemble the forest trees.
  But purity is also beauty.
  A grave spirit arises from within,
  Out of divers things. Yet so simple
  These images, so very holy,
  One fears to describe them. But the gods,
  Ever kind in all things,
  Are rich in virtue and joy.
  Which man may imitate.
  May a man look up
  From the utter hardship of his life
  And say: Let me also be
  Like these? Yes. As long as kindness lasts,
  Pure, within his heart, he may gladly measure himself
  Against the divine. Is God unknown?
  Is he manifest as the sky? This I tend
  To believe. Such is man's measure.
  Well deserving, yet poetically
  Man dwells on this earth. But the shadow
  Of the starry night is no more pure, if I may say so,
  Than man, said to be the image of God.
  
  Is there measure on earth There is
  None. No created world ever hindered
  The course of thunder. A flower
  Is likewise lovely, blooming as it does
  Under the sun. The eye often discovers
  Creatures in life it would be yet lovelier
  To name than flowers. 0, this I know!
  For to bleed both in body and heart, and cease
  To be whole, is this pleasing to God?
  But the soul, I believe, must
  Remain pure, lest the eagle wing
  Its way up to the Almighty with songs
  Of praise and the voice of so many birds.
  It is substance, and is form.
  Lovely little brook, how moving you seem
  As you roll so clear, like the eye of God,
  Through the Milky Way. I know you well,
  But tears pour from the eye.
  I see gaiety of life blossom
  About me in all creation's forms,
  I do not compare it cheaply
  To the graveyard's solitary doves. People's
  Laughter seems to grieve me,
  After all, I have a heart.
  Would I like to be a comet? I think so.
  They are swift as birds, they flower
  With fire, childlike in purity. To desire
  More than this is beyond human measure.
  The gaiety of virtue also deserves praise
  From the grave spirit adrift
  Between the garden's three columns.
  A beautiful virgin should wreathe her hair
  With myrtle, being simple by nature and heart.
  But myrtles are found in Greece.
  
  If a man look into a mirror
  And see his image therein, as if painted,
  It is his likeness. Man's image has eyes,
  But the moon has light.
  King Oedipus may have an eye too many.
  The sufferings of this man seem indescribable,
  Inexpressible, unspeakable. Which comes
  When drama represents such things.
  But what do I feel, now thinking of your
  Like brooks, I am carried away by the end of something
  That expands like Asia. Of course,
  Oedipus suffers the same? For a reason,
  Of course. Did Hercules suffer as well?
  Indeed. In their friendship
  Did not the Dioscuri also suffer?
  Yes, to battle God as Hercules did
  Is to suffer. And to half share immortality
  With the envy of this life,
  This too is pain. But this also
  Is suffering, when a man is covered with summer freckles,
  All bespattered with spots. This is the work
  Of the sun, it draws everything out.
  It leads young men along their course,
  Charmed by rays like roses.
  The sufferings of Oedipus seem like a poor man
  Lamenting what he lacks.
  Son of Laios, poor stranger in Greece.
  Life is death, and death a life.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Gustav, just some questions, illustrated with the following snippets taken from your post:

• What happens when the metaphysical model with and upon which a civilization has constructed itself suddenly collapses?
  
  But Western humanism, and indeed the very self of Western man, had been constructed on the basis of this metaphysic...
  
  If the whole project of Occidental Civilization is, in fact, a false step, based on a false platform ... then when it collapses ...

Would it be possible then to start thinking of Western humanism or "Occidental civilization' as having developed into a surprisingly, fundamentalist ideology? Would that in a psycho-analytical sense explain how this has created shadows of such radicality elsewhere? Some postmodern anti-globalist critics have pointed out that the modern globalism and its "universal values" implied throughout that system, are as radical and demanding as any good or bad old ideology. And full of consequences. Also potential destructive for anything and anyone not going along, not to mention invasive.

This is never the outward appearance. Of course not. It's wraps itself, like Nietzsche would describe the slave morality, in garments displaying always the very opposite, like freedom, choice, openness, inclusiveness, peace through dialog, multicultural hybrid societies and so on. The reality is this is not happening and one can only barely start making a list of all plain destruction, morally, humanly and socially, at various places in the world, but including the modern world itself.

Is this a bit compatible with the drift of your topic here? To me it sounds very much of what Nietzsche wrote about the death of Christianity, that it would take a long time before the first effects would even become clear, like a sunset going over into the night but bleached out with all the artificial lighting.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Would it be possible then to start thinking of Western humanism or "Occidental civilization' as having developed into a surprisingly, fundamentalist ideology? Would that in a psycho-analytical sense explain how this has created shadows of such radicality elsewhere? Some postmodern anti-globalist critics have pointed out that the modern globalism and its "universal values" implied throughout that system, are as radical and demanding as any good or bad old ideology. And full of consequences. Also potential destructive for anything and anyone not going along, not to mention invasive.

You are of course speaking of the late version, aren't you? The Twentieth Century more-or-less? It seems though that you'd be able to trace the 'shadows of radicalism' as arising within Occidental culture's own self first. I mean, if you wanted to work with the psychological paradigm. That would I suppose be discovered in the uncovering of and punishing of heretics. Yes indeed, it seems that the structure of Occidental forms, with the polarity of God and Satan, would necessarily create constant and ever-recurring antagonisms.

So, it seems to me that with that, and I will refer to Guenon again, it is necessarily to describe theology as being infected with 'sentimentalism' and the 'all-too-human', whereas the metaphysic that Guenon attempts to define is supra-human. However, this again poses a significant problem. After all, according to Bowden in any case, Heidegger (the father of aspects of postmodernist theory and a big influence on 'deconstructive' readings and all manner of 'deviations', many quite confusing and overwhelming) attempted to define a cold, German, non-humanism. Well, that is how some describe him and they do so with tremendous vehemence.

It is that cold, German non-humanism that leads to radical and poisonous destruction.

• Man schlägt den Juden und erschlägt den Menschen.

We have to disinfect the all-too-human from theology and metaphysics, but then we run a supreme risk of privileging, or perhaps unleashing, an antihuman power.

I have no way of settling these questions. I am more or less totally in the dark. On a good day I feel captured in angelic embraces and sing like a rare passerine. And then, as today, I come back into my satanic shell and when I attempt to vocalise what comes out is a horrid, mechanical scraping.

I do find it interesting to point to the dialectical tension between, say, Bowden and his New Right who look with horror on extreme liberalism and its 'destruction' of Europe, and to contrast that with the apparent antidote: a rigorous, and even a violent, reining-in by conservative force.

What I can say is that I think that our own 'liberalism', that is the liberality of our own selves, the way we think and act, is in a sense an expression, or the motion of, a lack of desire to take a stand. We recognise that to 'take a stand' is to assert will, to make choices, to crack heads to put it plainly, and we do not want to become implicated in such things. So, we retreat from decision and decisiveness into interiority.

The Grammar of Self-Intolerance is a fascinating problem. To begin to analyse it is to step into an Mephistophelean antechamber. When such a radical and dangerous step is taken, the very structure of the web senses it, or the thought alone resonates through the web and draws out reprecussions: repercutere ‘cause to rebound, push back'.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

The word 'liberalism' when interpreted in our wider present context, is intuitively understood to mean much more than the word reveals, or rather 'signifies'. 'Liberalism' refers to a range of things beyond the surface definition. If originally it advocated for the lifting of unnatural restraints against too-restrictive control---as for example the artistic rebellion and resistance to Franco's censorship of the arts and domination of sexual morality and so much else---we recognise that it is 'positive' and allows for expressions of 'fuller humanity'. People under restraint desire to express themselves more humanly, more warmly and openly. They desire to allow for expression of what is limited by structures of authority and so 'liberalism' is allied with rebellion and resistance yet allied very much to notions of humanism.

But at what point do progressive and revolutionary tendencies morph from liberal humanistic motivations ... into destructive impositions of liberalising will? I.e. 'reactionary liberalism'? And what then is required to rein-in excessive liberalism?

The European body: infected and devoured by liberal disease. Unable to draw its own limit. Liberalising trends in all areas: sexuality, economy, culture, entertainment, art, but with the Western European Outpost (America) leading the game. At some point the liberalising trends turns against all necessary limiting structure.

Is it fair and accurate (it is no doubt fun!) to describe this as a process of feminisation of the socio-political body? Radical liberalism does not have a masculine face except insofar as the homosexual or the transvestite brings such a face. What is 'feminisation'? A reduction to valuation and privileging of sensations of pleasure. Yet also a 'way of being'. Let us say that 'perverted humanism' is taken over by feminising moods. Well, I am getting ahead of myself. Except that liberalism as it is developing today appears a romantic decadence, a seduction by pleasure and immediate gratification, a seduction to the instantaneousness of stimulus.

Once the general social body is 'infected', it calls forth a reaction against the liberal infection. But then culture wars ensue in which factions, fired-up in emotionalism, vehemently defend continuing processes of liberalism against a pole which they define as the Devil himself.

At this point, in my view, what liberalism defends become less connected to the 'true values' of humanism (human-centered valuation) and become aberrant in defence of impulse and unreason. They defend impulse, the exhilaration of the moment, the child's will. Liberalism then morphs into dangerous forms of populism and liberal desire becomes popularised politically. At that point the game is lost.

How and why has this come about? I suggest it is through becoming unhinged from a cogent metaphysic.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Is this a bit compatible with the drift of your topic here? To me it sounds very much of what Nietzsche wrote about the death of Christianity, that it would take a long time before the first effects would even become clear, like a sunset going over into the night but bleached out with all the artificial lighting.

It surely is connected to Nietzschean analysis, there is no doubt about that. But as you know, what I focus on is The Death of Story. The story no longer functions. However, there is still the possibility that it might be seen and understood that the Story is a lower version of the high metaphysic, the expendable part of it. The Story is what is required to convince a child mind.

All Stories are false and we all seem to know that. But the only way---the only way---to come to an understanding of the metaphysical dimension is through an elaborate and uncommon manoeuvre of the intuition and the high intellect.

The mind becomes a tool for sensing and communicating with a dimension that is non-human and non-rational. What is realised is realised through inductive processes impossible to chart, impossible to explain.

Plato's Seventh Epistle

• But thus much I can certainly declare concerning all these writers, or prospective writers, who claim to know the subjects which I seriously study, whether as hearers of mine or of other teachers, or from their own discoveries; it is impossible, in my judgement at least, that these men should understand anything about this subject. There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise of mine dealing therewith. For it does not at all admit of verbal expression like other studies, but, as a result of continued application to the subject itself and communion therewith, it is brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as light that is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself. Notwithstanding, of thus much I am certain, that the best statement of these doctrines in writing or in speech would be my own statement; and further, that if they should be badly stated in writing, it is I who would be the person most deeply pained. And if I had thought that these subjects ought to be fully stated in writing or in speech to the public, what nobler action could I have performed in my life than that of writing what is of great benefit to mankind and bringing forth to the light for all men the nature of reality? But were I to undertake this task it would not, as I think, prove a good thing for men, save for some few who are able to discover the truth themselves with but little instruction; for as to the rest, some it would most unseasonably fill with a mistaken contempt, and others with an overweening and empty aspiration, as though they had learnt some sublime mysteries.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I mean, if you wanted to work with the psychological paradigm. That would I suppose be discovered in the uncovering of and punishing of heretics. Yes indeed, it seems that the structure of Occidental forms, with the polarity of God and Satan, would necessarily create constant and ever-recurring antagonisms.

Perhaps like Christianity had as project the conversion and transformation of pagan, barbaric tribes and cultures (including "Romanizing", the insertion of a new, bigger story?) and the British Empire had its idea of civilizing, of creating a higher man out of the beast, this is still going on, this utopian aim to convert the "heretics" and underdeveloped, damaged and "possessed" to embrace tolerance, universal rights and global bodies of governance and justice. The story, the "Romanizing" here is, or was, America. Which is exactly the story, the modern "myth" that has gone missing. Conservatives around the planet are feverishly digging through the old remains to get something back. Restore the old! Revamp and reissue old glory! It's even more apparent in popular art.

It is that cold, German non-humanism that leads to radical and poisonous destruction.

That's perhaps too easy, to look at one single local effect and then scapegoat it! There's a savageness in the 19th century European ways, how meaning was butchered and pure material concepts were pushed, the "end of appearances", the "magic" as some might call it. Then the uprise against that, while at the same time born out of it, no matter how ugly, became the scapegoat after the dust settled? Personally I do not trust any mainstream "reason" assigned to any analysis of world wars in the last century. It looks often more like a mantra with little bearing on actual processes behind the various facades.

We have to disinfect the all-too-human from theology and metaphysics, but then we run a supreme risk of privileging, or perhaps unleashing, an antihuman power.

That's because what first was seen as theology or metaphysics just takes other forms, not looking like theology or metaphysics. It goes under other, more acceptable guises. The most perfect demonstration was actually national-socialism but also the brutal capitalism of the whole era. Plus Marxism, psychoanalysis and so on. Quite a conflict in a world losing its universals and afterwards quickly put some new version in place: never again!

I have no way of settling these questions. I am more or less totally in the dark. On a good day I feel captured in angelic embraces and sing like a rare passerine. And then, as today, I come back into my satanic shell and when I attempt to vocalise what comes out is a horrid, mechanical scraping.

Well I'm almost tempted to link to a clip of Manic Depression here, the famous Hendrix tune. But I'd cramp someone else's style too much!

But as you know, what I focus on is The Death of Story. The story no longer functions. However, there is still the possibility that it might be seen and understood that the Story is a lower version of the high metaphysic, the expendable part of it. The Story is what is required to convince a child mind.

And here I'd link to the movie "The Neverending Story", the German-American fantasy movie from Petersen (more famous for Das Boot) based on the book of Michael Ende who was again influenced philosophically by anthroposophy. But really, you are describing the exact plot, literally!

All Stories are false and we all seem to know that. But the only way---the only way---to come to an understanding of the metaphysical dimension is through an elaborate and uncommon maneuver of the intuition and the high intellect.

Stories are scripts, channels for power to distribute and flow through. It's hard to say how they come in existence but generally their stated purpose is unrelated to how it actually functions. Perhaps by design?

The mind becomes a tool for sensing and communicating with a dimension that is non-human and non-rational. What is realized is realized through inductive processes impossible to chart, impossible to explain.

Yes yes. But it's not the end game, it's the situation as it already is. The human and rational elements are just story boards for realization to happen.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

That's perhaps too easy, to look at one single local effect and then scapegoat it!

I wasn't imagining the ur-cause of the world war(s) but just one aspect of it since, inevitably, it comes up in nearly any conversation of post-war (2) events and situation: only the Holocaust.

That's because what first was seen as theology or metaphysics just takes other forms, not looking like theology or metaphysics. It goes under other, more acceptable guises. The most perfect demonstration was actually national-socialism but also the brutal capitalism of the whole era. Plus Marxism, psychoanalysis and so on. Quite a conflict in a world losing its universals and afterwards quickly put some new version in place: never again!

Theology, metaphysics, construction of death-camps? There is a critique which would not allow you to make the statement, nor even the insinuation, of some sort of 'organic shift' to open horror. I don't want to divert the overall conversation into Holocaust issues, except to say that for some theorists---and they say this genuinely---all theory has to stop in the face what specifically occurred then and there.

Though capitalism may be ugly, and war-machinations too, there is something distinct in whatever processes of mind, whatever philosophical twists and turns, whatever distribution of poisons that would culminate in an attempt at genocide of that scale. And even though there were more deaths in Stalin's campaigns, and Mao's too, I am of the school that the German events were signal.

Thus I would resist what you seem to be doing in the above. I have been reading David Hirsch 'The Deconstruction of Literature: Criticism After Auschwitz' where he delves into the tricks of thinking that allow one to skip over the Event. (I am aware too that Bowden seems to indicate that getting past, getting over, is required in order to recapture our self-determining power).

I should point out that the 'postmodern project'---deconstruction, structuralism, hermeneutics, postmodernism---and these quite odd and often indecipherable Franco-German thinking- and writing-modes that appeared in the post-war era ... cannot in my view be said to represent 'responsible thinking' by 'responsible persons' about the really important things. In fact, and though in some ways I admire some of this output, I think they are largely contemptible means to avoid those things.

Hirsch has this glowing view of the post-war in American hands:



In the introduction to Hirsch's essays, which have many redeeming features, though he seems 'hopelessly naive' in certain senses and a wee bit too zealous, he employs this following paragraph by Henry Miller in 'Sunday After a War' (hard to imagine a more desolate, or desolation-tending individual in my view) to bolster his view of the post-war as opening up to wide, happy, horizons.



But this is really one of the points of this thread: To take a hard look at the present. To see if indeed we are falling or rising. Were we really & truly saved from real disaster ... or have we tricked ourselves? Anyone who has read this far, and listened even to a part of what Bowden says, and what many of us see, will have at least a few doubts about these cheerleading views.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Theology, metaphysics, construction of death-camps? There is a critique which would not allow you to make the statement, nor even the insinuation, of some sort of 'organic shift' to open horror. I don't want to divert the overall conversation into Holocaust issues, except to say that for some theorists---and they say this genuinely---all theory has to stop in the face what specifically occurred then and there.

What I meant to suggest here is a variation on P.K. Dick's "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". In this case death-camps are reality, the human situation "as is", which materializes when all belief, theology and metaphysics -- all functioning to divert away from such realities, are being halted. This is why I wrote about the "new version in place: never again!" I wasn't thinking about Zionism or something but the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: " With the end of that war, and the creation of the United Nations, the international community vowed never again to allow atrocities like those of that conflict happen again". Just making myself a bit more clear. Here I'm pondering in how far a new metaphysics was asserted to put the horror genii back in the bottle. This is also why it can seem repressive with all the political correctness implied.

Though capitalism may be ugly, and war-machinations too, there is something distinct in whatever processes of mind, whatever philosophical twists and turns, whatever distribution of poisons that would culminate in an attempt at genocide of that scale. And even though there were more deaths in Stalin's campaigns, and Mao's too, I am of the school that the German events were signal.

One can "stop all theory" but it's clear there was a death industry operating, as you mention, including but not limited to Nazi extermination of Jews, Poles and Slavs and just as visible with Stalin's executions, economical policies and the Gulag or the revolution in China and of course the larger war machine including the bombings of whole cities, burning alive hundreds of thousands families. In this madhouse, indeed theories "die" all too easily, perhaps because the event and period is a black hole for meaning to start with. But the fact remains that killing on industrial scales was happening in the wake of modernity and industrialization, especially in places where various modern ideologies collided or just could not functioning fully as integrating myth.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

To be clear: I am not 'opposed' to phenomenological interpretations that upend standard definitions, standard interpretations. I have a few times mentioned Harold Bloom's 'swerve' to illustrate that all thinking is in a sense either deliberate or unconscious veering away from a standard line of thought. (See here).

THEREFOR, LET THE DEATH-CAMPS be a mere precursor for levels of horror and suffering yet unimagined! May whole continents be incinerated and made uninhabitable except by mutant insects! May Earth heat up and accelerate in its motions until it ignites like a kitchen match! And may the smoke from flaming corpses cloud the atmosphere, bringing coolness again, then a pure rain from Heaven that recycles the madness into new tales of madness and devastation and misery, in endless circles, forever & forever, Amen.

• Prayer: Oh help me become less 'human' than ever & to mindlessly LOL with metadecadent Franco-Prussian mantras upon my slavering lips those incomprehensible invocations of Sheer Horror. May I cease to be so bothersomely human & become man-machine; blank, transitored, with murdering razor fingers & insatiable biological belly, feeding on the rot of God's fallen body, politely drinking putrid blood & knifing my friends unthinkingly. May confusion raise up sheets of blackness in my imagination & may I numb-out daily & accustom myself to death's chill & the freezing of my innards into moribund icy nihil. Selah.

______________________________________

"To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy."

Speaking of death and its inevitability, and if anyone has 18.5 minutes to spare, I recommend listening to a wonderful (really) recitation of Whitman's 'When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd'. Reading the poem is quite an experience, but listening to it read is even better, perhaps because I already know it. ('Lilacs' ends almost exactly at 18:30 before some other recitations begin.)

What I find interesting is that this poem, at one level I suppose, though it is really a broad metaphysical poem on the theme of Death, is a lament for the assassinated Lincoln who, in the eyes of many is interpreted to be 'The commander-in-chief of freedom's army' and an Avatar of Pure Metaphysical Goodness percolating down into the American soul.

But another view, a 'swervy' view, is that he was an ontological agent of malevolence (as we all are really) insofar as he meddled in history, he tinkered with events and processes that---as one view will say---should have been left alone to settle themselves out. By his Righteous Intervention, which was a costume worn by obscene levels of financial interest and many other motivators, he precipitated an event which though it is described as the salvation of the Republic, actually holds all the seeds for the destruction of it. It is possible to assert that all that came out of the American Civil War, as a 'swerve' away from the foundational ethos, is choking and murdering the American Republic in all original senses. If any part of this is true, then it appears possible that any one of us, choosing some line of action, could be an Agent of Disorder & Chaos even when we smilingly think we are 'doing good'.

What I find a bit strange is the poem's vision through death to affirm Death in an 'ontological' sense as the origin of lyrical vision through which beauty is grasped, achingly so. I don't know, but I sense a surrender to death's inevitability in what sounds a bit like a worship of death, which is longing for death?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

To be clear: I am not 'opposed' to phenomenological interpretations that upend standard definitions, standard interpretations. I have a few times mentioned Harold Bloom's 'swerve' to illustrate that all thinking is in a sense either deliberate or unconscious veering away from a standard line of thought. (See here).

Yes I know you do not oppose that although you're not firm enough in any position to really oppose something, at least in terms of interpretations.

The swerve is an interesting concept. It seems to me that it works just as much with most metaphysical meaning over the ages. There appears to be always deviation and tilting of horizons, ever so subtle. That would mean one can lean on past visions but will nevertheless end up with a rather tilted head. The next step always is to correct for time, place, peculiarities of the mind, in other words, to become reasonable as well.

It is possible to assert that all that came out of the American Civil War, as a 'swerve' away from the foundational ethos, is choking and murdering the American Republic in all original senses. If any part of this is true, then it appears possible that any one of us, choosing some line of action, could be an Agent of Disorder & Chaos even when we smilingly think we are 'doing good'.

It's quite reasonable to assert such thing. The question which follows is what the nature of all the resistance against such notion would be. Doubt is one thing but there's such a denial of even the possibility, that most things we hold dear in memory, personal, cultural or institutional, would have swerved into fundamentally different "creatures". Maybe our mind has difficulty conceiving that way, like entering a swamp?

What I find a bit strange is the poem's vision through death to affirm Death in an 'ontological' sense as the origin of lyrical vision through which beauty is grasped, achingly so. I don't know, but I sense a surrender to death's inevitability in what sounds a bit like a worship of death, which is longing for death?

But they are ultimately finalities which are desired and feared. Death then becomes for most people just the most distinct finality they can imagine. It's possible to project the longing and worship onto other things, which then take the place of death, as objects of desire or fear.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Yes I know you do not oppose that although you're not firm enough in any position to really oppose something, at least in terms of interpretations.

It is important to state, in self-defense as it were, that the only arena where I can make solid interpretive decisions and decisions of 'praxis', is in my tiny, irrelevant, personal world.

To make macro-decisions requires the interpretive/hermeneutic work. But my hermeneutic work has shown me that macro decisions are 1) beyond my scope (of influence), 2) too problematical to make large decisions with certainty, and 3) possibly non-solucionable in any case. Meaning that in a descent into 'Kali Yuga' (to borrow from Guenon and the traditionalists) there is essentially no hope. Waldo Frank describes Europe as a dying body lit up from within in hyperactivity by each petty dying cell. We live in a death that still is filled with lots of life, odd as that is. I find myself rather completely under the sway of general hopelessness. But not desperation. Most of the fine points of philosophy, most of the delicate and even aesthetic points of high-living, are undermined by encroaching chaos. So again, all that I understand that can be done is to retreat into the petty world that I can 'control' and influence.

Still to come to understand, and by this I mean to conceptualise and to be able to express what I understand of life in our era, is important. I think that you, me, the next person, we all have an *understanding* which is latent to us. It has already been formed. We seem to interchange only to elaborate on it, to perfect it.

Essentially, my 'position' is that I have no strategy that I can conceive of outside of alignment with consciousness, high-ideal, with the 'reality' that I describe as 'metaphysical'. That is it. The details of living are just the details of living.

I think that in the face of modernism-as-disaster everyone recoils away from 'engagement'. What I mean is that for Europeans and the World substantially the WW1 and WW2 events upended the structure through which we might have felt ourselves 'genuinely bound' to tradition, to productive continuance in local and immediate realms of activity (family, community, church, etc.), even to the land. So, I think we live in a really rather terrible upturning/overturning of normalcy ... and we try to adapt and get on.

As you know, I see GF and its recommendations (to speak too generally) as 'pathologies' in a sense: making the best of a bad deal. Turning loss into gain. Our productive plans and those clear lines to genuine productivity are cut off in many ways. So, we internalise strangely. It does not mean that 'everything is futile' but it does mean that everything is absurd.

The question which follows is what the nature of all the resistance against such notion would be. Doubt is one thing but there's such a denial of even the possibility, that most things we hold dear in memory, personal, cultural or institutional, would have swerved into fundamentally different "creatures". Maybe our mind has difficulty conceiving that way, like entering a swamp?

If you mean why is it, or how is it, that Americans (in particular) are so tied to their idealisms: false, ill-conceived, perverted, distorted, or tortured, it is a good question. Possibly it would extend from what I may begin to define as theological emotionalism. This is a Guenonian idea and very considerable. He desires to define a non-emotional, a 'factual' metaphysic and he finds it in the intellectual order of the Hindu system (which seems refined through his own self and intelligence). Apparently, one needs a pure metaphysic uncontaminated by sentimentalism. But in 'our' case it came out of a theological sentimentalism which is an infection in and of itself. It seems it can never get clear of itself. And when it goes wonky, brother look out. It is a form of structured psychosis. It requires processes of sobriety that will never come.

[Pam Seeback]

Gustav/Alex: Essentially, my 'position' is that I have no strategy that I can conceive of outside of alignment with consciousness, high-ideal, with the 'reality' that I describe as 'metaphysical'. That is it. The details of living are just the details of living.

But these ideals cannot be objectively captured, they are always subjective or individually conditioned in nature. It is this truth that rocks the ego and causes those clinging to the false idea that their belief system or metaphysic is absolute or objective to fall into psychological angst, and in extreme cases, despair or madness. But once the cat of subjectivity is out of the bag, it cannot be put back in. Which, whether he likes it or not, leaves man to work out his own salvation or liberation from his old way of thinking. Not an easy task to be sure, but when is life easy? Did not the Buddha correctly state that to be born is suffering, to die is suffering and everything in between is suffering? Perhaps the biggest problem man gets himself into is his clinging to the unattainable ideal of total harmony and peace of mind, his deluded but understandable longing for a world of zero suffering.

What saved me was my working through of the ideal of love, getting past its notions of romantic sentimentalism into its depths of compassion for the human condition. I find that this view includes both the transcendent quality of 'seeing the big picture' and the immanent quality of suffering, heaven and earth touching, so to speak.