Good morning everyone. Let's talk about how some parts of the internet think the banking mini(?) crisis will be a means to ushering in the digital currency some of us are dreading. Thoughts?
Do you think there is a form of currency that doesn’t depend on people’s perception of its value? Which element produces ‘value’ in laboratory experiments?
I couldn’t agree more. Gangsters. The lot of them. Even the Federal Reserve is comprised of a bunch of private banks. All smoke and mirrors as they said in the Wizard of Oz. It’s not a children’s story at all. It’s about the shysters who run the money system.
Another problem is that many of these banks which are falling are "regional" ones (albeit still huge), which means further consolidation and power of the mega international banks. In the UK, HSBC have bought up Silicon Valley Bank's UK arm for £1 - further strengthening the hand of HSBC.
Honestly, I wish we'd stop backing the banks and let them fail. There's no way to convince the executives and investors not to take on excessive risk other than to let them see what really happens instead of letting the government fix it. It would hurt and could have rippling effects through the economy. But it's about the only way they are going to be encouraged not to be bad actors. It has the added benefit of shifting the consequences to those who invested in high risk activities and the executives as opposed to the tax payers. The administration can insure us all it wants that the taxpayers aren't going to foot a single penny of the bill, but I don't believe it. The government is far better at laundering money than any crime organization out there...
We can't. The Empire must continue its war on Ukraine, and this cannot be questioned. At the same time, labor must be brought to heel and rich people cannot be allowed to lose money.
Since "bailout" is a dirty word, what will happen is a de facto bailout, where the People That Matter will be made whole, in order that the objectives listed above may continue to be advanced.
Only one dimensional "good guys:" versus "bad guys" narratives can justify warmongering and completely silence reason. Yay war ! Give us back that good old Cold War.
One side allowed Russia to invade Ukraine. One side did not act effectively if they wanted to prevent an invasion. One side baited Russia into invading Ukraine then reneged on their promises of NATO support for Ukraine. One side would rather go back to a Cold War the World cannot afford.
Financial meltdowns , the War in Ukraine, digital currency etc. will make the powerful more powerful, the rich richer ,the poor poorer and totally controlled.
So far that’s exactly what’s happened with these two US banks; FDIC is protecting the depositors but letting the investors and management lose their money. There is even an investigation into bonuses paid last month to the upper level officers.
Excuse me if I don't feel comforted by that. I have no faith that the government is actually going to do anything about it. They will stand up, like Elizabeth Warren, descrying everything that happened, and then they will do nothing. It will fade into oblivion with no action really being taken other than to say that they are taking action. And the extremely short attention span of Americans will allow it to fade away with nothing ever really happening ... until the hand wringing at the next crisis where, again, nothing will be done other than platitudes. Rinse and repeat.
The irony is that it seems that SVB didn't bother to employ basic interest rate hedging strategies at all. If they had done that, or even done a slightly better job of communicating their need for capital as part of their share raise, they'd be fine.
Now, what that says if these are "the best and brightest", and their defalcations are so obvious that even a feral cat can point them out, is left as an exercise to the reader.
I read somewhere that American multinationals (!!!) are no longer mindlessly recruiting graduates of the Ivy League schools into top entry level positions.
The tide is turning, maybe. If you look at the internet management fiasco (and the Covid scientific fiasco), algorithms kill living commerce and make... bad business. They make excellent ideology and propaganda, but bad business (and science). The question is : how long can you keep on telling yourself that black is white before the ship goes down, or Johnny points his finger and says "The Emperor has no clothes" (but... who will listen to Johnny in our current situation ?)
I find that many people are more interested in CREDITING the people in power with evil intentions than contemplating the terrifying ? idea that we (and our leaders) no longer know which side is up, which side is down, and that this is a significant handicap in a complex world.
Everything, everywhere all at once ! Digital currency is definitely coming and maybe even a guaranteed annual income if the shit hits the fan (which it could in a chain reaction) .. I wouldn't mind it if it digital money wasn't 100% trackable and able to be turned off by governmental issuers. Did you see the Canadian Government self-congratulating themselves for the effectiveness of freezing protesters bank accounts and restoring "social order" . This does not bode well. How close does this put us to a utopian era of totalitarian technocracy?
Digital money can't be 100% trackable, because then we would live in an unfallen world, and I haven't noticed recently that we live in an unfallen world. The 100% trackable is the meaning of the word "absolute" and that word is safely lodged... on God's side, and not on the creature's.
For sure, the number of people able to wiggle out from under the heavy yoke of government tracking will be reduced. There will be "precious" few who will be able to escape, but they will be there, and outside of the blinding light, too. Who will they be ? That's difficult to say.
When you start building the tower of Babel, the shadow of the tower of Babel goes up with it too. Inevitable.
But you have raised the issue which for me, is the most important one we should be talking about : the creation of virtual state via computers, and the destruction of physical contact between us thanks to our digital technology that goes, and takes us, all over the planet in the twinkle of an eye. Another big question : just exactly what enforcement will the virtual state force on us ?
The Bank of Ireland has said that it will keep cash. Apparently their customers prefer cash to digital transactions. Funny that. I think that some of these financial crises are manufactured. They always seem to turn out so well for the banks and financiers. The 2008 crash was great for the banks. They got bailed out with government money, our money, because they were too big to fail - unlike the rest of us. So is this how capitalism works? The rich get millions and billions in dole money to keep them viable, that is, rich, if the system fails. And it wasn't the system that failed them. It was them. They were responsible for their own failures and collapse. The rest of us lost our jobs and houses and were fed a few scraps. Just enough to stop us realising what's really going on. Keep the voters placated. They'd keep voting for the same system or party then, that fails them every time.
How do they so accurately predict inflation for six months hence. And it happens, on the dot. Do the banks and government decide in advance that they need to make money worth less. Couldn't have the plebs accumulating wealth now could we? I mean you could put it under the mattress! And strikes for better wages might actually really mean more money for the plebs.
With digital currency you lose complete control over whatever wealth you accumulate in monetary terms. The banks could change the value of your money in a heartbeat. Who knows what they would get up to. Me. I'm definitely an under the bed saver. Metaphorically speaking.
The more you dive into banking and investing, the more you see it for what it is, one big scam on the people who don't play along. The Federal Reserve has been a scam since the beginning and is at the root of all of these ups and downs. God will judge those who get rich dishonestly. Digital money is coming, like it or not, but it will not be soon. They are still working out getting everyone on the smart grid. The reason they need so much electricity and internet is to put this financial control into action. Everyone must have a phone and internet and the ability to charge their phones reliably. They are in the process of 'developing' third world nations so they can get their minerals for the batteries as well as get them connected. In the meantime they will keep eliminating the non-productive humans. This is the machine at its root.
I am watching the World Health Organisation review their International Health Regulations(2005) in the light of the COVID pandemic. I wonder if I am the only one for whom these discussion give rise to concern?
The amendments being considered would seem to me to offer the WHO far greater power in the event of future health emergencies. For example in the text below it is proposed to omit the phrase” the implementation of these regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons” and replace it with “ implementation of these regulations shall be based on the principles of equity, inclusivity and coherence”
1. The implementation of these Regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities of the States Parties, taking into
consideration their social and economic development.
This rewrite and many others being proposed in this review appear to copper fasten the future powers of the WHO and their power to over rule nation states in health policy.
Is this what we want? Are the public in Ireland discussing this, are the Irish Government in agreement with it?
We have just come out of 100 years of searching for national autonomy, are we going to give it away without a national discussion ? Could we have such a discussion?
I would hope we can , these proposals are to be discussed over the coming months, might we have a say? Would our politicians consider this worth considering? Let’s ask
Great idea, Ger. I wish Ireland would have such a national conversation about ... well, just about anything that's happening here. But it would have to be done from the outside, because the media and political class seem to have everything locked up. To me it looks like Ireland lost its autonomy some time ago. The place is run by the EU and Silicon Valley now. Might be time for some radicalism.
On this Paul, a dilemma; my main take of many from observing COVID is what a disaster it is when the State interferes in people's private lives. Yet this interference, which you have correctly divined as stemming from a technocratic world view that problems are there to be solved and we need big tech / big organisations / big regulation to achieve it, is arguably necessary with something like climate change.
I mean you correctly identified the Great Reset as a conspiracy theory hiding in plain sight. But I find myself agreeing with some of the ideas, such as that we should own cars and property communally, as being a useful offset to the mindless consumerism / individualism which is destroying the Earth and corrupts our characters.
So how then do we square that circle, of seeing the evils of he COVID response but also seeing the destruction of consumption that perhaps requires State interference?
Yes definitely true. I was going to throw Animal Farm in as a likely foil to the above being a solution.
Maybe the answer is that if you need to impose limits on individualism and consumption then society itself is sick and you won't be able to solve it with restrictions.
Individualism is a relatively recent concept. Maybe four hundred years old at most. Before that people did live communally, unless you were an emperor or some such. People lived in community, worked in community and survived, in community. The problem with the concept of individualism is the lie that as individuals we actually make our own lives. Great. If you don't have to spend time minding sheep, sheering them, spinning and weaving the wool, just to make your own clothes, or growing your own food and harvesting it.
Just staying alive is a life long and life - filling exercise. We can only be so called individuals if there are armies of 'slaves' out there manufacturing every thing we need so we don't have to do it for ourselves. Then we have the space and luxury of time, to go an do what we would like. I haven't noticed an awful lot of golf courses in places where people still live close to the earth. Not enough time. Nor did I see many indigenous people in Dilli playing golf or being' individuals'. They were too busy selling stuff on the roadways or surviving in shanties with no water supply other than what flowed down the sides of the roads, carrying effluent..
Agree. The obvious solution to a lot of the problems of modern culture and society is a return to the land, to subsistence, to community. I think most of us don't want that though as we've gotten very used to our creature comforts and our on demand lives. But it is good for us. Its closer to the soul.
I did do that. Return to the land. It was the most creative and productive time of my life. I had what I needed. A dwelling. Land around me. Friends. I didn’t have a lot of money but in many ways I didn’t need a lot. The on demand life can tend to distract from really being in the world.
But do we really have the luxury of time to go and do what we would like with all our money and convenience in the Western world ? Where I'm living the pressure to go fast... to work hard, fast, and to play hard and fast is getting out of control. When we work and play... hard and fast, life can seem exhilirating, but when we are not working and playing hard and fast we are crashed out on a sofa, recovering from.... working and playing hard and fast, maybe ?
The faster you are able to go, sooner of later, the faster you HAVE TO GO ? The point at which new, previously dreamed about freedoms suddenly show themselves as our new chains ?
Recently I told a man who has a psychiatric diagnosis and can't get a job that he STILL HAS something extremely precious : he has... TIME. What good is lots of money and stuff if you don't have time to spend your money, for example ?
I know that in Rome, republic and empire, business was done in the morning, and the afternoon was spent.... in the baths, libraries, in FREE TIME. We have technology and lots of abstract numbers doubling as money (but not hard cash...) and little free time. Plus we seem to have developed the idea that if you are cooking/cleaning you are a slave, even in your OWN HOUSE ?? Where did that come from ?...
Could we possibly have gotten caught up in that old trap of BUSI-NESS to eat up all the LEISURE time that we could be enjoying, or eating up the time that we could spend doing necessary things and getting pleasure out of them ?
BUSI-NESS is a big trap. It is designed somewhat to keep us from thinking about our HUMAN CONDITION which is naturally tragic, really, if you take the time to think about it.
I do have the time, but that is because I am one of the few winners of capitalism. I'm lucky enough to earn enough money in what I do do be able to have a lot of free time to devote to kids, pursuits, and thinking about how shit the overall system is, thinking that brings me places like here. I agree that huge chunks of the population are mere serfs in all of this and that that is sustained by compliant media. The funniest thing for me is how, in a world of appalling and increasing wealth inequality, the class politics I grew up with in the 1980s has almost entirely disappeared, replaced with the faux egalitarianism of the woke. A distraction and probably a deliberate one as well, because the number one discriminator in modern society remains economic power.
Individualism never works for long if you know history and its cycles. Communalism kicks back in sooner or later for good or evil depending on whether you are kicking or being kicked.
We are persons-in-community. Without both sides of ourselves we will continually get it wrong. Individualism and collectivism (the actual contrary to individualism, not communalism) are both delusions, as far as I can tell. Ideologies of either are dangerous.
I don’t think the Great Reset wants cars and property to be owned communally. It wants the masses to rent cars and property from a tiny technocratic elite. It needs consumption too. Lots of it. Just highly centrally determined (via CBDCs): no meat; lots of processed products.
Paul, the Republic of Ireland, it seems to me is now a true "vassal state" par excellence .. Politically serving the EU, slavishly, obediently following its agenda in every detail of domestic and foreign policy. Economically, Ireland is a captive of the US multinationals. Skimming off a tiny percentage of the latter's huge revenue streams in tax in an elaborate tax avoidance scam, whereby huge US tech, medical scientific, and pharma are located here. In return, the deliberately light tax skim of these vast corporate revenue streams provides the funds for Ireland's bloated, and often inefficient public sector, as well as the extraordinary plethora of semi-state sector entities, and the myriad NGO's in Ireland which effectively monopolise public discourse on all aspects of politics and culture.
The economic, political, and cultural foundations of this state are utterly compromised by these relationships.
It seems to me, having successfully sloughed off the rule of the British Empire through a popular and radical quest for national independence and identity. The indigenous political and cultural elites of Ireland (who were often the staunchest allies of British rule) , have now embraced the USA /EU neo-liberal empire with the same conspicuously slavish devotion which was once demonstrated for the Vatican in the early days of the newly created Irish state. Over eight hundred years of colonial rule leaves a huge political and cultural legacy.
It looks like nearly everywhere has or is in the process of losing the ability to determine even the most basic things for oneself and those around us. What would a Christian Radicalism look like in regard to what we are in and continually unfolds? I think we'd better figure that out quickly.
I'm going to think a bit more about that in the next essay, though without a specifically Christian focus. I hope to get to that focus later in the year though. Or maybe it's a podcast conversation Jack!
Things are actually moving along! The first remote test will be happening soon. If all goes well I will be in touch. But it would make a very interesting podcast topic, no doubt.
Ireland has already lost its sovereignty, otherwise Dublin's protected Georgian buildings would be pulled down in order for some uber wealthy 'developer'/ investment fund, or NGO, to build multi-storey monstrosities in their place. Mostly still empty by the way
Hey, I'm not knocking that. You have to live in the Western U.S. (outside of Californian, New Mexican missions, maybe) to see what multiple cheap box construction regularly razed to allow room for the new cheap box construction does to your spirit and sense of history.
"We have just come out of 100 years of searching for national autonomy, are we going to give it away without a national discussion?"
"National autonomy" died when the nation-state was smothered to death by the global corporate state aka Paul's Machine.
Our elites are entirely postnational and only consider their citizenry a burden at best, or maybe a cow to be milked, but otherwise gagged "in the name of Democracy".
The young, who are addled by their devices and will agree to anything as long as it their friends are doing the same, don't know or care about nations, histories, all those old dead white men etc—the entire circumference of their lives resides inside their machines and their identities and figuring out how to wield these for attention.
Those on the left side of the aisle, from college kid to the corporate suites, will be told that handing over political autonomy to an unelected globalist class has to be done to save us all from the evil bigot reactionaries—either give us all power or Hitler is coming!—and they will agree to it as long as it allows them to beat up on and feel superior to their blood enemies, conservatives.
As for conservatives, all of this is aimed directly at them: patriotism, nationalism, religion, the Old Ways, whatever you want to call em, are the final obstacles to total control, and everyone espousing them will either be stoned out of the public square by a barrage of bigotry accusations or canceled, deplatformed, driven out of civil society.
James Corbett calls that group that exists outside of national concerns the “Superclass” . He says they support their mutual interests, not those of the underclass. Such as by being cavalier about cutting off our current energy source, oil and gas, before making sure another source is in place. They do not care how many people starve to death.
I’ll start. I read an article from 1945 ,that I will find the link for later , which stated that the reason we have wars is because children are taught the concept of good and evil. This man was saying that the way to prevent another war was to eradicate the world of religion. He was a psychiatrist and the first director-general of the WHO. His plan was to use education and churches to re-educate adults and educate children using psychological methods. I think we can say that this did not turn out well. https://archive.org/details/psychiatry-of-enduring-peace-and-social-progress-chisholm-and-sullivan-1946/page/n2/mode/1up?view=theater
Isn’t it enough trouble wanting and achieving what’s best just for yourself and your immediate loved ones? Who has the balls to think they can plan it for all of humanity? That alone makes you nuts.
God is Not Great, 2007, by the late, great, and erudite C.H, with a flood of evidence pre and since 1945. A plethora of other writing by others during the last 80 years, all far more compelling than less sophisticated efforts from last century.
Is it? Indigenous people in Australia never warred with each other. If there was an issue then the two tribal groups would face off and the first person to throw the spear, won the war for his side. Then they all went home. They knew a thing or two. 500,000 years of living as tribal people certainly seems to have made them wise.
How do you empirically know that humans conceived of religion as opposed to receiving religious truths via revelation? It sounds like you're assuming a universal truth without having to justify it.
The religion of modern man posits that death is natural and indeed a necessary creative force. Survival of the fittest presupposes might is right and therefore violence and oppression as a universal law - the creative force that brought us into being. So I'm not sure how you allow yourself to presuppose that violence, death and oppression are bad in the first place. There is no objective or scientific justification for opposing violence and oppression in the modern world view. It's just an untenable arranged marriage between residual Christian values stripped of any grounding and secular scientism which needs to borrow something from outside of itself in order to salve a conscience it doesn't objectively recognise.
War mongers find reasons to galvanise an acceptance of war by the great unwashed. Whether it's because war is supposed to deliver Freedom and Democracy in the American way, or fighting for religious reasons, it's a way to get people on board the idea of a war because it is defending something valuable. In the end I think it's always about wealth, resources and territory. That is, power.
I think you are incorrect about the root cause of most wars. What do you think the War in Ukraine is about? I think I'd put greed, power and control of resources pretty high up on the list of causes. I imagine a sense of moral outrage is about the only thing that ever stopped a war...(before it was desired)
Surely the religious impulse reflects something authentic in the human spirit. The Tao, or Buddhism and Christianity talk about how to live an authentic life, in non shallow, truly enriching ways that allow a person to see something deeper at the heart of all things. Call it God if you wish. There's a lot of wisdom there. It's not just dogma. It is about the Tao, if you like, the Way. How to travel through life in a caring, loving and aware way. With people and the natural world.
And it's also being kept going because it is a money maker. Supplying all those weapons. The military industrial complex must be delighted at the money they are making. There is constant war. It is an industry at this stage. Especially for the USA.
I thought it was about territory. And more laterly acquiring resources form others who have them. Such as oil and minerals. The day will come when it's about water.
Putin and Russian leadership have many reasons for wanting influence and control back over Ukraine; wealth, resources, security, naval access , historical precedents, national identity, Russian population etc.
Despite the supposed evidence against the obvious reality of an intelligent designer, people continue to look for God. They just look for Him in science, political movements, sex, and alternative spirituality.
Yeah, modernity was nuts. Interestingly, this shows the principle that the true counter-tradition is an inversion of the highest spiritual truths, not just their rejection. Because we fell when we knew Good and Evil, and the Tao Te Ching says that when Tao is lost, morality arises. To attain realization is to move beyond Good and Evil, but not like this psychiatrist or Nietzsche said. The denizens of Dostoyevsky's The Dream of a Ridiculous Man are great examples of what I mean by that.
Hares (especially juveniles) also have the strange habit of bounding right up to observers. I have had the privilege of this happening to me twice when a curious hare has, from a distance, strolled up to within a few meters of me while being clearly aware of my presence. It is quite an extraordinary moment when a wild creature is curious about you - there's nothing else quite like it.
I had a similar experience with Gentoo penguins in the Falkland Islands. They were seemingly as curious of me as I was of them. A moment I'd no doubt appreciate all the more, now I am no longer in the first flush of youth!
There's something of this playfulness in domestic rabbits too (I prefer "hare" but as an American can't escape the vernacular). My parents have a rabbit who prefers to be shooed into his hutch at dark, as though he's asking to be tucked in.
Regarding hares and Celtic mythology: my family and I watched the movie “Harvey” the other night. A delightful piece all around, and in light of the new black eye medical science currently wears, insightful. A hare is the star, although the Americans insist on calling him a ‘rabbit’.
Harvey is a superb movie, in my opinion one of James Stewart's best. The 6 foot "White Rabbit" (Harvey) is deemed by Dowd played by Stewart to be a "pooka" a shape shifting Irish spirit animal. However, it may also be an hallucinatory bi-product of Dowd's alcoholism. This amusing and thought provoking film, on surface a light comedy, delves at times quite deeply into the possibility of other layers of reality, as well as the desire of many people, through substance abuse, to escape from what Marx referred to as the "heartless world" of rational and materialist reality.
The idea that addiction is a subconscious and warped bi-product of the necessity for the filling of a "God shaped hole" in one's life, lays at the heart of the spirituality to be found in the success of the 12 Step Recovery Fellowships, pioneered by the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. The film
"Harvey" intriguingly asked a lot of very interesting and relevant questions, whilst remaining an endearing and heart warming comedy drama.
I played Dr. Sanderson in a production of Harvey at our local community theater a couple of years ago. Alas, our last weekend of performances was canceled due to a new COVID surge, but it was still a good run.
A neighbour told me how she was suffering from unusual heavy bleeding and pain with her menstrual periods. We know this is happening to vast numbers of women since the injection of Frankenstein technology into women and children. It seems such an apt symbol of the dysregulation of human life and our planet. The disrespect for life itself and for the life givers. I want to start a group of these women called Women on the RagE. We’ll march to the government and medical and corporate offices holding aloft the bloody evidence of women’s suffering and lay it at their doors.
Can I get some book info/advice? I often get my "leisure" reading from Standard Ebooks; they just released two books by Richard Jefferies: Amaryllis at the Fair; and After London. If links are allowed:
From the descriptions, they seemed to be in Kingsnorthian territory (or perhaps Kingsnorth has lingered in Jefferiesian territory?). Is that a fair connection? I've never encountered Jefferies before. I'm interested to know how they would fit in the "Abbey's" reading room... Thanks!
"Peterson sees the story as a warning about the dangers of idolizing the intellect in utopian attempts to make heaven on earth."
Frank seems to be suggesting that you are trying to build an utopia (correct me if I am wrong Frank). However, your writings rather than pointing toward an "impractical, idealistic scheme for social and political reform", carve out a path toward what makes us human, connects us to reality, and realigns us with God's creation.
Well, I don't think that's quite what the Babel story is about, and it does sound suspiciously like Peterson retooling the Bible again for his own ends (which are usually either to criticise the left or promote self-help.) Either way, I've been an anti-utopian all my life and I'm not changing now!
I think it's about what happens when humans try to achieve unity - and build their own heaven - under their own steam, rather than following God's will.
It is about pride. Believing that together we can reach the height of God. At Babel, God comes down to the tower and scatters mankind. This scattering is a mercy. A leveling of the tower of pride. Because unity is not people + people. Unity is God + people.
I tend to read it as specifically about empire. Ziggurats were thought to be places where humans (mostly priests and kings) met with the gods. When I taught the Bible at a small private Christian university in the US, I used to illustrate the story by showing students this image of an Akkadian emperor striding up a mountain to meet his god, literally trampling on his enemies as he did so: https://smarthistory.org/victory-stele-of-naram-sin/
Sorry Paul my comment was not very clear. Peterson is putting together what he describes as a cabal of individuals... the best and the brightest from around the world, specifically Europe, to create an antithesis to the world economic forum.... these individuals will build a structure that will reach to heaven and change the world for the benefit of all Humanity I am sure.
Ah, I see. Well, I've not received an invitation. And I don't think it would be my cup of tea. It would depend, afte all, on what the proposed alternative was. I don't think JP and I would see eye to eye on that one.
Obviously my flippant description of his project indicates my position on it but I would think that if he is serious he would need somebody exactly like you. I know that Jonathan Pageau is part of the project and perhaps with enough sensible people in the mix it won't end up being another fall of man.
I wouldn't involve myself in anything Peterson-led. He's interesting enough, and he does some useful work, but he is in danger of misleading people in a lot of different directions, I think, especially as regards Christianity. His role as self-appointed unbaptised spokesman for the church is starting to grate on me.
Jonathan is a friend and so I worry about him but not that his heart is not true. In this endeavor he is going to be my canary in a coal mine and the more like him that we can put at the table the more we will understand when it goes off the rails. And it will go off the rails.
While like you, I don't have faith in these guys, I do think we can do things for the benefit of all humanity. There's too much suffering in the world to just chill and do nothing, and as it is, reducing the suffering of the world is rather doable!
Well, of course. Always work to be done. Love and charity and all the other virtues. I don't know about 'the benefit of all humanity', but for the benefit of particular people and places, yes.
I feel like in spiritual quarters, not enough is said about Good Works. I feel whenever someone is going to really elaborate on something spiritual (like in this project), there should be a preface that goes like: 'Spirituality is about many things, but it is definitely about leading a life of service. Wanna make sure your spirituality is real? Then start giving to charity and volunteering your time. The charity should preferably be an effective one, like the Against Malaria Foundation.'
It's very easy and common for spirituality to just be this thing that is locked in your head without helping the world in any way. And it's relevant to this project, because being rooted in a specific place does not mean you don't have a duty to help distant Africa. Summoning up the energy to actually start doing Good Works generates more energy that can then be used to make things like your vision of reactionary radicalism into a reality.
It's not so much that you, specifically, are not doing Good Works (I don't know the answer to that question), but if the readership gets fired up about this, it would do a lot of good. Maybe you need to start scourging your readers and viewers, or attempt persuasion, if that would be more effective.
It's not my job to persaude my readers to undertake good works! I will say that in the Orthodox faith this is central. The faith-works argument that took off in the West with the Reformation has never been a thing in the East. Both are obviously intertwined. By their fruits shall you know them.
I don't know who said "God save me from my friends ; my enemies I can handle myself" but the person had a rather good point, I think. I constantly keep in mind that Goethe remarked way back when that he could see the time coming in the Western world when it would be one vast hospital, and... after much thought, I can understand his concern. It is not easy to reason or observe from this vantage point, but we can always try before assuming that we are in a good position to help.
Good to remember that the Enlightenment philosophers petered out into the position of observing that we would do best to cultivate our gardens. Good advice, I think.
And I try to keep in mind that, like everybody else, I do not know what I am doing when I do it.
On a more concrete level, I think that some African countries and Indian provinces have actually made it through the Covid episode than most of our sophisticated, doped on high tech Western countries with a panicked population. Do they really need OUR HELP ?? Who are we to say/think so ? Just who do we think we are with our good intentions ?...
Maybe this has already been asked (so many comments):
Paul, do you feel tempted to discuss your theories with the latest technological hype called ChatGPT?
I hope to steer clear for as long as I can, but forever is probably not possible. I resisted computers for 15 years and mobile phones for even longer, but ended up in their 'nets' anyway.
In recent article Mary Harrington referred to Limbic Capitalism. She referenced the historian David Courtwright who states that “limbic capitalism refers to a technologically advanced but socially regressive business system in which global industries, often with the help of complicit governments and criminal organizations, encourage excessive consumption and addiction.” Since hearing this term for the first time, it has stayed with me. I would love to hear the thoughts of other readers.
Agreed! That article really resonated with me and I've been thinking about it a lot. I clicked through to read the interview with Courtwright as well, very thought provoking. I guess the next step is I need to find his book.
Now I need to read that - it sounds excellent. Similar to an article I read recently on how TikTok's algorithm has been designed to be as addictive (and brain-stupefying) as possible for the US market, whereas the Chinese strictly do not allow this algorithm to be used on their own population.
But I know that we started talking about "attention deficit disorder" before TikTok came around, and that U.S. and probably U.K psychiatrists were prescribing medication for this "syndrome" in children before we knew what algorithms were.
If you think that our technology has evolved in order to fit into an anthill organization where intelligence is collective, and not individual, then it is no longer necessary for us as flesh and blood PERSONS to be able to remember thoughts, feelings, and concentrate, when the machine will organize our collective memory and intelligence, and we disappear as persons. We have outsourced our intelligence and memory.
Just how much control to we have over this phenomena as... flesh and blood persons at this time ?
See very few of either these days in rural Derbyshire. What happened? Rabbits in particular used to be a common sight. Is it myxomatosis, habitat loss, land poisoned by overuse of fertilisers, all of those? On the other hand we see an ever increasing number of Buzzards circling overhead. I have nothing against buzzards. It's just weird (or perhaps wyrd) how the predators seem to be in the ascent.
Could be that the increase in Buzzards (they certainly are really common now) is driving behavioural changes in habits (altering feeding times, staying more hidden etc). But I think numbers have never really recovered from myxomatosis, and habitat changes are surely playing a part too.
It is also not known by many that rabbits are a non-native species to the UK (but arguably one that has been very beneficial - the Brecklands habitat wouldn't exist without rabbits, and our raptor population would probably be severely diminished).
Yes. You'd think less prey species = less birds of prey. I can see a poetic / omen like meaning in the increase of predators (you can hear the screeching call of Buzzards much of the time hereabouts, which is nice but also a bit disconcerting ) but I can't work out how they are doing it or what they are eating instead of rabbits.
Predators tend to be the easiest explanation for population reduction, and therefore the explanation that should be greeted most sceptically IMO. As far as I know, buzzards and other raptors are increasing mainly due to recovery after persecution by gamekeepers. Buzzards seem to eat a lot of earthworms. In fact, it's been bothering me for a while that I'm not sure I've ever seen one catch anything else. Obviously they do... well, presumably they do.
Anyway hares still seem to be doing very well in Cambridgeshire.
I don't think buzzards are a prey species. They may make off with something small here or there but they're primarily scavengers. They certainly don't eat hares!
They are supposed to take leverets pretty regularly, I believe, though probably only where they're common. I've seen one taking off from a carcass but don't know if they killed it. They supposedly live mainly on rabbits in some places, but maybe it has to be places where rabbits hop about happily in the middle of the day rather than only sneaking out at dawn and dusk.
My Kerry neighbours tell me that the predators of local hares are humans, trapping them for coursing. Big money placed on betting. They’ve cleaned out Limerick and have had to look for new stock to the West, perhaps to the North also.
The (happy) increase in buzzards is an interesting one as it seems to be happening all over the place in the UK. Maybe something to ask Chris Packham and the experts behind the (soon to be axed) BBC Autumn- /Spring- Watch programme. I suspect it's symptomatic of something bigger involving a number of factors. I also see it as an omen, on a different level.
That is truly disgusting. I despair of humans. Have they nothing better to do than chase animals for the kill. For sport. Total airheads. Maybe they should garden a bit.
I associate hares as having longer legs - what we call Jack rabbits ala Bugs Bunny and that cocky hare in Aesops tale with the tortoise. Rabbits are bunnies. Have no idea if it’s correct. Here in the suburbs we have lot of rabbits , I see more here on a walk than at our cottage.
Topic suggestion: What is the best argument you have encounteted for grounding a morality of universal human dignity within a non-Christian materialist worldview? (i.e. "secular" human rights)
This topic was sparked by the date on Paul's 2nd event in Dublin at the bottom of the email; the 4th of June is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It got me thinking about Communist horrors in general since they explicitly ascribe to the whole Marxist "Religion is the opium of the masses" craic (Holodomor, Kulak persecutions, Gulags, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution etc).
Tolstoy's description of religion as how a person relates to the infinite sits well with me, as does his subsequent suggestion that morality is then downstream of this relationship.
I realize there are experiential components that may be ineffable. However, I am specifically curious what good propositional arguments people have read/heard.
I don't have the premises on hand, but you can certainly find materialist anti-communist thinkers who wrote eloquently for human rights from a secular vantage point: George Orwell comes most immediately to mind, as does Milan Kundera and Mikhail Bulgakov. Perhaps Arendt also, though I'm less familiar with her work.
More recently, there's even a stable of such writers on Substack: Sam Khan (Castalia), Joshua Dolezal (The Recovering Academic), and Duncan Reyburn (Eucatastrophologist). These are eclectic writers I'd classify as anti-totalitarian but still classically-liberal without reference to religious sources (aside from Reyburn, last I'd checked).
My question, Ciarán, is what would prompt one to seek an "argument" for a morality based on universal human dignity within a non-Christian materialist view, or any context? Would it be needed to persuade people, to reassure someone who is following that morality willy-nilly? An "argument" seems to straitjacket morality in a way, in that if x is true, then I will do y. Or if there is any doubt that x is true, maybe I don't have to do y.
I tend to be more accepting of behavior toward me based on a personal, non-ideologically driven sense of what is right and wrong. But that may be because I see myself as an individual and hope others treat me as such. I do not respond particularly warmly, for example, to Christians in my life who I feel are being nice to me because their religion tells them to treat me so, or to union members supporting me because I, like them, are suffering from pay inequities. I guess it's the "because" problem.
Brilliant question. My response to which is probably twofold.
Firstly, the superficial answer: I am simply a philosophy nerd who enjoys grappling with propositional arguments around big questions in general. A "lover of knowledge" for its own sake.
Secondly, the spicier answer: I have been strongly influenced by books like Tom Holland's "Dominion" and Sperry's "The Idea of Human Rights", as well as religious writers like MLK Jnr and Tolstoy amongst others. All of which contribute viscerally, in more or less direct ways, to the case that modern human rights (1948 Universal Declaration) are based on Christian universalism. "Neither jew nor Greek" etc.
As someone steeped in Nietzsche who is seeing Christendom's Christianity recede, and someone concerned about the way totalitarian anti-human quasi-religions have been able to garner so much cultural territory in its wake (namely Covidianism, Wokism, Climatism), I am strained to find anything even resembling philosophically solid ground that may help the postmodern West from unmooring itself from the sacredness of the individual.
Please clarify. I don't understand your perspective : "help the postmodern West FROM unmooring itself from the sacredness of the individual." Does that mean that you desire our current direction to be away from the sacredness of the individual ?
I make a distinction between "person" and "individual". I believe that the "individual" is an Enlightenment perspective that paradoxically weakens the case for the person who can be, and often is ambivalent, thus divided within himself. Ants... are individuals, but human beings are not.
Lately I've started reevaluating just how likely it is that I'll live to see the system truly come crashing down. Unlike many, it's something that I grew up almost expecting, not just fantasizing about - even if I haven't done my best to prepare for it. Now it suddenly strikes me as less likely that it'll happen at all.
Take the Black Death. Makes the last three years look like kids playing doctor. Up to a third of the population of Europe died. Did any one of the continent's major institutions fall? The Churches of east and west stayed standing; the feudal order didn't fall apart; the Hundred Years' War continued. Plenty of things that changed over the following centuries could be traced back to that period, but society didn't splinter permanently or get turned upside down.
However naively, I've always drawn a certain comfort from the idea of total civilizational collapse. Yes, there's a good chance I wouldn't survive it myself, but it's always capped by the thought of the survivors starting afresh, eventually, at the local scale, living in a way that's at least vaguely recognizable from history. Most tech-dystopian scenarios, I think, offer a comfort of their own as well: the notion that networks of control will come to feel intense and alien enough that total rebellion will appear as the only sensible response.
Perhaps the scariest scenario of all is what's most likely to happen: that things will keep getting worse in all kinds of ways that'll feel more or less normal; that we'll all be waiting for the point to come where we say "I can't accept this," but it'll pass most of us right by; that even if you do decide and manage to build a life for your children outside the total system, the system will still be there when they grow up, and most of your kids will one day give you a big hug, walk out the front door, and go plug themselves right into that system.
I suppose much of the above is covered by things that Paul's already written and that we've likely all thought about. But I know there are some who take different views of the future, and I'd like to hear from them - particularly those who think it really will all come crashing down.
I think what may be different from the future we are heading towards and other past crashes is the totalising and global ecological and resource catastrophe.
We are living as if the world and its resources are unlimited and have built our economic systems on the premise of ever-expanding growth. However, this is a serious fallacy as the earth and its resources are fundamentally limited (see Wendell Berry and Herman Daly for excellent thoughts on this and I have done a piece here https://overthefield.substack.com/p/limitless-desires-in-a-limited-world).
Too much growth makes something very vulnerable. I would say our economic systems are well past the point where further growth is really just pouring more fuel on the fire for a future crash. Plus our ecological systems are really feeling the strain (climate change just being one manifestation of the "groaning") - and I don't think technological fixes will come to our rescue.
But in the C14th systems for survival were not highly complex and centralised like they are today. People back then knew how to subsist.
All we need is for the banks shut to down, or diesel deliveries to stop, and we're in real trouble. We're like pet hamsters waiting for our food to drop into our cage/show up on the supermarket shelves.
I think I can fairly post this as a reply to both you and Hadden: undoubtedly, we're in a much worse position as individuals to handle breakdowns in civilization than we were in 1350. (Partly because we're living so much "as individuals" to start with, but even at the community level, we're much more dependent on having things pumped in).
My concern is more to do with the resilience of systems of power themselves. Unless humanity is obliterated or well nigh obliterated, I can't help but think that there's a certain core number of the elite who are well enough insulated to maintain their position even after a massive shrinkage in global supply capacity and an unprecedented banking crash. Enough of a core that they could reestablish networks of control, in one form or another, over most of the world's population. (Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean we'd all get the cushier bits of the total system back: a cobalt mine in Katanga and an apple store in Seattle are both just dandy as far as the Machine's concerned.)
I console myself that the high tech society that we currently have is as a direct result of the complex connections between 8 billion people.
Lop a few billion people off and complexity will fall back.
Without the tech, and without cheap abundant energy, the ruling class cannot exert close control. Hence the saying from Chinese antiquity "The mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away."
We’d all be better off by a dramatic shift that unsettles and alarms the masses. But I fear no such luck. It will continue to be a slow incremental creep. A steady drip drip drip that goes unnoticed and totally absorbed by the spongey little minds/natures of the numbed out masses. Those awake will remain awake. Those numb will remain numb but get plunged into deeper inhumanity. They’ll be full fleshbots. At the same time our little group of eyes wide open non conformists will be forced into greater and deeper isolation and social rejection.
I’m done thinking or hoping for a revolt or resurrection prompted by man himself. Only God can light a fire in the souls of willing fleshbots sufficient to restore their humanity!
All we can do is hang onto our own and attempt to live beautiful fully human lives until our Lord calls us home.
I have a book from the 1930's which is a collection of travels pieces on various locations in the West. In one of these pieces the author visits Palm Springs, and ponders the significance of movie stars and moguls who go there to dress up as cowboys and "stab themselves with the primitive." What, he asks, is behind this sudden enthusiasm for the desert? His answer is that "Modern civilization has been geared up to such a frightful rate of speed that it is becoming unendurable."
I have adopted that explanation, which I have shortened to "The pace of modern life is unendurable." I find it useful to employ this phrase when someone questions why I don't travel, or why I live a semi-hermit existence. Try it sometime; it just rolls off the tongue.
Good morning everyone. Let's talk about how some parts of the internet think the banking mini(?) crisis will be a means to ushering in the digital currency some of us are dreading. Thoughts?
H.
Do you think there is a form of currency that doesn’t depend on people’s perception of its value? Which element produces ‘value’ in laboratory experiments?
I couldn’t agree more. Gangsters. The lot of them. Even the Federal Reserve is comprised of a bunch of private banks. All smoke and mirrors as they said in the Wizard of Oz. It’s not a children’s story at all. It’s about the shysters who run the money system.
It's the same old same old. Create a problem, then usher in the solution you have waiting in the wings. They have been setting this up for years.
Another problem is that many of these banks which are falling are "regional" ones (albeit still huge), which means further consolidation and power of the mega international banks. In the UK, HSBC have bought up Silicon Valley Bank's UK arm for £1 - further strengthening the hand of HSBC.
Honestly, I wish we'd stop backing the banks and let them fail. There's no way to convince the executives and investors not to take on excessive risk other than to let them see what really happens instead of letting the government fix it. It would hurt and could have rippling effects through the economy. But it's about the only way they are going to be encouraged not to be bad actors. It has the added benefit of shifting the consequences to those who invested in high risk activities and the executives as opposed to the tax payers. The administration can insure us all it wants that the taxpayers aren't going to foot a single penny of the bill, but I don't believe it. The government is far better at laundering money than any crime organization out there...
We can't. The Empire must continue its war on Ukraine, and this cannot be questioned. At the same time, labor must be brought to heel and rich people cannot be allowed to lose money.
Since "bailout" is a dirty word, what will happen is a de facto bailout, where the People That Matter will be made whole, in order that the objectives listed above may continue to be advanced.
Only one dimensional "good guys:" versus "bad guys" narratives can justify warmongering and completely silence reason. Yay war ! Give us back that good old Cold War.
One side invaded Ukraine and continues to commit war crimes. I rather blame the invaders there.
One side allowed Russia to invade Ukraine. One side did not act effectively if they wanted to prevent an invasion. One side baited Russia into invading Ukraine then reneged on their promises of NATO support for Ukraine. One side would rather go back to a Cold War the World cannot afford.
n.b. looking at the stock markets right now, that seems to be the market consensus as well.
Bond yields way down, however.
Financial meltdowns , the War in Ukraine, digital currency etc. will make the powerful more powerful, the rich richer ,the poor poorer and totally controlled.
So far that’s exactly what’s happened with these two US banks; FDIC is protecting the depositors but letting the investors and management lose their money. There is even an investigation into bonuses paid last month to the upper level officers.
Excuse me if I don't feel comforted by that. I have no faith that the government is actually going to do anything about it. They will stand up, like Elizabeth Warren, descrying everything that happened, and then they will do nothing. It will fade into oblivion with no action really being taken other than to say that they are taking action. And the extremely short attention span of Americans will allow it to fade away with nothing ever really happening ... until the hand wringing at the next crisis where, again, nothing will be done other than platitudes. Rinse and repeat.
Agreed! Just let all financial institutions and all governments fail! Return to the old ways.
The irony is that it seems that SVB didn't bother to employ basic interest rate hedging strategies at all. If they had done that, or even done a slightly better job of communicating their need for capital as part of their share raise, they'd be fine.
Now, what that says if these are "the best and brightest", and their defalcations are so obvious that even a feral cat can point them out, is left as an exercise to the reader.
I read somewhere that American multinationals (!!!) are no longer mindlessly recruiting graduates of the Ivy League schools into top entry level positions.
The tide is turning, maybe. If you look at the internet management fiasco (and the Covid scientific fiasco), algorithms kill living commerce and make... bad business. They make excellent ideology and propaganda, but bad business (and science). The question is : how long can you keep on telling yourself that black is white before the ship goes down, or Johnny points his finger and says "The Emperor has no clothes" (but... who will listen to Johnny in our current situation ?)
I find that many people are more interested in CREDITING the people in power with evil intentions than contemplating the terrifying ? idea that we (and our leaders) no longer know which side is up, which side is down, and that this is a significant handicap in a complex world.
Everything, everywhere all at once ! Digital currency is definitely coming and maybe even a guaranteed annual income if the shit hits the fan (which it could in a chain reaction) .. I wouldn't mind it if it digital money wasn't 100% trackable and able to be turned off by governmental issuers. Did you see the Canadian Government self-congratulating themselves for the effectiveness of freezing protesters bank accounts and restoring "social order" . This does not bode well. How close does this put us to a utopian era of totalitarian technocracy?
A little faith here, maybe...
Digital money can't be 100% trackable, because then we would live in an unfallen world, and I haven't noticed recently that we live in an unfallen world. The 100% trackable is the meaning of the word "absolute" and that word is safely lodged... on God's side, and not on the creature's.
For sure, the number of people able to wiggle out from under the heavy yoke of government tracking will be reduced. There will be "precious" few who will be able to escape, but they will be there, and outside of the blinding light, too. Who will they be ? That's difficult to say.
When you start building the tower of Babel, the shadow of the tower of Babel goes up with it too. Inevitable.
But you have raised the issue which for me, is the most important one we should be talking about : the creation of virtual state via computers, and the destruction of physical contact between us thanks to our digital technology that goes, and takes us, all over the planet in the twinkle of an eye. Another big question : just exactly what enforcement will the virtual state force on us ?
digital bread doth not sustain us....more faith please!
The Bank of Ireland has said that it will keep cash. Apparently their customers prefer cash to digital transactions. Funny that. I think that some of these financial crises are manufactured. They always seem to turn out so well for the banks and financiers. The 2008 crash was great for the banks. They got bailed out with government money, our money, because they were too big to fail - unlike the rest of us. So is this how capitalism works? The rich get millions and billions in dole money to keep them viable, that is, rich, if the system fails. And it wasn't the system that failed them. It was them. They were responsible for their own failures and collapse. The rest of us lost our jobs and houses and were fed a few scraps. Just enough to stop us realising what's really going on. Keep the voters placated. They'd keep voting for the same system or party then, that fails them every time.
How do they so accurately predict inflation for six months hence. And it happens, on the dot. Do the banks and government decide in advance that they need to make money worth less. Couldn't have the plebs accumulating wealth now could we? I mean you could put it under the mattress! And strikes for better wages might actually really mean more money for the plebs.
With digital currency you lose complete control over whatever wealth you accumulate in monetary terms. The banks could change the value of your money in a heartbeat. Who knows what they would get up to. Me. I'm definitely an under the bed saver. Metaphorically speaking.
The more you dive into banking and investing, the more you see it for what it is, one big scam on the people who don't play along. The Federal Reserve has been a scam since the beginning and is at the root of all of these ups and downs. God will judge those who get rich dishonestly. Digital money is coming, like it or not, but it will not be soon. They are still working out getting everyone on the smart grid. The reason they need so much electricity and internet is to put this financial control into action. Everyone must have a phone and internet and the ability to charge their phones reliably. They are in the process of 'developing' third world nations so they can get their minerals for the batteries as well as get them connected. In the meantime they will keep eliminating the non-productive humans. This is the machine at its root.
I am watching the World Health Organisation review their International Health Regulations(2005) in the light of the COVID pandemic. I wonder if I am the only one for whom these discussion give rise to concern?
The amendments being considered would seem to me to offer the WHO far greater power in the event of future health emergencies. For example in the text below it is proposed to omit the phrase” the implementation of these regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons” and replace it with “ implementation of these regulations shall be based on the principles of equity, inclusivity and coherence”
1. The implementation of these Regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities of the States Parties, taking into
consideration their social and economic development.
This rewrite and many others being proposed in this review appear to copper fasten the future powers of the WHO and their power to over rule nation states in health policy.
Is this what we want? Are the public in Ireland discussing this, are the Irish Government in agreement with it?
We have just come out of 100 years of searching for national autonomy, are we going to give it away without a national discussion ? Could we have such a discussion?
I would hope we can , these proposals are to be discussed over the coming months, might we have a say? Would our politicians consider this worth considering? Let’s ask
Ger Murphy
Ha! We both wrote about the evil WHO. No, we do not want this treaty.
Great idea, Ger. I wish Ireland would have such a national conversation about ... well, just about anything that's happening here. But it would have to be done from the outside, because the media and political class seem to have everything locked up. To me it looks like Ireland lost its autonomy some time ago. The place is run by the EU and Silicon Valley now. Might be time for some radicalism.
On this Paul, a dilemma; my main take of many from observing COVID is what a disaster it is when the State interferes in people's private lives. Yet this interference, which you have correctly divined as stemming from a technocratic world view that problems are there to be solved and we need big tech / big organisations / big regulation to achieve it, is arguably necessary with something like climate change.
I mean you correctly identified the Great Reset as a conspiracy theory hiding in plain sight. But I find myself agreeing with some of the ideas, such as that we should own cars and property communally, as being a useful offset to the mindless consumerism / individualism which is destroying the Earth and corrupts our characters.
So how then do we square that circle, of seeing the evils of he COVID response but also seeing the destruction of consumption that perhaps requires State interference?
Yes definitely true. I was going to throw Animal Farm in as a likely foil to the above being a solution.
Maybe the answer is that if you need to impose limits on individualism and consumption then society itself is sick and you won't be able to solve it with restrictions.
Individualism is a relatively recent concept. Maybe four hundred years old at most. Before that people did live communally, unless you were an emperor or some such. People lived in community, worked in community and survived, in community. The problem with the concept of individualism is the lie that as individuals we actually make our own lives. Great. If you don't have to spend time minding sheep, sheering them, spinning and weaving the wool, just to make your own clothes, or growing your own food and harvesting it.
Just staying alive is a life long and life - filling exercise. We can only be so called individuals if there are armies of 'slaves' out there manufacturing every thing we need so we don't have to do it for ourselves. Then we have the space and luxury of time, to go an do what we would like. I haven't noticed an awful lot of golf courses in places where people still live close to the earth. Not enough time. Nor did I see many indigenous people in Dilli playing golf or being' individuals'. They were too busy selling stuff on the roadways or surviving in shanties with no water supply other than what flowed down the sides of the roads, carrying effluent..
Agree. The obvious solution to a lot of the problems of modern culture and society is a return to the land, to subsistence, to community. I think most of us don't want that though as we've gotten very used to our creature comforts and our on demand lives. But it is good for us. Its closer to the soul.
I did do that. Return to the land. It was the most creative and productive time of my life. I had what I needed. A dwelling. Land around me. Friends. I didn’t have a lot of money but in many ways I didn’t need a lot. The on demand life can tend to distract from really being in the world.
But do we really have the luxury of time to go and do what we would like with all our money and convenience in the Western world ? Where I'm living the pressure to go fast... to work hard, fast, and to play hard and fast is getting out of control. When we work and play... hard and fast, life can seem exhilirating, but when we are not working and playing hard and fast we are crashed out on a sofa, recovering from.... working and playing hard and fast, maybe ?
The faster you are able to go, sooner of later, the faster you HAVE TO GO ? The point at which new, previously dreamed about freedoms suddenly show themselves as our new chains ?
Recently I told a man who has a psychiatric diagnosis and can't get a job that he STILL HAS something extremely precious : he has... TIME. What good is lots of money and stuff if you don't have time to spend your money, for example ?
I know that in Rome, republic and empire, business was done in the morning, and the afternoon was spent.... in the baths, libraries, in FREE TIME. We have technology and lots of abstract numbers doubling as money (but not hard cash...) and little free time. Plus we seem to have developed the idea that if you are cooking/cleaning you are a slave, even in your OWN HOUSE ?? Where did that come from ?...
Could we possibly have gotten caught up in that old trap of BUSI-NESS to eat up all the LEISURE time that we could be enjoying, or eating up the time that we could spend doing necessary things and getting pleasure out of them ?
BUSI-NESS is a big trap. It is designed somewhat to keep us from thinking about our HUMAN CONDITION which is naturally tragic, really, if you take the time to think about it.
I do have the time, but that is because I am one of the few winners of capitalism. I'm lucky enough to earn enough money in what I do do be able to have a lot of free time to devote to kids, pursuits, and thinking about how shit the overall system is, thinking that brings me places like here. I agree that huge chunks of the population are mere serfs in all of this and that that is sustained by compliant media. The funniest thing for me is how, in a world of appalling and increasing wealth inequality, the class politics I grew up with in the 1980s has almost entirely disappeared, replaced with the faux egalitarianism of the woke. A distraction and probably a deliberate one as well, because the number one discriminator in modern society remains economic power.
Individualism never works for long if you know history and its cycles. Communalism kicks back in sooner or later for good or evil depending on whether you are kicking or being kicked.
We are persons-in-community. Without both sides of ourselves we will continually get it wrong. Individualism and collectivism (the actual contrary to individualism, not communalism) are both delusions, as far as I can tell. Ideologies of either are dangerous.
I don’t think the Great Reset wants cars and property to be owned communally. It wants the masses to rent cars and property from a tiny technocratic elite. It needs consumption too. Lots of it. Just highly centrally determined (via CBDCs): no meat; lots of processed products.
Yes.
Paul, the Republic of Ireland, it seems to me is now a true "vassal state" par excellence .. Politically serving the EU, slavishly, obediently following its agenda in every detail of domestic and foreign policy. Economically, Ireland is a captive of the US multinationals. Skimming off a tiny percentage of the latter's huge revenue streams in tax in an elaborate tax avoidance scam, whereby huge US tech, medical scientific, and pharma are located here. In return, the deliberately light tax skim of these vast corporate revenue streams provides the funds for Ireland's bloated, and often inefficient public sector, as well as the extraordinary plethora of semi-state sector entities, and the myriad NGO's in Ireland which effectively monopolise public discourse on all aspects of politics and culture.
The economic, political, and cultural foundations of this state are utterly compromised by these relationships.
It seems to me, having successfully sloughed off the rule of the British Empire through a popular and radical quest for national independence and identity. The indigenous political and cultural elites of Ireland (who were often the staunchest allies of British rule) , have now embraced the USA /EU neo-liberal empire with the same conspicuously slavish devotion which was once demonstrated for the Vatican in the early days of the newly created Irish state. Over eight hundred years of colonial rule leaves a huge political and cultural legacy.
It looks like nearly everywhere has or is in the process of losing the ability to determine even the most basic things for oneself and those around us. What would a Christian Radicalism look like in regard to what we are in and continually unfolds? I think we'd better figure that out quickly.
I'm going to think a bit more about that in the next essay, though without a specifically Christian focus. I hope to get to that focus later in the year though. Or maybe it's a podcast conversation Jack!
Things are actually moving along! The first remote test will be happening soon. If all goes well I will be in touch. But it would make a very interesting podcast topic, no doubt.
You are not alone !
Ireland has already lost its sovereignty, otherwise Dublin's protected Georgian buildings would be pulled down in order for some uber wealthy 'developer'/ investment fund, or NGO, to build multi-storey monstrosities in their place. Mostly still empty by the way
Hey, I'm not knocking that. You have to live in the Western U.S. (outside of Californian, New Mexican missions, maybe) to see what multiple cheap box construction regularly razed to allow room for the new cheap box construction does to your spirit and sense of history.
"We have just come out of 100 years of searching for national autonomy, are we going to give it away without a national discussion?"
"National autonomy" died when the nation-state was smothered to death by the global corporate state aka Paul's Machine.
Our elites are entirely postnational and only consider their citizenry a burden at best, or maybe a cow to be milked, but otherwise gagged "in the name of Democracy".
The young, who are addled by their devices and will agree to anything as long as it their friends are doing the same, don't know or care about nations, histories, all those old dead white men etc—the entire circumference of their lives resides inside their machines and their identities and figuring out how to wield these for attention.
Those on the left side of the aisle, from college kid to the corporate suites, will be told that handing over political autonomy to an unelected globalist class has to be done to save us all from the evil bigot reactionaries—either give us all power or Hitler is coming!—and they will agree to it as long as it allows them to beat up on and feel superior to their blood enemies, conservatives.
As for conservatives, all of this is aimed directly at them: patriotism, nationalism, religion, the Old Ways, whatever you want to call em, are the final obstacles to total control, and everyone espousing them will either be stoned out of the public square by a barrage of bigotry accusations or canceled, deplatformed, driven out of civil society.
James Corbett calls that group that exists outside of national concerns the “Superclass” . He says they support their mutual interests, not those of the underclass. Such as by being cavalier about cutting off our current energy source, oil and gas, before making sure another source is in place. They do not care how many people starve to death.
I’ll start. I read an article from 1945 ,that I will find the link for later , which stated that the reason we have wars is because children are taught the concept of good and evil. This man was saying that the way to prevent another war was to eradicate the world of religion. He was a psychiatrist and the first director-general of the WHO. His plan was to use education and churches to re-educate adults and educate children using psychological methods. I think we can say that this did not turn out well. https://archive.org/details/psychiatry-of-enduring-peace-and-social-progress-chisholm-and-sullivan-1946/page/n2/mode/1up?view=theater
People who want what's best for us are usually nuts and/or evil.
Isn’t it enough trouble wanting and achieving what’s best just for yourself and your immediate loved ones? Who has the balls to think they can plan it for all of humanity? That alone makes you nuts.
God is Not Great, 2007, by the late, great, and erudite C.H, with a flood of evidence pre and since 1945. A plethora of other writing by others during the last 80 years, all far more compelling than less sophisticated efforts from last century.
Is it? Indigenous people in Australia never warred with each other. If there was an issue then the two tribal groups would face off and the first person to throw the spear, won the war for his side. Then they all went home. They knew a thing or two. 500,000 years of living as tribal people certainly seems to have made them wise.
Religion doesn't cause war. Humans cause war. Religion is just one of the myriad excuses they find for fighting it.
How do you empirically know that humans conceived of religion as opposed to receiving religious truths via revelation? It sounds like you're assuming a universal truth without having to justify it.
The religion of modern man posits that death is natural and indeed a necessary creative force. Survival of the fittest presupposes might is right and therefore violence and oppression as a universal law - the creative force that brought us into being. So I'm not sure how you allow yourself to presuppose that violence, death and oppression are bad in the first place. There is no objective or scientific justification for opposing violence and oppression in the modern world view. It's just an untenable arranged marriage between residual Christian values stripped of any grounding and secular scientism which needs to borrow something from outside of itself in order to salve a conscience it doesn't objectively recognise.
How does anyone look at the 20th century and conclude religion is the root cause of war?
War mongers find reasons to galvanise an acceptance of war by the great unwashed. Whether it's because war is supposed to deliver Freedom and Democracy in the American way, or fighting for religious reasons, it's a way to get people on board the idea of a war because it is defending something valuable. In the end I think it's always about wealth, resources and territory. That is, power.
I think you are incorrect about the root cause of most wars. What do you think the War in Ukraine is about? I think I'd put greed, power and control of resources pretty high up on the list of causes. I imagine a sense of moral outrage is about the only thing that ever stopped a war...(before it was desired)
In my observation all isms and especially the political ones lead to conflict, division and disempowerment of people.
Surely the religious impulse reflects something authentic in the human spirit. The Tao, or Buddhism and Christianity talk about how to live an authentic life, in non shallow, truly enriching ways that allow a person to see something deeper at the heart of all things. Call it God if you wish. There's a lot of wisdom there. It's not just dogma. It is about the Tao, if you like, the Way. How to travel through life in a caring, loving and aware way. With people and the natural world.
And it's also being kept going because it is a money maker. Supplying all those weapons. The military industrial complex must be delighted at the money they are making. There is constant war. It is an industry at this stage. Especially for the USA.
I thought it was about territory. And more laterly acquiring resources form others who have them. Such as oil and minerals. The day will come when it's about water.
What are the root cause of wars?
Putin and Russian leadership have many reasons for wanting influence and control back over Ukraine; wealth, resources, security, naval access , historical precedents, national identity, Russian population etc.
Territory and resources definitely ! Water is I'm sure is already a hidden agenda.
Despite the supposed evidence against the obvious reality of an intelligent designer, people continue to look for God. They just look for Him in science, political movements, sex, and alternative spirituality.
Important overlooked text: Cavanaugh's 'The Myth of Religious Violence,' OUP, 2009.
Thank you
Yeah, modernity was nuts. Interestingly, this shows the principle that the true counter-tradition is an inversion of the highest spiritual truths, not just their rejection. Because we fell when we knew Good and Evil, and the Tao Te Ching says that when Tao is lost, morality arises. To attain realization is to move beyond Good and Evil, but not like this psychiatrist or Nietzsche said. The denizens of Dostoyevsky's The Dream of a Ridiculous Man are great examples of what I mean by that.
Hares (especially juveniles) also have the strange habit of bounding right up to observers. I have had the privilege of this happening to me twice when a curious hare has, from a distance, strolled up to within a few meters of me while being clearly aware of my presence. It is quite an extraordinary moment when a wild creature is curious about you - there's nothing else quite like it.
I had a similar experience with Gentoo penguins in the Falkland Islands. They were seemingly as curious of me as I was of them. A moment I'd no doubt appreciate all the more, now I am no longer in the first flush of youth!
That is a dream encounter for me! (always wanted to see a penguin in the wild)
I have also been followed by a fox and a robin (not at the same time!) - but both were probably after food!
There's something of this playfulness in domestic rabbits too (I prefer "hare" but as an American can't escape the vernacular). My parents have a rabbit who prefers to be shooed into his hutch at dark, as though he's asking to be tucked in.
Rabbits and hares are not the same animal:
https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-rabbits-and-hares
My bad, thanks for clarifying. Now I'm just glad I chase and shoo a rabbit, rather than a hare.
😁
Would love to see you and Mary Harrington do a regular podcast, maybe once a month.
I quite like that idea!
Regarding hares and Celtic mythology: my family and I watched the movie “Harvey” the other night. A delightful piece all around, and in light of the new black eye medical science currently wears, insightful. A hare is the star, although the Americans insist on calling him a ‘rabbit’.
Harvey is a superb movie, in my opinion one of James Stewart's best. The 6 foot "White Rabbit" (Harvey) is deemed by Dowd played by Stewart to be a "pooka" a shape shifting Irish spirit animal. However, it may also be an hallucinatory bi-product of Dowd's alcoholism. This amusing and thought provoking film, on surface a light comedy, delves at times quite deeply into the possibility of other layers of reality, as well as the desire of many people, through substance abuse, to escape from what Marx referred to as the "heartless world" of rational and materialist reality.
The idea that addiction is a subconscious and warped bi-product of the necessity for the filling of a "God shaped hole" in one's life, lays at the heart of the spirituality to be found in the success of the 12 Step Recovery Fellowships, pioneered by the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. The film
"Harvey" intriguingly asked a lot of very interesting and relevant questions, whilst remaining an endearing and heart warming comedy drama.
I played Dr. Sanderson in a production of Harvey at our local community theater a couple of years ago. Alas, our last weekend of performances was canceled due to a new COVID surge, but it was still a good run.
A neighbour told me how she was suffering from unusual heavy bleeding and pain with her menstrual periods. We know this is happening to vast numbers of women since the injection of Frankenstein technology into women and children. It seems such an apt symbol of the dysregulation of human life and our planet. The disrespect for life itself and for the life givers. I want to start a group of these women called Women on the RagE. We’ll march to the government and medical and corporate offices holding aloft the bloody evidence of women’s suffering and lay it at their doors.
This was also one of the many symptoms of Covid itself.
Can I get some book info/advice? I often get my "leisure" reading from Standard Ebooks; they just released two books by Richard Jefferies: Amaryllis at the Fair; and After London. If links are allowed:
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/richard-jefferies
From the descriptions, they seemed to be in Kingsnorthian territory (or perhaps Kingsnorth has lingered in Jefferiesian territory?). Is that a fair connection? I've never encountered Jefferies before. I'm interested to know how they would fit in the "Abbey's" reading room... Thanks!
David / Fife, UK
Quick question for you paul.... are you going to be one of the architects of Jordan Peterson's Tower of babel?
What does that mean?
Paul, I think Frank is referring to this: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/jordan-peterson-takes-on-the-tower-of-babel
"Peterson sees the story as a warning about the dangers of idolizing the intellect in utopian attempts to make heaven on earth."
Frank seems to be suggesting that you are trying to build an utopia (correct me if I am wrong Frank). However, your writings rather than pointing toward an "impractical, idealistic scheme for social and political reform", carve out a path toward what makes us human, connects us to reality, and realigns us with God's creation.
Well, I don't think that's quite what the Babel story is about, and it does sound suspiciously like Peterson retooling the Bible again for his own ends (which are usually either to criticise the left or promote self-help.) Either way, I've been an anti-utopian all my life and I'm not changing now!
What do you think the Tower of Babel is about? Is it about attempts of any kind to achieve unity being wrong?
I think it's about what happens when humans try to achieve unity - and build their own heaven - under their own steam, rather than following God's will.
It is about pride. Believing that together we can reach the height of God. At Babel, God comes down to the tower and scatters mankind. This scattering is a mercy. A leveling of the tower of pride. Because unity is not people + people. Unity is God + people.
I tend to read it as specifically about empire. Ziggurats were thought to be places where humans (mostly priests and kings) met with the gods. When I taught the Bible at a small private Christian university in the US, I used to illustrate the story by showing students this image of an Akkadian emperor striding up a mountain to meet his god, literally trampling on his enemies as he did so: https://smarthistory.org/victory-stele-of-naram-sin/
Sorry Paul my comment was not very clear. Peterson is putting together what he describes as a cabal of individuals... the best and the brightest from around the world, specifically Europe, to create an antithesis to the world economic forum.... these individuals will build a structure that will reach to heaven and change the world for the benefit of all Humanity I am sure.
Ah, I see. Well, I've not received an invitation. And I don't think it would be my cup of tea. It would depend, afte all, on what the proposed alternative was. I don't think JP and I would see eye to eye on that one.
Obviously my flippant description of his project indicates my position on it but I would think that if he is serious he would need somebody exactly like you. I know that Jonathan Pageau is part of the project and perhaps with enough sensible people in the mix it won't end up being another fall of man.
I wouldn't involve myself in anything Peterson-led. He's interesting enough, and he does some useful work, but he is in danger of misleading people in a lot of different directions, I think, especially as regards Christianity. His role as self-appointed unbaptised spokesman for the church is starting to grate on me.
Indeed. These sorts of projects are intellectual hubris of the highest order and scare the shit out of me.
I discovered Orthodoxy because of Pageau and owe a debt of gratitude for that, but I am not so sure about some of the things he is up to lately.
Jonathan is a friend and so I worry about him but not that his heart is not true. In this endeavor he is going to be my canary in a coal mine and the more like him that we can put at the table the more we will understand when it goes off the rails. And it will go off the rails.
While like you, I don't have faith in these guys, I do think we can do things for the benefit of all humanity. There's too much suffering in the world to just chill and do nothing, and as it is, reducing the suffering of the world is rather doable!
https://squarecircle.substack.com/p/the-trolley-problem-is-all-too-real
Well, of course. Always work to be done. Love and charity and all the other virtues. I don't know about 'the benefit of all humanity', but for the benefit of particular people and places, yes.
I feel like in spiritual quarters, not enough is said about Good Works. I feel whenever someone is going to really elaborate on something spiritual (like in this project), there should be a preface that goes like: 'Spirituality is about many things, but it is definitely about leading a life of service. Wanna make sure your spirituality is real? Then start giving to charity and volunteering your time. The charity should preferably be an effective one, like the Against Malaria Foundation.'
It's very easy and common for spirituality to just be this thing that is locked in your head without helping the world in any way. And it's relevant to this project, because being rooted in a specific place does not mean you don't have a duty to help distant Africa. Summoning up the energy to actually start doing Good Works generates more energy that can then be used to make things like your vision of reactionary radicalism into a reality.
It's not so much that you, specifically, are not doing Good Works (I don't know the answer to that question), but if the readership gets fired up about this, it would do a lot of good. Maybe you need to start scourging your readers and viewers, or attempt persuasion, if that would be more effective.
It's not my job to persaude my readers to undertake good works! I will say that in the Orthodox faith this is central. The faith-works argument that took off in the West with the Reformation has never been a thing in the East. Both are obviously intertwined. By their fruits shall you know them.
I don't know who said "God save me from my friends ; my enemies I can handle myself" but the person had a rather good point, I think. I constantly keep in mind that Goethe remarked way back when that he could see the time coming in the Western world when it would be one vast hospital, and... after much thought, I can understand his concern. It is not easy to reason or observe from this vantage point, but we can always try before assuming that we are in a good position to help.
Good to remember that the Enlightenment philosophers petered out into the position of observing that we would do best to cultivate our gardens. Good advice, I think.
And I try to keep in mind that, like everybody else, I do not know what I am doing when I do it.
On a more concrete level, I think that some African countries and Indian provinces have actually made it through the Covid episode than most of our sophisticated, doped on high tech Western countries with a panicked population. Do they really need OUR HELP ?? Who are we to say/think so ? Just who do we think we are with our good intentions ?...
I agree. I don't like the abstractions any more. They have gotten a little stale for my taste.
I think he might be referring to the arc projector or whatever it's called.
Maybe this has already been asked (so many comments):
Paul, do you feel tempted to discuss your theories with the latest technological hype called ChatGPT?
I hope to steer clear for as long as I can, but forever is probably not possible. I resisted computers for 15 years and mobile phones for even longer, but ended up in their 'nets' anyway.
In recent article Mary Harrington referred to Limbic Capitalism. She referenced the historian David Courtwright who states that “limbic capitalism refers to a technologically advanced but socially regressive business system in which global industries, often with the help of complicit governments and criminal organizations, encourage excessive consumption and addiction.” Since hearing this term for the first time, it has stayed with me. I would love to hear the thoughts of other readers.
Agreed! That article really resonated with me and I've been thinking about it a lot. I clicked through to read the interview with Courtwright as well, very thought provoking. I guess the next step is I need to find his book.
Now I need to read that - it sounds excellent. Similar to an article I read recently on how TikTok's algorithm has been designed to be as addictive (and brain-stupefying) as possible for the US market, whereas the Chinese strictly do not allow this algorithm to be used on their own population.
https://gurwinder.substack.com/p/tiktok-may-be-a-chinese-bio-weapon
Not only is the TikTok algorithm highly addictive, it is literally destroying children's ability to learn, creating a TikTok brain syndrome of dopamine-hyped distractedness. See https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/tiktok-time-is-running-out-for-saving
I have never seen or used Tik Tok.
But I know that we started talking about "attention deficit disorder" before TikTok came around, and that U.S. and probably U.K psychiatrists were prescribing medication for this "syndrome" in children before we knew what algorithms were.
If you think that our technology has evolved in order to fit into an anthill organization where intelligence is collective, and not individual, then it is no longer necessary for us as flesh and blood PERSONS to be able to remember thoughts, feelings, and concentrate, when the machine will organize our collective memory and intelligence, and we disappear as persons. We have outsourced our intelligence and memory.
Just how much control to we have over this phenomena as... flesh and blood persons at this time ?
Just like in the Opium Wars.
Have you a link to the article?
It's here: https://reactionaryfeminist.substack.com/p/where-are-the-limbic-anti-capitalists
Thanks...
This is quite helpful, too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA1iBq5YbOA
TL:DR: debt is discipline.
Of Hares and rabbits.
See very few of either these days in rural Derbyshire. What happened? Rabbits in particular used to be a common sight. Is it myxomatosis, habitat loss, land poisoned by overuse of fertilisers, all of those? On the other hand we see an ever increasing number of Buzzards circling overhead. I have nothing against buzzards. It's just weird (or perhaps wyrd) how the predators seem to be in the ascent.
Interesting. We have exactly the same here: crash in hare numbers, more buzzards. I wonder why.
Could be that the increase in Buzzards (they certainly are really common now) is driving behavioural changes in habits (altering feeding times, staying more hidden etc). But I think numbers have never really recovered from myxomatosis, and habitat changes are surely playing a part too.
It is also not known by many that rabbits are a non-native species to the UK (but arguably one that has been very beneficial - the Brecklands habitat wouldn't exist without rabbits, and our raptor population would probably be severely diminished).
Yes. You'd think less prey species = less birds of prey. I can see a poetic / omen like meaning in the increase of predators (you can hear the screeching call of Buzzards much of the time hereabouts, which is nice but also a bit disconcerting ) but I can't work out how they are doing it or what they are eating instead of rabbits.
Possibly feeding on the abundance of road kill as well - a ubiquitous feature of our modern fast societies.
Predators tend to be the easiest explanation for population reduction, and therefore the explanation that should be greeted most sceptically IMO. As far as I know, buzzards and other raptors are increasing mainly due to recovery after persecution by gamekeepers. Buzzards seem to eat a lot of earthworms. In fact, it's been bothering me for a while that I'm not sure I've ever seen one catch anything else. Obviously they do... well, presumably they do.
Anyway hares still seem to be doing very well in Cambridgeshire.
I don't think buzzards are a prey species. They may make off with something small here or there but they're primarily scavengers. They certainly don't eat hares!
They are supposed to take leverets pretty regularly, I believe, though probably only where they're common. I've seen one taking off from a carcass but don't know if they killed it. They supposedly live mainly on rabbits in some places, but maybe it has to be places where rabbits hop about happily in the middle of the day rather than only sneaking out at dawn and dusk.
Perhaps only a dead hare as you suggest buzzards clean up dead stuff quite nicely.
I've wondered if it's because of overgrazing by sheep here in the Welsh uplands. And for the Buzzard there's always plenty of dead sheep around.
My Kerry neighbours tell me that the predators of local hares are humans, trapping them for coursing. Big money placed on betting. They’ve cleaned out Limerick and have had to look for new stock to the West, perhaps to the North also.
The (happy) increase in buzzards is an interesting one as it seems to be happening all over the place in the UK. Maybe something to ask Chris Packham and the experts behind the (soon to be axed) BBC Autumn- /Spring- Watch programme. I suspect it's symptomatic of something bigger involving a number of factors. I also see it as an omen, on a different level.
Oh no, axing Spring Watch program ? What a joy that program.
That is truly disgusting. I despair of humans. Have they nothing better to do than chase animals for the kill. For sport. Total airheads. Maybe they should garden a bit.
Maybe the hares are hiding. I would be hiding if I were a hare.
I associate hares as having longer legs - what we call Jack rabbits ala Bugs Bunny and that cocky hare in Aesops tale with the tortoise. Rabbits are bunnies. Have no idea if it’s correct. Here in the suburbs we have lot of rabbits , I see more here on a walk than at our cottage.
Topic suggestion: What is the best argument you have encounteted for grounding a morality of universal human dignity within a non-Christian materialist worldview? (i.e. "secular" human rights)
This topic was sparked by the date on Paul's 2nd event in Dublin at the bottom of the email; the 4th of June is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It got me thinking about Communist horrors in general since they explicitly ascribe to the whole Marxist "Religion is the opium of the masses" craic (Holodomor, Kulak persecutions, Gulags, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution etc).
Tolstoy's description of religion as how a person relates to the infinite sits well with me, as does his subsequent suggestion that morality is then downstream of this relationship.
I realize there are experiential components that may be ineffable. However, I am specifically curious what good propositional arguments people have read/heard.
I don't have the premises on hand, but you can certainly find materialist anti-communist thinkers who wrote eloquently for human rights from a secular vantage point: George Orwell comes most immediately to mind, as does Milan Kundera and Mikhail Bulgakov. Perhaps Arendt also, though I'm less familiar with her work.
More recently, there's even a stable of such writers on Substack: Sam Khan (Castalia), Joshua Dolezal (The Recovering Academic), and Duncan Reyburn (Eucatastrophologist). These are eclectic writers I'd classify as anti-totalitarian but still classically-liberal without reference to religious sources (aside from Reyburn, last I'd checked).
Excellent thanks. Kundera and Bulgakov are two writers I know by name only and know nothing of their work. I'll check out those Substacks too 👌
My question, Ciarán, is what would prompt one to seek an "argument" for a morality based on universal human dignity within a non-Christian materialist view, or any context? Would it be needed to persuade people, to reassure someone who is following that morality willy-nilly? An "argument" seems to straitjacket morality in a way, in that if x is true, then I will do y. Or if there is any doubt that x is true, maybe I don't have to do y.
I tend to be more accepting of behavior toward me based on a personal, non-ideologically driven sense of what is right and wrong. But that may be because I see myself as an individual and hope others treat me as such. I do not respond particularly warmly, for example, to Christians in my life who I feel are being nice to me because their religion tells them to treat me so, or to union members supporting me because I, like them, are suffering from pay inequities. I guess it's the "because" problem.
Brilliant question. My response to which is probably twofold.
Firstly, the superficial answer: I am simply a philosophy nerd who enjoys grappling with propositional arguments around big questions in general. A "lover of knowledge" for its own sake.
Secondly, the spicier answer: I have been strongly influenced by books like Tom Holland's "Dominion" and Sperry's "The Idea of Human Rights", as well as religious writers like MLK Jnr and Tolstoy amongst others. All of which contribute viscerally, in more or less direct ways, to the case that modern human rights (1948 Universal Declaration) are based on Christian universalism. "Neither jew nor Greek" etc.
As someone steeped in Nietzsche who is seeing Christendom's Christianity recede, and someone concerned about the way totalitarian anti-human quasi-religions have been able to garner so much cultural territory in its wake (namely Covidianism, Wokism, Climatism), I am strained to find anything even resembling philosophically solid ground that may help the postmodern West from unmooring itself from the sacredness of the individual.
Definitely with you on unmooring the West from the sacredness of the individual.
Please clarify. I don't understand your perspective : "help the postmodern West FROM unmooring itself from the sacredness of the individual." Does that mean that you desire our current direction to be away from the sacredness of the individual ?
I make a distinction between "person" and "individual". I believe that the "individual" is an Enlightenment perspective that paradoxically weakens the case for the person who can be, and often is ambivalent, thus divided within himself. Ants... are individuals, but human beings are not.
Lately I've started reevaluating just how likely it is that I'll live to see the system truly come crashing down. Unlike many, it's something that I grew up almost expecting, not just fantasizing about - even if I haven't done my best to prepare for it. Now it suddenly strikes me as less likely that it'll happen at all.
Take the Black Death. Makes the last three years look like kids playing doctor. Up to a third of the population of Europe died. Did any one of the continent's major institutions fall? The Churches of east and west stayed standing; the feudal order didn't fall apart; the Hundred Years' War continued. Plenty of things that changed over the following centuries could be traced back to that period, but society didn't splinter permanently or get turned upside down.
However naively, I've always drawn a certain comfort from the idea of total civilizational collapse. Yes, there's a good chance I wouldn't survive it myself, but it's always capped by the thought of the survivors starting afresh, eventually, at the local scale, living in a way that's at least vaguely recognizable from history. Most tech-dystopian scenarios, I think, offer a comfort of their own as well: the notion that networks of control will come to feel intense and alien enough that total rebellion will appear as the only sensible response.
Perhaps the scariest scenario of all is what's most likely to happen: that things will keep getting worse in all kinds of ways that'll feel more or less normal; that we'll all be waiting for the point to come where we say "I can't accept this," but it'll pass most of us right by; that even if you do decide and manage to build a life for your children outside the total system, the system will still be there when they grow up, and most of your kids will one day give you a big hug, walk out the front door, and go plug themselves right into that system.
I suppose much of the above is covered by things that Paul's already written and that we've likely all thought about. But I know there are some who take different views of the future, and I'd like to hear from them - particularly those who think it really will all come crashing down.
I think what may be different from the future we are heading towards and other past crashes is the totalising and global ecological and resource catastrophe.
We are living as if the world and its resources are unlimited and have built our economic systems on the premise of ever-expanding growth. However, this is a serious fallacy as the earth and its resources are fundamentally limited (see Wendell Berry and Herman Daly for excellent thoughts on this and I have done a piece here https://overthefield.substack.com/p/limitless-desires-in-a-limited-world).
Too much growth makes something very vulnerable. I would say our economic systems are well past the point where further growth is really just pouring more fuel on the fire for a future crash. Plus our ecological systems are really feeling the strain (climate change just being one manifestation of the "groaning") - and I don't think technological fixes will come to our rescue.
But in the C14th systems for survival were not highly complex and centralised like they are today. People back then knew how to subsist.
All we need is for the banks shut to down, or diesel deliveries to stop, and we're in real trouble. We're like pet hamsters waiting for our food to drop into our cage/show up on the supermarket shelves.
I think I can fairly post this as a reply to both you and Hadden: undoubtedly, we're in a much worse position as individuals to handle breakdowns in civilization than we were in 1350. (Partly because we're living so much "as individuals" to start with, but even at the community level, we're much more dependent on having things pumped in).
My concern is more to do with the resilience of systems of power themselves. Unless humanity is obliterated or well nigh obliterated, I can't help but think that there's a certain core number of the elite who are well enough insulated to maintain their position even after a massive shrinkage in global supply capacity and an unprecedented banking crash. Enough of a core that they could reestablish networks of control, in one form or another, over most of the world's population. (Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean we'd all get the cushier bits of the total system back: a cobalt mine in Katanga and an apple store in Seattle are both just dandy as far as the Machine's concerned.)
I console myself that the high tech society that we currently have is as a direct result of the complex connections between 8 billion people.
Lop a few billion people off and complexity will fall back.
Without the tech, and without cheap abundant energy, the ruling class cannot exert close control. Hence the saying from Chinese antiquity "The mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away."
Now it looks rather more like the mountains are edible and the emperor is everywhere.
We’d all be better off by a dramatic shift that unsettles and alarms the masses. But I fear no such luck. It will continue to be a slow incremental creep. A steady drip drip drip that goes unnoticed and totally absorbed by the spongey little minds/natures of the numbed out masses. Those awake will remain awake. Those numb will remain numb but get plunged into deeper inhumanity. They’ll be full fleshbots. At the same time our little group of eyes wide open non conformists will be forced into greater and deeper isolation and social rejection.
I’m done thinking or hoping for a revolt or resurrection prompted by man himself. Only God can light a fire in the souls of willing fleshbots sufficient to restore their humanity!
All we can do is hang onto our own and attempt to live beautiful fully human lives until our Lord calls us home.
I have a book from the 1930's which is a collection of travels pieces on various locations in the West. In one of these pieces the author visits Palm Springs, and ponders the significance of movie stars and moguls who go there to dress up as cowboys and "stab themselves with the primitive." What, he asks, is behind this sudden enthusiasm for the desert? His answer is that "Modern civilization has been geared up to such a frightful rate of speed that it is becoming unendurable."
I have adopted that explanation, which I have shortened to "The pace of modern life is unendurable." I find it useful to employ this phrase when someone questions why I don't travel, or why I live a semi-hermit existence. Try it sometime; it just rolls off the tongue.