Moderates United

I was dreaming last night of being a modern German, watching your culture and way of life end, and end not by conquest by a superior power, but by simply ceasing, as a nation, to care for the work of existence; to cease doing even the work of maintenance, much less creation.

To be sure, many German scientist are doing interesting things.  But are their best thinkers TRULY envisioning a better future, or even a future that looks like the present?

I was talking with an Italian woman the other day, whose brother is still in Italy, and he is telling her she would not recognize her old home.  The immigrants keep coming in waves in boats, and nobody really stops them, and the first things they want are a phone, a paycheck, and government housing.

What part of “you can’t do everything for everybody forever” ever stopped being obvious, common sense?

The overall scheme seems to be clear enough.  Most of the world is poor.  If they do nothing but move somewhere like America they will improve their living standard considerably.  But if there are not enough jobs, they go on welfare.  Wherever they come from, they have typically voted for socialism in some form all their lives.  If you are poor, you vote for the people who promise you free shit, even if they can’t deliver it.  You vote every election like you are buying a lottery  ticket, hoping one day it will be true.  And like the Venezuelans, you keep doing this even as things start to fall apart, even when the modest existence you had ceases to be possible, and you fall from poverty to outright hunger and then starvation.  The lesson is never learned, not least because far too people are speaking of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and far too few people are listening in any event.

But the morally and intellectually bankrupt elites of the West–almost certainly in collusion with the Communist Chinese and their ilk around the world–think they have found in the idea of the CONTROL a global government can obtain a purpose for their otherwise useless existences.

To get a global government all you have to do is change the voting patterns of perhaps 20 industrialized nations by overwhelming them with parasites, who will reenact the voting patterns of their home countries, and invariably default to those who promise them free shit.  In other words, you import and subsidize mediocrity, all while watching gleefully as they reproduce like rabbits, while those who hold any residual attachment to the values which made Western civilization the default model the world over disappear.

In Europe, you use the EXCUSE of a war to import millions, many of whom are just looking for free shit, and European tits to squeeze.  In America, of course, you just pretend we don’t have a southern border, that we have no poverty and unemployment at all, and that the rights of people who came here illegally are exactly the same as those who have lived and worked and died here for generations.

Obviously, the sense that there is a WE in contrast to a THEY is inimical to this project, which is why they have to condemn “nationalism” so much.

In America, our nationalism is not racial.  It is rooted in a sense of a shared attachment to a LAW, which in this sense makes us a bit like the Jews, who found some union in extreme diversity.  Our law is the best ever created to govern a nation.  I can and would defend this notion at length.

Hence the need to attack our law.  The need to attack what few residual holidays we have and care about, like Christmas and Thanksgiving.

The whole thing is founded in darkness, in nihilism.  Globalism is a religion for those who believe nothing.  It is not a force for good, or even for survival, if by survival we include the provision for something approaching dignity and freedom.

This is a slow motion trainwreck, which all the nations and peoples affected can still do something about.  It is not too late.  But paralysis and wishful thinking will undoubtedly prove fatal to all of us.

Do you know why Mark Zuckerberg wants a universal living wage?  Because he is doing is level best to eradicate most of the jobs in this and every other developed country with robots and artificial intelligence.

Why?  I don’t know.  I can’t speak to the minds of delusional sociopaths.  He has plenty of money, and on some level he has to know his plan can’t but work cultural and psychological mass destruction.

I have very few positive memories of my childhood, but there are a few things.  One was reading comic books.  I have toyed now and again with the idea of revisiting them, to see if the feeling can be rekindled.  It is a bit childish, of course, but lord knows I would have plenty of company.

And I was looking at some in the bookstore the other day, then it hit me: what I want is a feeling, and that feeling can be had without comics.  It is the feeling of the transcendent, of the possible.

And it hit me that this feeling is, in a very small way, related to that of religious awe.

I have on several occasions read of Hindus who think of their gods like super heroes.  I think he said this in Life of Pi.  And it hit me that it goes both ways: in some respects, comics provide an ersatz, or weakened spirituality for those who read them.  They provide amazement, ideals, the attainment of the impossible.

Humans are meaning making creatures.  We have deep seated instincts, of which sex is perhaps the most vulgar, even if it can be made powerful and good.

I will note my notion of Qualitative Repression, which is the process not of suppressing what is ugly because it is socially unacceptable, but what is beautiful and also socially unacceptable.

Some rebellions are necessary for beauty, even if some rebellions breed nothing but ugliness.

Who are you, and what are you doing, are two questions which must be answered prior to any and all attempts at “moral judgement”.  Those who see tend to do good, and those who are blind tend to render ill to all.

I watched Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” today, and could not escape the sense that what I was witnessing was, in some measure, the drama of the 20th century.

Not only does he never, as the movie notes state, “judge” the perpetrators of really what amount to stupid crimes, but he seems, through the music and overall tone, almost to admire them, almost to wish to be them, almost to wish he, too, could run amok, and leave this pedestrian, predictable, world behind.

It is worth noting that the most important and emphatic early support the Nazis got was among German students, who were studying at what were at the time the best universities in the world.  Our Ph.D system is based on German models, and as Allan Bloom discusses at length in his magnum opus, much of the angst and confusion we see even today is Germanic in origin.

These students wanted lives of meaning and excitement.  They wanted to reject the bourgeois mindset, and set out upon adventures, upon world conquering, upon great risk and great reward, and this is what Hitler promised them.

The Communists promise no less.  They had to compete for the affection of Germans, and largely lost since the concept of Kultur was deeply favorable to the Nazis.  But the underlying emotional longing is the same.

I do not think it overstating the case to say that much of the idiocy that happens in our universities is an intellectual reaction to an emotional problem, which is the sanitary, safe, predictable nature of the world we have built.  This applies even to the cause of safe spaces, which for the time being are anathema to most traditional Americans, and thus revolutionary.

Anything that pushed the buttons of “ordinary” people must be good, these people reason.  Martin Sheen, obviously, is a paradigmatic Leftist. He also starred in a sympathetic movie about a mass murderer.

The problem, the deep problem, is how to soften the tough, leathery hides of our sensory and emotional perception, how to learn to see the world as beautiful, how to feel kinship with the natural world, how to leave behind complete safety, and to feel the excitement of the wild animal.  Nothing in our educational system teaches this.  Nothing in our churches teaches this. 

So I say again: Kum Nye, in my view, really is the missing piece in Western culture.  I am an enthusiast by nature, and prone to making exaggerated claims.  Perhaps I am here, too.

But I am conversant with the currents of philosophy, have degrees in religion, am widely read in psychology, and watch and interact with people from all walks of life every week.  Nothing better–with the exception of combining it with Neurofeedback–has yet crossed my path.

What makes the tiger feel alive is not the kill, but the heightened sensations which attend it, the need for vigilance, alertness, and following connection with all the senses.

On a related note, I was pondering the other day that calling someone a “lion” is really not a particularly large compliment.  Lions hunt creatures weaker than themselves.  The true animal heroes are the smaller ones, like mongooses, which pick and win more fair fights.

But then I started reading up on the Tibetan notion of this whole thing, and they make an interesting point: as the apex (in most cases, although hippoes and others can sometimes best them in some cases in my understanding) of the food chain, lions are RELAXED.  They are not afraid.  This, indeed, is valuable, which makes the symbol valuable, when interpreted correctly.

I have a little ceremony I do each morning.  I find it congenial, and improved it spontaneously in a small way this morning.

I had read some time ago of some Tibetan who like to put a pinch of tea in a pot, and pour it out into a cup, to the point of overflowing.  These are blessings.

I thank God for all that I have, and I try to see it as I do so.  Running water, heat, air conditioning, sufficient food, varieties of food, clean water, health, a bed, a blanket, a sense of physical safety: the possible list is long. 

Today I added: and I thank you for what good may come my way today.  I like this.  It sets a tone of expectation, of looking, of anticipatory gratitude.

Then I take a small piece of a flower from a flowering plant I keep, which has purple blossoms, and has done a fantastic job of staying in bloom for at least 4 months, and float it on the water, and ask for the wisdom and perception to see and appreciate the beauty that floats by me in this life.

Finally, I light a small tea candle, and ask for the wisdom and courage to be a light in this world.

It is congenial.  It is my approach, but something like it, I think most people will find useful in the remembrance of the good, which cannot but drive out, or at least reduce, the terrors and anxieties of the present and past.

Uniquely among emotional pains–or so it seems to me at this moment before I drink my first coffee–confusion is avoidable through a simple expedient: unwarranted assumptions and unwarranted confidence in those assumptions.

Don’t want to feel confused?  Just assume you are always right, or at least right, here, 100%, beyond any possibility of doubt.

It is perhaps the case that much of human misery comes from the simplicity of this exercise.

I am feeling confusion in my dreams.  Where most of my dreams before were running, fighting, or enduring, now no one is attacking me. I am on journeys, with people I have known, in places which are unfamiliar, and which change spontaneously in strange ways.

If I have not said this before, though, let me say it now: the path to wisdom leads straight through confusion.

If it is completely comfortable, completely easy, it is not the right path.

https://youtu.be/SF6I5VSZVqc

I agree with this guy 100%.

There is a popular t-shirt with a picture of Christ saying “I never said that”.  Much of Christianity, in my view, falls under that heading.

No sane person, studying the history of Christianity, can be anything but nauseated at much of its history.  Obviously, I am not and never have been one to also overlook the good it has done, but my goodness, I have images floating in my mind of churches filled with women and children being burnt to the ground over minor points of theology, and well constructed rain gutters literally flowing with human blood.

This before we even get to the Inquisition, the Reformation, the burning of “witches”, and everything else.

This guy puts it great, though: the goal is to become human, to find your spark, to find what connects you to God, what attracts you to the light, what enables goodness to shine, what makes you happy to work for everything beautiful.  These are all worth dying for repeatedly.

You can’t fix the past. What you can do is fix the future by fixing the present.

I would like to stipulate a principle which I myself am not sure I believe: words cannot create a greater sense of inner peace than you have already experienced in the company of others. They can of course agitate you, or teach you to substitute one form of chronic tension for another, or calm from a state of agitation to an emotional state you know.

But if we posit, as I do, that the beginning of human self knowledge is the capacity for deep relaxation, practice, and ONLY  practice, can take you there. If you don’t know the place, no idea will ever take you there.  But another way, no philosophy can be written which will substitute for a mothers love. That you need a practice for.

Think about the options for making illicit money inherent in an organization shrouded in secrecy, black budgets, and the training to be extraordinarily devious and cunning.

I look at a John Brennan and I see a political motivation: working towards a global Communist state.  But what if some of these people are using their spy tools to make money.  Could they not spy on private corporations to gather top secret market information and engage in insider trading?  Could they not invest in companies in foreign countries, then interfere with the governments to make sure those companies were protected? 

Why not?  Who watches the watchers?  

It is an odd thing that Leftists so fear monopolies in the private domain, but not just accept but DEMAND them in the public, so called, domain, which is to say in the realm of government.  Everything to be “socialized” is inherently to be monopolized, is it not?  Single Payer is quite different from multiple payer.  One source is quite different from many sources.  One option is quite different from many options.

It is a clearly established fact of economic history that true monopolies are rare, and can only be maintained over time through using the leverage of size to provide more for less, by being the best.  Unless you take care of people, market alternatives emerge and slowly take market share.  White Castle, in my understanding, was the dominant–really the only–fast food chain for some years.  But today, most people have never had a slider (you’re not missing much, although I do like the jalapeno ones).

This is not the case with government monopolies, which do not need to be highly competent, to provide good service, or do anything at the best or even a reasonable price.  No market incentives exist.  Nothing prevents mediocrity from enduring and dominating indefinitely, but public outrage, and such outrage is necessarily diffused by the very nature of a large bureaucracy and the difficulty of fixing blame, particularly when the TRUE blame lies with the system itself.  The VA is a very good example.  It is horrible, has been horrible a long time, and has proven very resistant to change and improvement.  Why?  It is socialized medicine.  That is the shortest answer, and privatization–for example, by giving veterans an annual stipend equal to what the government was already willing to pay on their behalf in its own system, which they can use for health insurance, or to pay for health care directly–is the obvious answer.

Right now, veterans have no choice, if they want their care to be paid for by the government.  Right now they suffer, and in some cases die unnecessary deaths, because somebody somewhere thought that centralized control was humane and just, and the alternative inhumane, when the opposite is clearly the case.