It's not a perfect time to be alive, but it is a very good time to be alive. I am poor as fuck, but I have a 1980s Cray super computer level "phone" in my pocket that also shoots cinema quality video. I have a freaking laser cutter in my spare bedroom, how cool is that? My little crappy car has twin turbos and is faster 0 to 60 than a Porsche from the 1970s, and I can speak to it and have it play back to me any album ever recorded in human history. Is that not some near Jetsons level stuff?
When I was growing up in the late 70s my dad got one of the 1st video cameras. It was 2000 dollars, used VHS tape, the set up weighed like 20 lbs and had a shoulder mounted camera, and a separate unit with the tape and battery that literally hurt your back. There was no way to edit easily, and the picture was laughably fuzzy and bad. Now freakin' homeless dudes have a way better video camera on their 100 dollar dollar store phone that the government pays for service on, and yet they are bitching and complaining and not out there making little movies?
WTF?
And yes I get many people are having a hard time. So am I, I can't afford food and gas at the end of the month, but I sure as hell am going to use the brilliant tools we have now to make stuff, because why wouldn't I?
I remember dads lugging those huge cameras around Disney world, taping everything and completely missing out on the experience they paid so much to have. It was sad and funny at the same time. Parents yelling at their kids to have fun and failing totally to connect.
Like me, my dad was conflicted. He lived in the woods like I do and rejected much of modern society like I do, but he also kept up with developments in tech and cars though magazines like Popular Mechanics, and he liked to fart around fixing up cars and electronics while doing his art. He was engaged with the modern world, and rejecting it, but also not refusing to use new and interesting tools when they presented themselves.
I think that is a reasonable way to go about it. You make your own assessment. Smartphones are amazing. I know some reject them, but disciplined use of one is perfectly possible.
We were talking about this last night, what happened to all the guys who made a living tinkering with things, small appliance and tv repairmen, etc. Some turned to computer repair or set up for the technologically challenged but with computers becoming disposable, and even cars are computerized, there is literally almost nothing left to fix.
Words like solid state used to mean something. I remember my father taking the tv tubes to the hardware store where a little tabletop machine told you which tube was broken. It was a frustrating project but a man felt in control of it and immensely satisfied when it worked. So many skills have failed to be passed down
With all the mania about the environment no one is suggesting more durable and fixable products.
As I was saying before fat finger came out of nowhere again, when Dad brought home that modern wonder of 50’s electronic engineering, the wire recorder, predecessor to all the tape recording devices since. It gave off enough heat to keep a small boy warm sitting next to it. I still have it.
True facts. Audio electronics had some durability through the 1970s, I have a 1970s Pioneer receiver on my desk that sounds great. Some time in the early 80s the quality started going down, IMO it is (((bean counting globalist financiers))) fault.
I definitely agree greed moved us towards disposable tech. Although fashion too. The easily bored want new stuff and the market responds. Many get bored with old things, women especially.
You really deserve a wider readership. Too many young people, women especially, are missing out on the many meaningful experiences to be had in life.
The young are supposed to take chances, it’s why, for good or ill, young men used to sign up without a qualm to fight for their country, at least in the days when there was some connection between the wars and their country.
Trust is really a problem for the young today. How do you form a family when everyone wants to keep separate bank accounts and separate lives in many cases? It is the single biggest problem facing the developed world. Everyone says kids are too expensive but most people live pretty elaborate lives by historical standards. Trust is one of those chances you have to take ( with a little due diligence!) if you want a real relationship. And like you say worst case scenario most losses are recoverable.
I do think anxiety in various forms characterizes today. It is perhaps a side effect of consuming mainstream material. Life is considered bleak by many, even if it is cushy by historical standards as you say.
I don't know what the solution is except to remind people life is pretty amazing once you tune out the programmed material.
And thank you for your kind comments. I am not sure how you increase an audience here. Most of these get read by one to two thousand people, but not everyone subscribes.
Which is of course a concise definition of Narcissus of which the Orange Oaf is an in-your-face example. And a leading edge example of (its all and only about me) solipsism.
What a great reminder for an old fashioned woman as myself. I'm always thinking that I'm in the wrong time because I resent having to carry a phone and using apps to survive today. There are other reasons, such as the complete loss of privacy, the decline of polite society, etc..but you are so right.
Here I am, and this is where and when God put me here.
It distresses me to see young people have to go through awkward adolescence, a time where everything is embarrassing, with social media and other anxiety provoking tools. I can't imagine how awful that must be.
So, not only as you point out, do people long for a future, some long for the past, instead of seizing the day.
You are so right about that, the trauma of being young in a world of social media. If the bullying at school had been able to follow me home and be magnified online I would not have survived junior high school.
I think so too. The sensitives who find life hard then learn to overcome the hardships are developing in ways that are closed to those who sail through life.
Spiff, this is Pure Fire and balm for the soul! I'm 3/4 building a beautiful small studio (400sq.ft) in my backyard with my brother in law and a little help from my frens. I always wanted to "build my own house" but I'm 67 now and thought that dream had gone past. Nope. Shit's hap'nin. Grab it and don't let go. Love all your writing.
That is great to hear. Never let go of your dreams. If there is something you think of every day you must pursue it, no matter how crazy anyone else thinks you are.
And making anything is superior to consuming anything. There is just something about production that nothing else matches. That is especially true for physical objects that exist in the real world.
I always enjoy your positivity with objectivity, of which this is a splendid example. On the ubiquity of passive culture (so to speak), it occurs to me that the sheer proliferation of options at almost every point in our everyday lives these days is probably a source of action-paralysis for most, especially the most recent generations who have known nothing but the utter replacement of so many actual full - sensory experiences with an ersatz risk-free alternative. The WorldWideWeb was well-named.
I wonder if Lennon and Mc Cartney would have spent hundreds of hours sitting in their back rooms writing and playing those early songs if they had hundreds of "options" available, and not just going and kicking a football around or The BBC Light programme as the other two choices?! But they also lived in a time of boundless optimism, it seems. A Prime Minister had the confidence to tell the nation that " You've never had it so good.." and people probably largely agreed with him. That is what I would like to believe at this remove in any case. I am a late boomer and absolutely felt positive about the future as a child and youth.
I think there is much to be thankful for and much to look forward to. I think we have to accept not everyone will make it intact. I see too many people lost on their devices. So none of them will become Lennon or McCartney. They won't rack up the flight time because their boredom threshold is too low.
But life teaches many lessons. Some who are lost today will find a way out of their labyrinth. I did. Mine wasn't digital porn or social media like today, but I had my demons to slay. The road less travelled is windy and twisty.
But life today has antibiotics and the internet. Tomorrow may have flying cars and jetpacks. So it is amazing.
Nihilism gets a bad rap and a also a bad rep because it is misapplied.
What it was, was an attitude that no, everything (social order-related, not material) is not ordained by fate or divine command: it is the way it is because of human (in)action. Therefore, any moral argument about the social order - in support of it or challenging it - was an inherently subjective one. Any argument essentially being about "ought" rather than "is".
And therefore, the existing social order could be challenged on moral grounds, both its own purported ideal but also other new or alien ideals.
But: that's only half of it. That "everything lacks meaning" or that "social rules are constructs" and so on doesn't make them meaningless, as high school nihilistic people think: it makes them /more/ meaningful. Much more.
A divine command can only be obeyed or refused, it cannot be modified or changed (unless the god in question said something like "obey these rules if you feel like it, or whatevah, Bro") and represents an absolute moral authority beyond the human. Akin to how a Master commands a dog: why Master denies the dog access to the sofa matters not. Master has decreed sofa equals no, and lo thus it is no. Then the dog sleeps on the sofa anyway, but will feel bad when scolded.
Since gods are only as real as humans make them (good luck proving otherwise), accepting as true or adopting as stance that morals, meaning, codes, mores et c are all made up by humans (and collectively evolved over millennia in various sets of circumstances - something oft ignored by relativists and individualists both) what is left is opportunity to create, by living it, something better than what one criticises as inferior or not living up to standards.
And that's where all the pomo-woke-crap fails: they purport to tear down everything and replace it with nothing. You can't replace something with nothing, as nothing is an absence. All you achieve is replace a functioning something (even if it's not to your liking) with a dysfunctioning something else.
And here is where Will enters the equation. Your Will be done, to the extent of your ability to enforce it, as dictated by the moral and ethical limitations you have freely chosen to carry as virtues. A free human says "I act because it is my Will to act thusly" without blaming gods or the party or mom or whatever. A kept human blames his or her actions on someone else.
Which is terrifying. Bearing the blame (or fame) for your actions, without any recourse to commandments or Fraudian excuses or anything else is horrible, is terror worse than death.
Perhaps nihilism as a label is misapplied. I think many reject it because it seems to be a void, an absence of meaning as you suggest. And too many seem to embrace this and wallow in it. I think that intentional hobbling of agency is to be rejected.
As for the Woke tearing things down. Their greatest sin in my view is this. Their destruction of things that have been with us for centuries or millennia, thrown away as old fashioned. Marriage and women enjoying raising their kids would be good examples. This is accompanied by a refusal to discuss these matters sensibly. It is all emotion.
The original meaning was used as a slur against a person who rejected the truth at the time, of "God, Crown and County" and the social order as mandated by divine fiat. This was because back then (1750s-1850s era) the idea that morals comes from humans, not from god(s), was about as radical as you could get. We may well speak of Enlightenment, but until the French and american Revolutions, it was mainly a thing for the intellectual classes. To most, the social order was taught as a natural order of things, that poverty was always the fault of the poor themselves, and so on.
Nihilism was a an act of rebellion against the hypocrisy of claiming a human order was divinely ordained - and it was much more obvious back then the hypocrisy of the Christian churches and congregations, than even the virtue signalling of the woke today. Thus, Nihilism came to be a slur used by the religious elite of the day against those asking why a priest was to grow fat from taxing his starving parishers, or why a bare handful should own everything and use the masses as fodder for the Molok of Capitalism, or why the rich could buy their way out of serving in wars - if such an order was ordained by god, then god was evil and evil is to be opposed.
And so by opposing evil, new better morals could be put together by humans, using reason, compassion and freedom from oppression, starvation, cold and want as guidelines.
Just a shame Marxism came along and co-opted it all in the later 1800s.
well written. But its important to clarify that Liberalism did not come to dominate America until the either the 1960s and 1970s and prior to WW2 was never more than a marginal force within America
Not visibly. But it was operating long before that. Womens votes, European wars, income tax. What do you think all that is? Welfare is another.
Most European states are the same. It wasn't very visible until much later, but the elites bought into it by the late nineteenth century. The universities from the 1930s and even earlier, and they trained the generation operating in the 1960s.
Hi, thanks for the interesting reply. I would say a few things, the last point i think being the most important for current times for far broader reasons than this context, while theres truth to what you said, I think its still the case that when you look at the variegated forces involved in those things in america, I dont see how it can be called Liberal in the sense that Liberalism dominated the formulation and execution of those actions:
1) Women’s suffrage, for example, wasnt strictly a liberal project; it was driven by a quite variegated coalition that included many different populist groups (I say many because there was no "populist movement" in an organization al sense, the actions of populist era were performed by hundreds or over its length even thousands of discrete and independent "populist" groups who varied by quite a lot), many different progressives (the same for the "progressive movement" one of the small number of things I can truly provable in the absolute, and I mean irrefutably absolutely, is that almost all progressives are not the ones who we have to day or their forbearers, after the war they began to lie about history and falsely describe all the progressives as being lie them but they were actually, and this shocked me especially since it so provable, a fringe faction), and even a lot of conservative moral reformers.
2) The income tax was a great error, but it was largely pushed by progressives (and again most progressive's were not liberal) and agrarian populists and even many conservatives in response to the monopolistic power of industrial magnates who had begun to dominate states where most policy/government action was at the time (and should be again) and had begun to run roughshod not overly over democracy and the economy but also culture (*some* of the motivations for the income tax, which was meant to use a higher level of gov then the ones theyd captures (not all states by way) was to do conservative cultural things in the form of disrupting their cultural machinations, rather than by liberal elites advocating for a welfare state.
3) most importantly for today, the University were actually very much a minority of importance in academia, the USA's higher ed system as we know it today was constructed from consolidating the decentralized, diversified and pluralistic many elements of the Old Republic's educational system of systems. DARKLY LMAO they even lie about the percentage of people who were "educated" and the even the number of colleges/learning places, and most all scientists and engineers and business managers and lawyers to went to those ones that they leave out, not the University. BTW, at least in science and engineering it seems there a chance they were literally better than what we have now.
I cede WW1, and like you say it was hidden. The national welfare state only really began in the 1930s and was nothing like its later incarnation, so if you want to claim that, fine, but it was only lightly beginning and that just pushes the timeline back by a decade on that one thing.
Interesting points. But I would maintain that liberalism, however you define it, was a pet project of elites long before it came to prominence. Perhaps we are labelling things incorrectly. But something like not-conservatism or not-tradition might be enough, whether liberal or progressive.
I would concede the United States was best able to withstand liberalism, but is now its prime mover globally. Although that seems to now be dying.
Agreed! In fact, I went to extensively visit the 1830s/1840s and the dark forces that were thoroughly defeated by the generation 1.0 Democratic Party (the Jacksonians, which despite what we are taught was verifiably not just a party of "yeoman farmers", lol they lie about the meaning of the word "mechanic" at the time, it meant engineers, and it also wasnt just farmers and engineers, it was a broad based party of the middle class structured as decentralized and publicly accessible mass member party with deliberation and decision making diffused across decentralized and localized nodes, in short, it was actually a small "d" democratic party) and those forces were Liberal, they just had different trappings, and they were a few feat away from victory, the America that once was, was almost snuffed out in its crib, but they were defeated. LOL, their plans -- which the American Philosophical Society and Harvard and the predecessors to the field of so called "Macroeconomics" assured everyone were the only smart thing to do -- for the development of the western territories and and eventually California, were almost indistinguishable from the plans that have been imposed on the Congo. Oh man, did we dodge a bullet...
America is resilient. Although mass immigration is changing it into something new. And it won't work in my view. That said, actual Americans are still plentiful and they are descended from those for whom liberty meant everything. So I believe it will survive, albeit in a different form.
I suspect most of the European states will too. The Liberal ideas we all now grapple with have the grave weakness of not working well.
Agreed! But we may revert. I was thinking of some of the "DODGE" stuff yesterday, and I remembered the 1990s Russia episodes where, when the initial post Soviet corrupto-tron was collapsing and elements of their "establishment" and "deep state" were going after each other and ratting each other out, well, people can say what they want about him but Putin actually did course correct, stabilize, and despite what is said introduce a modicum of decentralization/democratization, and the things is, what came into being, and just the named (eg "duma") which were already instituted, well, the system across several key dimensions fundamentally resembles pre Revolutionary Russia... and the Soviets worked even far harder and far more effectively to erase that physically and mentally from existence than even our current centralized regimes have done for us... so maybe the ghosts of country's pasts can truly shape reforms in very deep and substantive ways....
You could be a motivational speaker, Spiff. Possibly due to my constant aging, I thought the essay could be condensed a tad. At the same time, I think an addendum might be in order. If I do not meditate on a regular basis, I find myself dwelling on mistakes I've made in the past. Recently, I have found a Hemi-Sync CD entitled THE 'SO' SOUND. It is 42 minutes of tones that are attuned to the frequency of Earth and of all humans. It puts me in a dream or else into an alternate reality where there is no war, no hate, no cancer, and no pain. I highly recommend it and it is cheaper than THC-A.
And the defeat of the Blue Meanies in the Beatles film Yellow Submarine.
On the other hand it seems to me that the scenario described in the book introduced here provides a muchly more accurate description of our collective Wetiko Psychosis of which the "beautiful bombs" Orange Oaf is the leading edge vector
It's not a perfect time to be alive, but it is a very good time to be alive. I am poor as fuck, but I have a 1980s Cray super computer level "phone" in my pocket that also shoots cinema quality video. I have a freaking laser cutter in my spare bedroom, how cool is that? My little crappy car has twin turbos and is faster 0 to 60 than a Porsche from the 1970s, and I can speak to it and have it play back to me any album ever recorded in human history. Is that not some near Jetsons level stuff?
When I was growing up in the late 70s my dad got one of the 1st video cameras. It was 2000 dollars, used VHS tape, the set up weighed like 20 lbs and had a shoulder mounted camera, and a separate unit with the tape and battery that literally hurt your back. There was no way to edit easily, and the picture was laughably fuzzy and bad. Now freakin' homeless dudes have a way better video camera on their 100 dollar dollar store phone that the government pays for service on, and yet they are bitching and complaining and not out there making little movies?
WTF?
And yes I get many people are having a hard time. So am I, I can't afford food and gas at the end of the month, but I sure as hell am going to use the brilliant tools we have now to make stuff, because why wouldn't I?
Exactly. Sometimes we need to recalibrate. You are correct you have a full recording studio in your pocket. An amazing thing to contemplate.
I remember dads lugging those huge cameras around Disney world, taping everything and completely missing out on the experience they paid so much to have. It was sad and funny at the same time. Parents yelling at their kids to have fun and failing totally to connect.
And preserving it for eternity on media no one can now access. I guess the cloud fixed that problem.
And also never watched even when people had VHS decks because guess what unedited video is boring as fuck.
Indeed. But early adopters are early adopters. They love the tech.
Like me, my dad was conflicted. He lived in the woods like I do and rejected much of modern society like I do, but he also kept up with developments in tech and cars though magazines like Popular Mechanics, and he liked to fart around fixing up cars and electronics while doing his art. He was engaged with the modern world, and rejecting it, but also not refusing to use new and interesting tools when they presented themselves.
I guess I didn’t fall from the tree, lol.
I think that is a reasonable way to go about it. You make your own assessment. Smartphones are amazing. I know some reject them, but disciplined use of one is perfectly possible.
We were talking about this last night, what happened to all the guys who made a living tinkering with things, small appliance and tv repairmen, etc. Some turned to computer repair or set up for the technologically challenged but with computers becoming disposable, and even cars are computerized, there is literally almost nothing left to fix.
Words like solid state used to mean something. I remember my father taking the tv tubes to the hardware store where a little tabletop machine told you which tube was broken. It was a frustrating project but a man felt in control of it and immensely satisfied when it worked. So many skills have failed to be passed down
With all the mania about the environment no one is suggesting more durable and fixable products.
As I was saying before fat finger came out of nowhere again, when Dad brought home that modern wonder of 50’s electronic engineering, the wire recorder, predecessor to all the tape recording devices since. It gave off enough heat to keep a small boy warm sitting next to it. I still have it.
Amazing. They don't build them like that anymore.
True facts. Audio electronics had some durability through the 1970s, I have a 1970s Pioneer receiver on my desk that sounds great. Some time in the early 80s the quality started going down, IMO it is (((bean counting globalist financiers))) fault.
I definitely agree greed moved us towards disposable tech. Although fashion too. The easily bored want new stuff and the market responds. Many get bored with old things, women especially.
Some future classics are still being made, but yes mainly in nerdy thing like headphone amps that are less driven by fashion, though not immune.
Of course. There is a market for quality. Even things like traditionally made shoes. But most want quick hits then get bored.
I favored Kenwood myself all of which I still have, some of which I also still use.
No truer words have been spoken on this subject than yours here; however, I remember when Dad bought that new high tech wonder, the wire
You really deserve a wider readership. Too many young people, women especially, are missing out on the many meaningful experiences to be had in life.
The young are supposed to take chances, it’s why, for good or ill, young men used to sign up without a qualm to fight for their country, at least in the days when there was some connection between the wars and their country.
Trust is really a problem for the young today. How do you form a family when everyone wants to keep separate bank accounts and separate lives in many cases? It is the single biggest problem facing the developed world. Everyone says kids are too expensive but most people live pretty elaborate lives by historical standards. Trust is one of those chances you have to take ( with a little due diligence!) if you want a real relationship. And like you say worst case scenario most losses are recoverable.
I do think anxiety in various forms characterizes today. It is perhaps a side effect of consuming mainstream material. Life is considered bleak by many, even if it is cushy by historical standards as you say.
I don't know what the solution is except to remind people life is pretty amazing once you tune out the programmed material.
And thank you for your kind comments. I am not sure how you increase an audience here. Most of these get read by one to two thousand people, but not everyone subscribes.
That's pretty good dude. I have over 800 subscribers, but most of my work is read by a few hundred at most. Keep up the good work.
Thanks. It is hard to gauge on here.
And the biggest loss is no relationships at all.
Which is of course a concise definition of Narcissus of which the Orange Oaf is an in-your-face example. And a leading edge example of (its all and only about me) solipsism.
What a fantastic read. A true antidote to the many blackpillers that surround us. Thank you for writing this.
Thanks for reading. Glad you liked.
Yes a needed kick in the butt for people to stop moaning and start using the brilliant tools we have to make stuff.
What a great reminder for an old fashioned woman as myself. I'm always thinking that I'm in the wrong time because I resent having to carry a phone and using apps to survive today. There are other reasons, such as the complete loss of privacy, the decline of polite society, etc..but you are so right.
Here I am, and this is where and when God put me here.
It distresses me to see young people have to go through awkward adolescence, a time where everything is embarrassing, with social media and other anxiety provoking tools. I can't imagine how awful that must be.
So, not only as you point out, do people long for a future, some long for the past, instead of seizing the day.
Indeed. Seize the day. Make it work for you. This is your life and it is not a rehearsal.
You are so right about that, the trauma of being young in a world of social media. If the bullying at school had been able to follow me home and be magnified online I would not have survived junior high school.
But those who survive the bullying shine brightest later.
I think so too. The sensitives who find life hard then learn to overcome the hardships are developing in ways that are closed to those who sail through life.
Spiff, this is Pure Fire and balm for the soul! I'm 3/4 building a beautiful small studio (400sq.ft) in my backyard with my brother in law and a little help from my frens. I always wanted to "build my own house" but I'm 67 now and thought that dream had gone past. Nope. Shit's hap'nin. Grab it and don't let go. Love all your writing.
That is great to hear. Never let go of your dreams. If there is something you think of every day you must pursue it, no matter how crazy anyone else thinks you are.
And making anything is superior to consuming anything. There is just something about production that nothing else matches. That is especially true for physical objects that exist in the real world.
And thank you for your kind words.
Another excellent piece, Spiff. Thanks for putting something positive out into the universe today.
We all need some positive vibes from time to time. As they say, be an encourager, the world already has enough critics.
Thanks for reading.
I always enjoy your positivity with objectivity, of which this is a splendid example. On the ubiquity of passive culture (so to speak), it occurs to me that the sheer proliferation of options at almost every point in our everyday lives these days is probably a source of action-paralysis for most, especially the most recent generations who have known nothing but the utter replacement of so many actual full - sensory experiences with an ersatz risk-free alternative. The WorldWideWeb was well-named.
I wonder if Lennon and Mc Cartney would have spent hundreds of hours sitting in their back rooms writing and playing those early songs if they had hundreds of "options" available, and not just going and kicking a football around or The BBC Light programme as the other two choices?! But they also lived in a time of boundless optimism, it seems. A Prime Minister had the confidence to tell the nation that " You've never had it so good.." and people probably largely agreed with him. That is what I would like to believe at this remove in any case. I am a late boomer and absolutely felt positive about the future as a child and youth.
I think there is much to be thankful for and much to look forward to. I think we have to accept not everyone will make it intact. I see too many people lost on their devices. So none of them will become Lennon or McCartney. They won't rack up the flight time because their boredom threshold is too low.
But life teaches many lessons. Some who are lost today will find a way out of their labyrinth. I did. Mine wasn't digital porn or social media like today, but I had my demons to slay. The road less travelled is windy and twisty.
But life today has antibiotics and the internet. Tomorrow may have flying cars and jetpacks. So it is amazing.
Nihilism gets a bad rap and a also a bad rep because it is misapplied.
What it was, was an attitude that no, everything (social order-related, not material) is not ordained by fate or divine command: it is the way it is because of human (in)action. Therefore, any moral argument about the social order - in support of it or challenging it - was an inherently subjective one. Any argument essentially being about "ought" rather than "is".
And therefore, the existing social order could be challenged on moral grounds, both its own purported ideal but also other new or alien ideals.
But: that's only half of it. That "everything lacks meaning" or that "social rules are constructs" and so on doesn't make them meaningless, as high school nihilistic people think: it makes them /more/ meaningful. Much more.
A divine command can only be obeyed or refused, it cannot be modified or changed (unless the god in question said something like "obey these rules if you feel like it, or whatevah, Bro") and represents an absolute moral authority beyond the human. Akin to how a Master commands a dog: why Master denies the dog access to the sofa matters not. Master has decreed sofa equals no, and lo thus it is no. Then the dog sleeps on the sofa anyway, but will feel bad when scolded.
Since gods are only as real as humans make them (good luck proving otherwise), accepting as true or adopting as stance that morals, meaning, codes, mores et c are all made up by humans (and collectively evolved over millennia in various sets of circumstances - something oft ignored by relativists and individualists both) what is left is opportunity to create, by living it, something better than what one criticises as inferior or not living up to standards.
And that's where all the pomo-woke-crap fails: they purport to tear down everything and replace it with nothing. You can't replace something with nothing, as nothing is an absence. All you achieve is replace a functioning something (even if it's not to your liking) with a dysfunctioning something else.
And here is where Will enters the equation. Your Will be done, to the extent of your ability to enforce it, as dictated by the moral and ethical limitations you have freely chosen to carry as virtues. A free human says "I act because it is my Will to act thusly" without blaming gods or the party or mom or whatever. A kept human blames his or her actions on someone else.
Which is terrifying. Bearing the blame (or fame) for your actions, without any recourse to commandments or Fraudian excuses or anything else is horrible, is terror worse than death.
But such is freedom.
Perhaps nihilism as a label is misapplied. I think many reject it because it seems to be a void, an absence of meaning as you suggest. And too many seem to embrace this and wallow in it. I think that intentional hobbling of agency is to be rejected.
As for the Woke tearing things down. Their greatest sin in my view is this. Their destruction of things that have been with us for centuries or millennia, thrown away as old fashioned. Marriage and women enjoying raising their kids would be good examples. This is accompanied by a refusal to discuss these matters sensibly. It is all emotion.
The original meaning was used as a slur against a person who rejected the truth at the time, of "God, Crown and County" and the social order as mandated by divine fiat. This was because back then (1750s-1850s era) the idea that morals comes from humans, not from god(s), was about as radical as you could get. We may well speak of Enlightenment, but until the French and american Revolutions, it was mainly a thing for the intellectual classes. To most, the social order was taught as a natural order of things, that poverty was always the fault of the poor themselves, and so on.
Nihilism was a an act of rebellion against the hypocrisy of claiming a human order was divinely ordained - and it was much more obvious back then the hypocrisy of the Christian churches and congregations, than even the virtue signalling of the woke today. Thus, Nihilism came to be a slur used by the religious elite of the day against those asking why a priest was to grow fat from taxing his starving parishers, or why a bare handful should own everything and use the masses as fodder for the Molok of Capitalism, or why the rich could buy their way out of serving in wars - if such an order was ordained by god, then god was evil and evil is to be opposed.
And so by opposing evil, new better morals could be put together by humans, using reason, compassion and freedom from oppression, starvation, cold and want as guidelines.
Just a shame Marxism came along and co-opted it all in the later 1800s.
All very interesting. I didn't know any of this. As for Marx, well, the less said the better.
well written. But its important to clarify that Liberalism did not come to dominate America until the either the 1960s and 1970s and prior to WW2 was never more than a marginal force within America
Not visibly. But it was operating long before that. Womens votes, European wars, income tax. What do you think all that is? Welfare is another.
Most European states are the same. It wasn't very visible until much later, but the elites bought into it by the late nineteenth century. The universities from the 1930s and even earlier, and they trained the generation operating in the 1960s.
Hi, thanks for the interesting reply. I would say a few things, the last point i think being the most important for current times for far broader reasons than this context, while theres truth to what you said, I think its still the case that when you look at the variegated forces involved in those things in america, I dont see how it can be called Liberal in the sense that Liberalism dominated the formulation and execution of those actions:
1) Women’s suffrage, for example, wasnt strictly a liberal project; it was driven by a quite variegated coalition that included many different populist groups (I say many because there was no "populist movement" in an organization al sense, the actions of populist era were performed by hundreds or over its length even thousands of discrete and independent "populist" groups who varied by quite a lot), many different progressives (the same for the "progressive movement" one of the small number of things I can truly provable in the absolute, and I mean irrefutably absolutely, is that almost all progressives are not the ones who we have to day or their forbearers, after the war they began to lie about history and falsely describe all the progressives as being lie them but they were actually, and this shocked me especially since it so provable, a fringe faction), and even a lot of conservative moral reformers.
2) The income tax was a great error, but it was largely pushed by progressives (and again most progressive's were not liberal) and agrarian populists and even many conservatives in response to the monopolistic power of industrial magnates who had begun to dominate states where most policy/government action was at the time (and should be again) and had begun to run roughshod not overly over democracy and the economy but also culture (*some* of the motivations for the income tax, which was meant to use a higher level of gov then the ones theyd captures (not all states by way) was to do conservative cultural things in the form of disrupting their cultural machinations, rather than by liberal elites advocating for a welfare state.
3) most importantly for today, the University were actually very much a minority of importance in academia, the USA's higher ed system as we know it today was constructed from consolidating the decentralized, diversified and pluralistic many elements of the Old Republic's educational system of systems. DARKLY LMAO they even lie about the percentage of people who were "educated" and the even the number of colleges/learning places, and most all scientists and engineers and business managers and lawyers to went to those ones that they leave out, not the University. BTW, at least in science and engineering it seems there a chance they were literally better than what we have now.
I cede WW1, and like you say it was hidden. The national welfare state only really began in the 1930s and was nothing like its later incarnation, so if you want to claim that, fine, but it was only lightly beginning and that just pushes the timeline back by a decade on that one thing.
Interesting points. But I would maintain that liberalism, however you define it, was a pet project of elites long before it came to prominence. Perhaps we are labelling things incorrectly. But something like not-conservatism or not-tradition might be enough, whether liberal or progressive.
I would concede the United States was best able to withstand liberalism, but is now its prime mover globally. Although that seems to now be dying.
Agreed! In fact, I went to extensively visit the 1830s/1840s and the dark forces that were thoroughly defeated by the generation 1.0 Democratic Party (the Jacksonians, which despite what we are taught was verifiably not just a party of "yeoman farmers", lol they lie about the meaning of the word "mechanic" at the time, it meant engineers, and it also wasnt just farmers and engineers, it was a broad based party of the middle class structured as decentralized and publicly accessible mass member party with deliberation and decision making diffused across decentralized and localized nodes, in short, it was actually a small "d" democratic party) and those forces were Liberal, they just had different trappings, and they were a few feat away from victory, the America that once was, was almost snuffed out in its crib, but they were defeated. LOL, their plans -- which the American Philosophical Society and Harvard and the predecessors to the field of so called "Macroeconomics" assured everyone were the only smart thing to do -- for the development of the western territories and and eventually California, were almost indistinguishable from the plans that have been imposed on the Congo. Oh man, did we dodge a bullet...
America is resilient. Although mass immigration is changing it into something new. And it won't work in my view. That said, actual Americans are still plentiful and they are descended from those for whom liberty meant everything. So I believe it will survive, albeit in a different form.
I suspect most of the European states will too. The Liberal ideas we all now grapple with have the grave weakness of not working well.
Agreed! But we may revert. I was thinking of some of the "DODGE" stuff yesterday, and I remembered the 1990s Russia episodes where, when the initial post Soviet corrupto-tron was collapsing and elements of their "establishment" and "deep state" were going after each other and ratting each other out, well, people can say what they want about him but Putin actually did course correct, stabilize, and despite what is said introduce a modicum of decentralization/democratization, and the things is, what came into being, and just the named (eg "duma") which were already instituted, well, the system across several key dimensions fundamentally resembles pre Revolutionary Russia... and the Soviets worked even far harder and far more effectively to erase that physically and mentally from existence than even our current centralized regimes have done for us... so maybe the ghosts of country's pasts can truly shape reforms in very deep and substantive ways....
Reality? It's a clown world and I choose to speak the evident truth and do the right thing with good intention, to live, and to laugh.
https://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8847863/holographic-principle-universe-theory-physics
Laughter is good.
Yes seize the day….
A certain speech in Munich has certainly put the cat among the pigeons!!!
Will Faustian Western Man take up the challenge?
I suspect he will. First he must stop seeking leaders to do it for him. He must do it himself. And he will.
You could be a motivational speaker, Spiff. Possibly due to my constant aging, I thought the essay could be condensed a tad. At the same time, I think an addendum might be in order. If I do not meditate on a regular basis, I find myself dwelling on mistakes I've made in the past. Recently, I have found a Hemi-Sync CD entitled THE 'SO' SOUND. It is 42 minutes of tones that are attuned to the frequency of Earth and of all humans. It puts me in a dream or else into an alternate reality where there is no war, no hate, no cancer, and no pain. I highly recommend it and it is cheaper than THC-A.
I do make use of ambient type music for much the same reasons.
And yes most of my work could be edited down. That takes more time that I usually have.
The conundrum: There is no time without space and no space without time.
Yet, in my current dream, I must attend to my yogurt. The milk had cooled to 99 degrees five minutes ago.
😩wire recorder.
Yes why not check out the de-LIGHT-ful video The Sunshine Makers
http://vimeo.com/275193530
And the defeat of the Blue Meanies in the Beatles film Yellow Submarine.
On the other hand it seems to me that the scenario described in the book introduced here provides a muchly more accurate description of our collective Wetiko Psychosis of which the "beautiful bombs" Orange Oaf is the leading edge vector
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/undreaming-wetiko-introduction