Return to body, substance & meaning

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Santiago Odo
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Return to body, substance & meaning

Post by Santiago Odo »

(split from thread Trumpism)

Well, that was instructive. I wanted to mention that I have gotten into juicing lately and the MiracleJucePro is my favorite kitchen tool of late! Perhaps you will find what I have found: a strict regimen of fresh, healthy vitamine-rich vegetable juice is just what is needed today to bridge the abysses that separate us! Sounds unlikely, doesn't it? But Trumpism is actually a bowel-condition that can be treated with kelp-concentrate and 3 glasses a day of fresh, vital, 100% natural and organic juice! Email me ASAP and I will send you what you need to get started!
David wrote:I'm making this my last post in this thread, and on this topic. The whole anti-SJW fracas, in its current form, disgusts me. It is like watching a screaming fight between a couple going through a very messy divorce. Dan mentioned the extreme anger which drives these people and how off-putting it is. Who in their right mind would want to be involved with that kind of frenzy? Not me at least.
Thread, topic, planet, plane of existence, cosmic manifestation --- how far will you take it?

I would suggest, David, that this is not the point to veer away from the conflict, but the point to go into it more deeply. The issues that are coming to the fore are octaves of those that came up very strongly in the interwar period in Europe (1920s-1930s). Opposition to the 'SJW' is grounded in nationalistic self-definition, that is true, but also in articulations of values. This is man's domain really. That of defining values.

What I found interesting is a comment you made some days back on this thread, that the people who are inclined to your spiritual message are those who are 'educated and liberal'. It sort of fits, doesn't it? It is the values that you define that are rather diffuse. I mean, this is the area that you work in: a sort of no-man's-land of the enlightened. Once you come into that space you sort of abandon the specific, the immediate, the tangible, even the practical. Therefor, the turn away from this 'liberalism' (hyper-liberalism is the term I prefer) is a turn back to substance, solidity, historical struggle, a fight generally, but one located in immediate concerns, selfish concerns even.

And what happens when that movement (movement within the person) is supported by a spiritual view of things, or by conservative metaphysics? Who is that person who comes onto the scene to defend what is, what is 'traditional', and also metaphysically linked to order, discipline, hard definition? What is so odd from my perspective is that I'd have imagined, at some point, that *you* (plural) would have made that turn. Such intense critical spirit, so armed against the flowey present. I certainly do understand what both you and Dan are saying (and in so much of it you are right indeed). But there is another part of the equation you seem not to be concerned with (or aware of).

I would have been curious to know your opinion of the *message* in this short video. It is sort of perfect for our age, isn't it? A 13 inute video that alludes to so much, that provokes certain sentiments, that inspires research and renewal, but is expressed in a video meme (if that is the right use of the term).

Image

Recently, I have been devoting myself --- re-devoting myself I suppose --- to the study of the original influences, the formative structures, of occidentalism. It seems to me the crucial and ever-fruitful area because, of course, there is manifest the stuff that is the substance of our souls. In one way or another everything resolves back to this, at least for 'us'. This is what we arise out of.

Now, the 'anti-SJW' backlash, the core of its 'anger', is complex indeed. To get to the bottom of it, more so and perhaps impossible. But the value in reviewing the pdf by Bernard Lazare ('Antisemitism', written at the turn of the century approx.) is that it describes much of what has 'come around and gone around'.

What I find so interesting is that these basic issues were at one time your issues! That is, Weininger and his masculine-feminine polarity. And his Judaic-Christian conflict. And then your own 'hyper-masculine' turning against the liberalised feminine which for Weininger was the Judaic and for Nietzsche is the Judeo-Christian-as-disease. I mean this was the stuff of the basic dogma! And to become 'masculine' was to become 'decisive' and was to describe a rigorous path of internal conquest that very definitely was not liberal! But those who became interested in your spirituality were 'educated and liberal'. Yet your philosophy was, in these senses, rigid, rigorous, demanding, uncompromising and intolerant. I am sort of reminded when reading up on Corneliu Zelea Codreanu of the Iron Guard and the 'Legion of Michael' that to follow the paths recommended here was to become inducted into a radical-masculine path. How odd it is that you take the side that you do now.

In our present there is a sort of crescendo of the hyper, the vaginal-sensitive, the mutable-seductive which flows forth like an unconquerable wave, pulling along everyone and everything. It is exactly now that a man must define a position that avails him metaphysical bedrock, not a wounded bleating of a social state subject fearing the manifestation of a new spirit (to push the Hegel reference!) (Sorry, I got carried away. That happens when I mix in orange juice to the carrot-celery combo in combination with the kelp-ginger-flush).
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Return to body, substance & meaning

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Santiago Odo wrote: I wanted to mention that I have gotten into juicing lately and the MiracleJucePro is my favorite kitchen tool of late! Perhaps you will find what I have found: a strict regimen of fresh, healthy vitamine-rich vegetable juice is just what is needed today to bridge the abysses that separate us! Sounds unlikely, doesn't it? But Trumpism is actually a bowel-condition that can be treated with kelp-concentrate and 3 glasses a day of fresh, vital, 100% natural and organic juice! Email me ASAP and I will send you what you need to get started!
You mean the "Miracle Pro Juice" right? I'd recommend a Magimix™. As for treatment, magnesium is a lot in the news again. As the old Dutch materialist wrote in German (he was confused): "ohne Phosphor keine Gedanken".
Therefor, the turn away from this 'liberalism' (hyper-liberalism is the term I prefer) is a turn back to substance, solidity, historical struggle, a fight generally, but one located in immediate concerns, selfish concerns even.
Any "real" substance, being it lead or gold, is supposed to be philosophical masonry. The turning back as you describe I consider, as you know by now, as a phantasm. a "trumpism"! It's like saying we should bring "real" jobs back while opening another broken coal mine. The interesting thing about the Trump government is exactly that: speaking the desired firm words, superior in campaigning but the most vacuous deals ever done are what you get. The globalist, liberal, new age camp seems still solid in comparison! (its substance is by the way caused by referring to a slightly more recent bankrupt idea -- its shadows still intact).

To prevent any confusion: while I might talk often about nihilism, the destruction of meaning and so on, that's not based in any desire for it. On the contrary, I do acknowledge that real changes and real movements are way more interconnected, grass rooted but also based on a few unique individuals. Also, the platform of the political is not the stage where it can ever happen anymore. Neither is "new" media where it will or could even happen. The focus is shifting to I believe to be whole other processes. Dangerous and promising!
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Santiago Odo
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Santiago Odo »

Amee wrote:I agree that it would be nice if, aside from successfully being a monkey wrench in the corrupt political system, something of substance could actually be built from the chaos. But, at least when I voted for Trump, I knew that substantial change would be just the icing on the cake, if Trump won at all.
But the second that you proceeded forth with definitions of any sort on 'substance' and what might arise from the chaos, is the same second the woven narrative would find itself in the mire of the culture wars. It is a nest of *arrows* all pointing in different directions but all crammed into the same space with wrenches tightening down against it.

What is more likely, if one can make predictions, is that the Deep State which I refer to not because I know anything about it but simply that I assume that such an invisible entity exists (because it must exist) is profoundly aware of the crisis that is developing. I speak solely of the American scene. But the Deep State has overcome similar crises in the past, and, to that, we owe our present in a very real sense. I mean our socially engineered present: hyper-liberal multiculturalism.

What has corrupted the system? War and the war-industry. The Americanopolis is constructed on that base. At this point it would take a national crisis of dramatic proportion to turn that barque around.

The conflicts that I notice between people, the fallings-out, the deep disagreements: all symptoms of systems that begin to run into walls.
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Santiago Odo
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Santiago Odo »

Diebert wrote:Any "real" substance, being it lead or gold, is supposed to be philosophical masonry. The turning back as you describe I consider, as you know by now, as a phantasm.
Oh God, Oh God, I do indeed know that.
To prevent any confusion: while I might talk often about nihilism, the destruction of meaning and so on, that's not based in any desire for it. On the contrary, I do acknowledge that real changes and real movements are way more interconnected, grass rooted but also based on a few unique individuals. Also, the platform of the political is not the stage where it can ever happen anymore. Neither is "new" media it will or could even happen. The focus is shifting to whole other processes. Dangerous and promising!
There is a wee bit of a contradiction noted here. What your left hand snatched away, your right hand proffers. Must be a Dutch thing ...
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Santiago Odo wrote:
To prevent any confusion: while I might talk often about nihilism, the destruction of meaning and so on, that's not based in any desire for it. On the contrary, I do acknowledge that real changes and real movements are way more interconnected, grass rooted but also based on a few unique individuals. Also, the platform of the political is not the stage where it can ever happen anymore. Neither is "new" media it will or could even happen. The focus is shifting to whole other processes. Dangerous and promising!
There is a wee bit of a contradiction noted here. What your left hand snatched away, your right hand proffers.
The apparent contradiction sits possibly more in how you have defined the causality of meaning or even reality in various metaphysical or even, excuse me, sentimentalist ways. But when I talk about meaning and its horizon, I talk about shifts, not destruction. What is under threat are edifices, identifications, certainties or even just preferred uncertainties. The political as stage is dysfunctional and as a whole becomes a form of establishment, resisting change. That's the significance of Trump who is not a political operator and which is exactly why certain political operators still bet on him, as they did with Palin. But the game is still politics although it's now a suicidal form: killing its own significance and relevance with increasing pace.

The grass root or individuals might be where meaning and connections are, but it's not another political stage. And certainly I'm not thinking of al the neo-sentimental movements with its "cosmopolitan emotiveness", being it Trumpists or the SJW. Perhaps briefly Ron Paul showed the combination of grass root and strong individual, invoking meaning and direction, with at least some governing, intellectual principle. It's in the US the closest thing since communism but just does not get traction on the political stage and is neither a sentimental movement. So what you see here is a world burning up, which is actually "meaning burning up" faster and faster. Which will shift the value back to anything which does provide value, simply shifting to other places. In that sense it's not me snatching and proffering but showing it's not about destruction but about changes. No mysterious uncertain changes but stuff already happening which can actually be pointed out at times, the moment the attention can be shifted from the political, sentimental and the self towards something else. That's harder than it sounds.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Santiago Odo »

Diebert wrote:The apparent contradiction sits possibly more in how you have defined the causality of meaning or even reality in various metaphysical or even, excuse me, sentimentalist ways. But when I talk about meaning and its horizon, I talk about shifts, not destruction. What is under threat are edifices, identifications, certainties or even just preferred uncertainties.
Well, any conversation or exchange of perspectives is taking place on a forum that was originally set up to put forward a specific perspective, and one based in absolute certainty. It could be nothing but fair and proper to establish this as the backdrop for your statement and my comment about it.

I am holding this in my mind and I am also remembering that, in respect to this forum and its quite respectable and indeed important initial declaration, all conversation will always have to *answer* in one way or another this original proposition. Now, in relation to that original proposition which was the animating spirit and which did what animating spirits will do: produced activity and stimulation in regard to the large metaphysical proposition, it has happened that a sort of explosion has occurred. I refer of course to David and his *Open Letter*. I suggest that this event and all that came from it is highly worthy of attention. And by attending there, I sense, many interesting things can be revealed and, perhaps, understood. It might appear mercenary and some might assume my intentions are not pure, but this is not the case. I have said and I maintain that intellectually I am happy to have come into contact with this forum and with its original intention which is, as must be said, absolutist.

One is forced to take absolutism and the meaning of an 'absolute' deeply into consideration and the question, if properly entertained, and received, will always tend to produce results. I mean, anyone who dwells on the question, dwells on the question at a) a somatic level and b) at an abstract and intellectual level. On one hand there is 'the body' and its commitments and restrictions, and on the other --- shall we say --- the unlimited spirit. In this, I would suggest (and it can be taken as a metephor and a trope) that our object must be to come into relationship with 'the unlimited spirit'. Abstractly, I mean as a proposition, this is I think what the Absolute refers to. Therefor it is right and proper to orient oneself in respect to the *question* and that the question is a challenge to the body (if you will permit this polarity for the sake of my argument) to allow itself to be worked on; to come under the pressure of, and to work out in one way or another a relationship to the Grand Idea. And the main part of this question is what do we mean by 'an absolute' and what ultimately does it mean for us. What other alternative is there?

Now, as one engages with abstract absolutes there are many problems and dangers that arise. But one of them is 'disconnection with the body' and, as I think you know, this can and does at times produce an unhealthy psychic condition which leads to many levels of distortion. I suggest this because it has always seemed to me, and still seems to me now, that an encounter with the Abstract is dangerous enterprise. This is perhaps especially true for we Occidentals, and perhaps more poignantly true for we of the PostWar generation. In any case, the focus is obviously on us: what we think, what we say, what we do. If the Question is not about us, if the issue does not revolve around us, I cannot understand the concern for the issues (the metaphysics, if you will). Therefor, the question is about us.

I think that this recent *conversation* and I refer mostly to David Dan and Kevin when I use the word, indicates a rupture, that is, a breakdown in a concordance of view. How appropriate! Because this is quite evidently what is 'going on around'. And since these fellow did indeed come forward with assertions about *value* and *meaning* and which were couched in a relationship to a Grand Question (in their terms The Absolute and what that must ultimately mean and what action it must inspire), the essential question has only been brought out into more luminous hightlight.

And as I think is plain and evident, and if indeed there was ever 'unity of opinion' and some level of 'metaphysical agreement', well, this is what has been ruptured (or seen to rupture which is not, precisely, the same).

OK, so that sort of sets the stage, at least as I see it, in relation to resuming consideration of *what ultimately is being talked about*. And that is why I say that the difficulty, the explosive contrast of opinions, but the core question itself, should not be veered away from. You cannot just leave the conversation.

Your position, as you know, I regard as I regard you-as-person. I am within my rights to say that I see you as an elaborate knot of confusion but yet one who masters walls and veritable sheets of prose to support a basic I-don't-know posture. I think that is one of the meanings of 'Nietzsche' (put in quotes to indicate an uncertainty of what 'Nietzsche' is, or insn't). I do not mean this in an unfriendly way, yet I cannot imagine that you would react except as if I mean this unfriend-ily. And I think your evolution and trajectory as a person, as a spiritual being, as well as as a man grounded in 'the body' (in the sense I mean) can be explored. I also think that you tend to avoid this scrutiny, and that this leads to the walls and sheets of prose and the elaborate 'I-don't-know-but-yet-will-pretend-to-know' posture. But do keep in mind that my statements here, now, are not out of keeping with the intentionality of the forum and, more important still, what must be produced, what must come forward, when one asks the 'Grand Questions'.

Shifting gears (down-shifting as it were!), one must say that Trump has meaning to the degree that he has no meaning! Trump conceals, I gather, the machinations of executive and administrative agents who are working (I gather) to dismantle other machinations set in motion by 'Obama'.

What else can this be but a power-struggle between hidden and submerged governmental factions? That is, polarized factions within a 'deep state'? Do these events have any bearing on our relationship to the Grand Questions? Well, according to David and Dan it really seems to. But this indicates 'concern for their world'. How could that be 'bad'?

But there are other dimensions here, and I do not see them as having awareness of them. In fact, they seem nearly completely ignorant of them.
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Santiago Odo
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Santiago Odo »

Diebert wrote:So what you see here is a world burning up, which is actually "meaning burning up" faster and faster. Which will shift the value back to anything which does provide value, simply shifting to other places. In that sense it's not me snatching and proffering but showing it's not about destruction but about changes. No mysterious uncertain changes but stuff already happening which can actually be pointed out at times, the moment the attention can be shifted from the political, sentimental and the self towards something else. That's harder than it sounds.
To my view, and even though I relate to the metaphor of 'burning up', it remains somewhat vague. I am interested in hearing about and exploring more exactly what is 'burning' but also why. If this is not defined the observation does not have much utility.

I think I would agree with 'no mysterious uncertain changes' and 'stuff already happening which can actually be pointed out at times'. But these comments remain unattached to specificites and I have to guess at what you mean.

I am of the opinion that 'we' must speak as directly as possible to the 'we' that is us, not some universalist 'we'. What is happening in 'the world' is difficult to isolate. But in contradistinction to the liberal-globalist movement, which David and Dan seem interested in or aligned with at a metaphysical level, I think we have to begin to isolate 'Europe' as our object of concern. And that this invokes the question of Identity, and definition, and alliance, and then *what is served* and why.

And for these reasons it would be some part of my assertion that 'we' need to bring our definitions back to our own 'body' and in this sense I invoke Weininger and for this reason I referred to the selection from Bernard Lazare. The questions turn back to the core and basic questions of the Interwar Period. They may be universal question insofar as they touch on Grand Metaphysics, but they are local and identifiable concerns and issues that have to do with 'the body' and men in time.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Santiago Odo wrote:...a forum that was originally set up to put forward a specific perspective, and one based in absolute certainty
But the qualification "absolute" would defy, reasonably, even the notion of this being about perspective, let alone "specific". To be able to work as absolute it has be the most universal, common and context independent thing ever! But if such notion cannot be allowed to exist, even in theory or inside speculation -- or as deeper conversation -- there would be certainly no point to it. Certainly enlightenment cannot be meant as mere "perspective" without stopping to be any meaningful enlightenment. In any case: the forum has been to my knowing simply put forward as discussion forum and not to put forward one single perspective but instead encourages "bloodied and dangerous" ones. Yes, many of those might fail to have much blood or danger, upon inspection.
Now, as one engages with abstract absolutes there are many problems and dangers that arise. But one of them is 'disconnection with the body' and, as I think you know, this can and does at times produce an unhealthy psychic condition which leads to many levels of distortion.
And I never disagreed with that notion but I do not see it as "problem of this forum". Everyone is already engaging with absolutes, the abstracts and the model to begin with. Including conception of what the body is, or politics, love, wealth, meaning and so on. You never succeeded to make the case of any particular problem and actually caused the question to bounce back: what is your problem with the abstract, the body, the unhealthy psychology and distortions. It's at such moment ones own attempts to get to a 'platform' of any kind crumbles. And the circle starts again, repeat, rinse, wash. But we could leave that topic rest for now.
I think that this recent *conversation* and I refer mostly to David Dan and Kevin when I use the word, indicates a rupture, that is, a breakdown in a concordance of view. How appropriate! Because this is quite evidently what is 'going on around'. And since these fellow did indeed come forward with assertions about *value* and *meaning* and which were couched in a relationship to a Grand Question (in their terms The Absolute and what that must ultimately mean and what action it must inspire), the essential question has only been brought out into more luminous hightlight.
The whole story has in my view been not much new, really. There's perhaps a danger of making too much of it? It should not be shocking if people, even assumed wise or enlightened, turn out to have certain limitations. Or fundamental differences. If it were any other way, philosophy would have been more like mathematics. Or with Kierkegaard's pure existentialism: not truth is subjective but subjectivity is truth. A subtle difference there.
veritable sheets of prose to support a basic I-don't-know posture
Vast bodies of science basically support the same thing when it comes to it. So I'm fine with it. And it's not an easy position to achieve, in my experience. Yes, one can have say or pretend "not to know". But so many times the knowing still oozes out of the posture, the absolute assuming of relative things. For example "matter", "body", "feeling" as absolute grounds.
And I think your evolution and trajectory as a person, as a spiritual being, as well as as a man grounded in 'the body' (in the sense I mean) can be explored. I also think that you tend to avoid this scrutiny
Surely it can be explored. But it's a dead end, generally, to do so for nearly everyone but myself. The reason you are interested in it, in these types of exploration with people, with certain kind of topics, shows a lot of your own trajectory and tragedy. It's obviously very important to you to keep engaging in that, it has become a form of being I suppose and not doing it is like dying? But I admit I'm not that interested, it's only a simple reaction to your statement and stops there.
But there are other dimensions here, and I do not see them as having awareness of them. In fact, they seem nearly completely ignorant of them.
True but I"m not that worried about it. As if wisdom would lead people onto the same path, would create the same engagements with the world, would develop the same intellectual or intuitive views of all events around them! It's tempting perhaps to assume something like that with spiritual developments but it's simply not the case! A brutal realization. And yet we need to keep going on, questioning, exploring, doubting, discovering, re-orienting and so on. But that also implies erring. Simple as that!
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Santiago Odo wrote:To my view, and even though I relate to the metaphor of 'burning up', it remains somewhat vague. I am interested in hearing about and exploring more exactly what is 'burning' but also why. If this is not defined the observation does not have much utility.
Overheating: the over-excited and the subsequently perverted. It will be tricky to speak of in more exact, powerful terms without having you protest the post-modern leaning analysis and language. In my opinion it's not hard to understand and "see" the reality of the metaphor. It's the desire of exactness and utility which could kill the fluency and "living" multilevel interpretativeness of reality. Obviously this is why language has formed in the first place, to respond to this in various intuitive ways. So it will remain "vague", I suppose in many cases. But it can re-appear in many forms and many contexts until some connection might be made.
But these comments remain unattached to specificites and I have to guess at what you mean.
But I did already write: "Perhaps briefly Ron Paul showed the combination of grass root and strong individual, invoking meaning and direction, with at least some governing, intellectual principle".

There's more to say of course about the reason I picked that as simple but weak example. But it's pretty specific, right?
And for these reasons it would be some part of my assertion that 'we' need to bring our definitions back to our own 'body' a
But this is your requirement of course. And you seem to demand from a conversation to go in that direction. In my case I see changes in definitions of "body" throughout the ages. A definition which slowly, deeply changes, same with identity. It cannot be wheeled "back" to something recognizable, something from the past, which is already rehashed, digested and regurgitated too many times. That's a fantasy, one I speak out against.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Santiago Odo »

Diebert wrote:But the qualification "absolute" would defy, reasonably, even the notion of this being about perspective, let alone "specific". To be able to work as absolute it has be the most universal, common and context independent thing ever! But if such notion cannot be allowed to exist, even in theory or inside speculation -- or as deeper conversation -- there would be certainly no point to it. Certainly enlightenment cannot be meant as mere "perspective" without stopping to be any meaningful enlightenment. In any case: the forum has been to my knowing simply put forward as discussion forum and not to put forward one single perspective but instead encourages "bloodied and dangerous" ones. Yes, many of those might fail to have much blood or danger, upon inspection.
I have come to understand --- I suppose I must clarify that it is a speculation --- that a person will reveal in what they write exactly what is their relationship to Being, and to all the grand questions, when they provide their 'metaphysical definitions'. I think in what you have written here you have done that.

So, 'the absolute' and a relationship to it, would seem to have little relationship to you, your people, your family for example, that is 'specific'. You seem to hold to a notion of an 'absolute' as something ultimately that has no relationship to concrete 'perspective'. If the 'absolute' is 'universal, common and context-independent' as you assert that it is and must be, I think this nicely illustrates how your understanding of 'it' and your relationship to it will result in nothing decided. OTOH, if one defines an absolute in different terms, or if one discovers that having relationship to 'it' involves a tangible structuring of self or restructuring as the case may be, it shifts the entire meaning of the relationship.

When I speak of 'restructuring' I am, of course, referring to what I understood about the philosophy and desire of Kevin Dan and David: they came into relationship to all these questions and what they noticed about society-at-large as reformers, as messengers, as instigators. The purpose being to inspire people to relate to Being in a different way.

The essential question here, therefor, really does stem from the primary metaphysical definitions. I suggest that when one encapsulates one's primary metaphysical definition --- when you tell me what it is and what it will do in relation to me and what I must do in relation to it --- you will have revealed the very essence of your relationship to Being. By doing so, you will have revealed an entire platform, an entire program through which one 'answers' the relevant questions.

Now, what is interesting and what must be delved into and understood with greater clarity --- and not shunted aside as you seem to wish to do --- is to turn a closer focus on what has happened in these recent exchanges and extract from it essential meaning. You say 'Not much should be made of it?' but I think that everything should be made of it. Especially since, in David and Dan's case, it takes the lid off their 'basic metaphysics'.

I have little idea, ultimately, what Kevin's are, but I do have some iinsight into the politics of the New Right (Nouvelle Droite) which originated as an idea-movement to counter a radical French movement summed up by the date-term '1968'. The conversations, here in this thread and in other places, have turned on the political polarities that extend from that time. And these fellows, as is the case with all of us, 'arise out of a postwar context'. All that we do, think, say, desire, hope for, react against --- et cetera --- is relational to 'the body' of Europe and we can only indicate how we are related to it, even when we deviate from it, or even when we attempt, as you seem to, to annihilate a relationship to it (the European body) and the notion of the Abstract-Metaphysical and of course to God or the Transcendent. I suggest that *for you* this has no meaning. It is meaningless. I have a sense that this is likely so because you have no 'personal' means of relationship to this 'absolute' since this absolute is, by definition, 'context-independent'. In essence, I suggest (because I notice it), whatever is your definition, your metaphysical predicate, it does not seem to have a tangible and direct relationship to you. Well, if it did I think you would speak differently about its meaning, and the meaning you discover in relationship to it.

Therefor, and as you might have guessed --- and I think I thoroughly understand how expert you are at dismantling ciritical thrust directed toward you! --- I must repeat what I have often stated about the metaphysics one is introduced to here. You say it is different people opining differently in respect to an 'Absolute' and that, here, one witnesses and participates in a sort of college of different opinions. That is all fine-sounding (and David has also said as much), but I have determined that this is very weak overall. Since I have spoken of 'dissolution of self' and the breakdown of relationship to tangible self as part of the desire and activity of *these fellows*, I must continue in that line of criticism and assert that some valuable piece is missing, some understanding absent, which renders them not reformers of the disease of their age, and that in which we all struggle, but *victims* of it and ones who, because of unconsciousness, carry it forward.

I am reminded of my own efforts to speak of the nihilism inherent in Ernst Becker's critique of oriental relationship to rationalism and to the breakdown of solid and structured relationship to Self that is part of Occidental degeneracy. My assertion has been that something in culture, some 'destructive movement', attacks identity and acts like an 'acid' against proper and necessary identifications.

By putting forward a platform, by asserting a certain metaphysic, by making statements about society, by definining 'male' and 'female' and by privileging the one and identifying the nebulous and indecisive or sensual aspect of the other, by noticing the difference in a man who is strong in idea and henid-resistant, by employing definition-skills in articulating a relationship to Becoming, one engages in a worthy and 'masculine' project. So far so good. But by these assertions it is assertion which is brought to the fore. A man defines his world and defines his relationship to it.

But if on the other hand, and in the same breath as it were, he undefines a relationship to Being and to Self, and fails to take the defining project toward sharper definitions in the present, and then sort of gives himself back over to the 'feminine-liberal' as metaphysical acquiescence --- I ask What has happened here? That is why I am puzzled and intrigued by this *juncture*. And a side-project to analysis of the larger picture of them-and-society is my sense that your relationship to *these questions* is also to some extend hobbled by the force of your own, shall I say, erroneous predicates. You seem to become an unending wall-of-prose, an unending response-capability, a labyrinth for the inverted self. This is your condition because, metaphysically, you have run into a wall. Or to put it another way into a *mire* of sorts. Now, I must and we all must see ourselves as 'products of the time'. If you (or I of anyone) has hit a wall can it really be said to be 'our fault'? I don't think so. I think we are 'the abstract and brief chronicles of the time'. So, what I assert is that it is and it must be a man's project and undertaking to *get out from under* the determining forces that render him impotent. And that means that man is potent and full of determining energy, and it also means that when he connects to the determining metaphysics at a cosmic or abstract (or absolute) level that he must translate that potency into tangible relationship.

The great weakeness of *you fellows* is likely to be that you define no relationship to women (woman as is said here). There is an essence here to be explored. The choice that determines your aloofness indicates a sort of abdication of responsibility. I do of course mean that in our culture it has become possible, indeed desirable, and even determined, to relinquish relationship to family, which also means relationship to the social world. In the larger scale of things, and certainly in respect to larger trends in culture, this is evidence of a form of social sickness. It is entirely unnatural. But yet it was and has been a core tenet here: the perverse separation away from the female and the feminine. This in itself indicates a wide area that needs to be looked into. It is a dead-end my friends! The ramifications of this are large indeed.

So, we turn back 'to Europe' and we turn back to events that shifted meaning in that world. We turn back to ruptures, to catastrophes, to breakings-away from core and basic identity with Self in the sense of 'the body' in precisely the most tangible sense. It is absolutely critical, therefor, to 'turn back to the body' and to seek to construct and reconstruct the identity required in relationship. I do not only mean relationship to a woman. A man's relationship to a woman is part of a man's relationship to his society. It is one and the same.
But this is your requirement of course. And you seem to demand from a conversation to go in that direction. In my case I see changes in definitions of "body" throughout the ages. A definition which slowly, deeply changes, same with identity. It cannot be wheeled "back" to something recognizable, something from the past, which is already rehashed, digested and regurgitated too many times. That's a fantasy, one I speak out against.
Oh no, not *mine*. It stems out of metaphysical predicates. It has to do with an entire motion of descent into incarnation and it has to do with what it means to be a man who comes to exist within the mutable world but who yet holds to ideals which are Absolute and Eternal. When you indicate that you have lost that link, or have yourself become negligibly decisive and somehow amorphous, and when you defend that breakdown with elaborate apologetics verging in sophistry, I say that we can turn the lens of examination on you, singular and plural. We can inquire what happened and why, and we can assess it.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by jupiviv »

While you guys are rambling on, has it even occurred to you that I deserve enormous praise and adulation - perhaps even quasi-deification - for being the only member here who was consistently right and accurate about the fate of the Trump presidency?
Alex wrote:So, 'the absolute' and a relationship to it, would seem to have little relationship to you, your people, your family for example, that is 'specific'.
Yes, but it would have a singular relationship to a pair of Klipsch RB-61s, which I recently bought from amazon and was playing not 4 hours ago at full volume. The music was a Big Bang in itself. Deconstructed, it yields a periodic table of its own. Just as much as "the love that moves the sun and other stars", Mozart animates and then glorifies his creations; even Bartolo and Antonio are brought to life from dust and loved beyond reckoning for their foibles. In itself, this is reassurance. A Divine Comedy is in play whose ends we cannot necessarily see and yet the narrative is undeniable.

On paper at least, perfection - and over two hours of it - should be caustic to mere flesh and blood; we're more attuned to the grease of concupiscence. How easy it is to luxuriate in this splendour and emerge on the other side as something more than the tattered old suitcase of the self. Who suspended the Law of Diminishing Returns? What underwrites this plenitude? Is it not an Encounter?

Nothing can be predicated of the One. Contrary to Lewis' proposition, inky staves and bar-lines will not imprison the Unmoved Mover. Nevertheless, in these Shadowlands of ours where trinkets and fakery are sovereign, that Figaro and its 1981 recording by Solti should exist and dwell among us is a cause for jubilation - in hoc signo. I'm no idealist. If a Jew and USD 500 can render me aglow with the Word come the finale of the fourth act, I'm all for it.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

jupiviv wrote:While you guys are rambling on, has it even occurred to you that I deserve enormous praise and adulation - perhaps even quasi-deification - for being the only member here who was consistently right and accurate about the fate of the Trump presidency?
Can you summarize what you wrote and how it relates to the current reality in terms making sense to others besides yourself?
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Re: Trumpism

Post by jupiviv »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
jupiviv wrote:While you guys are rambling on, has it even occurred to you that I deserve enormous praise and adulation - perhaps even quasi-deification - for being the only member here who was consistently right and accurate about the fate of the Trump presidency?
Can you summarize what you wrote and how it relates to the current reality in terms making sense to others besides yourself?
I was responding to Alex. Need I say more?
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Santiago Odo wrote:I have come to understand --- I suppose I must clarify that it is a speculation --- that a person will reveal in what they write exactly what is their relationship to Being, and to all the grand questions, when they provide their 'metaphysical definitions'.
And I have come to understand that people tend to "hear" whatever they desire to believe in the first place. So your personal deductions and revelations are, while containing valid notions, more like a way to self-affirm whatever needs to be affirmed.
You seem to hold to a notion of an 'absolute' as something ultimately that has no relationship to concrete 'perspective'.
It's not my notion at all simply because "the Absolute" means in the context I'm applying it: not being another thing to have relationships with or defined by any relationship to it (and so unfamiliar to any "Woman" way of existing ). It only exists as much as we have "things" and "relationships" at all. Although it's still a term, like all others, like the word "God" I suppose, you can easily think of it as non-existent or extremely distant if so desired, or not think about it at all, but it won't change anything. The foundation of all notions cannot be just another notion, logically. And yet, there can be so much said about it still, relatively and confusingly.
... what they noticed about society-at-large as reformers, as messengers, as instigators. The purpose being to inspire people to relate to Being in a different way.
Yes to learn to understand the nature of the infinite and thus also the nature of "self". That being the purpose, there is nothing specific beyond it like developing any utopia, saving the world from anything else and so on. Which doesn't mean a person cannot, individually, develop his own additional insights into what "should". This is the function of the ideal, of projecting into the future. But also the function of will, to desire ones ideas to live on, to become "reality" in some way. And since we're always dealing with people, some individual elements start playing up. This is all fine but when someone dares to link one with the other, so the understanding of the nature of the infinite with ideas on how the world should or could function, I simply warn for the confusion which is bound to follow. The one relation I do see is that a wise man cannot help but inquiring into the nature of reality and generally he also will have inquiries on the nature of society, the human psyche, the future and so on.
Especially since, in David and Dan's case, it takes the lid off their 'basic metaphysics'.
At first glance there are even more at this forum who were revealed to be aligned with different ideas, politically and economically, while largely still in agreement with these 'basic metaphysics' as you call them. So your analysis is about these one or two persons. But please go ahead!

Again, I do think that you're making too much out of it. The differences, if anything, only prove you wrong about what you believed to be some cultist group think tank. Obviously that was not the case and never has been. David and Dan turn out to be, also, progressive and liberal leaning, probably socialist even, and that's what you are delving into now. But they are not the best examples of these leanings either.
You say it is different people opining differently in respect to an 'Absolute' and that, here, one witnesses and participates in a sort of college of different opinions. That is all fine-sounding (and David has also said as much), but I have determined that this is very weak overall.
Determined yes but you have not made any case at all! Perhaps it just sounds fine because it's truthful, sound and valid reasoning?
I must continue in that line of criticism and assert that some valuable piece is missing, some understanding absent, which renders them not reformers of the disease of their age, and that in which we all struggle, but *victims* of it and ones who, because of unconsciousness, carry it forward.
That statement only has meaning if there was someone who had knowledge of the valuable piece and is going to trot it out at any moment. Or in the context of someone in existence who can save the victims, someone who can diagnose the disease and start providing medication or prophetic warnings for it.

The moment all those things turn out to be, in fact, non-existing or out of reach, that line of criticism proves to be vocal but infertile.
My assertion has been that something in culture, some 'destructive movement', attacks identity and acts like an 'acid' against proper and necessary identifications.
And my assertion is that this might be a cyclic movement, intimately linked to how the human mind (ancient and modern alike) just works. All identification, like deification, can only work through the past. The Past, a certain view on it, a careful selection of it, in effect becoming "god" for all ends of purposes, supplier of faith, hope, trauma, law and "sacred" history.
But if on the other hand, and in the same breath as it were, he undefines a relationship to Being and to Self, and fails to take the defining project toward sharper definitions in the present, and then sort of gives himself back over to the 'feminine-liberal' as metaphysical acquiescence --- I ask What has happened here? That is why I am puzzled and intrigued by this *juncture*.
We could discuss how far Trump-bashing or NYT-valueing is then "undefining a relationship to Being and to Self". Or how liberalism or globalism are that in their broadest meaning. While I was a bit puzzled and intrigued as well, at first, it only affirmed what I already knew to be the case: we are beings defined by circumstances to a great farther degree than we're often able to believe. Even wisdom of the infinite will not suspend the laws of causality. To still believe in something, to hope or strive for something, despite these quite deterministic notions, is another interesting topic for discussion.
And that means that man is potent and full of determining energy, and it also means that when he connects to the determining metaphysics at a cosmic or abstract (or absolute) level that he must translate that potency into tangible relationship.
But progress seems to be coming about just as well through idiocy, addiction, destruction, randomness alienation and other too human things. It sounds to me that it's more you who refuses the ugliness and randomness of the world. And as such you need this rather imaginary, idealistic being with special energies and faith whose actions will gain meaning and power. Right? It's the Übermensch ideal of course and I am not arguing against it, just trying to get to a better description here.
relinquish relationship to family, which also means relationship to the social world. In the larger scale of things, and certainly in respect to larger trends in culture, this is evidence of a form of social sickness. It is entirely unnatural. But yet it was and has been a core tenet here: the perverse separation away from the female and the feminine. This in itself indicates a wide area that needs to be looked into. It is a dead-end my friends! The ramifications of this are large indeed.
Of course it can be discussed, preferably in its own thread although you prefer to mush everything together inside one conversation, forgetting that Real Men divide, categorize and set apart one thing from another for a specific purpose like quality, readability, focus and so on. Topics can always be recombined or referred to later again if the need arises.

My counter argument in such topic, should you choose to pursue it, would likely revolve around the historical nature of relationship, family and tribe over the ages. Clearly there are many significant differences in each era, each geographic location and within each culture. It seems to me that you are trying to glue this all together in what you perhaps desire to see -- or perhaps as some abstract, personal ideal. Probably because of a need to align yourself with some higher principle, to derive meaning and validation from that? Justify your own personal dedication to the family ideal?
So, we turn back 'to Europe' and we turn back to events that shifted meaning in that world. We turn back to ruptures, to catastrophes, to breakings-away from core and basic identity with Self in the sense of 'the body' in precisely the most tangible sense. It is absolutely critical, therefor, to 'turn back to the body' and to seek to construct and reconstruct the identity required in relationship. I do not only mean relationship to a woman. A man's relationship to a woman is part of a man's relationship to his society. It is one and the same.
But in my view you are here defining humanity by the only means you have at your disposal. Rather quite late, modern means: to define a man as a sum of his relations. Or like Marx: the sum of his socioeconomic relations who needs to re-own his "means of production", including the body.

What you're describing could certainly apply to modern "Self", which is largely a social-economical by-product. It's an outcropping of the mechanization, of industry, of reading, of knowledge, of sex, and so on. Man, as ideation of self, has become this part-time alienated surface dweller. Like Nietzsche's Last Men: a flea! It's for this man you go out there on fora and try to save him from himself? Big irony explosion!

In the end, I think I'm just looking for a bigger picture, a bigger concern, a larger sense of Human. Which is what philosophy should be all about and indeed is. While politics more and more is becoming about smaller pictures, little concerns and tiny conceptions of human nature. And that's of course also the triumph of Trumpism: small-hand-ism.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by jupiviv »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:In the end, I think I'm just looking for a bigger picture, a bigger concern, a larger sense of Human. Which is what philosophy should be all about and indeed is. While politics more and more is becoming about smaller pictures, little concerns and tiny conceptions of human nature. And that's of course also the triumph of Trumpism: small-hand-ism.
And of course everyone *pretends* that it all makes sense. But it isn't information overload per se that brought about Schism. "Left" and "Right" and whatever else have become politically, economically etc. intertwined to such a degree that no "rational" (precise) choice remains. Human nature dictates that in the absence of such in reality, forced simulation is in order.

The collapse of industrial civilisation - built on ever-increasing debt accumulation and servicing as proxy for resource extraction and wastage - is underway. Global financial default is certain, but market participants have put it out of mind and are aided in this venture by Trump et al. It's like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights - an interesting phenomenon that is unusual to the rabbit, and since it doesn't have a predefined reaction it just keeps watching.

It's not like Trump *isn't* inept and clueless. The MSM could have done truth to power but chose to make propaganda about Schrodinger's cat instead. The alt media did do truth to power to an extent, but then "power" decoupled from "truth" and now they are - surprise, surprise - following the MSM's lead. Trump's election happened because of real problems that affect Trumpists, cucks, SJWs and liberals alike, but nobody wants to hear that or, even worse, that there are no real solutions. So it's pizzagate for everyone!

The point at which political ideals and philosophy intersect, especially when the philosophy in question is based on the principles championed by DDK, while being *very* far above the actual reality of politics, is still *very* low on the scale of what we here call "genius". It is unwise to attempt to reconcile even that intersection with true wisdom. In fact, such an attempt indicates that the person doing so is unable or unwilling to reconcile *themselves* with the latter.
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Re: Trumpism

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I think I fundamentally disagree with you about the function and purpose of 'philosophy' as you have defined it. (Bigger picture, a larger sense of the Human). I would imagine that it is safe to say that it is this point that will divide our perspectives. I would suggest to you that if you define 'philosophy' in this way --- and it is thoroughly arbitrary and really rather Greek that you do so! --- it will certainly lead to you a fuzzy, indecisive universalism and also to a general disempowerment. What if the exact opposite were 'true' and necessary to inculcate? The purpose of 'philosophy' is to sharpen and accentuate a man's relationship to himself, his milieu, his specific activity within the specific span of his life, even taking into consideration his ephemeral position and the angst and insecurity of his realization of his larger, overarching powelessness?

If any part of this is true --- that is, that one should employ 'philosophy' as a tool to sharpen one's own relationship to tangibles and tangible relationship --- my general critique of GF as a sort of Spenglerian living entity does not lose its validity, rather the validity of that sort of statement sharpens. I will certainly grant you that the entire entity of GF has included many different persons and perspectives, yet I think it fair to say that it does represent a sort of space, a unique place in time with peculiarities, with a design which set it in motion and, yes, determines that motion. Like a particular school, like a particular tradition. I think it is fair to step back from that and examine it and I think it quite interesting the significant differences that have shown themselves just recently.

But in the end --- and we are witnessing a sort of end here, are we not? --- what interests me is something else. It is to notice how and why conversation comes to an end. And how the 'possibility of conversation' also, rather suddenly, evaporates. But this would be some part of my point: in order to converse, in order to share the intelligible and the meanignful, there must be some inner relationship, and the only field in which inner relationship can occur and will occur is when there are shared common interests. So, your philosophy of ever-expanding 'bigger pictures', seen from one perspective at least, will lead not to the discovery of commonality, but dillution into abstractions. And at the end of that conversation what occurs? Well, just look around you. Look to yourself. What shows itself, what becomes most visible, most evident, is the breakdown in the possibility of communicating commonalities. I would say that that is a philosophical tragedy (if I were to use a deliberately dramatic term).

I gather that you imagine yourself linked to some hyper-masculinity. I hope that when you employ these tropes that you simultaneously hold to some irony! But the time has come to really come to see how far away from 'genuine masculinity' it is possible to drift. One must remember, and one must hold to the understanding, that this particular definition was established at the very base of the GF Project. You seem one who has invested a great deal in it. I think it is still a very open question. A good question, yes. But I would suggest that it has gone half-answered 'here' (if you will permit the generalization).

That is one reason why I say that another part of the 'masculine project' is to bring realization down into the particular, down into the body, down to one's people, nation, group, et cetera.

I think it fair to say, though I will speculate here, that the contrast between David and Dan as wishy-washy liberals and SJWs in their own way ... runs up against a more sharp, focused and limited definition: the empowerment of a specific people. You are likely of course aware that my ideas have turned to these areas with my interest in Jonathan Bowden and the Nouvelle Droite, Julius Evola, Savitri Devi and this sort of radicalism. You also know, because I have said it here, that it surprises me very much that David and Dan do not extend their 'masculine project' further and --- how odd! --- resolve themselves into the 'flowey' femininity of mass-culture, mass emotional relationship to 'the world'. That was a heavy one to process for me!

I still look to Commander Solway and hope that in him the Heroic Music will trumpet forth in red-hued brassy tones...

You say that you do not think I have 'made a case' or enough of one. That does not make me feel bad or guilty. Because to find a way out of nihilism, to find a way to effectively confront the ideological dissoluteness of our age, and to recover self and self-empowerment and the capability of defining action and also of acting! These are not easy topics. But remember: these were, ultimately, the Grand Questions asked here at GF! If you really take it to the limit a man has to ask himself all these very difficult questions and become decisive in relation to them.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by jupiviv »

Alex wrote:blah blah blah my general critique of GF as a sort of Spenglerian living entity does not lose its validity blah blah blah
I can at least agree with characterising GF as Spenglerian entity, although doing so would necessitate extending the same to all cultures (you know, like Spengler did). Besides that, this is just another invalid attempt to validate your ad hoc arguments against the philosophy of DDK, based on forum affairs/controversies between mindless adherents to said philosophy.

Anyone who views and treats this forum as some sort of community is pathetically missing the point of it. The search for wisdom must be solitary at its core from first to last in order to succeed. No discussion of it can involve what you call "stories" or "metaphysics", i.e, human emotions and kindred feelings. I understand that this is your main gripe with us and the root of your Megatherian efforts to that end, but there it is I'm afraid. Take it or leave it. In another year, everyone will just ignore you. Well, maybe not Diebert and me, but then not everyone is a fat mammy's boy who spends all their time flapping their fat cheeto-stained fingers on the keyboard writing posts like this.

And besides, if you actually believe everything you write, then we have self-destructed and you have won! You have slain the Jabberwock! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Hi, welcome back Santiago!

As for leading anyone to fuzzy, indecisive universalism and general disempowerment, that's preaching to the choir, dear Priest. What is philosophy if not at least an attempt to establish doubt, to enter the emptiness, a willingness for pain and yes, accept disempowerment as the price? It's not exactly a secret. Truth cutting into its own flesh, a bit like Nietzsche hinted at:
  • It is a sign of damaged instinct, when a man sees what drives him and its "imprint" ("the mask") removed -- a sign of self-contradiction, and much less victorious.
    -- Nietzsche
To go around in this world looking for philosophical armor, some kind of mental arms race, some way to gain power (as Castaneda's men), to cross the threshold and cheat the supernatural enemy keeping us imprisoned, that would be the nature of the priest. Or the eternally religious man, the ultimate game player (with games meaning here the circular, ritualistic, seduction based round-a-bouts of power). The purpose of any real 'philosophy' would be more like increasing or just celebrating awareness itself. "To sharpen relationships" would be then heightening of awareness which only happens when there's first room made, some preparation, to be able to grow into that. A lot of things need to let go off first. In a way, that's the nihilistic part of the journey. That dangerous, poisonous part, for "everyone and nobody".
But in the end --- and we are witnessing a sort of end here, are we not? --- what interests me is something else. It is to notice how and why conversation comes to an end. And how the 'possibility of conversation' also, rather suddenly, evaporates.
If you mean the interesting phenomenon of nearly every forum ending up banning you at some point, this is partly caused by certain toxic elements in your own characters and some of the larger inconsistencies in your writing. You are not aware of them and probably never might be since you won't gain anything by it (see also the: backfire effect). For me that doesn't matter since you're capable of bringing nevertheless many great themes and observations to the table. And you take it to the limit, your own limitation and such conservations then exhaust themselves, one way or another.
So, your philosophy of ever-expanding 'bigger pictures', seen from one perspective at least, will lead not to the discovery of commonality, but dillution into abstractions. And at the end of that conversation what occurs? Well, just look around you. Look to yourself. What shows itself, what becomes most visible, most evident, is the breakdown in the possibility of communicating commonalities. I would say that that is a philosophical tragedy (if I were to use a deliberately dramatic term).
When I look around past and present, I've seen myself communicating with many people at many places for prolonged spans of times. It seems like forever, from the dawn of time. And I gained in nearly every instance respect. And in nearly every instance I still can restart that conversation. Why you think it might be otherwise remains a mystery. Perhaps you hope or just assume it would be not so? However it's true, there's a sort of breakdown in my interest to converse (philosophically) but not because of lack of possibilities. It has to do with how conversations tend to function in others, how they only seem to end up encouraging their own firmly held beliefs instead of challenging those in the same way I'm continuously challenging and overturning my own. As for "commonalities", I meet enough people with whom I still share culture, work and living environment, actually so many that I value every time and place I can pause all of that for a little while. Social bonds are still bonds, they work both ways but mostly against a truly freely thinking person. That's why family is the biggest hurdle known to thinking men. The hardest, sweetest, most invisible, most tough chains to discover and break -- if philosophy is the goal of course but why should it?

As for masculinity, it's unclear what you think I imagine that to be. From my experience you have very odd ideas about "hyper-masculinity" and would dare to suggest that you are actually suffering from some form of hyper-masculine styles like those commonly found in typical gay male culture, with the exaggerated aggressive undertones and over-compensation combined with overdoses of dressing up. It has been suggested at times by others as well.
to bring realization down into the particular, down into the body, down to one's people, nation, group, et cetera.
Or, more importantly to question all of this, what are they, how are they formed, are they still relevant and how. Or if the imagined boundaries are actually as clear as suggested. These are important questions for every thinking man and need to be addressed before wishing or to insert a little dick of realization into this mess.
it surprises me very much that David and Dan do not extend their 'masculine project' further and --- how odd! --- resolve themselves into the 'flowey' femininity of mass-culture, mass emotional relationship to 'the world'. That was a heavy one to process for me!
To prefer a better informed or more factual presidential candidate than Trump? How is that flowy femininity? Even looking at the Trump family briefly makes it all too clear that it's all about pretense; a thoroughly pussy whipped arrangement lost in girlish and simplistic materialist values. People who like to play a game of masculinity but never get around to actually embody it? The best thing about Trump is that he's a "walking id" but that is turning out to be more something instinctual than intuitive. Rationality remains alien to it.

It's unfortunate though that David and Dan seemed to have involved themselves in quite an emotional sounding manner, like assigning this particular case such a great importance in the grander scheme of things. And they're not even American (although we all are, in hyper-real modern sense). In my view they have been swept up by a larger hysteria combined with a defensive posture related to their lifestyle only made possible by a couple of hardcore socialist arrangements, which are under pressure in most countries.

On top of that I've to say that indeed for the philosopher's aim, the goal would be to remain detached in the most internalized sense. He needs to be "hollow" for the world to be able to fill him up, to breath everything in what as been exhaled before. He can't be anything the moment he embodies these holiest perspectives, his wisest perspectives.
Because to find a way out of nihilism, to find a way to effectively confront the ideological dissoluteness of our age, and to recover self and self-empowerment and the capability of defining action and also of acting! These are not easy topics. But remember: these were, ultimately, the Grand Questions asked here at GF! If you really take it to the limit a man has to ask himself all these very difficult questions and become decisive in relation to them.
Recovery in the face of eternal changes? It's the nature of man and doubly so Western man. Good luck, at worst the quest only makes you more human, more actor, more facade, more mask, more poet, more thief but, unfortunately, less of a philosopher.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Santiago Odo »

Jupi wrote:The search for wisdom must be solitary at its core from first to last in order to succeed. No discussion of it can involve what you call "stories" or "metaphysics", i.e, human emotions and kindred feelings. I understand that this is your main gripe with us and the root of your Megatherian efforts to that end, but there it is I'm afraid. Take it or leave it. In another year, everyone will just ignore you. Well, maybe not Diebert and me, but then not everyone is a fat mammy's boy who spends all their time flapping their fat cheeto-stained fingers on the keyboard writing posts like this.
The questions I would ask myself, were I in your situation, and the questions that from time to time run through my mind when I meditate on your general contribution, would I think put some pressure on this 'declaration' about wisdom. I have used this statement here before as a counter-statement to D/D and some others who have been attracted to their absolutism and I send it up again for you because I think it is true: You have no idea what 'wisdom' is or isn't. You seem to desire to though. If I have a main gripe, or have had a main gripe, the gripe is genuine if one is genuinely concerened for the question: What does it mean to be wise? If I have taken issue with the Forum and its founding philosophers it has been because I think they have made a similar mistake as you. You are in this sense an example of just how mistaken they have been. By making this absolute declarations about 'wisdom' and implying (asserting without coming out and saying it) that they have wisdom and even know what it is, they attract fellows like you. I think that it is 'wise' to spend a little time and look at that.

That means of course looking at you and it would mean, in the best of circumstances, you looking at you! But I do understand how that statement, from me, is an affront to you and will only provoke you. It has become obvious to me that for you this becomes a racial and cultural issue: you see here (in this forum and within Occidental categories not your own) a platform offered to fight your way to an *identity* and to channel immense anger and jealousy against the the very culture which had so much affect on your own. It seems to be a strange codependence. But the strongest feature I notice in you is an acidic contempt and the desire for some sort of fight through which to resolve your anger. There is a strange Oedipal element I notice in you. Have you ever wondered about this? Has anyone else ever mentioned it to you? It must be a typical issue in your culture, mustn't it? With the Aryan conquest of the brown-skinned fellows and that culture's domination of *the categories of concern*, and then, centuries on, a similar invasion by English culture and a historical repeat. Could this explain, Jupi, some part of your ressentiment? I assume that in your *solitary* wisdom-ridden mediations you have wondered at some of this? If not perhaps *wisdom* can be turned in that direction...

You make a declaration: "The search for wisdom must be solitary at its core from first to last in order to succeed". This declaration would need to be explored. I would suggest that this statement is not a part of some active, positive engagement with knowledge that will bear fruit of some sort (in any case in those areas and senses that I would identify as having value and meaning) but is overall a symptom. But to confront this symptom is to poke at you in a way that will provoke you to rather typical self-defense and then the peculiar forms of offense that characterize your presence. At that point you generally turn grandiose. In all this grandiosity you become quite peculiar and distorted and this raises more questions. The thing that I am most curious about, in your case, is how it has come to be that you, an Indian national, have come to seek identity through categories that are not your own in any sense.

I do take issue with you though because by inserting yourself into what are my traditions and my culture and hallucinating your way into these questions and problems, that you become a meddler. I do not really mind that you are attracted to these Occidental categories --- they are wonderful and powerful --- but it does bother me that you feel you can insert yourself, and also that you are given the right to do so. These are not *your traditions* my friend and you are a pretenter and in a real sense an interloper. It is not my business to be too concerned about what you do or don't do but I notice in you 'an argument looking for a theme'.

Essentially, Jupi, you are thoroughly irrelevant and it would be *wise* if you noticed this.

But the question: What is wisdom remains. Unexplored. Unanswered.
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Santiago Odo
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Santiago Odo »

SO wrote:But in the end --- and we are witnessing a sort of end here, are we not? --- what interests me is something else. It is to notice how and why conversation comes to an end. And how the 'possibility of conversation' also, rather suddenly, evaporates.
DvR wrote:If you mean the interesting phenomenon of nearly every forum ending up banning you at some point, this is partly caused by certain toxic elements in your own characters and some of the larger inconsistencies in your writing. You are not aware of them and probably never might be since you won't gain anything by it (see also the: backfire effect). For me that doesn't matter since you're capable of bringing nevertheless many great themes and observations to the table. And you take it to the limit, your own limitation and such conservations then exhaust themselves, one way or another.
But that is not what I was talking about! Though I do appreciate you turning it in that way. I am reminded of the 'swerve' Harold Bloom defines:
  • 'Clinamen': Bloom defines this as “poetic misreading or misprision proper”. The author makes a swerve away from a precursor, alluding to the proposition that the original work was only precise and accurate up until a particular end; at which point, the successive author makes the corrective motion.
In fact I am speaking very much to something else. But I will admit that it is hard to talk about because it is a large issue and hard to get a handle on it. I suppose it has to do the further erosion of defined categories of concern, valuation and meaning.

But I suppose that I might respond to you *accusation* about banning and such. Yet this is more complex than it seems, Diebert. You are the one who banned me here, and you did this for very personal reasons which were always expressed in PMs and never in the same way on-forum. When the forum was sort of *bequeathed* to you it went, I think, to your head. You are not the best moderator because you are so involved in these issues!

But more important than that, and more germane to my point, I would make mention of the two forums that have banned me: Civil War Talk and (just recently) Philosophy Forum. The reason that I was banned at CWT is because I took (and take) a position that turns against the standard narrative which is axiomatic to American civil identity: the rightness of the North's cause against the South. The 'real reason' for their baning of me is that I tended to make my points and to do so in an articulate manner and this became intolerable to them. When I say 'them' I mean the forum owner: a man who was attempting to construct an American Civil War 'forum' that schools could access and direct their students to. It had to be 'sqeaky clean' and could not present any view which turned against the basic construct of the 'American civil religion'.

I had been a long-time writer on Philosophy Forum and never had any problem at all there (writing on my conflict with Christian categories mostly) until I began a thread that proposed axamining the Alt-Right and the European New Right. Since I explored those groups and those ideas fairly and openly, and presented for example some of the Bowden videos that I have also shared with you, I was labeled a 'Nazi'. Right from the start.

Similarly to the CWT forum I noticed a common theme and issue: if you turn against the standard narrative you upset people, or challenge them in uncomfortable ways, and what happens is they attack you. And the terms of that attack are quite underhanded. In other words if they think that they are confronting 'fascism' and 'evil' in you there is nothing they feel compelled to stop at in defeating you. But the content of their *argument* is not discusive and intellectual, but emotional and sentimental. In any case, the thread I began went eventually to 75 pages. At one point the moderator, for no valid reason at all, temp banned me. In a sense it was similar to the way you did things: he made it a personal issue. He said in PM: 'I really don't like you and you'd better watch it because I will ban you'. In PMs he spoke of his dislike for my ideas but he would not speak of this on-forum. And just recently, after the thread had sat dormant for months, I wrote on other threads and attracted his ire. Not only did he ban me he erased the entire thread. Months of work not only by me but by many others. For me, this has been rather an amazing 'lesson' about the breakdown in communication. It is not that I do not understand it, and it is not that I condemn it, but I see it in a larger context of tremndous break-downs in mutually-agreed definitions.

This is refelcted, of course, in David and Dan's issues with Kevin. These topics have relevancy and we are all affected by 'what is going on in the larger contexts around us'. It is meta-political.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Santiago Odo »

Is there not an Indian snack food that could replace Cheetos!? This might seem minor and perhaps it is. But with all the advances in production and distribution in India is there not an Indian local snack product --- chaat --- with which to stain your plump fingers?
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Santiago Odo »

DvR wrote:To go around in this world looking for philosophical armor, some kind of mental arms race, some way to gain power (as Castaneda's men), to cross the threshold and cheat the supernatural enemy keeping us imprisoned, that would be the nature of the priest. Or the eternally religious man, the ultimate game player (with games meaning here the circular, ritualistic, seduction based round-a-bouts of power). The purpose of any real 'philosophy' would be more like increasing or just celebrating awareness itself. "To sharpen relationships" would be then heightening of awareness which only happens when there's first room made, some preparation, to be able to grow into that. A lot of things need to let go off first. In a way, that's the nihilistic part of the journey. That dangerous, poisonous part, for "everyone and nobody".
My impression, Diebert, is that you are rehashing some Nietzschen condensation and it seems to have become a strategy for you. When you start going off in this way I notice that it has a certain polish and eloquence but it just seems like a pose.

Still though, even if we were to remain within Nietzschean terms, I cannot imagine you as the corresponding warrior or man-of-action. Therefor --- and I do not disagree with your characterization of me necessarily --- I would suggest that you are very fixed within what Nietzsche defined as that priestly and interiorized space. It seems to me that were you not you'd be out in the world building things, conquering and establishing. Your greatest 'treasure' is in this sense your philosophical exposition.

My impression of you, especially when one taps on you and you respond with Nietzschenism, is that you are in many senses a romantic but there is no external outlet for it and so it turns gloriously inward and gets italicized.

I have no doubt about your basic solidity as a person, in this world and in all worlds, and this was not brought into question when I said 'Look to yourself'. What I actually meant is just what I have been saying: you dress up your 'philosophy' in such a way to conceal that you are, in many senses, in a dead-end. One presses on you and the same sort of stuff oozes out.

And this fits, and you fit (here), and clearly everyone who has invested *here* are birds of a feather in various ways, but pleeeeze don't bullshit me with some rap about 'wisdom' nor of 'manliness'. Here, in this particular space, many different people have taken on many different poses in respect to the Weiningerian categories of masculine and feminine. I would hope that you do not imagine me as susceptible to the 'I think you're a fag!' rehearsal. I have suggested, and continue to suggest, that the topic of masculinity is still very much up in the air. Nothing has been decided here, or very little. I further suggest that one can easily notice here failing men and men beginning (in the sense I mean) to fail in that peculiar and also sad way when age overtakes them.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by JohnJAu »

Santiago Odo wrote: For me, this has been rather an amazing 'lesson' about the breakdown in communication. It is not that I do not understand it, and it is not that I condemn it, but I see it in a larger context of tremndous break-downs in mutually-agreed definitions.
I'm surprised you are still learning this lesson. In the modern day at least, and I can't speak for the past, any conversation which challenges, is more or less illegal. It is the single most taboo activity one can engage in, next to theft, murder, etc. It incites violence, especially if it is public, and it is almost irrelevant how carefully you tread. The moment someone notices you've gone beyond the acceptable set of conversations, into some challenging territory which might question their morality or beliefs for example, you have become a major threat in some way. I think you hold people in too high a regard, obviously this is not the case for everyone, but to me it seems the majority are so deluded, arrogant, egotistical, etc, that the only way which they can be described is as harshly as possible. I like to be visual. A five year old girl running around screaming and crying suffering from ADHD, autism, depression, narcissism, borderline personality disorder, and other mental health issues/forms of retardation, that lacks even the most basic education. That comes close to explaining how mature(?) the average person is, obviously, that's always been known as the average woman, but it's become nearly every man too. It usually only ends very quickly, and in one of a few ways: ignoring(in your case banning), ridicule, accusation(in your case, "Nazi"), police, or violence.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by Santiago Odo »

John wrote:I'm surprised you are still learning this lesson. In the modern day at least, and I can't speak for the past, any conversation which challenges, is more or less illegal. It is the single most taboo activity one can engage in, next to theft, murder, etc. It incites violence, especially if it is public, and it is almost irrelevant how carefully you tread. The moment someone notices you've gone beyond the acceptable set of conversations, into some challenging territory which might question their morality or beliefs for example, you have become a major threat in some way. I think you hold people in too high a regard, obviously this is not the case for everyone, but to me it seems the majority are so deluded, arrogant, egotistical, etc, that the only way which they can be described is as harshly as possible. I like to be visual. A five year old girl running around screaming and crying suffering from ADHD, autism, depression, narcissism, borderline personality disorder, and other mental health issues/forms of retardation, that lacks even the most basic education. That comes close to explaining how mature(?) the average person is, obviously, that's always been known as the average woman, but it's become nearly every man too. It usually only ends very quickly, and in one of a few ways: ignoring(in your case banning), ridicule, accusation(in your case, "Nazi"), police, or violence.
To make a long story short, in my case I am interested in the 'breakdown in communication' as the spiritual glue which united people in the European world has been coming undone. I often have used the term 'acid' to attempt to describe an agent of this effect, and though I have no doubt that my general thesis is on the crude side, my view is that we each of carry as a part of ourself some aspect of this 'acid', consciously or unconsciously. An easy reference to naming what this 'acid' is, or at least to illustrate one manifestation and to notice how it works, is to refer for example to 'The Frankfurt School': an intellectual project hung upon a Marxian framework and Marxianism defined as a deliberate and willed cultural undermining to destroy those structures identified as 'oppressive'. The possibility of 'becoming an acid' (becoming a destroyer) has been offered to too many people and too many people have taken up those arms.

My view is that it is this 'critical acid' is a 'contagion' of our age. It is hyper-manifest in the use of social media (Twitter and such), a disturbing trend certainly, and I think this observation is germane to the recent conversations about Kevin's involvements with 'gamergate' etc. We are certainly seeing YouTube become a new communications platform and Dan and Kevin (not David to my knowledge) have jumped into that world attampting to bring the 'enlightenment' message.

These 'worlds' that open up seem mostly to turn into battlegrounds for abstract conversations which seem more personality battles than proper idea-confrontations, but the personalities that --- like puppets --- perform in these dramatic conflicts, although it is hard to discern, do speak from certain 'idea-platforms'. I mean that ideas stand behind them. But few seem able, or sufficiently conscious of ideas, to discern well just what the conflicts really are. At a certain point, yes, as you say, it devolves into tantrums of children who are not getting their needs met in some ways.

But there is a larger issue, as I see things. It is an issue of civilization, our civilization. I speak here in an exclusive sense and say 'the Occidental World' or the pan-European world. I would also extend it and describe it as the 'White world' but that, of course, borders into definitions that are not at all popular. At one time there was a sort of glue which united this 'white European world' into a sort of 'confederation' and that glue was Catholicism. To define this term is not easy because it encompasses a sweep of ideas and history which begins on the pagan world and evolves in various ways through European history. But I think it fair to say that *it* is and it does represent a sort of *spiritual glue* which held Europe together. Essentially it is what made Europe Europe (and the term itself implies a confederation based in a 'spiritual ideal').

I have to say again, because I think it true, that the *project* of Dan and David and Kevin --- that is if I understand it aright --- begins in an attempt at a reform movement. The recommended GF Project (though I know how some here hate that I would describe in general terms) came about because of a reaction to the narcissism and the nihilism of the present. I see it as just one more, essentially religiously-motivated, reform movements which have arisen and will continue to arise within the 'Occidental body'.

I think that one has to contextualize these things --- these facts --- in order to then return to the conversation that was initiated by these fellows. What I take that 'conversation' to be, in its essence, is as I say a 'reform project'. But these fellows have attempted it (though there is disparity between them) largely through a strange and foreign intrusion: the Zennish metaphysics, the 'Sage Pose. But my contention is that, without knowing it, without understanding it, they grabbed hold of what is in its most potent essence another form of 'acid' designed to eat away solidities and structure.

Presented in the way they present it, or operated in the way they operated it, it itself becomes an acidic adventure and it itself participates in weakening the *glue* I have spoken of. The essence of my resistance to *that* is legendary. ;-)

The purpose becomes -- must become in my view --- to locate and to define the unifying fluid, the spiritual essence, that is capable of really functioning as 'reform': within a project of regeneration. To define this 'regeneration' is not at all easy. And in fact, today, there are lively battles over what any of this means.

Myself, I have said a few times that 'I will rewrite GF'. It was sort of a joke to begin with. But I no longer see it as a joke. Their original impetous was good and even *noble* and fine (in many ways). But now what has to be *battled*, as it were, are those Bulldog Guards who stand growling and frothing when a genuine effort at redefining and reempowering the definition of the nature of 'reform' is passed in front of their Dog House.
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Re: Trumpism

Post by jupiviv »

Santiago Odo wrote:If I have a main gripe, or have had a main gripe, the gripe is genuine if one is genuinely concerened for the question: What does it mean to be wise?
I think a lot - probably almost all - of the confusion surrounding your "project" here can be erased simply by acknowledging the difference between *defining* "wisdom" appropriately (logically) after being asked to do so and the questioner *disapproving* of said definition. For example, why you ask for a basic definition of wisdom *after* having begun a discussion about its implications, which presumes mutual agreement about the former.
blah blah By making this absolute declarations about 'wisdom' and implying (asserting without coming out and saying it) that they have wisdom and even know what it is, they attract fellows like you. I think that it is 'wise' to spend a little time and look at that. blah blah and, indeed, blah
I've never "implied" that I am wise, but explicitly stated it. However wisdom can exist at the same time as delusion, even a lot of delusion. This is so in my case and so I've also stated explicitly.

The goal of a wise man is to encourage others to be wise, rather than assuring them of his own wisdom. What is ironic, in fact, is that people who place emphasis on characterising the nature and extent of their *own* wisdom per se tend to be gurus or cult leaders. A non-absolutist sort of wisdom needs no explanation or even conscious expression, just allegiance.
blabbity blah It must be a typical issue in your culture, mustn't it? blah blabbity blah
Ah, yes. The bitchy phase of your forum mating cycle. Anyway, my stance on culture in *general* is that it is banal.
You make a declaration: "The search for wisdom must be solitary at its core from first to last in order to succeed". This declaration would need to be explored.
So why don't you explore it instead of telling me how much you disapprove of my "meddling" in "your" culture?
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