Author: White Whale

I will likely make notes from time to time as I go through this book.  His is the sort of clear mind which is sorely lacking in nearly all universities, and which I would have loved to have encountered in my own education. He taught himself to see what was in front of him, while retaining a memory of what was ideal.  Put another way, he deals honestly with life’s contradictions, a feat which is perhaps the summit of what education at its best makes possible.  Certainly, that is what I hear him arguing thus far.

He makes the point that whereas parents and grandparents in the past viewed it as their task to inculcate notions as to what is good and desirable, parents today focus more or less on vocational preparation.  He comments as well that with the ubiquity of media, parents have lost much control over their childrens moral development, even when they do try to instill what they consider moral values.

One point I found particularly interesting is the importance of music in culture, and thus in political life.  I think I have always sensed this.  I worked hard to bring my kids up with good, wholesome, honest, “life” music.  Both of them have thanked me specifically on a number of occasions for raising them with good music.

In any home there is always what is said and what is present but not said.  You want both to be in harmony, in congruence.  Music is a beautiful way to speak without talking.

“Openness to closed-ness is what we teach.”

I finished listening to Confederacy of Dunces.  I really do believe that Ignatius Reilly–with his continual outrage, compulsive lying, emotional detachment, grotesque self obsession, and delusions of grandeur–really does represent an Ideal Type in a Weberian sense of the typical Leftist.  If you take Michael Moore, he even more or less LOOKS like him, although he likely has trouble sourcing Dr. Nut.

Likewise Myrna Minkoff (spelling approximate, since I listened to the book) is obsessed with saving people.  She wants to save HERSELF through her crusades to save others.  This, too, is the model behind the Daily Cause.  You have large numbers of emotionally fucked up people who want to feel better about themselves by finding–or inventing–people in “need”, who in turn need them as saviors.  Being saviors, their lives are not without meaning, and being saviors, they are superior to SOMEONE at least.

I would add in that vein that it is odd to juxtapose the obsession with material wealth which suffuses socialist thought with the grandiose, Olympian detachment which intellectuals direct at the “bourgeois”.  On the one hand we are to believe that only material equality matters–social inequality merely being a means to material inequality–and on the other that the culture of intellectuals is superior to the mere pursuit of material things, which are thus signalled as unimportant.  Unimportant, to be clear, to THEM, but not the poor fools who need them to agitate on their behalf.

Bloom himself, turning to my main point (as a segue I should note this is the new audiobook I am listening to), noted all this 30 years ago.  He points out that the intellectuals want to make of minorities the majority, with themselves as aggregators and shepherds of the minorities taken as a whole.  This is where we are today.

But the main point I wanted to make is that he predicted the outrage at Trump 30 years ago as well.  Trumps absolute core sin is positing such a thing as “American Interest”, which might also be called the “Public Good”.  He speaks of improving the lot of the “American People”.

This is a sin because it posits as an absolute truth that such a thing exists, that positive coherent action is possible in support of clearly defined objectives; and positing an absolute truth is exactly equal to Fascism.  Since he speaks of the Public Good he is therefore, through a short chain of tortured logic, a Fascist.

I would encourage our public intellectuals, such as they are, to revisit this book, which was describing 3 decades ago the world we live in today.  It has simply become much worse.  Public lunacy is now tolerated in far too many places, and embraced by far too many people in power who should know better.

The claim made is that this voice matches John Podestas. If true, this can be verified with s high level of precision.  And should be.

Actually, the video–which was audio of someone torturing a child–seems to have been removed already, while I was typing. Still, it hit the public domain and I’m sure HONEST law enforcement can find it and investigate it.

John Podesta is connected to everyone.  If he is a violent pedophile, as alleged, then some very powerful people in this country are very sick, which has been the allegation.

I found the video. I won’t watch the whole thing. The voice needs to be identified: https://youtu.be/7b273RhFHCY

Say what you want about Alex Jones, but he is right in nearly all cases about important general claims he makes.

Dr. Phil has embraced the idea that a large, global network of members of the power elite who engage in sexual deviancy and evil exists: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/25713-dr-phil-interview-exposes-global-elite-pedophiles

Here is a group working to fight them, founded by a Seal Team Six veteran: http://www.vets4childrescue.org/

I am going to give them money.

Last night, I think for the second time, but I really can’t remember, I had some turbulent force erupt 1′ from my face, in one of those dreams where you are more or less awake, and awake instantly when it is done.  I just watched and felt it.  My capacity for fear itself seems to be slowly fading.  You can only have so many bad nights before some fatalistic part kicks in, and I am hoping that is soon.

But the energy got me to thinking this morning.  The demonic is everything a properly socialized, intrapsychically healthy individual is not.  One acronym I have introduced in the past that I got from Dan Siegel is FACES, which is flexible, adaptable, coherent, energized and stable.

I would invert all but one of these for the demonic to inflexible, controlling, chaotic, and completely unstable.  The one I would keep is energized.  In fact, I would make the energy completely compulsive.

Thus, a demonic person is one who needs to control others because they are inflexible, and who need that power because what they are asking for, what they need, varies continually, all in a context of hyperarousal, fear, and furious energy.  A whirlwind.  That is what I felt.

Once again, I will channel my own inner pedant and point out that this describes the Left.  It is not that they want concrete things–actual amelioration of any human conditions, for example–but a channel for the expression for incoherent and destructive energy.  It is demonic, as I continue to say regularly.

As for me, I will add as a goal something the 109 year old also said, which is that he would sleep just fine with all his doors unlocked.  He was not afraid to die, and figured when it was his time, it was his time.  I’m not going to go to that length–I haven’t lived a century after all, although I suspect he’s been like that most of his life–but it is worth asking the question: what do we LOSE through continual thought about and preparation for the worst?

I have seen demons.  They did not hurt me.

I was watching a video on a man who has aged to 109 beautifully. And what struck me is that he has numerous things throughout the day and week that he likes and which make him happy.  He likes to smoke cigars. They make him feel good.  He likes soup.  He likes to drive.  He likes to go to church.  There are a number of small, controllable things that bring him comfort and small pleasures.

Over and above the wisdom of this, I suspect small things which make us happy also enable us to live longer.

Spring flowers do not last forever.  Enjoy them when they are at their peak.  It is beautiful around here right now.  And eat cookies and candy from time to time.  I suspect the stress of orthrexia is more damaging over time than the shortfalls of the pretty close approach.

I am house watching for someone, and they said I could watch TV and grab a beer from time to time, which I took advantage of tonight.  I watched the end of one of the Transformers movies, then 2 and a half episodes of the Walking Dead.  Tonight is the season finale, but I needed to go to bed, and in any event I don’t follow much of what they are talking about.

But I could not help but feel I was participating in American culture.  This is what we do.  There is a morphological similarity between knowing that everyone in your culture is performing a certain ritual at a certain time, and the ritual of TV.  It is a talking point.  It is a means of bridging individual gaps.

And I see that we are all confused.  TV really is in important respects our culture.  When people want to talk about something shared, it is usually mass media in some form, whether it be TV, music, movies, or something on the internet.

Where people did things slowly and together–as in church, as in Rotary, as in the Masons–half a century ago, now it is solitary, but shared later (although sports, of course, many still watch together, which is good).

And I felt, too, that interacting empathetically with the characters made me feel less lonely.  Emotions were going on, and I felt like I was sharing them.  There is a sociality with TV and movies, where we create the feeling of being with others, and participating in their lives.

It is an odd fact of our age that we are culturally disconnected already, and vast segment of our thought leaders in the universities and political arena are working HARD to deconstruct what few cultural markers and shared assumptions remain.  The crowd is getting lonelier.

It is odd that watching normal TV makes me feel like a part of the human race.  I should do it more.  Really, I should get cable, and a better couch.

I am an odd duck.  I often feel I am in the wrong time and place.  I have, I feel, so much to offer, but few people seem to have any interest in my many ideas and projects.  Misunderstood: ah, there is a word one sees often with outliers.

Shit, I do still need to get cable.  I find sports relaxing too, especially baseball, golf and tennis, because I could not care less who wins.

So I spent an hour or two listening to Shostakovich, and I cannot escape the idea that what we need to eliminate is not nuclear weapons–and all the other things that could destroy us, like weaponized AI, and germ warfare–but the IDEA of all of these.

Everyone at some level wants peace.  All nations–the people of all nations–want peace.

What we need to figure out is who wants war. There are many people in positions of power who want war.  Who need war, despite the cost.  At any cost.

Nations who do not want war still prepare for war, because so many people in this world are still insane.

My sense is that we need to eliminate those who cannot be negotiated with, and negotiate with the rest.

Why can’t we all want a world where we are all free to live and die as we see fit?

There is nothing there, until something is there.