What now? Or ‘Nihilism as a Cure for Nihilism’.

[Santiago Odo]

This is where I think "perspectives diverge" -- that is: existence is just not really there. Life doesn't happen at such "surface" but this would not imply rejection or any simple dismissive as it being illusion or hallucination. We are all born at the surface, as self, as some ego-identification process and in that sense I do know the world. But for those looking for life, existence, meaning and any "ultimate", it would mean some weighing down is needed before any lightness, as described by the mystics, could occur.

. . .

But this is all rather too early. Every radical vision arrives always too early. The natural laws dictate that sudden changes are non-distinct from violence. Slow changes are more beneficial. And as the old dies, hollows out into outward shells, hiding what's growing instead inside, the true simulacrum reveals itself as pure irony at times.

I read what your wrote, and always read and consider what you offer, yet I find that it is essentially non-useful to me. If I began to counter-propose I would begin again, and force you to begin again, a rather typical pattern of communication.

Essentially though, what you say is *non-intelligible* to me, and I do mean this in the sense that I have been using intellectus. I think that the way I would describe it (and we did in fact last encounter the same thing, more or less, in the last thread I had posted in before my hiatus), is that were I to become interested in what your speech conduces to (to come under the influence of your ‘sermonic speech’ — in the sense that R. Weaver refers to ‘all speech as being sermonic’) I would involve myself in disappearing down your specific ‘rabbit hole’ and into those sorts of anti-things that you value. It is that sort of conversation that seems more proper to the *upper level* of this Forum.

You know already, and I know that you know — we both know — that I see your perceptual location as a symptom of nihilism. You know as well that I see you, more or less, as the more *severe case* too. Thus, and as I explained just above, I am aware of being in a long and fairly elaborate process of reaction, and of counter-construction, and this does involve, and would involve, and will involve, overcoming (what I understand of) your position within nihilism.

But I find that you are too defended within your fort, too wily! The debate is pointless because, as I understand things, you will not — and perhaps cannot — move.

And I completely understand that you see yourself as having and coming from a superior position. What I mean by that is that, philosophically, you see yourself as having advanced beyond these ‘surface’ considerations (as you put it) into some other level of gnosis. What that is, I have no idea. I do not know how we would then talk, Diebert, and what value it would have to either of us. If you have insight here do let me know.

[Santiago Odo]

That was just me trying to pull the notion of "semi-symbolically European renovation" or any recovery of value and meaning back to actual processes taking place. And they are deeply related, which is why I presented it and also explained the why: disembodied being lacking a story and immediate, meaningful connects. Dispassionately one could witness theirs and your "independence march" under the same light. Reviving something using symbols, myth, past -- while drumming loudly about it. And this is of course the actual, historical reality of Europe, not just semi-symbolical or never-realized idealistic: the continuing battle of Independence and identity locally and the ever shifting allegiances, empires, migrations and invasions.

I start from the level of the individual — myself in fact. I am the *place* where *renovation* is required. And as I have been saying, and as I sincerely mean, I give thanks to this forum and to all its participants for stimulating the range of reaction that has been produced.

As I have been saying, if one really wishes to take these questions seriously, if one really feels impelled in that direction, it will lead right into the most relevant and meaningful existential questions : and they must be answered. It will also cause one to define if — or not! — life and manifestation are *really real* and really important. In comparison, the Buddhistic perspective, and worldpicture, is ur-nihilistic. (Which is one reason why it is a popular manoeuvre for many people). I am absolutely opposed to — and in reaction to — such a manoeuvre. And I seek to articulate it.

What I am talking about you define as “Reviving something using symbols, myth, past -- while drumming loudly about it“ and I think, after some years, I grasp where you stand. Your position does not change. Essentially, this is where we differ and why our discourse will not coincide.

All that I can say in relation to your assessment is to refer back to what I have already written here, now. If indeed it is reviving symbols and myths and drumming about it then I think it should be noted and also critiqued. Because such a means, certainly in relation to the individual, cannot and will not ‘renovate’. But one must note that your statement about what you *see* (for example in my discourse and these offerings) is really more a statement about your own position : a form of nihilism. You do propose, it seems, a vague sort of hope in what may rise out of the old shells, and I can respect your position as such.

My idea is different though. The symbols and the myths refer to a *real content* and not to other symbols and myths that one can approach only ironically. Obviously, I am referring directly and concretely to what I refer to as the Greco-Christian; not as an object but to the content which is intellectus. One does not have a conversation about it, one lives in relation to it. Here, it is only possible to emply signs, indicators, suggestions and in that sense symbols.

My discourse attempts, whether well or badly is not for me to decide, to show possible angles to review and reconsider that which I refer to. But you should know, and I wish to make it plain as day, that ultimately I am referring to a *real presence*. A real thing, not a symbol or a myth. This is the point that your and my view diverges. You cannot see this as *real* and you then branch out into ironic territories. That is the *rabbit hole* I refer to, and there I cannot follow. So I merely *note* it.

[Santiago Odo]

And with that and *all this*, again, I suggest that we have to come to grips with the nature of the nihilism that has captured us and which we live within without a full grasp of what it is, how it came to be, and what it is doing. The implication therefor with any notion of ‘renovation’ is not just to speculate about a *cure* or to conceive it in some imagined future, but to discover it and to begin the work of self-recovery from the forces of dissolution. There is really no other way to put it. Furthermore, it also has to be said and understood (ie internalized) that *this* is our spiritual world and that it is REAL. This is — right now — our one opportunity. The imposition of some dark and essentially erroneous imagined view which discounts or fogs over or nullifies the importance of ourself within this manifestation is, I assert, evil. It is in that motion of the mind that an evil is perpetrated on the Self (and on the soul).

Additionally, and to riff off the notion of metaphysics and the need for a ‘master metaphysician’, I assert that we need to get far more clear about our *location*. Location as I use the term means a location within an understanding that can see and also understand that we now exist in a borderland between a former metaphysics and a deadly (and erroneous in many ways) developing anti-metaphysics. Remember : all of this takes place in man’s imagined world and, at the start, a given man has to grasp his imagination-function in a special sense (a Thomistic sense) which is part of a holistic appreciation of man’s metaphysical nature. The key to everything it seems to me is there. In this sense, what operates against man is to be found in what attacks the possibility of conception within the imagined world. But the imagination, understood in this sense, is not to be understood as unreal and the mechanism through which one is taught to conceive it thus has to be recognized for its destructive aspect.

I suggest that internalizing these ideas will conduce one back into the Self and will begin a process of abandoning the unreal for a recognized real. And in this process of recognizing and appreciating the real one will synchronistically also better appreciate and seek to rediscover and better understand not only our own Self as a process of spirtual development, but also our own culture and civilization and its supreme importance. From that perspective, which also becomes a praxis, one can (in my view) much better understand the reactionary movements within the world of ideas that are attempting to take a stand, militantly, against the encroaching Hyper-Liberalism, which is something more than a heresy and represents, when it is understood, a sort of death-process. In this, the *acid* I referred to often is to be seen and understood. It destroys cognition eventually. It definitely destroys higher thought. And it does this by acidic work within imagination and in respect to intellectus. This turns out to be, then, a very serious business in which ‘irony’ and ‘ironic play’ are understood as irresponsible. True responsibility, therefor, has yet to be adequately defined within the context of this Forum. It had not ever been understood because of the error of misconception about *location* (and a range of other misconceived views).

I therefor suggest, as respectfully as possible, that if one were to attempt to describe in one word the essential error of many who write here and have written here — and this as a problem of our age — that basic issue and problem is nihilism. It is almost like an invisible but insidious spirit that *captures* the mind and imagination. And to see and describe nihilism is just the first stage. One then has to discover, internally and personally, the antidote to it.

This is how I have come to conceive ‘European Renovation’ and the resistance to Hyper-Liberalism. I suggest for this reason a return to what I can only describe as a contravening spirit. The manifestation of it, in the sense that it can be felt, is nicely demonstrated in this short video of a talk by Jonathan Bowden. Something elemental is expressed here, something quintessential.

[guest_of_logic]

But why selecting Christianity?

Santiago, you rightly recognise this as "a good question, a necessary question".

I would go further: it is not only a good and necessary question; it is the question.

The first reason why is obvious: there is a range of possible metaphysics, and you are advocating for one of them in particular. The question then is why you have chosen that particular metaphysic as opposed to any of the other possibilities - and not just chosen it, but chosen to battle (your choice of words) for it.

The second is a little subtler: you have made no secret of being a reactionary in two senses, one being in reaction to your extremely liberal upbringing, and the other being in reaction to the "absolutes" proposed by the founders of Genius Forums. Just as you suggest, via the title of this thread, that there is a problem with "nihilism as cure for nihilism", the potential problem with "absolutism as cure for absolutism" needs also, I think, to be broached. I have not seen you write anywhere explicitly that your chosen metaphysic is "the absolute truth", but you have, I think, certainly implied it (the tension noted below notwithstanding). Perhaps - and I hope this isn't too impertinent a suggestion - you might expand a little on how readers can be confident that you have not simply substituted one flawed set of absolutes for another in a reactionary manoeuvre.

Getting to your actual answer to that crucial question, "Why Christianity?", you essentially offer two reasons (nominally three but the third is simply a promissory extension of the first): because it is "our" tradition and is central to "us", and because it is "uniquely powerful".

There is an awkward tension here: whilst the first is relativistic, the second is (quasi?-)absolutist. That Christianity is "our" tradition can only be turned into a compelling reason to adhere to it given a principle that all metaphysical traditions are roughly equivalent, such that whichever metaphysical tradition one happens to be born into is as good as any other (thus making familiarity compelling) - but this principle is at odds with the (quasi?-)absolutist principle behind the second reason: that one should adopt the metaphysical tradition that is most "uniquely powerful".

It seems (perhaps brazenly) to me that you would do best to resolve this tension by dropping the parochialism and sticking with the (presumed) universality.

In respect of the possibility of your consistently adopting an argument from universality, though, I must admit that I was quite stunned to read this admission:

I find that statement ‘Christianity could not stand up to rational criticism’ especially interesting. This is true!

At a face reading, this utterly undercuts your argument: you are more or less explicitly advocating for the recovery of a (purportedly universally true?) metaphysical system which you affirm can not even stand up to rational criticism. This is a very peculiar position to take.

You go on to suggest that rational defensibility is not important because the real issue is instead "linguistic and semantic": that of "recover[ing] meaning". This is again a peculiar position to take in the context of a forum whose founders have - rightfully, in my view - been criticised for misrepresenting mere tautologies as significant truths; of defining their way to truth. Shared meanings are of course important - not least for the purposes of interpersonal communication - but truth cannot be defined into existence in other than a tautological sense. Meaning is a necessary precondition for the sort of metaphysical truths with which you are concerned, but it is not a sufficient one.

So, summing up, and again risking impertinence, I suggest that there are several areas in which you could improve your advocacy. I will follow with interest to find out whether and if so how you go about it...

(There is so much more to which I could respond - some of that response being more agreeable than critical - but I am wary of swamping the conversation with multiple branching points. Possibly I will work some of it in to any potential ongoing dialogue).

[Santiago Odo]

The second is a little subtler: you have made no secret of being a reactionary in two senses, one being in reaction to your extremely liberal upbringing, and the other being in reaction to the "absolutes" proposed by the founders of Genius Forums. Just as you suggest, via the title of this thread, that there is a problem with "nihilism as cure for nihilism", the potential problem with "absolutism as cure for absolutism" needs also, I think, to be broached. I have not seen you write anywhere explicitly that your chosen metaphysic is "the absolute truth", but you have, I think, certainly implied it (the tension noted below notwithstanding). Perhaps - and I hope this isn't too impertinent a suggestion - you might expand a little on how readers can be confident that you have not simply substituted one flawed set of absolutes for another in a reactionary manoeuvre.

Hello there. Nice to see you here.

I would start from the observation and the suggestion that we live in 'extremely liberal times'. I would describe my own experience of growing up, which was radically liberal and had radically liberal-strange elements, as being a *symptom* of the time. But of course I see this *symptom* as -- and this connects to some of the interesting ideas of the Founders -- to a long line of causation. So, even though my own upbringing was more radically *liberal* than many, the specific degree is not really the issue. Hyper-liberalism -- the only term I have at my disposal -- is in my view (and my lexicon) a symptom of deviation from 'metaphysical constants'. It is hard to describe precisely how it has come about, and where it tends, and what exactly it is, and I suppose that is part of the process of recovery and renovation.

In fact I am not opposed to absolutism. I am opposed to hasty conclusions about what one should be absolutist about. I am chary of absolutist definitions if they come to be through *desperation* (another term in my lexicon with special meaning). I think that an absolute and the idea of absolutes is an idea, an abstraction, and it will always be hard indeed for a person located in mutability to define 'proper absolutes'. And of course, for reasons discussed at length and of which you are aware, I am opposed to the specific absolutes -- but not all by any means -- of the Founders of GF (and as I always say I appreciate what they did and respect many elements).

But I do think that nihilism -- though just a word and a label -- is a real thing, and I do think that aspects of the 'philosophy of GF' (if that can be spoken of in that way) is indeed a symptom of nihilism, not a cure for it. However, many people are *desperate* and feel a need to latch on to any particular thing that will give them a sensation of liberation. Nihilism-desperation are part of a complex nexus.

I would not speak in terms of 'absolute truths', and I would also avoid anything that would seem to be 'preaching'. I prefer to point in the direction of certain things and to *allude* rather than expressly concretise. However, I do read authors -- one of the most interesting and influential in my case being Christopher Dawson -- who are dedicated Catholics/Christians. I am a sort-of 'Johannine Christian' which is, I suppose, if one were to be honest, a sort of gnostic. I agree with Richard Weaver that 'all speech is sermonic' and so all communication, in one way or another, conduces to existential effect and result. It seems to me that we either become aware of this, and then establish a *proper base* within our own metaphysics, or we avoid doing this through negligence, laziness, impotence, or confusion. In that sense the object is to become *absolutist*. But in regard to and in relation to what?

Perhaps - and I hope this isn't too impertinent a suggestion - you might expand a little on how readers can be confident that you have not simply substituted one flawed set of absolutes for another in a reactionary manoeuvre.

Those readers cannot be confident. The things that are being *alluded to* are things that, if one is 'confident' or 'convinced', one has gone through a gamut of experience to arrive at that locality. I also do not think the explanation that you (seem to) ask for really ever convinces nor does it produce 'confidence'.

[Santiago Odo]

There is an awkward tension here: whilst the first is relativistic, the second is (quasi?-) absolutist. That Christianity is "our" tradition can only be turned into a compelling reason to adhere to it given a principle that all metaphysical traditions are roughly equivalent, such that whichever metaphysical tradition one happens to be born into is as good as any other (thus making familiarity compelling) - but this principle is at odds with the (quasi?-)absolutist principle behind the second reason: that one should adopt the metaphysical tradition that is most "uniquely powerful".

It seems (perhaps brazenly) to me that you would do best to resolve this tension by dropping the parochialism and sticking with the (presumed) universality.

As I said above, I think that absolutisms are necessary and good. So, I do not have a problem with that label myself. I use the term 'Greco-Christianity' and my 'Christianity' would be, I think, fairly unconventional at least in certain senses. My own background is, to be precise, gnostic. And my mind and my *eyes* have been formed in those ways.

I think the argument about 'our traditions' and 'what has made us us' is in fact uniquely powerful. But as you know I connect that to questions of identity and cultural and also racial facts. I think Europe needs to 'recover' itself and this means that a given European needs to do that and to the radical degree that he is able. With real seriousness. And to do that, in my view, means confronting a very powerful nihilistic current. But I will not presume to spell out, like in some kind of catechism, what that is. I think it has to do with spiritual recovery, and that spiritual recovery is recovery in a more general sense. But I have yet to work out some kind of position and platform. In this thread I tried to bring out different references but, well, it is just a forum thread and it really cannot offer that much.

[Santiago Odo]

At a face reading, this utterly undercuts your argument: you are more or less explicitly advocating for the recovery of a (purportedly universally true?) metaphysical system which you affirm can not even stand up to rational criticism. This is a very peculiar position to take.

I was speaking more to the rationalistic undermining of the seeming possibility of the story-line of Christianity. I do not think you have encountered Nietzsche's conundrum enough to be able to grasp how 'God has died -- and we killed him'. (Yet this is very important to understand modern nihilism and modern desperation).

But this is a large part of what I attempt to speak about when I speak of a shift from one metaphysics to an anti-metaphysics. This is a 500 year process. It does require a 'master metaphysician' to see the large picture of that shift.

We 'killed' God because we do not have a rationally scientistic means to describe 'God' and thus, cognitively, the notion of God has been substantially undermined. God then *exists* as a sort of phantom in a quasi-reality. As Diebert has said : as simulacrum.

Nor can any part of the Christian mythos can be explained rationalistically. But this does not mean that the mythos is not *true*.

The rediscovery of the *meaning* and the spiritual potency within Greco-Christianity is something that one does with one's whole self, is how I would describe it. My reference-point would be Aquinas and Thomism. But also the *pattern*, if you will, of Medieval mysticism and monasticism. One cannot enter in *rationalistically*. At least this is how it seems to me. You have to enter it with your whole person. And if one does -- if one can -- take Grace as a *real thing*, one is also guided along (and this is a large part of my understanding).

It seems to me that Thomism (in the sense of an Aristotelian argument about the necessity of a prime mover) is as close as one might get to a rationalistic argument. But that rationalism cannot hold if it is not supported by something more fundamental to the soul.

[Santiago Odo]

Christopher Dawson on the study of Christian culture.

An article on Christopher Dawson’s interpretation of history.

His books ‘The Making of Europe’, ‘Medieval Essays’ and his essays generally are very interesting for the light they throw on European originations and European ‘identity’. I was first introduced to him through the short book (a long essay) ‘The Historic Reality of Christian Culture : A Way to Renewal of Human Life’.

Also, and along the lines of some of the ideas in this thread, there is the very interesting study by Basil Willey entitled Seventeenth Century Background. It is presented here in a easily readable form. I don’t think Basil Willey is very well known, and I only came upon him when I was doing Shakespeare studies, but it is his work principally that alerted me to the fascinating dimensions of the issue of shifting metaphysics. The first chapter is only 13 pages long and is well worth the read.

Another very interesting title, but a bit more arcane, is ‘Elizabethan Psychology and Shakesepeare’s Plays’ by Ruth Anderson. Man’s psychology and man’s imagination are really, in my view, the subject of all enquiry if we are to realistically attempt to understand religion and its implications. There is no better place to gain a grasp of this than in the works of Shakespeare. And the more one understands Shakespeare, the more one understand the ‘former metaphysics’ as well as our essential, perhaps latent, cognitive relationship to *meaning*.

[guest_of_logic]

Hello there. Nice to see you here.

Happy to converse publicly!

I'll start by following up on your responses to my (admittedly rather critical) opening post, but after that I'll try to bring in a few other elements from other of your posts.

First off, the issue of meaning versus truth, which you avoided explicitly answering, but which you implicitly furthered in these quotes (emphases mine):

In fact I am not opposed to absolutism. I am opposed to hasty conclusions about what one should be absolutist about. I am chary of absolutist definitions if they come to be through *desperation* (another term in my lexicon with special meaning). I think that an absolute and the idea of absolutes is an idea, an abstraction, and it will always be hard indeed for a person located in mutability to define 'proper absolutes'.

[...]

I would not speak in terms of 'absolute truths' [...] I prefer to point in the direction of certain things and to *allude* rather than expressly concretise.

You are not opposed to absolutism yet you would not speak in terms of 'absolute truths': what, then, does "absolutism" mean to you if not a category or manifestation of (purported) truth? Do you think that there can be some sort of "absolute" meaning? This does seem to be implied in the first part of your quote above which I've emphasised, in which you reference absolutist definitions (i.e. meanings). Yet I pointed out in my first post that whilst meaning is a necessary precondition for (absolute) truth, it is not a sufficient one. Does that not seem to you like a point worth addressing? You hang so much of this discussion on (lost) "meaning(s)", but you are speaking on a forum dedicated to truth. If you think that meaning is more relevant than truth, then surely you ought to put up a showing to that effect? And if not, then surely you ought to explain how I've misunderstood you? No?

Moving on to another of my critiques:

I pointed out that your two justifications for your choice of metaphysical belief are contradictory. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my explanation, because you seem to have not even acknowledged my point, let alone addressed it.

One can assert:

"One should choose the metaphysic of the culture into which one is born",

or one can assert:

"One should choose the best (or truest or 'most uniquely powerful') metaphysic",

but one cannot without contradiction assert both simultaneously, which is what you seem to be doing.

I won't press the point of the other of my three critiques - the potential problem of a reactionary "absolutism as cure for absolutism" - because there's nothing more that I think can or needs to be added or responded to in this respect.

Moving on to other engagements:

Without wishing to fall into romantic paranoia and any sort of paranoid thinking generally, I would begin to describe this *force* that is operating against intellectus as demoniac. I realize that in making this claim I am, quite obviously, speaking from a metaphysical position that has become untenable to many in our present. And it is important to say that I am not speaking in metaphor. I am speaking in terms of spiritual realism and realistically.

This is on one level gratifying to hear, because it is essentially an understanding (in part from personal experience) that I have tried to share with you over the years: that the demoniac has a (very real) metaphysical existence which intrudes into this "physical" reality. I am glad that you have come to this realisation independently. I think your suggestion here though is mistaken:

my suggestion is that Man is assaulted and defeated by essentially mindless and diabolical forces.

Our enemies are not mindless. In fact, they are far more aware and intellectually capable than you seem to give them credit for.

[In] my view, and this has deep historical roots, a war has been waged / is being waged on a spiritual plane against specific elements in or as I sometimes say against the *possibilities* within the human spirit.

Quite, yes. In this respect I share something of your "gnostic" sensibilities, although, as you know, mine are more of the manichaean variety.

[Santiago Odo]

You are not opposed to absolutism yet you would not speak in terms of 'absolute truths': what, then, does "absolutism" mean to you if not a category or manifestation of (purported) truth? Do you think that there can be some sort of "absolute" meaning? This does seem to be implied in the first part of your quote above which I've emphasised, in which you reference absolutist definitions (i.e. meanings). Yet I pointed out in my first post that whilst meaning is a necessary precondition for (absolute) truth, it is not a sufficient one. Does that not seem to you like a point worth addressing? You hang so much of this discussion on (lost) "meaning(s)", but you are speaking on a forum dedicated to truth. If you think that meaning is more relevant than truth, then surely you ought to put up a showing to that effect? And if not, then surely you ought to explain how I've misunderstood you? No?

I say that I, personally, am not opposed to absolutism in the sense that I would make use of it. I have a way to use it and apply it to myself (up to a point though because I am, as I assume we all are, involved in, 'trapped' in, a mutable conditionality). What I take that to mean is that my 'eye' is imperfect. But it does seem reasonable to me to assume that in respect to spiritual life that 'absolutes' exist. But to speak about that means to engage in metaphysical and abstract thinking. And that is a closed-off territory for the scientism- and positivism-oriented.

To conceive of an Absolute is in this sense a conceptual manoeuvre; a manoeuvre of consciousness. If I seem to avoid responding to your enquiries with the type of answer you demand -- the structure of answer, the formula of answer -- it is because I do not desire to make absolutist statements for any other person. In this sense, in this thread certainly, I am interested in *presenting information*. If the information is useful to anyone (or no one) I will never know . . .

In my own case, when I become interested in something, and in this case I am referring to the metaphysics of Johannine Christianity and Christianity and Catholocism as the foundation of Occidental cultures and *our civilization*, my tactic is to immerse myself in it. And doing that I notice that my *experience* of it is quite different than a mere rationalistic conversation about it from an abstracted position. I do notice that in order to *know* something, and I mean this in a larger sense of gnosis, one has to approach it with one's 'full self'. There is very much more to one's full self than just the rational mind, the analytical mind. As I have said I do not believe that the grand existential questions will be or can be solved only through the machinations of the rational mind. The rational mind in my conception is an element of the self, certainly a tool of intelligence, but for it best to operate servicefully I think it needs to be directed by something shall I say *larger*, and that something I refer to as intellectus.

Frankly, to use such a metaphysical and mystic term is, it must be said, to refer to invisible, non-quantifiable intelligence of an angelic and divine sort. In my own view it is at that point of engagement, if you will, that one uses elements of one's 'full self'. It is also the point that one enters subjectively into a relationship or a process. And because it is subjective all the problems of subjectivity appear. It cannot be communicated except through allusion. It is hard to speak of 'knowledge' in a positivistic sense when dealing with the entire field (which is to say the religious experience generally).

As to the issue of *meanings* I would likely choose not to apply analytical acid (analysis comes from the Greek 'to loosen' and is in fact a sort of application of 'acid') to the topic of meanings. It is not my purpose to undertake that sort of enquiry (though it might be fruitful for someone) but only to point to the problem of what happens -- what can happen -- when one (a given person) loses his capacity to receive, perceive and live in relation to *higher meanings* in the sense that I allude to. The best allusions I have found are poetic. For example:

“This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”

I find that I return to it again and again because it seems to me to refer so elegantly and so directly to the essence of the question. What does 'eye' mean here? What does it mean to have an 'eye' and to be an 'eye'? And when one answers that question, if one answers it, what does *seeing* mean? And what does one *see*? I suggest that a pure *rationalist* and a positivist would have a very difficult time responding to the allusion in those 4 lines. And I would ask you to make an effort to do so.

Yet I pointed out in my first post that whilst meaning is a necessary precondition for (absolute) truth, it is not a sufficient one.

I do not have an answer for you, if indeed you are asking some sort of question. I have been speaking of 'meaning' perhaps in a more general sense and, as you have noticed, in regard to Shakespeare and to Medieval 'meanings'. I am not in a position to offer a conclusive study of what meaning is and how it occurs in us, but only to suggest that to know ourselves, and to recover ourselves in respect to our cultures and civilization, that we need to look into the question and be stimulated to arrive at some sort of inspired position. I am uncertain how average people should orient themselves in regard to the larger questions of existence. And sometimes I think there is no way for them to do so. They must rely on *story*, on *myth*, on pre-digested interpretations : and this means theology. If I notice that an *average person* must rely on a schema in order to orient themselves in Reality, what must that mean for you and I? It means that we, too, must avail ourselves of a schema and a story through which we orient ourselves in this life.

As you know I have a practical intention in all my communication and the backdrop of it is European Identity and 're-identification'. And I am openly stating that I feel strongly that this can only occur through rediscovery of our *roots* in the Greco-Christian tradition that is part-and-parcel of our very selves. And you also know that I am opposed to that which operates as an *acid* against the self and that identification.

It is quite possible that our purposes are different (in relation to these issues and questions) but I cannot say that I know what yours are. Perhaps you can explain.

You hang so much of this discussion on (lost) "meaning(s)", but you are speaking on a forum dedicated to truth. If you think that meaning is more relevant than truth, then surely you ought to put up a showing to that effect?

I definitely place emphasis on *meanings* and the entire question of 'higher meaning' and the relationship, in Medieval philosophy and in fact throughout Occidental culture, to the angelical and to the divine, and I use the Latin term intellectus to refer, broadly, to something that I do not know how to define in rationalistic terms or in terms that would be acceptable to a scientistic, positivistic mind-frame (worldpicture). If you (or anyone) were to say that I am involved in invisibles that cannot, in fact, be discussed rationally and coherently I would be forced to abandon the ground ; that is, to concede the point. And that is what I meant through the reference to Nietzsche and 'God Has Died -- And We Killed Him'. What that means to me in essence is just as I have been saying : we do not have any ways and means to explain and to grasp what this 'higher realm' is, and therefor we have no way to approach it. We are, as I suggest, cognitively locked out of a *realm* that was open and accessible just a few short years ago (in historical time). I am suggesting that there is a great loss as a result, and I am further suggesting it is leading, now, to the erosion of identity, to the Self, and to the *destruction of meaning*. And I am happy to discuss this issue and to the effect of living in such nihilistic conditions.

What I have done is to clarify what I am 'hanging' and where I am hanging it. All throughout this thread I have been referencing, in one way or another, this basic issue and suggesting, through allusion, the possibility of recovery of the *inner tool* as it were through which one can access such *meanings*.

Now, while it is true that this forum states that it is dedicated to Truth, you must surely have realized by now that I do not think a defective instrument (to put it dramatically) can know or reveal Truth. You also know that I am stating, directly, that I think our Founders are mistaken men because they do not and cannot approach truth and reality through the fullness of their self, and thus their project fails, and will always fail. Why? Because their *cure* is part-and-parcel of the very nihilistic current.

To 'put up a showing of that effect' is a *request* that hinges directly on the entire problem, as I see things. I do suggest, and yet have no interest nor the time available to *prove*, that we need only examine our own culture and civilization to quickly gain a sense of the 'showing of the effect'. But -- and if I may be so bold as to say -- who am I speaking to? Who is demanding that 'show'? And would that person be able to recognize and to distinguish *value*? I suggest that in this sense perception and also understanding directly connect to intellectus in the sense that I use the term. In order to understand something and appreciate it in its higher aspect requires a *prepared person*. And when I speak of a *prepared person* in a spirtual sense I am referring to one *opened up* to intellectus. There is a conundrum here. It is obvious. To understand the conundrum I would suggest a close reading of Plato's Seventh Epistle. The nature of *philosophical revelation* is clearly presented.

I suggest (and I remember suggesting this to John the Aussie) that we gain a new reverence for 'the library'. That is, the compendium of knowledge that has been preserved in language. It is the *shadow* as it were of *meaning*. I refer to academics in the proper sense of the word. Along with that I suggest 'spiritual engagement' which is non-rational, subjective and personal. In relation to a *real thing* (Real Presence) of course but non-quantifiable. I am fully aware of the problems here, in case you think I am not.

[Santiago Odo]

One can assert:

"One should choose the metaphysic of the culture into which one is born",

or one can assert:

"One should choose the best (or truest or 'most uniquely powerful') metaphysic".

If approached through the formula you present -- a game of logic I might call it -- I would have to concede the point. That is, to be corralled through your formula to find myself in your situation in respect to your 'answer'.

But I think I have a more expansive field of understanding. I believe that every people develops a *metaphysics* and they do so within their location, their time and place, and according to what has been presented to them through their existential trajectory. They work on themselves within the context of all of that (which is both tangible and also intangible) and their self and their culture are creations of their relationship.

You, here, are approaching the question abstractly and rationally and this method, while useful in many areas, will not be so useful here and now. You are in this sense presenting to me the 'structure of your eye' and showing me how you use it. You use it limitingly. You have no alternative but to be dragged along to the conclusion that appears to you necessary (and to drag others with you if they are susceptible to your argument). Thus, you 'lock yourself out of' another level of meaning which you cannot see. Indeed you cannot conceive of it. Interesting thing about language*.

Expand this *error* to larger things (the things I am trying to speak about and allude to) and you will nicely demonstrate a good part of what I mean!

It is possible to *jump into* different metaphysics, I admit this. The practical example would be, for example, leaving our Greco-Christian accomplishment and forcibly locating oneself in, say, Hindu metaphysics. One could further attempt the shift by taking on the trappings of another culture and trying to fit oneself in. It is possible to do this, and it has been done. I have come to recognize that it is not a 'wholesome' endeavour and leads to 'spirit-loss', a loss of relationship to self. I am suggesting that this is a result of 'nihilistic processes' but I do not pretend to have a total answer to the problem. I merely suggest a way and means to examine and grasp the problem a little better (and according to my understanding, the results of my researches).

The reason that this sort of *mental game* is attractive to you is because you are an abstract thinker (this is my impression, correct me if I am wrong). You approach a problem 'abstractly'. But I would suggest that the only way to approach the question or the problem I attempt to present is through another method : the use of the whole self ; the engaged self. Not just one part of the self (rationalism) but something more.

I will not say that studying another metaphysics is *bad*, in fact I think it is good and necessary. What I am attempting to point out as a possibility and not a settled fact is what happens when, through the effect of various forces and for various reasons, we are forced to *deviate* from ourselves. Or we are forced to self-hate our self. Or when forces we cannot see act against our identity and our identifications. I am of course speaking of the dissolution of Europe! But I do nto think (if I may be so bold to say) that you have any interest in or relationship to the core issue. Or do you?
___________________________

*Side note : One wonders how much language modifies perception in larger senses. I would suggest that, in a significant way, we are touching on a significant problem : how to circumvent language-constructs in order to *get back to* profounder (more original, less mediated) meanings. I allude, necessarily, to prayer and meditation, in any case to other methods of gaining knowledge and wisdom. I suggest that our scientistic mind-frame has adversely affected our way of grasping higher meanings. That is of course what I have been writing about and, now, it should be more clear.

[Santiago Odo]

An interesting article by John Morgan on Julius Evola’s philosophy and influence on the Counter-Currents website.

First of all, I would say that, regardless of what one thinks of the heavy-duty metaphysics underlying his ideas, the concept of Tradition is a valuable one regardless. In our time, when politics is getting pettier than it has ever been before, I think it’s important that we keep in mind that our final goal is not simply ending immigration or voting out the liberals. Ultimately, we stand for a set of principles that have guided our civilization from its origins and that stand above everyday politics. Even if we could send out all of the non-whites from America and Europe tomorrow, the rot that is afflicting all of our minds and souls would still be there. We have to try to put ourselves in the mindset of our ancestors and what made them great. Our approaches might change, but the principles we stand for are timeless. When I’ve tried to think about what it is that most fundamentally distinguishes the various and sundry strands of the Right from the liberals, what it ultimately comes down to is that we believe that there is an essential meaning to things. There is something essential in being an American or a German or an Italian, and that’s why not just anyone can become one, just as there is something essential in being a man or a woman . . . and similarly, there is an essential difference between being a white person engaged in the life of your civilization as opposed to being a pop culture, fast food junkie sleepwalking through history who happens to have white skin.

Writing here in GF now, I am quite uncertain what is going on in the minds of those who still read here. I have come to understand and accept that the pursuit of knowledge is a path that may lead to *success* on an inner plane — to achieve understanding in a world of mutability and chaos is a satisfying attainment but still a rather shaky one insofar as *uncertainty* remains a problem — but it does not necessarily lead to a sense of unity or solidarity. What I mean is that gaining understanding, especially of complex issues, separates one from others who, we must face this fact, remain within conventional understandings of things. I could speak of this in relation to many different things but I might select one example though likely you were expecting something else : the events of 9/11.

If one sought what I refer to as an *emblem* of chaotic static, of false appearances, of fearful psychological mind-games, and then of course mass manipulation, deceptions engineered and directed from behind curtains of shadows, but then a direct and hyper-tangible effect on the state of the world through destructive processes which, though this is a dramatic term, seem nearly demoniac, 9/11 is a perfect emblem. Perhaps I am exaggerating of romanticizing it but I would say that The Events of 9/11 define something crucial about Our Present which, in my view, become a starting point for establishing, if you will permit the turn of phrase, a counter-metaphysics. If I sound tentative in what I write here (and in all that I present in this thread) it is because everything is up in the air and nothing is decided. To be clear : I am of the opinion that 9/11 was a manufactured event. To gain clarity about ‘who’ and ‘why’ brings one directly into the political world and to struggles that are unreally brutal and yet defining.

It really is necessary, in my view, to gather some information and perspectives to help one gain a *picture* of the world of power and how it functions in order to be able to make decisions about how one — an individual — orient one’s life but especially one’s spiritual life. Because in so many ways it is not possible to live in our age and not to be affected by the *tone* of the age and in this sense to be held within its vibrations. My understanding goes something like this : since this sort of political and mind-control is an expression of madness, when one confronts it one must come to terms with madness but also must recognize that one is in the grip of madness. Madness reigns in this sense. Now, one faces many choices when one confronts *the world* in this sense but it is essentially a dualism. One participates and becomes *complicit* or one retreats and attempts to extricate oneself from complicity.

So, as I come to understand things better, and I must say again as a result of confronting and being confronted by elements of reaction and absolutism that had been expressed on GF, I recognize that what happens to a person, and in a person, is that they confront *desperation*. I link currents-of-nihilsim with *desperation* insofar as the madness of the world pushes one to desperate choices. I think it is true that if it were *really possible* to act creatively and responsibly in one’s political and social world that the individual would feel — could feel — a sort of healing unity with his social world. But the closer one gets to the real generator of political power and domination, the closer one gets to a *world* that renders that unity impossible, I think that *the soul* reacts to that and in fact goes a bit crazy. Yet a person has no option but to go on (I can’t go on / I’ll go on is how Samuel Beckett put it), and yet ‘going on’ at that point takes on a kind of pathological note : that is, one has been repulsed from *normal engagement* and forced therefor to engage abnormally. The result seems to be that one is pushed away from one’s own self even as one is pushed into one’s self, that is, one detaches from *reality*. Coming under the influence of what I might describe (again dramatically) as the Black Magic of the deceptive event of 9/11 is a mega-example of crazy-making. And I think it was designed that way. That is, the people who engineer these things understand, fairly well, what they are doing and to what end.

Now, there is a *movement* afoot which seeks a cure. Or to put it another way, the individual, to hold to his inner integrity-of-self, is forced to make choices. Those choices are two-fold and essentially dual. He either reacts against the *madness of the world* by succumbing to its expulsive force which will mean falling into all manner of different levels of degeneracy (insofar as the force that acts against him is, by definition, degenerate), or he becomes conscious of what is acting on him and becomes reactive to it in a *conscious way*. That is, he inverts the degerate current by becoming a counter-current to it. But I would suggest, as John Morgan seems also to suggests, that this is a manoeuvre which is really a manouvre that arises out of time. To engage in the manoeuvre is to respond to something metaphysical to time. That is where I would locate Traditionalism.

From this angle-of-view Ephesians can be better understood:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

In this sense then the notion of ‘metaphysics’ must be understood. And I again would call to mind Christian metaphysics as foundational to Europe if perhaps strictly seen as offering a ‘metaphysical platform’, a fulcrum, from which to live and of course to act. To be really. The key factor is that the Christian revelation is seen as coming from an ‘absolute other’. It is understood — metaphysically — as being quite literally super-natural. It does not arise in nor is it connected with material facts and material processes (Nature essentially, and ‘the natural world) but is rather what I have termed an *imposition* as-against *the world* in this sense. Greco-Christianity is therefor a position of metaphysical agency that effects the world from outside the world. I do not mean to say that other metapysics do not provide a similar fulcrum — they do — but I would suggest that Greco-Christinity, including heretical elements and pagan elements (it is all really one) is *ours* and is our Historical Project.

[guest_of_logic]

The last parts of my last reply were ill-considered, so I have deleted them (that which I put to you you had already addressed in this thread).

That said, it remains the case that your two answers to "Why Christianity?" are contradictory, and that you ought to resolve this tension - for your own clarity of mind if for nobody else's (clear thinking is not a game).

In any case, let's look at the first of your answers:

You say that Christianity is "our" (meaning Europeans') tradition - but Christianity is not a European tradition, it is a Semitic one. Christ was an eschatological Jew, and it's not even clear that he intended his message to apply to gentiles nor beyond his generation of contemporaries. The evangelical zeal with which his message was universalised, along with Roman political and military favour, led to the Christian tradition displacing the truly (so-called "pagan") European traditions - the traditions of, for example, the Celts and druids; of Asatru. (And I know that you know all this already - I am simply contextualising what follows).

Given all that, if we are to rehabilitate the European tradition, then why preference the invasive Christian monotheism? Why not the indigenous polytheism(s)?

Also, and I hope you don't take offence at my getting personal, but I understand that you are Jewish. Why, then, concern yourself with rehabilitating European Christianity as opposed to Orthodox Judaism? Too, why not physically centre yourself in Europe if you are battling for Eurocentrism? Deebs might even put you up for a bit until you find your own place!

More importantly, I don't find heritage to be a compelling reason on its own merits. What if "our" tradition had happened to be a particularly brutal and obviously insane one? In that case, that it was "our" tradition would be no good reason to adhere to it.

Now, you asked a series of questions which generally probed my own views:

It is quite possible that our purposes are different (in relation to these issues and questions) but I cannot say that I know what yours are. Perhaps you can explain.

But -- and if I may be so bold as to say -- who am I speaking to? Who is demanding that 'show'? And would that person be able to recognize and to distinguish *value*?

But I do nto think (if I may be so bold to say) that you have any interest in or relationship to the core issue. Or do you?

Perhaps you recall that since the new year I have sent you two documents (over ten pages' worth) that explain my views in some detail. As I explained in those, I think that we should be collectively striving, including via research and analysis, for apprehension of the true metaphysic, and that pending our closely approximating that metaphysic, we should at a societal level adopt metaphysical/cosmological agnosticism, such that individuals (at least in the West) should be free, politically and socially, to choose their own metaphysical views insofar as those views do not impose unreasonably upon others.

Like you, I am concerned that the default metaphysic in the West, at least within academia and within the mainstream intellectual discourse, is not agnostic but is materialist/physicalist. Like you, I am concerned that this excludes certain ideas and realms of being from mainstream consideration. Like you, I suspect that this situation is not an accident.

Perhaps, then, you will understand why I think your second answer to "Why Christianity?" is the only relevant one: that it is "uniquely powerful", which I interpret as meaning that in your view it is the true or at least the truest extant metaphysic (but please correct me if I am misinterpreting you).

The problem for me with this claim is that I agree that Christianity cannot hold up to rational criticism, and for me this is a fatal problem rather than one which - as you and the author of the article to which you linked in your opening post seem to believe - can be worked around. By this I mean that rational criticism can demonstrate via inconsistencies and implausibilities that - no matter what lost meanings are restored - Christianity is very likely, or even certainly, not the true metaphysic.

Now, you talk about the value of an experiential approach to spirituality; of approaching spiritual experience with the full person. That's totally valid and probably the right approach, but, ultimately, any doctrinal propositions - tentative or otherwise - that might be drawn from full-bodied spiritual participation need at the very least to avoid self-contradiction. The experience is one thing; its metaphysical implications are another and need to be coherent.

All of that said, there is a lot in Christianity that I think is close to the truth (if also incomplete), and I appreciate that it provides a structure of ritual, clergy, and community which many people find effective and helpful, so while I don't see cause to rehabilitate it as "the" European tradition, I don't advocate for its dismantling either.

I also think it's worth noting that Christianity is, after all, the world's largest religion at 31.2% of the global population in 2015, and predicted to remain that way until at least 2060 (with Islam catching up fast and predicted to eventually overtake it). So, even though genuine (as opposed to nominal) Christian belief has been and still is declining in Europe, 75% of the European population was still nominally Christian in 2010. One might, then, suggest that reports of God's death have been greatly exaggerated...

Finally, it is important to note that there are political implications to our different perspectives. You, as a "Eurocentrist", see no need to redress the injustices of Eurocentric colonialism and imperialism upon the indigenous occupants of lands such as Australia, the United States, and Canada, whereas I see the restoration of indigenous sovereignty, both political and metaphysical, as crucial.

[Santiago Odo]

You say that Christianity is "our" (meaning Europeans') tradition - but Christianity is not a European tradition, it is a Semitic one. Christ was an eschatological Jew, and it's not even clear that he intended his message to apply to gentiles nor beyond his generation of contemporaries. The evangelical zeal with which his message was universalised, along with Roman political and military favour, led to the Christian tradition displacing the truly (so-called "pagan") European traditions - the traditions of, for example, the Celts and druids; of Asatru. (And I know that you know all this already - I am simply contextualising what follows).

I have a different perspective on this question. While it is true that Christianity originated in the East, Christianity must be understood in its Greco-Philosophical context. While one must note that Judaism, and hence Christianity, are foreign to Europe, the cradle of Occidental cultures is in the matrix of the Mediterranean sea. Judea, Greece, Rome and Alexandria. In a sense each of those areas are distinct from Northern Europe and true ‘pagan’ European culture. Within the Traditionalist Right (you could reference Evola as one who hold such a view) the Judaic influence is often not admired and sometimes despised. But in my own view they make a great mistake, if only because the Greco-Christian element will never be removed from *Europe*. It is (as I say ) *part-and-parcel of our very selves*.

Christopher Dawson brought to my attention another interesting fact and perspective : it is this general tradition of Judaism and Christianity — as coming from the East as you note — that really must be seen in a wider view. That is, insofar as it is ‘from the East’ it holds elements that originate in deep historical time. That is, that go back to the origins of civilization, and our civilizations, in the Tigris-Euphrates region. One would also have to include Egypt. One could then describe *Christianity* as it came into contact with Hellenic culture in a different way.

Greco-Christianity then explores the *meaning* of Logos and creates an identification between the Christian figure and a cosmological logos. It seems to me that it is with that manoeuvre that Christianity separates itself from Judaism and also Middle-Eastern traditions. Yet traditional Catholicism is so infused with Judaic elements that thoese elements could not ever be separated out. Thus, there is a strange hybridism there. The tradition is mottled and expresses and embodies as Houston Chamberlain has said ‘a chaos of peoples’ : many different elements that come together. As in exotic cookery perhaps, strange (but interesting) assortments of flavors. I suggest that to *get to the core* within a confusing array is not easy and requires focus and perserverence. But I do not in any sense dismiss the *chaotic* element.

To my ear, your *question* about rehabilitating pagan pre-Christian traditions is a vain one. That is, you are not yourself interested at all in this (as far as I am aware) and likely have little or nothing to say about it. Yet you *suggest* it as a viable option. But as I see things if one can speak in terms of *musts*, we must rediscover ourselves and our own traditions. A sort of archaeology-of-self is a way to look at it. In my own view this could very well involve rediscovery of European pagan ideas. But in fact they are already there : part-and-parcel of our philosophy, literature, art and religion. However, I would suspect that discerning this would be a challenge in your case simply because you are not interested in the question.

Yet it must be said that within so-called Traditionalist circles there are definitely people interested in recovering and reinvigorating pagan traditions in a more strict sense, but they also seem to mean *cutting out* the influence of Greco-Christianity. This is *impossible* in my view because it would mean separating out of the very Self what has become tightly interfused with it for 1500 years more or less. It is a deadly operation to untangle them. The patient could die. In my view it is better to understand how they all blended anyway in historical time. And if you were interested in the presence of the pagan within our structure of ideas I’d recommend Walter Otto’s The Homeric Gods. You surely must remember that The Iliad and The Odyssey are views, if you will, that are fused to the Occident. It seems to me that we have as much in common with Odysseus (and thus with Hamlet) than with the Jesus of the Gospels.

More importantly, I don't find heritage to be a compelling reason on its own merits. What if "our" tradition had happened to be a particularly brutal and obviously insane one? In that case, that it was "our" tradition would be no good reason to adhere to it.

A vain, abstract hypothetical. Europe and its traditions are unlike any other and this is why they have such amazing power. I know that you don’t really know why this is so. And I also suspect you don’t really desire to work to gain that understanding. But this is part of my point : What has acted on you that you have *abandoned* what is in truth a manifestation of your own self? You as *outcome*? That is really what this thread is about. Nihilism. Processes of degeneration and destruction. The loss of self. Spirit-loss.

Also, and I hope you don't take offence at my getting personal, but I understand that you are Jewish. Why, then, concern yourself with rehabilitating European Christianity as opposed to Orthodox Judaism? Too, why not physically centre yourself in Europe if you are battling for Eurocentrism? Deebs might even put you up for a bit until you find your own place!

Repeating you : “I hope you don’t mind if I say . . .” that I do not imagine that you have much comprehension of what Judaism is, be it Orthodox or of any other form! But if you knew what Orthodox Judaism is you would, in my view, not recommend it. In my own view Judaism has been transcended and what transcended it was exactly that which I attempt to talk about. The ‘JQ’ as it is called is certainly up for conversation. It is a very difficult and deeply avoided conversation given the bizarre experiences of the last war and the aftermath. Again, I do not think you have any interest at all in these questions, nor in their complexity and with all their deep problems, so before you could engage in that conversation you’d have to do a good deal of study. There are indeed people who are doing this though. For example Kevin McDonald.

So, yes, I grew up in a context that was ‘culturally Jewish’ but in fact it was very a mixed culture. I have only ever maintained that I had a Jewish parent but I never described the specifics. I prefer it that way. But if you are probing me and attempting to flush me to give you some sort of answer-statement : I reject Judaism and also ‘being Jewish’. I do not mean that someone who really does identify as a Jew should stop that identification. Yet I do see Greco-Christianity as an evolution from and a transcendence of Judiasm. Even Occidental Jews who have broken out of Orthodoxy (strict religious practice which circumscribes life in all aspects) are no longer really Jews. If they were, they would have remained within Orthodoxy which is complete unto itself. Yet I suspect that for you to understand the Jewish Emancipation in Europe would require a great deal of reading and study and, frankly, you are not interested in this, are you?

Therefor I cannot say I understand what you are up to (and doubt that you know!)

In my view, it is imperative that conscious Jews (those who really do desire to be Jews and not merely quasi-Jews) must choose to *serve Europe*. Not Judaism, not Jewish processes, not Jewish *infiltration* of a European host (that is an antisemitic idea but a valid one in my view), and definitely not Zionism. Jews and Judaism are in fact in a terrible and terrifying bind in my view. One imagines that Jewish history is somehow completed and that Jews are not only emancipated but poweful and dominant. This is an illusion. In fact their position is frighteningly weak. But again : none of this is really interesting to you and you have very little understanding of these issues and problems! Yet you push on these questions . . .

As I explained in those, I think that we should be collectively striving, including via research and analysis, for apprehension of the true metaphysic, and that pending our closely approximating that metaphysic, we should at a societal level adopt metaphysical/cosmological agnosticism, such that individuals (at least in the West) should be free, politically and socially, to choose their own metaphysical views insofar as those views do not impose unreasonably upon others.

I am aware of your ideas. And there is no doubt (in my mind) that there are surely important elements in them. But I would suggest to you that you yourself would not be able to fulfill the task that you propose, if only for the reason that you do not seem to have enough understanding of what is ‘your own’ and what comprises *you*. We have, as I say, been shoved off of our foundation. Research and analysis could only honestly be undertaken and carried through by someone with a thorough background in Occidental forms. That is why the (Basil Willey’s) notion of a ‘master metaphysician’ becomes relevant.

But there is something else too : your agnostic metaphysics would result in no metaphysics at all! Agnosticism is non-knowing. You cannot build a metaphysics on what is not-known. So, unless I am missing something, your approach would result (logically) in the ending of metaphysical view. And this is, I intuit, what your own position really is. This is not a criticism and is not meant as a barb in any sense. It is where we have arrived. This is a facet of our nihilism.

Metaphysics as I mean it occurs within intangibles. There will never be a ‘rational metaphysics’. Metaphysics means an encounter with what is known through other means : intellectus. And though I might wish to be enlightened otherwise, I do not think that in modernity any *metaphysics* will ever be practicable or coherent.

‘Metaphysics is dead . . . and we killed it’.

That is the more troubling meaning of ‘God has died . . . and we killed Him’.

[Santiago Odo]

Interesting analysis inspired by the arrest of Tommy Robinson. He brings up many interesting points.

This is a good example of something hard to define. It reminds me of something that Jonathan Bowden pointed out in his talk Western Civilization Bites Back. That ideas motivate, and strong ideas, transformative ideas, come out of the intellect, but it is sentiments that give them power to effect change.

Richard Weaver wrote about the use of rhetoric and, if I understood him correctly, he defined rhetoric as sentimental power that embellishes but also gives power to ideas. Rhetoric is not the content but the embellishment of the content.

It is a hard one to work through given the power of emotionalism in our present. But when rhetoric supports *correct* ideas good things arise out of their manifestation. If something is skewed then the *idea* goes awry. If something is mixed the results are always similarly mixed.

Nationalist sentiment is a two-edged sword . . .

[guest_of_logic]

Therefor I cannot say I understand what you are up to (and doubt that you know!)

Is it really such a mystery? I mean, I'm doing what I've always done - not exclusively of course - from my very first post to this forum: examining ideas claimed to be "absolute truth" or otherwise important or at least worthy of consideration and offering a critique. That of course involves critiquing the arguments made in favour of those ideas too.

To ask a probative question does not imply - as you seem to suggest it does - that one ought to be interested in the answer for its own sake and thus that, if one is not, the question is "vain". Sometimes - as in this case - these sorts of questions are useful simply to interrogate and understand the limits of an argument.

I think your answers clearly do show the limits of your argument. The best example of this is your position on Jews with respect to Judaism, of whom you write:

"In my view, it is imperative that conscious Jews (those who really do desire to be Jews and not merely quasi-Jews) must choose to *serve Europe*. Not Judaism, not Jewish processes, not Jewish *infiltration* of a European host".

In other words, in your view, Jews should not follow "their" tradition simply because it is "theirs": they should instead follow "ours" (because that's what a "real" Jew would do).

So, it seems that your argument that "we" should follow "our" tradition simply because it is "ours" is not a serious one, because it is not one that you apply consistently: it doesn't apply to Jews, whom you believe should not follow "their" tradition but rather should follow "ours".

This is consistent with what I've been saying from the start: that it conflicts with your other argument for Christianity - that Christianity is "uniquely powerful" - and that you would do better to drop it and to stick with the argument from unique power.

But if you are still unwilling to accept this critique, then perhaps we can keep exploring this issue via an additional question:

Imagine a hypothetical "you" who had been born into a Brahman family in India. This hypothetical you understands "your" tradition (Hinduism) as a native born into it, but also knows all that the real you currently knows about the Western tradition including Christianity. Which metaphysic would you advise or expect this hypothetical you to adopt and why? Hinduism, because it is "your" tradition, or Christianity, because it is "uniquely powerful"?

It might seem unnecessary that I persist with this critique, but over the years on this forum and elsewhere you have made so much of the need to become familiar with one's own tradition that it is only natural that any critique of the ultimate form into which you have developed this line of thought - an argument for Christianity from cultural belonging - should also assume significance. It is also important because it could save us a bunch of (already wasted to some extent) effort: if we are to agree to drop the fickle argument from cultural belonging, then we can focus on the relevant argument - that from "unique power".

I remain, as I have been from the start, very interested in what exactly you mean by Christianity being "uniquely powerful". I have alluded to this question already, but you haven't clarified it. "Powerful" in which sense? In the sense of effectiveness for some purpose? If so, which purpose? Or do you mean in the sense of truth? Do you mean that it is uniquely powerful in its absolute truth?

In any case, here is a set of cross-over questions which might shed light on the meaningfulness of both arguments:

Is salvation possible for a non-Christian? Indeed, what defines a Christian, what is salvation, and from what does it save? Are you advocating for the Catholic doctrine of heaven, hell, and purgatory? If so, are these literal realms? And what is the requirement for salvation? Faith in Christ? Obedience to his commandments? A lightness of spirit and a tangible relationship with him and with the Father? Some combination of the preceding? Something else?

All of this is to ask: What is it that you are battling for, and why? You offer a variety of categories, not all of which are compatible: Johannine Christianity, Catholicism, Gnosticism, Eurocentrism - but when the rubber meets the road, what exactly is it for which you unsheath your sword, and what motivates that unsheathing?

Research and analysis could only honestly be undertaken and carried through by someone with a thorough background in Occidental forms.

A general, broad knowledge of a variety of different metaphysical systems is, I think, very useful for such a programme, but I don't see why unique knowledge of Occidental forms is necessary. Since you do, perhaps you could elaborate a little on why you think so: on what is unique about the Occidental tradition and why it is (most?) powerful.

But there is something else too : your agnostic metaphysics would result in no metaphysics at all! Agnosticism is non-knowing. You cannot build a metaphysics on what is not-known. So, unless I am missing something, your approach would result (logically) in the ending of metaphysical view. And this is, I intuit, what your own position really is. This is not a criticism and is not meant as a barb in any sense.

I wouldn't mind even if it was a criticism or a barb - it's perfectly reasonable as both.

Yes, you're right: strict metaphysical agnosticism would leave us floundering in utter uncertainty, unable to make confident choices. Perhaps there is a more accurate term for what I'm actually proposing, but roughly (and feel free to question), it is something like this: that, collectively, we formally establish, as a basis for social and political decision-making, only that which we can know for sure or at least meaningfully agree on, including the natural ethic and the social and political structures that follow or are developed from that ethic, and that we leave out of our collective metaphysic that on which we can't agree or can't meaningfully demonstrate or argue interpersonally to be true or known: on those matters, individuals are free to believe whatever they want, albeit that they are only free to act on those beliefs insofar as those acts do not impose unreasonably upon others.

This is essentially the system we have except that, as we both agree, and which I've already pointed out in a prior post, our system is - at least in the academic and intellectual mainstream - biased towards the metaphysic of materialism/physicalism rather than being a "true" metaphysical agnosticism.

I could say more, and I think I anticipate (at least some of) the objections you might have to this, but this is your thread, not mine, so I will leave it up to you as to whether and if so how to pursue this theme.

Metaphysics as I mean it occurs within intangibles. There will never be a ‘rational metaphysics’.

The latter, again, is to me an odd statement. It could be understood as "Any metaphysic is necessarily irrational", but I doubt that you intend it that way so I will not straw man you. I think that what you actually mean is that a metaphysic cannot be constructed by reason. But why not? Is the Western approach not itself a rational one? I mean, isn't Aristotelian logic a strong part of its core, and has not rational argument led to the basis of many of its political and social institutions?

Too: why should intangibles be unamenable to reason?

Metaphysics means an encounter with what is known through other means : intellectus.

This seems to be another part of your core: "intellectus" being some sort of transcendent contact, via the soul, with, and understanding of, the immaterial realm. This raises some interesting questions:

How can a person be confident that the apparently meaningful truths which s/he accesses via his/her intellectus actually are meaningful truths as opposed to misapprehensions? And what if one person purportedly accesses one meaningful truth via his/her intellectus, whereas another claims to have accessed another, contradictory one? How can this conflict be resolved interpersonally, and especially in the public sphere?

And though I might wish to be enlightened otherwise, I do not think that in modernity any *metaphysics* will ever be practicable or coherent.

Reason allows third parties to assess competing claims or arguments on their own merits, such that conflicts can be resolved via rational discussion in the public sphere with the result being (ideally) practical and coherent. How are such conflicts of vision via intellectus resolved? Is rationality involved at all? Who gets to decide whose vision-from-intellectus holds sway?

I'll end with an interesting snippet from an interview of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers. I don't agree with everything in this interview, and I don't expect you to either, but this excerpt poses, I think, both an acknowledgement of your critique of modernity as well as an interesting challenge to your subsequent agenda, and I'd be interested to read your thoughts on it (the full interview is fascinating, and I encourage you to read it).

BILL MOYERS: You’ve seen what’s happened to primitive societies that are unsettled by white men’s civilization. They go to pieces, they disintegrate, they succumb to vice and disease. And isn’t that the same thing that’s been happening to us since our myths began to disappear?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Absolutely it is.

BILL MOYERS: Isn’t that why conservative religious folk today are calling for a return to the old-time religion?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That’s right.

BILL MOYERS: I understand the yearning. In my youth I had fixed stars; they comforted me with their permanence, they gave me a known horizon; they told me that there’s a loving, kind and just father out there looking down on me, ready to receive me, thinking of my concerns all the time. Now science, medicine has made a house-cleaning of belief, and I wonder what happens to children who don’t have that fixed star, that known horizon, those myths to sustain them?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All you have to do is read the newspaper. I mean, it’s a mess. But what the myth has to provide, I mean, just on this immediate level of life instruction, the pedagogical aspect of myth, it has to give life models. And the models have to be appropriate to the possibilities of the time in which you’re living. And our time has changed, and it’s changed and changed, and it continues to change so fast, that what was proper 50 years ago is not proper today. So the virtues of the past are the vices of today, and many of what were thought to be the vices of the past are the necessities of today. And the moral order has to catch up with the moral necessities of actual life in time, here and now, and that’s what it’s not doing, and that’s why it’s ridiculous to go back to the old-time religion.

A friend of mine composed a song based on the old-time religion, “Give me the old-time religion, give me that old time. Let us worship Zarathustra, just the way we used to, I’m a Zarathustra booster, he’s good enough for me. Let us worship Aphrodite, she’s beautiful but flighty, she doesn’t wear a nightie, but she’s good enough for me.”

And when you go back to the old-time religion, you’re doing something like that. It belongs to another age, another people, another set of human values, another universe. So the old period of the Old Testament, no one had any idea. The world was a little three layer cake, and the world consisted of something a few hundred miles around the Near Eastern centers there. No one ever heard of the Aztecs, you know, or the Chinese, even. And so those whole peoples were not considered, even, as part of the problem to be dealt with. The world changes, then the religion has to be transformed.

[guest_of_logic]

Interesting analysis inspired by the arrest of Tommy Robinson.

Here's a different perspective, suggesting more functional than corrupt judicial processes: Why ex-EDL leader Tommy Robinson was jailed - and why no-one could report it until now.

Richard Weaver wrote about the use of rhetoric and, if I understood him correctly, he defined rhetoric as sentimental power that embellishes but also gives power to ideas.

This is somewhat semantic but I feel the need to pick you up on this. Take it for what it's worth. Based on my understanding of his writing in "Ideas Have Consequences", Richard Weaver distinguishes between "sentimental" (as something like: emotionally, and thus, potentially, irrationally, driven) and "sentiment" (as that which is "anterior to reason" and which drives an arbitrary cultural affirmation of the existing world). After all, he did title one of the chapters of "Ideas Have Consequences" as "The Unsentimental Sentiment".

[Santiago Odo]

I remain, as I have been from the start, very interested in what exactly you mean by Christianity being "uniquely powerful". I have alluded to this question already, but you haven't clarified it. "Powerful" in which sense? In the sense of effectiveness for some purpose? If so, which purpose? Or do you mean in the sense of truth? Do you mean that it is uniquely powerful in its absolute truth?

There is a term — Diebert brought it up awhile back — called JAQ : Just Asking Questions. It is a strategy that is employed in forums and often when an opponent desires to interrogate a position he does not agree with (or in some cases is deeply offended by). It seems completely benign and necessary and certainly questions are good. But because I know you, and have known you for some years now, I am also aware of some part of your own processes in relation to these issues and problems. I will not say that I think your questions are bad questions, they are not, but I am not the one to provide you with the answers that you need. Nor can I do this (nor do I want to do this) for anyone nor for the readership.

If I have a *project* it is to stimulate interest in these issues. As I said, because I know you I know that you do not have a great deal of energy to dispose in reading. But my assertion is that the only way that you or anyone could gain a platform within the world of ideas, and certainly within the world of renovation of Europe and in challenging nihilistic currents, is through a close and detailed study. But I cannot recommend (that is, insist on) what is essentially my own program and my own engagement. So, when I talk to you (here, or in our private communication) I am aware that I am speaking to someone marginally involved, and even to a degree superficially involved, with these issues and problems. So, I do not feel inclined to ‘do your work for you’ and all that I can do is point you in the direction of sources that you could, if you desired to, explore.

When I use the word ‘vain’ I honestly do not mean it as a barb or insultingly. What I mean is that you are in a sense *pretending* to engage seriously and to challenge elements of what I am suggesting or alluding, but my impression is that no matter what I say you will not be ‘convinced’. The *questions* then become a way to cause me to invest a great deal of time devising *answers* but you are, in my view, and aprioristically, disinclined to accept any *answer* I might give. Perhaps this will appear evasive on my part? It is not so much that as it is that I am zealous of my time.

If I say ‘Christianity is uniquely powerful’, and you ask What makes you say that? Explain ..., it really does seem a necessary question on a forum like this. And there have been threads where such things are hashed out (ad infinitum at times). Yet I really do think that I have made allusions and offered references. References, not proofs. If this seems unsatisfactory to you I can of course sympathize with that sentiment. What you hope to get you will not get from me. In order to *get* from me what I desire to *provide* you can only get by engaged and perservering study. And I am certainly willing to direct you to very goos sources. If after some period of time and thought you then come back with something *genuine* to say, based on some real experience, your engagement will become less detailed nit-picking and more substantial involvement.

[Santiago Odo]

As to Tommy Robinson, the point that is brought up through that article seems to be a fair one (I assume there is an element of truth there). However, there are counter-arguments to that one, and counter-perspectives. I suggest looking at the Counter-Currents site as there is a short article by Greg Johnson where he received a good deal of opposition to his dismissal of Robinson (attack might have been a better word), and this is very revealing and very interesting. If you want to get a sense of what the more reactionary Right is thinking, read the comments.

(I do not dismiss, myself, the jurisprudential irregularity. I think that Tommy Robinson is a *phenomenon* that needs to be seen and understood.)

But in some sense my response to you would be similar to the one I just gave as to the issue of *proofs* : if you were really interested in the developing movement against these hyper-liberal social policies that are described as *destroying Europe*, you would yourself be involved in researching and looking into the issue. And if you were *genuinely interested* in the issues you would have a great deal to say about them and would not resort to a *vain* reference to an article published in what is likely to be a ‘state-sponsored’ and allied news site. If you were really interested in the questions that revolve around the control of news and information, you would similarly be interested in the problems that arise when a population (a nation, a readership) is *managed* by state-involved forces. And if you were, if you will allow me to say it like this, a ‘patriot’ of Europe in the sense that I suggest and recommend, and even if that patriotism was more in the line of social justice warriorship, you would again have a great deal more to say. But please allow me to suggest without offense that (my impression is) that you are not really interested in these specific issues and, perhaps, do not feel them to be important or relevant.

So, in my humble view expressed as politely as I can, you have really offered nothing at all to the issue and the problem of the activism of Tommy Robinson. You have tossed out a *vain* reference.

But I will attempt to respond, very briefly, to the larger question that is raised. The ‘State’ in many of the liberal democracies has become a corrupt power- and social-management enterprise. In the background is the so-called Deep State and vast economic forces that are so large and so powerful that they are difficult to conceive. They ‘engineer’ consent through a system of manipulation of opinion and, quite literally, what is *seen* and what is *not shown*. The British state, for different reasons, is involved in a sort of ‘covert idea-war’ and is attempting to dampen down a rising populist-based current of raw reaction. Tommy Robinsom, in my opinion, nicely represents what you (accurately) referred to as the *sentiment* of a people, or some aspect of that people (some percentage). But, it is raw, unstudied, incompetent, badly prepared, reckless, crude and even ‘vulgar’ in the precise sense of the word.

These comments I am making are relevant to the *larger conversation* that (sort-of) began to be discussed in this forum when Dan, David and Kevin appeared to engage in an ideological spat. All of them abandoned the conversation but that *conversation* is still implied ; is still hanging there in the air as it were. That question revolves around considerations of the liberal state, of ‘hyper-liberalism’ (my term), of ‘liberal rot’ (Jonathan Bowden’s term), and of course of the reaction to it. This brings us back into issues and problems that arose out of the Interwar Period in Europe between the 2 World Wars. It has to do with a range of questions, issues, perspectives and problems which, in my view, need to be better understood and discussed.

To do so requires *engagement* : serious study. To the degree that *you* show yourself seriously engaged is the degree that I will seriously respond! Even if you can’t or won’t here and now I do hope that you-plural will engage more profoundly and my puropse is to encourage more involvement in these questions.

If you are at all interested in the reactionary movement I can suggest Rightwing Critics of American Conservatism by George Hawley. Obviously geared to an analysis of the American scene, he references European intellectuals who are the intellectual engine behind intelligent (and somethimes not so intelligent!) reaction against the Hyper-Liberal Present.

[Santiago Odo]

It might seem unnecessary that I persist with this critique, but over the years on this forum and elsewhere you have made so much of the need to become familiar with one's own tradition that it is only natural that any critique of the ultimate form into which you have developed this line of thought - an argument for Christianity from cultural belonging - should also assume significance. It is also important because it could save us a bunch of (already wasted to some extent) effort: if we are to agree to drop the fickle argument from cultural belonging, then we can focus on the relevant argument - that from "unique power".

I remain, as I have been from the start, very interested in what exactly you mean by Christianity being "uniquely powerful". I have alluded to this question already, but you haven't clarified it. "Powerful" in which sense? In the sense of effectiveness for some purpose? If so, which purpose? Or do you mean in the sense of truth? Do you mean that it is uniquely powerful in its absolute truth?

In any case, here is a set of cross-over questions which might shed light on the meaningfulness of both arguments:

Is salvation possible for a non-Christian? Indeed, what defines a Christian, what is salvation, and from what does it save? Are you advocating for the Catholic doctrine of heaven, hell, and purgatory? If so, are these literal realms? And what is the requirement for salvation? Faith in Christ? Obedience to his commandments? A lightness of spirit and a tangible relationship with him and with the Father? Some combination of the preceding? Something else?

All of this is to ask: What is it that you are battling for, and why? You offer a variety of categories, not all of which are compatible: Johannine Christianity, Catholicism, Gnosticism, Eurocentrism - but when the rubber meets the road, what exactly is it for which you unsheath your sword, and what motivates that unsheathing?

Obviously, I think, the main area of your interrogation does stem out of the *metaphysics* that is presented through the Christian religion. My observation, offered in good faith to you at a personal level (not an academic level and my thrust is really more academic for the purposes of this forum and all on-line conversation), is to point out that it is in these areas that you, yourself, exist in clear and definite *metaphysical uncertainty*.

I would suggest that you are, as the founder so the forum are, as so many of us are, examples and *outcomes* of specific processes that have led to a nihilistic reigning attitude. This is what this thread is about. But it is not about *providing an answer* for you. You should know, and I hope you do know, that that is what you need to do (if you choose to do it, and perhaps you can’t or won’t). You (seem to) desire *answers* that, even if given, will not and of course cannot satisfy you. I suggest that just there, precisely there, is the essence of the *problem*.

I definitely do suggest that it is imperative to see and to understand — and to live in and out of — a position of deep appreciation for *our traditions* and *what has made us us*. But as I have now repeated a number of times I am not at all interested in doing your work for you! Neither that of an internal and deeply personal sort (Cardinal Newman said that there comes a point when a man realizes that there are just two beings in the Universe : himself and God, and my view is that no matter how this is looked at, it has great validity and is thoroughly useful as a perspective-point), nor of a more historical and academic sort (philosophical, cultural, contemporaneous).

You seem to feel it useful to break things down into analytical units. Is my argument one from ‘cultural belonging’ or is it one from ‘superior metaphysics’? But I would not, and I do not, break down the questions into such a dichotomy. I would rather work from a synthetic perspective. But to this, again, I can only suggest sources. Because the arguments are already there! I recommend Christopher Dawson’s The Historical Reality of Christian Culture. It is required to have some basic position within the larger question before you could fairly engage in a discussion of the issue. Gain that platform and you and I will have a basis for discussion. You do not have that platform right now.

There is, I suppose, a certain conflict between, for example, a ‘Catholic perspecive’ which is by its nature universalist, and a more specific and exclusive Eurocentrism, and yet it is the perspective I am coming to. But I do not pretend to imply that I have everything worked out. And I do not have any issue with contradictions though, one hopes, that contraditions, like disharmonies, are resolved. What I can say and will say is that you read what I have written both in this thread and also in one that is now 10 or 15 threads down. There, I wrote a good deal that would, I think, give you some sort of *answer* to your questions.

[Santiago Odo]

And when you go back to the old-time religion, you’re doing something like that. It belongs to another age, another people, another set of human values, another universe. So the old period of the Old Testament, no one had any idea. The world was a little three layer cake, and the world consisted of something a few hundred miles around the Near Eastern centers there. No one ever heard of the Aztecs, you know, or the Chinese, even. And so those whole peoples were not considered, even, as part of the problem to be dealt with. The world changes, then the religion has to be transformed.

What I would say is I think rather obvious : the perspective of Campbell is that of classical academic detachment. What he is doing is providing what I call a *conceptual pathway* to be able to gain access, if you will, to another level of self, or another way to *use* self (if I can be allowed to put it like this). But he speaks, essentially, to people who have been removed (knocked off) their foundation. That is a dangerous position to be in. Because the forces that have brought that about are very very active. They will not help you (anyone) to get back on a foundation. Campbell therefor points a way, but vaguely.

In respect to what I am writing about, I would only suggest what I have been suggesting : a thorough engagement with the study of Our Traditions. That is, the Mediterranean *world* and the very matrix of our identity. See for example Waldo Frank’s The Re-discovery of America and The Re-discovery of Man. But especially The Re-discovery of America. And the ‘chapters’: The last days of Europe ; The sense of the whole ; Action and decay ; Wreckers and recorders ; The grave of Europe.

I would say that Frank is pessimistic in respect to the recovery I attempt to speak about, but he was, in this sense, a man of his time (20s-30s but he also wrote into the 50s).

My dear Guest : your ideas are so tentative, and so superficial, because you will not and perhaps cannot dedicate the necessary time to gaining background in these important areas. You are, as I have been saying, just a symptom of the time. You provide an example of one ‘knocked off their foundation’ and the consequences of this are grave indeed.

I have engaged with this Forum and with all its main denizens and what I have concluded, after considerable work (which I have undertaken I might add with my whole self), is the degree to which nihilism reigns, not just in *them* but in *us*. Nihilsm is just a word for something hard to define, yet we must make the effort. We have to confront this, and we have to discover a means back to *value* and also to *meaning*. Your questions indicate, to me anyway, that you spin your wheels in a mud puddle that has you trapped. But you must also note that just recently I described Diebert as having the most severe case of nihilism. These are simply references or observations in an attempt to clarify an issue. If you understand this you will understand a great deal of what I am on about.

Don’t shoot the messenger! ;-)

[guest_of_logic]

You (seem to) desire *answers* that, even if given, will not and of course cannot satisfy you. I suggest that just there, precisely there, is the essence of the *problem*.

The inability to provide satisfactory answers is an essential problem... which of course is, as you seem to recognise, the point in asking the questions - or, at least, one of the points. Another is simply to try to get clarity. On a forum supposedly "for those who like their thoughts bloodied and dangerous", you seem to desire not to do battle over concrete ideas, but instead to allude and refer. Thus...

Campbell therefor points a way, but vaguely.

...there is some rather delicious irony in this statement!

There are all sorts of interesting discussions that could be had over where Christianity gets it right and where it gets it wrong and why, and I suspect that you and I agree on more than we disagree - but just as you cannot compel me to dig into your sources, I cannot compel you to discussion. And of course I respect your right to choose how and on what you spend your time.

I will say though that the gambit of "Your disagreement is invalid because you don't [understand / know enough]" is sadly all too familiar on this forum, and handing out impressive references is no substitute for defending specific claims in one's own words - but again, it's your thread and if that's how you want to use it then so be it.

Nihilsm is just a word for something hard to define, yet we must make the effort. We have to confront this, and we have to discover a means back to *value* and also to *meaning*.

What does nihilism mean? Ah, the paradox. What is the meaning of meaning? How nicely self-referential.

But I wonder whether the dichotomy is not so much between meaning and absence of meaning as between prescribed meaning and chosen meaning - to the extent that there is even a strict dichotomy in the first place (which I doubt).

Don’t shoot the messenger! ;-)

Alright, so long as he's waving his white flag. ;-)

[Santiago Odo]

As respectfully as I can I do not think that my methods or my interests suit you very well. I do not see myself as evasive but rather that I map out in advance where the JAQing goes. I have spent a good deal of time (obviously) on forums and I am aware of the tactics (in the best light) and the games (in the worst) that are employed. What I am attempting to do here, whether well or badly, is just to ‘report back’ to a place in which I had invested time and energy and which had a certain effect — a productive and helpful effect. Most of my posts have been directed to this.

I also will apologize for the *gambit* as you call it, but I think you are mixing categories. If David for example saw you as being locked out of his mode of perception (enlightenment), and I think this was the basis of the *special knowledge* that he and others perceived they were involved in, my assertions are differently based.

But the point I make, too, is part of a widespread issue and problem that has to do with education. If I speak of being ‘knocked off our foundation’ it does not require special or magical gnosis to get back toward that foundation : it requires a specific use of the will. And this is a substantial aspect of my project : to encourage that.

I sometimes think that millions of badly prepared individuals walk the landscapes of life, toss our opinions on all matters, but lack a necessary authority to do so. I do believe in authority. My position, though I have a relationship to the problem I mention, is similar to, say, Aldous Huxley, who lamented and did not celebrate the throngs who attained a four year university education. That is not education. That is vocational training, by and large.

So, bringing this up is germane to the overall point I have made in this thread : unprepared individuals, willful and incited, plunge forward into the world of ideas but are quite badly prepared. I have said that this is how I perceive our founders. They end up mucking things up. My understanding is that this is happening on a vast scale. I do not arrogantly separate myself from the problem. I use a ‘we’ and say ‘we need to do better’. But we also need to radically reorient ourselves.

I have used the term ‘nihilism’ as one of convenience. But what does this really mean? It is not, as you imply, a paradox. I didn’t mean it in that way. I mean quite literally what does it mean to be in the possession of ‘nihilism’. It is not easy to define because, I suggest, it is a sickly condition that envelops us.

[guest_of_logic]

What I am attempting to do here, whether well or badly, is just to ‘report back’ to a place in which I had invested time and energy and which had a certain effect — a productive and helpful effect. Most of my posts have been directed to this.

That's fine - I'll avoid further comments/questions in this thread unless something seems especially worth adding.

I have used the term ‘nihilism’ as one of convenience. But what does this really mean? It is not, as you imply, a paradox.

I was being playful with that comment. The paradox is of course only superficial.

[Santiago Odo]

Suggestion : speak about your view of or relationship to the issues brought up here. For example, since I am making recommendations about education, or offering opinions in pro of a Eurocentrism, or about ‘identity’, why not spesk about your view of these things? That is, instead of an interrogation a participation?