tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34409991845610154952024-02-07T06:00:37.851-07:00TTHC: THAT TIME HAS COMEel grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.comBlogger184125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-24576459907104197322016-09-17T11:42:00.001-06:002020-06-30T21:43:25.893-06:00The Aesthetics of Civility: Art and Counterrevolution <div class="date">
<h1>
<strong><em><br /></em></strong></h1>
<b>By <span class="st">Fr. Matthew Raphael Johnson, Ph.D.</span></b></div>
<b><em>Originally Published in </em>Modern Age<em>, Spring 2000</em></b><br />
<br />
Art is a microcosm of civilization. If, as Plato was to say, justice
consists in a certain ordering of parts according to their nature,
then art is an idealization of this arrangement, one anticipating its
coming into being. Pieces of the whole are found naturally there,
manifesting themselves as such a part. An aesthetic manifesting the
idea of justice is the human intellect striving to realize the pieces
of a whole subsumed under the concept of justice itself. Both the parts
and the whole are shown as manifesting what they truly are. Art, as
Plato would not say, is an understanding of justice as an idealization
of the real. These are two quite distinct things. The former is the
anticipation of the Good under the medium of an artistic expression.
The expression itself takes its beginning from the concept of justice
itself. The latter takes its starting point from the real, from natural
objects and states of affairs. By “idealization” one means the concept
of justice itself, a concept immortalized in the definition of Logos,
or the arrangement of elements forming a whole. Art seeks the elements
of justice within natural objects, and attempts to bring out its
defining features in ways currently not socially grasped. Artistic
creation is the ability to see potential for further ethical growth in
the natural and social order. It is the realization of essence, if only
in symbolic form. Art can find no separation from this. Art apart from
the Logos is degeneracy.<br />
<br />
The lack of vision in modern art is one of the most painful and most
obvious signs of American and Western social collapse. It is such that
even the most untrained minds can see the lack of any hope in
society’s most subtle modes of self-expression. Art is a window to
society, and much can be learned through an examination of art, or the
collective social expression. Much is learned about social cohesion and
collective values through art. Classical Byzantium and its successor
state, Imperial Russia —perhaps two of the most healthy societies in
world history—expressed themselves in that antithesis of decadence,
iconography. Iconography is the aesthetic of counterrevolution. Even at
the start of the “Enlightened” revolution with Thomas Hobbes and the
Renaissance (of which he was the intellectual apogee), art had an
evocative nature, even a transformative one. However fleshy, sensual,
and hyper- realistic, Gothia showed mankind at its essence, in a
powerful relationship with the Creator of all things —humanity, that
is, as reaching fulfillment only in such a relationship. Mankind’s
essence as a rational being is actualized only in communion with its
creator. Religious art was the poetry of the soul, in that it could
transcend the mundane and show mankind’s final resting place. This was
the repose of the human soul, and poetry could capture it as
theological speculation never could. This is the aesthetic of the
liturgy, and even of scripture itself.<br />
<br />
After the great El Greco attempted the fusion of the icon with
Western realism—certainly one of the greatest experiments in art
history—the residual transcendent understanding of art had a rather
short life. As liberalism and utilitarianism took over the realm of
ethics, art no longer had any metaphysical base from which to proceed.
Decadence and decay were soon to follow.<br />
<br />
If art is the expression of the Logos, or the arrangement of
elements in a whole according to the fullness of their essence, then
modernity was the death of art. The ideology of modernity declared that
essences were non-existent. Following the ideas of the English
Schoolman, William of Occam, Enlightenment philosophy considered
objects as merely a bundle of properties. An essence was merely
something invented by the observer to make sense out of the properties
themselves, to bring unity to that which was brought to the senses.
Essences had no independent existence. There were no “objects” strictly
considered, but merely an understanding of universal causality. There
was no central purpose to man, the human intellect was reduced to a
bundle offeelings and impulses. No art worthy of the name can proceed
from such a psychology.<br />
<br />
It was mankind, according to Francis Bacon and John Locke, that was
to impart meaning to objects, rather than science being a study of
objects in themselves. Rationality, vis-à-vis a just social order,
concerned the scientific establishment applying the understanding of
universal causality to the social realm—the birth of the social
sciences, reaching its apogee in Comte. The concept of a social science
was the elite arrangement of social entities (self-moving pieces of
matter idealized into “human beings”) in such a way that the response
to stimuli was to lead the entities in the preordained direction —it
was the social planners who were to define justice, and, if the human
intellect was a fiction, then all that was needed was a skillful
manipulation of sentiments and impulses. The greatest and most
unfortunate expression of this idea is within the pages of Hobbes’s
Leviathan (1651).<br />
<br />
The effect on aesthetics was nothing short of revolutionary. With
the concept of an object fully expressing its essence now dissipated in
Enlightenment social science, objects were merely to reflect the moods
and drives of the viewer. Classical art was not something that
essentially extended from the intellect of the artist, or, more
accurately, the sentiments and “will to power” of the artist, but from
the object itself, the object expressing an intrinsic essence through
the medium of the intellect.<br />
<br />
That essence being fully actualized in direct communion with God is
the very aesthetic of iconography, reflecting faithfully the philosophy
of a fully Christian social order as well as a Christian psychology.
The iconographer, usually a monastic, would fast for extended periods
of time before attempting to capture this concept. Fasting was to
release the spirit at the expense of the flesh, bringing the artist
into a fuller communion with the essence of all essences, pure being
itself, God. This is the aesthetics of the spirit, the aesthetics of
Christian civilization.<br />
<br />
Enlightenment social science created an aesthetic that merely
reflected the drives of the artist, for there was no essence to be
actualized, no spirit to soar above the ever earthbound flesh. Art
became the “idealization” of the piece of matter-in-motion of the
Leviathan. Mankind was expressed in art, eventually, as the tortured
and imprisoned bundle of passions at the mercy of drives. Soon, this
idea was to reach its fullness in the Existentialist school; that
school of thought that still haunts Western man to this day. Art and
music began to express dread and fear. Mankind had no purpose and the
universe was absurd, but man was still forced to make moral judgments,
still forced to live in society and cherish his pathetic modicum of
earthly contentment.<br />
<br />
There can be no question, with exceptions such as Goya, that the
Enlightenment ushered in the age of decadence in aesthetics. No longer
was the human form illumined from outside, but humanity was seen,
following the Weltgeist of scientism, to possess this for itself, as
itself. This myth was not to last long. Mankind, quite the contrary
from proving it was the bearer of the “divine spark,” showed that it
was capable of the basest evil. Such ideas came into painfully sharp
focus as World War I began.<br />
<br />
Artistic creation was to become blurrier and blurrier as humanity
was severed from any transcendent purpose. By the end of the nineteenth
century, van Gogh, Sickert, Seurat, Prikker, van de Velde, and so many
others had severed humanity from its origin—and, explicitly so, had
Gauguin. Mankind was not renewed, as in classical iconography and
sculpture, but distorted, taken away from its transcendent origin and
place of repose; the human form became the plaything of arbitrary will.
Art became the idealization of the bureaucracy. Ovid’s Metamorphosis
had reasserted itself in the age of the social sciences. The onslaught
of Comte, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, as well as their famous
predecessors such as de Sade and LeMettrie, posited man not only as
lacking purpose and ethical basis, but subject to forces beyond human
control. Humanity became something to administer, to regulate, to place
in arbitrary units for its own good. This culminated in the communes
of Paris and in the collectivization of the Soviet period.<br />
<br />
The will of the artist imitated the will of the bureaucrat and the
will of the industrialist. The structures of modern social science
replaced the human essence as the final resting place of artistic
creation. If<br />
<br />
mankind was to be manipulated according to its passions, impulses,
and drives (the only realities in modern psychology), then it became an
inevitability that art reflected the powers of the new order. Art Deco
became the symbol of bureaucratic art, the art of the social
scientist, the aesthetic expression of John Dewey and John Maynard
Keynes.<br />
<br />
World War I, of course, eliminated the human form altogether, giving
birth to a true Existentialism, one that is still the official creed
of the modern mass man. The destruction of the aristocracy, by those
who protected classical culture (in, however, a vulgar fashion), came
simultaneously with the destruction of the human form in aesthetics. It
was just a few years until Picasso distorted the human form by
following the ebb and flow of his own libido—the very apogee of
arbitrary, that is, non-rational, will in art. E. Michael Jones, in his
Degenerate Moderns, clearlyshows Picasso as merely being the
reflection of his own sexual lust and extremely short attention span.<br />
<br />
The connection with Enlightenment—and Existentialist—metaphysics
should be clear. The manipulation of the properties of the human form,
truly the only relevant subject of artistic creation given the demise
of the human essence (or the human form in the highest sense), became
the only purpose of artistic creation, reflecting fully the
bureaucratization of social life in accord with the final victories of
the social sciences and their patron, the techno-bureaucratic and
industrialized state. As masses of humanity were herded to death in war
and into the factories, art reflected this new reality in the lifeless
and meaningless depictions of mankind. Dostoevsky’s Notes from
Underground (1864) became one of the greatest artistic creations of
social protest, both affirming and denying human freedom and the human
intellect, depicting a mankind that both loved and hated freedom, or
the idea that mankind possesses an intellect.<br />
<br />
On the other side of the canvas, art was exemplified by the drives
and carnal desires of the artist. The Enlightenment had won and mankind
was now completely a material object, a purposeless, functionless blob
of desires and passions meant to be shaped into a harmonious whole by
the scientist and the bureaucrat. Art had followed the new idea of
mankind as well as the new idea of justice.<br />
<br />
All of this falls into the perennial danger of the essayist, that
is, a stultifying simplicity, and one that I admit. A solid essayist,
however, is interested in essences, not in chronology. I notice one
interesting thing, however. As the human form was gradually destroyed
between 1890 and 1918—though the origins go back at least to the early
Enlightenment—the concept of sculpture remained highly realistic and
romantic, with horrible exceptions like Rosso. People like von
Hildebrand and Gerome did maintain a classical understanding of
sculpture. Dalou in sculpture and Liszt in music may well have found a
second but not entirely unrelated spur to the glorification of the
human form in the idea of the nation.<br />
<br />
Dalou’s Triumph of the Republic (1899), however much it included
that prostitute “goddess” of reason at its head (the ever present
revolutionary symbol and a mockery of human rationality, and indeed its
death sentence), finds its clarity in the idea of the nation. Hegel’s
concept of the nation as the divine- historical manifested on earth, or
the concept in all its terrestrial fullness, may have well breathed
new life into the concept of humanity and its eternal purpose. The idea
of the nation, particularly in its more conservative aspects, created a
super- reason of the national patrimony. It created a new man, the
nation, or the collective man, from which art could spring. One must
understand, however, that even this was not to last. The wars of the
twentieth century put an end to that.<br />
<br />
We need look no further than Picabia’s Girl Born Without a Mother
(1915) to find the final guttering out of Western aesthetics. Mankind
has completely become a machine, and the traditions of the past no
longer existent for European humanity. The lack of a “mother” was not
only the lack of an intelligible patrimony but also the
consummation—long anticipated by Hobbes—of fear into a fundamental idea
of human life. This fear was the fear of Existentialism: the existence
of moral ideas in a person supposed<br />
<br />
to be merely material; the absurdist contradiction between mankind
as allegedly material with the idea that mankind can consider the
future. This was the fundamental contradiction of modernism and the
fullest explanation of the fear that gripped twentieth-century
man—reflected faithfully by the Existentialists. It finally took Toorop
and Brauner to view humans—including themselves—as corpses, or at
least as possessing a corpse-like countenance. Mankind without an
essence, mankind without a final and transcendent purpose, mankind as
being merely a bundle of properties (externally) and a bundle of
passions (internally) showed itself to the artist as form without a
life, function without a purpose. The corpse became the living symbol of
Enlightenment philosophy through its art.<br />
<br />
The simple fact of meaning here is that modernity has made it
intolerable to be human; Existentialism itself quickly followed upon
the debris of the broken promises of modern science. The promises of
the Enlightenment—well-placed by Goya and others—went unfulfilled as
science failed to impart meaning to the human community. Science was
never to replace what classical philosophy had, without exception,
understood: an intrinsic meaning and purpose to the human function and
form, or an understanding of function through the form.<br />
<br />
Socialist realism rediscovered the human form buttressed by
ideology, but art on orders from the state cannot be interpreted except
through the demands of the state system itself, and contains nothing
but the ever present demands for propaganda only. Indeed, art in the
twentieth century reflected the socialist school in that it was a
product of the New Order of mass capital and state manipulation. The
proof of this can be found in the dragooning of art into the service of
mass advertising, reflecting, in the most vulgar way imaginable, a
mankind that the scientific class considered as merely a tool for the
enrichment of mass capital and as cannon-fodder for the newly formed
and entrenched total warfare state.<br />
<br />
Socialist realism understood the classical function of art much
better than the various schools at the time. For Marxism, art was the
reaching for human justice, a fullness of man’s “being”—a “being” that
was entirely self-created through the various new technologies. It
stood to reason, however, that once “paradise” had come to earth, art
lost its function; it was merely to report what it had seen, for there
was nothing to “idealize” since ideals were already manifested within
the socialist state. Thus, ordinary human forms doing ordinary human
things became the sole domain of artistic expression, in other words,
socialism had claimed to have transcended art in bringing it into
reality. The socialist state system, then, demanded the dissemination
of “realism” in art to show, if nothing else, that the paradise had
indeed arrived on earth. Socialist realism is a necessary outgrowth of
socialist theory, and served not the reality of socialist life, but
merely the demands for propaganda by the socialist elite.<br />
<br />
What, then, is the aesthetic of counterrevolution? It is the
perennial aesthetic of the icon. What makes this the rock of
anesthetics—a true aesthetic of civility—is its vision of human
destiny, a final repose outside of earthly desires and fleshly
passions. It was the eros of Plato rather than the erotica of Picasso.
Humanity does not contain its “own light,” as the neo-gnostic
Enlightenment assured us; nor does science have the ability to recreate
the “divine spark” in its own image. The classical aesthetic of the
apostolic Christian world is that humanity, first, is fallen, and,
second, is capable, through communion with the Creator, of recapturing
the glory of his nature manifested to the fullest extent. This is the
aesthetic of iconography. The psychology of iconography is to be found
in the final victory of the spirit (or the upper reaches of the
intellect in Orthodox Christian theology) over the flesh. This victory
is not found in the radical suppression of the flesh, as the ancient
gnostics taught, but rather in that fundamentally Orthodox notion of the
transfiguration of the flesh.<br />
<br />
What Plato understood, in spite of himself, was that the flesh was
an intrinsic part of the human person. His view of justice was not the
elimination of the flesh, but rather its being brought into subjection
to powers that are naturally superior to it. The spirit and intellect
were, by nature, superior to the flesh in that they could generalize
about natural contingency and understand the universal hidden therein.
Only<br />
<br />
then could the flesh find its proper function in the world. The
passions, or the active principle of the flesh, were not to be
eliminated, but placed in the service of the intellect. This is the
psychology of civility, and was productive of an artistic vision that
idealized the final victory of the spirit.<br />
<br />
One must, however, not forget the idea of the nation. The very
concept of the Christian collective, reinforced by its national idea,
is the true spur for considering the eventual human glorification in
the super-nation of heaven. Following Vladimir Soloviev, artistic
beauty is the divine light penetrating the material humanity. One can
extrapolate, first, the idea of the nation as the material condition
for the divine penetration, collectively speaking, of divine grace, and
second, the Christian society as its light. The life of the nation, in
other words, can be transformed by the church, and society can become
actually Christian. Christian society takes on the look of a large
church, and it is the light of Mount Tabor that makes a nation a
theological organization rather than merely a mundane one, as Saint
Augustine taught.<br />
<br />
This is to say that, if the entire collective is transformed, there
is no object of nature that cannot be considered transfigured, and
thus, a thing of beauty. Beauty for those like Soloviev and the
classical tradition in general follows from the Holy Transfiguration of
Christ. Art represents the transfiguration of nature. It is not the
slavish imitation of nature, nor is it its nullification, but rather
its fulfillment. This is the purpose of art, this is the artistic
genius. Justice, then, is the Christianization of the collective
because only it can redeem man from his intrinsic fallenness,
manifested by the predominance of human passion and impulse. Justice
follows from the Transfiguration, for only when the flesh of man and
his community is transformed can mankind live as he should, according
to his essence.<br />
<br />
But if nature is to be receptive of this transformation, then the
collectivity itself must be transformed. This is to say that the
society in general must be dedicated to manifesting the supremacy of
the spiritual and intellectual over the carnal. The Christian nation,
then, becomes a work of art, for it is the transfiguration of social
life. It is the idealization of the famous seal of the Byzantine
Empire, or the two-headed eagle, the joining of the mundane to the
spiritual in one transformative and transformed unity, the highest
aspiration of social theory.<br />
<br />
Even the architecture of the church itself speaks of the idea of the
Transfiguration. The church itself, in its state closest to the
ground, or the earth, is square. This represents the mundane world with
its boundaries, pain, limitations. Above it and expressing a unity
with the square is the dome, and within it, the icon of the
Pantocrator, the creator and maintainer of all things. The divine
circle rests upon the human square. The circle transforms the
limitations of the mundane world, making pain and limitation necessary
ingredients to one’s spiritual transformation, itself a precursor to
the final glorification of the church in heaven. The altar itself is
always a square (tetrapod), while the body of Christ, offered upon it,
is in the form of bread baked in a circle. The circle has no beginning
or end, while the square is well defined by its intrinsic limitations.<br />
<br />
The lack of the rational state of justice—the transformed human
collective—is the end of artistic creation worthy of the name. If the
collective is not dedicated to this state of affairs, or the
spiritualization of the collective, then nature cannot be seen as
transfigured, but merely as the object of human desire. This is the
very definition of decadence and is the ground for abstraction—or the
nullification of nature—in artistic creation. Nature is “conquered” by
the spirit and made to be seen anew, as expressing value in itself.
Outside of this, nature is viewed as Locke viewed it, merely a means to
mankind’s passions.<br />
<br />
Nature can be three things in artistic representation: abstract,
real, or transfigured. Imitating nature as it is makes little sense—no
one needs an artist for this, but merely eyes. This is the art of
socialist realism that claims that idealization is unnecessary because
the ideal is now the real. Abstraction is the view of nature as the
object of technical manipulation, nature as nullified, subject to
outside powers.<br />
<br />
Transformation is the glorification, through the light of the
Transfiguration, of nature to its original state, a state of
cooperation, abundance, and humanness.<br />
<br />
This is the meaning of art, and it has a spiritual as well as social
component. The social life is to reflect the Church in its demand for
the supreme rule of the spiritual and the intellectual, as the Church
imparts the grace needed to make this a reality, not a part of the
dreams of the Platonists or the Stoa. The church is the true spur to
art in its fullness in that it is the mystical body of Christ itself,
thus redeeming us from our base passions. Humanity can finally be
represented in its wholeness, in its place of repose. In classical
times this ideal existed, but remained a distant object of speculation,
something Plato painfully took to his grave. There was no “bridge”
between the current passionate state of humanity and the ideal of the
rational life. This is, further, the aesthetic of counterrevolution,
the art of anti-decadence, the art against carnality.<br />
<br />
Simply put, then, art is about transformation, collective as well as
natural. The Christian nation is an icon of heaven, as the monarch is
the icon of Christ; it is the transformation of collective life. Art
seeks to capture this transformation and present it to those who find
difficulty in comprehending a mass transformation as a theological
matter. Christian faith, in its highest and most complete expression,
is a collective phenomenon; when it becomes an individual phenomenon
solely, the end of Christian society is near if not present. The nation
has, in both East and West, been the repository of the Christian
collective. Its health—as Blessed Augustine was to say—is the health of
the Church. Both are necessary to the transformation of human life,
and thus, to the existence of true art. The light of Tabor enlightens
and transfigures the collective life as the national expression
encourages all to acts of penance and repentance. Christianity does not
exist with a series of monasteries or hermitages alone, but as a
vibrant collective phenomenon in the nation taking on the externals of a
Church in itself. The nation participates within the mystical body of
Christ on earth, and is not something foreign to it. This is the
beginning of transfiguration, and also the impetus to aesthetics. It is
the aesthetics of civility, the aesthetics of the new man.el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-4867998071242097892016-09-17T08:16:00.000-06:002016-09-17T08:16:42.790-06:00Deconstructing the PUA fraud "The Alpha male"From the message board SlutHate.com<br />
<br />
<strong>User "Master Yoda":</strong><br />
<br />
Given the dumbed down and oversexed society we live in, where a man's worth is falsely based on how many women he beds, as opposed to his contribution to society, to answer your question, I guess guy #1 is what would be considered "alpha", guy # 2 would probably be alpha as well, but guys #3 and #4 would be considered "beta" males.<br />
<br />
In any case Alan, we can argue until we go black and blue in the face regarding the dynamics of male-female sexual relationships, but the bottom line is this:<br />
<br />
1) There is no such thing as being "good" with women, women PRESELECT the men they want, and this is mostly based on the man's looks,race and financial resources (yes, women have very strong racial preferences when it comes to men).<br />
<br />
2) Women are shallow, superficial creatures that are attracted to shiny things, and if you don't pass the looks, race and money test with a woman, it's game over, lights out, and no amount of "game" or any other PUA dumbfuckery is going to change a woman's mind if she has already rejected you.<br />
<br />
3) As with point #1, women are the CHOOSERS, when it comes to sex/or relationships, and as the choosers they are also JUDGE, JURY and EXECUTIONER when it comes to gauging your true SEXUAL MARKET VALUE.<br />
<br />
I rest my case.<br />
<br />
<strong>Master Yoda:</strong><br />
<br />
No Alan, Ceran absolutely nailed it with his summation of the word confidence and how it relates to attracting women, and I will expand on that with my own definition of what the word confidence actually means.<br />
<br />
"Confidence is a SELF ASSURED FEELING (free of self doubt), that one will achieve a positive outcome, based on PREVIOUS, PERFORMANCE, ACCOMPLISHMENT".<br />
<br />
You can only be as confident with a woman as she allows you to be, and I will qualify my reasons why. For example, if you are interacting with a woman you have an interest in, and she is giving you evasive or hostile body language eg. she turns her back on you, she gives you the "silent treatment", dirty looks etc, then your confidence (or that self assured feeling), is going to plummet because you know you are being rejected. On the other hand, if a woman is giving you inviting body language, eg. she moves in on your personal space, she constantly touches you, smiles at you, actively participates in the conversation etc, then your confidence will rise, because you know that there is a good chance you are going to get lucky.<br />
<br />
I am sorry, but your NBA star Michael Jordan analogy is a poor one, because you what you are doing here is, is that you are suggesting that picking up women is a skill, that once learned can be replicated again and again. Once again, picking up women is NOT a skill, women PRESELECT the men they want, based on the man's looks, race, money and status.<br />
<br />
Learning how to play basketball actually is a skill, that once learned can be replicated again and again, and in the case of NBA legend Michael Jordan, he mastered his chosen sport with great skill. <br />
<br />
You see a basketball is a neutral object, and it doesn't care whether you miss the hoop or not, and assuming you shoot the basketball in the right direction with the correct amount of force, the basketball will pretty much land in the hoop or if you have the height and know how to jump you can just slam dunk it. A woman on the other hand is a human being (Captain Obvious I know), who has a mind of her own, that can work with or against you, regardless how tight your "game" is. Some women will find you attractive, others will think you are an ugly creep, when you are dealing with a woman, you have NO control over the outcome.<br />
<br />
Yes, I have given up on the dating scene (or should that be called the hook up culture), because I have had a fucking gut full of being rejected and humiliated by women, no thanks, I have my pride and dignity as a man, and there is no dignity in being made to look like a fool. If I want sex, I just go to hookers (prostitution is legal here in Australia), and I have to say the hookers I see, give me a great service for a very reasonable price.el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-41169865246353883362016-06-05T10:18:00.002-06:002016-06-05T10:23:20.001-06:00Uberman Quotes 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4MVTDFE3QKvVYRAzT13RclIDhLaPcqyLQEI3XTsTeDpDGwIcLPXA1JTavzUjCj__AVKRjf8Ei5mhUpqQjc-OhyDbksNE3iXZ7E5n4V38zFH9gTsa_nndQ0MwSYrIgcLM3xrvvbaoL_Us/s1600/4872311597_721312df36_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4MVTDFE3QKvVYRAzT13RclIDhLaPcqyLQEI3XTsTeDpDGwIcLPXA1JTavzUjCj__AVKRjf8Ei5mhUpqQjc-OhyDbksNE3iXZ7E5n4V38zFH9gTsa_nndQ0MwSYrIgcLM3xrvvbaoL_Us/s320/4872311597_721312df36_b.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<strong></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Quotes from the original professor of "black pill" Uberman from getbig.com</strong><br />
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Listen, we are animals and we re just designed to find mates to reproduce with, then we re supposed to maximize the odds of survival of offspring by helping it dominate the competition instead of being dominated by it. The healthiest, strongest, richest the partner is, the better odds of survival for the eventual offspring obtained with him/her. Thats what all animals do, they struggle daily and indefinitely to find, obtain and maintain/improve the highest odds of survival for themselves and their offsprings. Everything you do, think, is geared toward this unique goal, purpose.<br />
Males /females relaltionships in all animal species are based on this very basic principle that motivates absolutely every single thought and action we automoatically and subconsciously produce at any given time.<br />
We re automated war machines also known as "lifeforms" that consume resources until there are none anymore. <br />
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the american dream = biggest unscrupulous assholes dominate weaker losers and eradicate them<br />
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</span>It s a fact, majority of immigrants dont come to integrate but to import their way of life in the host's country. Also they re breeding way more than whiteys which means that logically, mathematically, they re going to outnumber them in the end, as simple as that, if you dont reproduce enough or more than other races, you get replaced by them. Immigrants are FORCED to assimilate when they are a very few in an ocean of natives, to survive they must become just like the hosts. When immigrants come in large groups and constantly stick together, they have no reason to assimilate no incentive to do so, and they import their way of life and then being more numerous impose it to the natives that are in smaller numbers before litteraly booting them out of their own place after a while. Quite simple to understand really. The same shit applies everywhere in the world, notably with muslims in europe.<br />
Trump doesnt intend to become president, he knows he has no serious chance anyway, so he goes straight to the point speaking his mind. But wether it s in europe or north america, it s way past the right time to tell these truths. Money rules, rich cynical elites rule and they promote multiculturalism to lower salaries and crush the middle and lower social classes for their profits. Middle and lower white social classes are getting massacrated by their elites who flood them under waves and waves of cheap third worlders. The white race is isolated, self hating, depressed and in decline demographically, period. We re facing extinction, a slow, gradual but certain extinction.<br />
The irony is that mexicans are mostly catholics that some of our white catholic ancestors converted to christianism. Their jesus and god are probably latino looking. They re crushing the atheist white dysfunctional family with their strong family ties and "faith", promise of eradicating the old corrupt white man - and woman-, they have that same revenge logic that muslims in europe have. Just like muslims in europe are convinced they re destined to replace the dying atheist lost and corrupt white man there. Believers, whatever they believe in, are crushing atheists, who mostly happen to be whites.<br />
The other funny part is that most white people will end in retirement homes that are mostly ruled by ...mexican nurses.<br />
Also when it comes to listening to one's opinion about immigration, i always tend to listen to the one who s actually really facing it daily with his guts, to get a realistic point of view, than some asshole who has no idea what is it really about and simply repeat cliche mantras about how great they are and how hard it is for them to make himself look better.<br />
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I worked in nursing homes and psych wards while a student, for three weeks each... it's hell on earth. Psychological hell. Basically all staff members without exception are enjoying laughing openly at weakened and mostly isolated people daily and you can feel the obvious inhuman suffering of customers patients whose bodies and minds are slowly decomposing day after day and cant say or do shit about it. At this point most are sedated without consent with powerful anti psychotics to accelerate the global -physical and psychological- decline so another customer patient can replace them. As a patient, you re stripped of all your rights and are forced to comply with all coercitive behaviors of the so called "care givers". Most family members that sometimes came visiting them barely cared about what happened to them and you could sense it. They would just come to give themselves good conscience. Sometimes they would even laugh at the old patients with staff members...Everyone pretending all was fine and well. If the old patient says something out of place he/she knows he s going to get even more bullied once family leaves.<br />
Most of these institutions are businesses and the dying human beings there are resources to "manage". They re financed by big pharmaceutical companies that provide them with the "drugs" which are subtly designed to accelerate their killing by deteriorating their brains and metabolism.<br />
What i learnt there was that if for some reasons im not able to die in my bed at home surounded by close relatives, i d prefer to end on the streets dying of cold or shooting myself rather than ending there. A real life changing experience to spend some time there.<br />
The irony is that these buildings are full of people who were convinced they d end bed ridden at home surrounded by caring family members...I remember an old man in a wheelchair quickly whispering in my hear while we were alone "this place isnt an hospital, it' s a prison". He pretty much summed my feelings in one sentence a few days before i left.<br />
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in all times, soldiers have always been mercenaries , paid by the richest , strongest, to defend them from the poorer, weakest.<br />
That's nature. An intelligent, philosophical soldier always end killing himself . Most soldiers are guys nobody know what to do with and are sent in the army by their own family to bring some money in. Needless to say if they die...well, at least family keeps getting the money.<br />
Now im grown up and figured the ways of this world, i have 0 compassion for cops or military. They re all assholes.<br />
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elites of all countries have always been impressed by eugenics and the global control/ genocide of poorer , weaker people they see as a danger as long as they cant work in their fields and factories. Most white elites of europe were pro nazism/eugenics before it turned against their interests. Churchill was quoted saying he somewhat respected and admired nazi ideals, of course he then modified his views to fit the reality as all politicians do.<br />
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women created this world by feminizing their sons after neutering their fathers or booting them out. Women have taken over. And the anciently christian civilization is now an atheist and feminist, nihilistic, superficial society on the decline. Again muslims and chinese will roll over what is left of the white race very soon.<br />
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it doesnt require to be christian/religious to see whats wrong with homosexuality. It s just common sense and has always been seen as something abnormal in all human and animal societies. Just like pedophilia and zoophilia or necrophilia.<br />
Now it s becoming a norm, trend in the west and only there, simply because the atheist west is in complete decline. Homosexuality is at its core, a nihilistic , suicidal behavior. Feminists who took over males in the west of course encourage it; males submit by wanting to become women in order to survive. Obviously females have completely taken over males in atheist, white societies.<br />
There is no doubt in my mind the white race is heading the way of the dodo. No way muslims or chinese ever fall into that nihilistic, suicidal stance. They ll gladly take over what we leave behind us.<br />
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the rich man will always trouble the poor. Just like the weak monkey will always be harassed by the alpha monkeys. When you re a kid everything sounds fun until you re an adult and realize it s all about killing instead of being killed; all the "games" you "played" were just training for the real fight once grown up. Games serve only one purpose in all animal species: train to kill for when you ll be on your own.<br />
Some are better prepared for it than others, and history is written by the winners.<br />
Pleasure is felt when killing, dominating, pain is felt when losing, being dominated. <br />
"Since we already know the ending, may as well make the time in between at least somewhat pleasant somehow. "<br />
problem is to be happy, you ve got to step on someone else's head and actually face his/her pain to feel "luckier" and "happier" then him/her. One 's pleasure, hapiness, is always at the expense of someone's else pleasure, that s just the way it is. A winner needs losers to actually feel like a winner, otherwise he wouldnt feel like one. Nature isnt designed to be fair, all lifeforms exploit each others to "make a living" , survive.<br />
Also most people who pretend to be happy because they ' re "helping" others are actually fooling themselves; they re in fact exploiting others weaknesses to make a living. Their ultimate goal cant be to completely cure their customers/patients problems; otherwise they wouldnt have a job anymore. They need a steady stream of "unlucky" people to "take care" of. Most social work is lucky people exploiting poorer, unlucky people. Irony is the rich need poor people to exploit and make a living while the poor constantly wish to become as strong as their masters to.. join and/or replace them.<br />
There s a reason why so called "human resources" exist, it s because the weak is a resource for the strong. In all animals species, the luckiest, strongest, fastest individuals exploit, prey, on the weaker individuals and use them as slaves/resources.<br />
And yeah, everything is vain for whoever understands the true nature of existence.<br />
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the success of facebook only proves humans are vain egocentrical worthless hypocritical animals. Whatever their skin color btw.<br />
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love the little buddha statue at the bottom of screen to make the whole presentation even "healthier" and legit. You know you re facing a charlatan everytime buddhism is brought up by a westerner.<br />
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worked in IT for 6 years webdesigner/content manager and other bullshit titles -basically laughing all day with collegues surfing playing games and "working" like two or three hours a day-, got bored of office work, thought i wanted a" more meaningful" role and career...got into studies/health and social work... oh boy what a mistake. It was way less stressing to displace files , create some bullshit graphics , "code" websites and answer fucking emails all day. Sure it can get repetitive and boring, you want to smash your computer/mouse but are you really sure you want more stress? Given the choice now, i would choose boredom over stress. I learned nothing really good about life attempting to care about people needs, mostly that some people are luckier than others and...thats all. Most of the time you cant do jack shit to help people, you re just sitting there telling them stuff they either cant comprehend or cant really do. All they want are money/free handouts. And i dont even blame them. I came to despise all the collegues -mostly women- i had because they were making fun of the people they were supposed to help more tha anything. Comparing themselves to those who have less to make themselves feel better about their own lives. It s rampant in all the system, i leared that most doctors hate mankind and their patients with a passion. No really, health and social working are definitely not for me, way too cynical.<br />
I regret so fucking much leaving IT now, im considering going back but it s tough. Seriously, stay sit in your fucking chair doing fuck all, there s no better place to spend the rest of your life. As you age the less stress you feel at work the better. Stress takes its toll way faster. Just my opinion. Stay healthy, practice sport, stay sit in a chair moving a mouse as a job and you ll live til you re 120. Isnt it what it s all about in the end, what truly matters, lasting longer than anyone else.<br />
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When i was a kid i thought space was all about tie fighters, x wings firing lasers and planets full of funny looking "aliens".<br />
Now i realize space is an uterly uninteresting, depressing empty cold dark place and that if an alien race exists/didnt destroy itself before leaving its planet it would probably destroy us if they ever found us.<br />
It s called growing up and realizing how shitty life is at its core. Most old people who survived long enough to see most of their peers die of cancer or suicide know the truth. They enjoy life as much as they can when they can for the luckiest of them, not giving a fuck about what will follow, simply because they know that what will follow is ... more and more competition, more and more wars until nothing is left at all. After a lifetime spent looking around them, they know we re just animals that will destroy themselves at some point if we re not destroyed by some random cataclysmic event first.<br />
What is left then? focusing on everydays simple pleasures, and telling the youthto fuck off. They know their kids will abandon them as soon as money and inheritance will become the only reason to talk to them. Thats what happening in most of atheist families. White man dont believe in anything anymore, no values, no faith, no morals, it s all about fucking or getting fucked until we all get fucked one day anyway once and for all.<br />
Third worlders who still "believe" in various religions, in strong family ties will flood and replace us all, then will progressively abandon their faith too and become just like us, whiteys. Their time is coming as we re slowly disapearing, but they too, will face that state of ultimate mental decay the white man is the first to have reached thanks to "reasoning, logic and "science".<br />
Most people are doping themselves with various drugs daily to have an edge over the competition for jobs, mates etc. Everything is allowed and money and domination are everything. Always have been but it s just now more apparent than ever, after we got rid of the fake sugarcoating of "religion". There is nothing left but our sheer natural cruel core bestiality for all to see.<br />
We re just fucking animals killing each others randomly and indefinitely until we either destroy ourselves for the last resources or get destroyed by something coming from somewhere else. Life is war, at all levels, constantly. Some are designed to survive, others to disapear. The strongest last longer, but they too at some point are destroyed. <br />
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<strong>Previous quotes from Uberman:</strong><br />
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<a href="http://thattimehascome.blogspot.com/2013/09/what-is-happiness.html" target="_blank">What is Happiness?</a><br />
<a href="http://thattimehascome.blogspot.com/2013/05/girls-and-sons.html" target="_blank">Girls and sons</a><br />
<br />el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-15912662884763086432015-12-08T12:36:00.001-07:002015-12-08T12:38:06.574-07:00Orthodox Christianity and the Internet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<h2>
On Internet-Abstinence by Archimandrite Symeon (Tomachinsky) | 29 May 2015</h2>
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Much-respected Vladykas; dear Fathers, brothers, and sisters; ladies and gentlemen!<br />
It is my special pleasure today to speak to you on May 9, on the celebration of Victory Day. On the one hand, we indeed celebrate the ontological victory of Christ over death and the devil; and, on the other, we celebrate the earthly and historical victory over fascism and evil. This gives us hope that today as well we will find a solution to the problems that we are discussing here.<br />
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There have already been several interesting speeches on Internet-abstinence: in particular, Fr. Maximos Constas delivered an excellent speech today, and Elena Zhosul also spoke on this topic. She introduced a very nice term: digital detox. Archpriest Vasilios Thermos also spoke about the necessity of having a sober attitude towards the Internet, and many who have spoken here have mentioned this topic.<br />
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Many Christian virtues, as we know, are connected with abstinence. This can mean abstinence from food, alcohol, conjugal relations, evil thoughts, impure looks, rude words, and sinful deeds. Some types of abstinence are temporary, as for example during Great Lent, and some are prescribed only for certain groups of people, such as monks, in certain situations. Others are permanent and unconditional. In fact, most of the commandments given by God to the people of the Old Testament are of a restrictive character and contain an element of abstinence. Generally speaking, as we know, abstinence as a virtue began in Paradise, when the Lord commanded Adam not merely to cultivate the Garden of Eden, but also to refrain from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.<br />
The appearance of the Internet has opened a new front in mankind’s spiritual warfare. The Internet has introduced new and effective means of tempting people. These are probably not new sins, but they do involve new means of tempting and manipulating people, as well as new means of wasting life. At first, it had seemed that computers and the World Wide Web had introduced unparalleled opportunities for people’s creative development.<br />
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Steve Jobs once related a textbook case about reading an article in a learned journal about how much energy various animals put into covering distances and into any positive work. And Jobs came to a conclusion that condors (a kind of soaring eagle) are the most successful animals in this regard: they expend the least number of calories to move at the maximum speed. Man is somewhere near the bottom of the list. Jobs suggested that computers could become a kind of bicycle for the human brain, because a bicycle, which is a human invention, immediately gives one the advantage to use one’s capabilities more instinctively than condors. That is, one expends fewer calories to cover longer distances. Jobs proposed that computers should become this sort of bicycle for the human brain. But how did it turn out? It turned out that it was not man who ruled the computer in order to increase his capabilities, but that it was the computer that ruled man, dictating his will and offering endless diversions.<br />
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Multitasking has become one of the most intractable problems for modern man. In his article titled “How Today’s Computers Weaken Our Brain” in The New Yorker, Tim Wu examined different aspects of this problem. The author arrived at the following conclusion, and I quote: “Today’s machines don’t just allow distraction; they promote it. The Web calls us constantly, like a carnival barker, and the machines, instead of keeping us on task, make it easy to get drawn in — and even add their own distractions to the mix. In short: we have built a generation of ‘distraction machines’ that make great feats of concentrated effort harder instead of easier.”<br />
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A great feat of concentrated effort – this is what is required of us, and this is what we lose because of computers. In his article, the author gives three examples of successful creative works. The first was Franz Kafka, who wrote his work “The Judgment” in eight hours, in one sitting, without being distracted by anything. The second was Jack Kerouac, who wrote his famous novel On the Road in three weeks. The third was Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who created a new video game, Breakout, in four days. I am deliberately avoiding offering any evaluation of the works created, because I would like to draw your attention to the conditions that are essential for creative work – although, of course, the works of Kafka and Kerouac are considered classic literature.<br />
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Kafka could have gotten distracted from his work by checking his e-mail, and could have lost the inspiration that was essential for finishing his story. Kerouac could have checked his Twitter or chatted on his Facebook, WhatsApp, or somewhere else, and his On the Road would never have been finished, and we would never have been able to read this novel. Psychologists state that a person can fully concentrate on one thing at a time, and on several things in the background, but that will already be unproductive. Yes, we can all simultaneously talk on Skype and surf the Internet, and even write simple letters via e-mail. However, we also know that we cannot do serious work in a similar way. We live in an age when tremendous forces are fighting for our attention and time, as we have heard in other speakers’ talks.<br />
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The Internet has become one of the most important battlegrounds. It is no coincidence that neologisms have appeared in Russian, such as khronotsid, which means killing time, and osetenet’, which means getting addicted to the Internet, and which also sounds like the word osatanet’, which means getting attached to the devil. We are called to make friends with time, just like Alice in Wonderland. If previously we could just run faster in order to stay in one place, today we have to run twice as fast, as you can understand. Therefore, many people are now installing the Freedom program onto their computers, which disables any signals given by e-mail, social networks, or Internet advertisements in order to concentrate on their activities.<br />
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Even if we were merely talking about wasting time due to diversions on the Internet, it would be a great cause for alarm. But today we are talking about true Internet-addiction. The previous talk clearly demonstrated this fact. This Internet-addiction can be compared to drug addiction. Many people literally experience severe withdrawal symptoms if they are deprived of the Internet for even a short period of time. Dr. Dimitrios Karayiannis was among those spoke about this on the first day of our conference. The Internet is turning into a kind of Gogol’s “Viy,” which, when seen by anyone, kills one with its evil powers. The Internet is like a crystal ball, a Palantir, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings. One hopes to look into it to see a mystery, but gradually it turns one into a slave of the Dark Lord. Sometimes our mouse and our face, looking at a computer screen, become the mark on one’s right hand and forehead of which St. John the Theologian speaks in his Revelation. Sometimes we are one click away from a grievous sin that would enslave us to the devil.<br />
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You all know the old monastic piece of wisdom: “Go, sit in your cell; and your cell will teach you all things.” Modern life has created another aphorism from a collection of dark humor: “Get Internet access in your cell, and your cell will teach you all things.” This does not merely concern monks. It is as if the three temptations of which the Apostle John the Theologian speaks – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – have taken shape on the Internet.<br />
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Of course, please do not misunderstand me: I am not against the Internet; one has to use it for the purposes of pastoral and missionary work. We have witnessed a wonderful example of such ministry during our conference. Abstinence does not mean giving up the Internet. Abstinence means a rational, creative, and constructive attitude towards the Internet. We are called to learn Internet-abstinence. One should teach young children to learn its rules, to use it carefully, like a hot iron or an electrical current in a wall socket. These rules should be taught in schools and studied in-depth at universities. They should be put on one’s desktop as accident prevention.<br />
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If we would like to preserve our freedom and if we wish for computers to serve people, and not the other way around, and if we value the feat of creative and constructive work and not killing time, Internet-abstinence should become a new Christian commandment for us.<br />
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“For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:20).<br />
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<h2>
Valaam abbot gives up Internet, suggests restricting use of smartphones in monasteries | 23 July 2015</h2>
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“All these smartphones, large screens are a huge temptation, especially to young monks. I have often heard them say at confessionals that they have again fallen into the sin of using the Internet […] One novice even left Valaam because he had been drawn by the Internet and the common world had drawn him back. I even believe it’s one of the biggest challenges to monks now,” the bishop said in an interview published in the Wednesday edition of the paper Argumenty i Fakty.<br />
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The bishop said monks leave the secular world and smartphones bring them back to it, adding that the problem now exists everywhere, even on Athos.<br />
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“They write blogs there, talk on forums, send ‘Many years’, addresses and anathemas. But all these things absolutely contradict monkhood. Although I use the Internet myself. It’s really convenient: you can learn the weather and the weather forecast for tomorrow, whether you should use a boat to sail on the Ladoga or not, and the news on events taking place in the patriarchy and the world. It’s convenient to manage, read and send letters,” the bishop said.<br />
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Nevertheless, he said he has made a decision to give up the Internet.<br />
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“Even the phones that monks have on Athos are not theirs, they are the monastery’s. They get them like they get socks in the warehouse, a cup and a spoon, the simplest and the cheapest furniture. Everything is very functional. If a monk gets a specific obedience, he gets a phone and the phone is taken away when it’s over. The same should be done in our monasteries,” he said.<br />
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Elder Ephraim of Vatopedi: The Internet and Spiritual Experience | 22 May 2015</h2>
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The rabid development of information technology over the past two decades has truly brought about unexpected results, of which we could not even dream in the seventies and even eighties. The Internet, e-mail, web-based resources, social networks: they are part of our everyday life, work, science, education, art, and entertainment. The Internet has allowed us to reduce or even abolish distance. Thus, news can be transmitted through the Internet from one end of the earth to another in a couple of seconds – we have all had this experience. Conversations, sometimes even involving eye contact, now take place smoothly, regardless of distance. The only condition is that the user have Internet access. Indeed, the use of the Internet is so simple that any child or elderly person can easily use it.<br />
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In this same manner, the Word of God can be transmitted anywhere in the world. In this way, that which is happening here in Athens before an audience of 100 people can be recorded and sent to thousands or even millions of users, or even transmitted online, as is happening now with our conference.<br />
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But we should realize that the Word of God is not simple human speech, but bears Divine Energy, which can spiritually revive man and truly comfort him – and this can happen through the Internet. We know of many cases when various people – atheists, idolaters from India, Japan, and Nepal – have found Orthodoxy through the Internet and been reborn, because they found the truth that they were looking for in this life; they found Christ.<br />
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Not long ago the Hollywood actor Jonathan Jackson visited our monastery. I asked him how he became Orthodox. He told me that the Internet had very much helped him. On the other hand, thanks to the Internet, Christians who had departed from God have returned to Him, found themselves, and found their place in this world. There are people who had been on the verge of absolute frustration and, having listened to some talks on the Internet, found the necessary spiritual strength and hope, and are now developing spiritually.<br />
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Of course, the Orthodox Word of God is less present on the Internet compared to other words. When I speak of other words, I mean science, economics, politics, and even such phenomena as fashion, show business, or even certain corrupting resources that, unfortunately, are often visited.<br />
It seems to me that today the Word of God must have a strong and powerful presence online. The majority of people today are disoriented, constantly falling at an impasse. In this era, only the Word of God can comfort man, inform him, and assure him of the possibility of eternal life. The Word of God transmitted through the Internet can have a healing function for man.<br />
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The creation of digital libraries with relevant content can and should be encouraged and multiplied. The heritage and wisdom of the Holy Fathers, with their remarkable texts, should be used as much as possible in the most modern and optimal way. The digitization and categorization of the Holy Fathers enables Internet users to find texts and information on topics of interest to them. Moreover, the digitization and promotion through webpages of the Word of God, especially the teachings of the Holy Fathers as well as of the Elders of the twentieth century, will bring spiritual benefit to our contemporaries.<br />
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Elder Ephraim of Katounakia said: “Oh, what it pity that it wasn’t possible to record the sayings of the Elder Joseph.” We understand that it is truly important when things are uttered by people who have experienced and gained personal experience in the unseen spiritual warfare. St. Paisios said: “Write down everything that is spiritual that you hear, as well as the experience that you have heard from others, because there will come a time when this experience will be exhausted, and you will have a spiritual deficiency.” Indeed, over the past few years there has been great growth in the publication of books of theological content, especially in Greece, but also in other Orthodox countries.<br />
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But, unfortunately, there are Orthodox who, due to language barriers, do not have access to these valuable texts. Moreover, the ordinary book, printed on paper, is now in a serious crisis. At the same time, sales of electronic books are growing. Therefore, we can say that we can make use of this trend. We can say that all this is good and God-pleasing, when everything goes correctly.<br />
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The Internet is a modern tool that promotes globalization. Those who would like to spread their ideas for global history, global economics, a global state, and a global leader know how to make use of the Internet – and, indeed, they use it at a high level. Why should not we, the Orthodox, use this instrument for promoting the global role of Orthodoxy? Why should we not use it for uniting the Orthodox and its mission in the known world?<br />
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The proper use of the Internet depends upon the user. Of course, the Internet cannot replace living contact. Of course, no one can attain a given level of spirituality through the Internet alone. Orthodoxy is person-centered. Priority also goes to the essential value of the person, to the individual person. The Internet is a tool, an instrument, that helps and benefits us – but in order for the faithful to lead an authentic spiritual life, it is required that he have personal contact with his spiritual father.<br />
In the same way, it is essential to have communication with other brethren, in order to experience love and to participate in all the Mysteries of the Church. Of course, there are also cases in which excessive use of the Internet, even for good and spiritual purposes, can create dependence, resulting in asocial isolation and a detrimental effect on one’s personhood. Thus, the Internet can have negative results: instead of leading the user closer to Christ is can, on the contrary, lead him away from God. Therefore we bear the great responsibility of promoting and sharing the Word of God using the most creative, useful, and modern methods – but we should also inform our flock about how to use the Internet profitably, emphasizing all the negative effects that can be caused by the misuse of this technology.<br />
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This is one of the goals of our conference, which for the first time is being carried out on an international level for the Orthodox. It is a great blessing that the first such conference is taking place in our country. I would like to thank the organizers: the online journal “Pemptousia,” as well as online resources and “Bogoslov” from Russia. Our monastery always supports with much love and interest the activity of the “St. Maximus the Greek” Institute. We hope that this conference will be able to confront the challenges of the modern world, and that all participants will use these new technologies and the Internet for their spiritual benefit.<br />
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Christ is Risen! I thank you.<br />
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<h2>
Elena Zhosul: The Orthodox Church must respond to the challenges of “information overload”</h2>
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In her speech at the First International Conference on Electronic Media and Orthodox Pastoral Care, Elena Zhosul described the current state of the media scene as an “information overload,” since a large amount of data hinders a person’s ability to concentrate. In contrast to many hours spent researching in archives, online searches can be reduced to a few minutes, however, this this type of “search outsourcing” weakens memory and reduces one’s ability to critically analyze surrounding reality.<br />
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The speaker quoted the writer Umberto Eco: “Over time, the Internet can become a conspiracy and destructive to human civilization.” Orthodox Churches need to provide an adequate response to this challenge, she said. “In our church, this sort of work has begun in the framework of an Inter-Council Presence,” said Elena Zhosul.<br />
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She stressed that even Ecclesiastes warned against what scholars then called an information explosion: “My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. ” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). The same was later said Heraclitus of Ephesus, Seneca, and French Encyclopedists.<br />
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The increasing amount of information in the network can easily be seen in the number of monthly users on Facebook. In 2008 there were only 100 million, but now there area already about 2 billion.<br />
“If we do not want virtual reality to become a space without God, we should seriously consider how the Church can be present in this reality more effectively in terms of transmitting our message to the world — especially the youth,” said Elena Zhosul, recalling the words of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill.<br />
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“We need to take on part of the information overload,” she contends. She identified three stages of this path: awareness and recognition of the problem, study devoted to the Church’s patristic heritage, and digital detox (deliberate restriction of Internet use), which Christians are increasingly doing to guard their discipline.<br />
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Elena Zhosul quoted the Gospel passage: “Watch therefore — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning — lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.” (Mark. 13:35-36).<br />
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<strong>From <a href="http://pravmir.com/" target="_blank">Pravmir.com</a></strong>el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-64709164617278862042015-07-04T19:51:00.000-06:002015-07-04T19:52:44.781-06:00The New Left<br />
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<b><a href="http://salo-forum.com/index.php?threads/the-left-and-appropriate-concern-pc-wars-2-0.4147/#post-33953" target="_blank">popfop</a>:</b><br />
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The New Left is absolutely responsible for setting the stage for contemporary identitarian progressives. As such the whole "where did this come from?" act is completely disingenuous. The New Left replaced native workers with students and oppressed groups as the core of revolutionary change. Similarly, non-objective theories of oppression like Freudian Marxism were already popular. I should also point out that while the Left has always had a professional class which leads, the gap between the oppressed peoples and the leadership has grown considerably so they make up for this uncomfortable truth by adopting their own victimology. When the veteran Boomer leftist speaks of "the reasonable hierarchy of moral priorities" he means objective measures of disenfranchisement, such as income levels and educational opportunities. The contemporary progressive has no time for such things and is perfectly content to see oppression as simply, "I went outside and somebody looked at me funny" or, "I do things that make me feel bad about myself but I don't want to take responsibility." When we consider that the contemporary progressive is likely a jobless college student living off their parents finances it's easy to see why this mode has won out. Despite the irrationality of the political language, there is an objective self-interest at play. This is because in the Anglo-American context, the Left has always been better at politics than the Right. The language may change but the promotion of the professional leadership class is always the objective. From labor unions (the Old Left) to libertine upper middle class students (the New Left) to middle class young people with personality disorders and a medicine cabinet full of SSRIs since middle school (contemporary progressives).el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-56379057662951832202015-07-03T11:43:00.005-06:002015-07-04T12:24:23.371-06:00Beta males and romantic relationships<br />
<a href="http://salo-forum.com/index.php?threads/this-is-how-betas-will-be-remembered.4211/">This is how betas will be remembered</a><br />
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<b>SixtusVIth:</b><br />
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The more I see this sort of thing the more convinced I become of my private theory that beta male fixation on epic romantic relationships with women is actually an anima projection of an unmet need for male friendship that is too emotionally intense for the manchildish masculinity of American men to bear and too alien to what women want in a man for them to really satisfy. All of the characteristics that are associated with romantic love - mutual understanding, intimacy, loyalty, and so on - are clearly more apt to flourish among people who are like minded, and there are few sets of people less like minded than a man and a woman. Yes, there is a sense in which sex can be said to naturally lead to love - the sort of breeding-love you see between people who are committed to the path of raising children together. But that is perhaps rare among humans, who seem to be far more reticent about accepting the full weight of responsibility for family and children than one might think; and it is in any case something clearly not widely found in America, where the association of sex with babies is considered morally offensive by a wide range of lunatics who prefer to talk about infants as if they were a sexual disease one needs "protection" from. One would think the more natural option for a lifelong lover (note: lover, not sexual partner) would be someone who is more capable of understanding who you are and where you are coming from, rather than someone else whose alien patterns of thought and behavior are literally proverbial for their oddity.<br />
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Why don't American men get this? Among other reasons, it is because we have lost the spine needed to enforce morality and have allowed the fringes of our society to define what qualifies as love, falsely and to their own twisted benefit. This is why behavior that would not lead to a raised eyebrow in traditional societies is classified as "gay" in the US (<a href="http://salo-forum.com/index.php?threads/ching-chong-ching-chong-chong.1418/page-14#post-31811">Ango wrote about this once after seeing men holding hands in Korea</a>). Back when we were a traditional society as well, that was common here too. Now we can no longer set boundaries and allow the normal behavior of mankind to be norm of our law, and so we end up here: absurd expectations straining marriages to the breaking point, which might have otherwise worked if they had been entered into with more humble intentions.<br />
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<b>Bronze Age Pervert:</b><br />
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The Greeks, as stated, wouldn't approve of modern homos, and modern homos would be ridiculed and would lose voting rights for engaging in slavish conduct. It's also not clear how much sex pederastic relationships involved, and it probably varied from state to state. The Thebans were famous sodomites (and rustics). The aristocratic Athenian relationship was ideally non-sexual. Also Foucault and these others are twisted and wrong about older men exploiting younger & women, in fact as Paglia emphasizes, it was the younger partner who was, if anything the "dominant" one, and he was worshiped and literally put on a pedestal. Whether this involved sex or no, I don't know, but Nietzsche says it was this love of youth that allowed for genuine education to take place, since it was based on love.<br />
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Otherwise I agree with what Sixtus says, even in societies without a reputation for homo, friendships between men were intense and could be considered "gay" today. I believe another reason such friendships are discouraged is because they are politically very dangerous. It's also the reason for the attack on fraternities (which only exist in colleges; in real life I believe men's clubs have been legally banned, and yet it is only from such clubs that any effective political movement can emerge). I don't think this was consciously thought out by ZOG, but it works to its great advantage. Normally in an age like ours there would be many conspiracies by such clubs and by men in mid-level military to overthrow the regime. Harmodius & Aristogeiton are the ancient aristocratic ideal, two friends who stood up to tyranny.<br />
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American men are feminized in a literal sense, their emotional life is exclusively connected with women and they are taught to have contempt for friendship with men. I don't think this was planned though, I don't think ZOG can think ahead so far.<br />
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<br />el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-23252171876701387652015-05-18T19:55:00.004-06:002015-07-03T11:57:38.440-06:00Do Genes Determine Happiness<br />
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<a href="http://sluthate.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=86199">Sluthate.com</a> found out who the internet meme "Greensboro Jock" was and how he became a multimillionare business man married with kids:<br />
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<b>Peppers wrote:</b><br />
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Just lol that this former Jock that injected roids at 18 ended up making it to Alpha status. You couldn't of scripted it would end up like this. This is surreal and a true sluthate fairytale story. The irony. The coping of nerds that they believe "Dumb Jocks end up working for them at 40" totally blown out of the water. Popular, athletic and liked at 18 = the tracks for success in life being made. Genetic trash framecel pubertycel manlet with a weak face, unpopular, unathletic at 18 = the tracks for life success broken and require years of repair and will always remain unstable due to bad memories.<br />
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<b>PJGoodwater wrote:</b><br />
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lol seriously. Success in the business corporate world is all about CONNECTIONS, NETWORKING, getting people to like you and making them think you are the right person for the job/promotion regardless of actual skill set. As an incel your only real hope of getting rich like Gould is to pull a Cuckerburg and program some shit that everyone will use.<br />
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Otherwise as an incel you will be doing all the actual work for executive Chads while they go out to eat with clients at fancy restaurants and making deals face to face with important people. If you aren't charismatic and can get people to side with you, you will never succeed in corporate America, regardless of how hard you work<br />
<br />el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-7239212448818764282015-04-29T10:50:00.001-06:002015-07-09T04:47:27.564-06:00HBD Wimp-Centered View of History<br />
<b><a href="http://salo-forum.com/index.php?threads/hbd-wimp-centered-view-of-history.4050/#post-33583" target="_blank">HBD Wimp-Centered View of History</a> - Monday 29 Dec 2014</b><br />
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<b>Bronze Age Pervert:</b><br />
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Heartiste has some good tendencies but someone eventually will have to address the cuckold/wimp-centered view of history you see in so many HBD (human biodiversity) writers like Peter Frost, Steve Sailer, and probably Greg Cochran. These are IT guys who have strong resentments of physicality and a weird relationship toward manliness (they all lack it, but where Frost seems to resent it, Sailer has some strangely erotic appreciation...still foreign though). They want to make the case that the white race or Western civilization is great because white men have evolved to be less masculine, more docile/tame, altruistic, cooperative, and possessing the sort of intelligence to do IT work or sit through an IQ test or do book-keeping.<br />
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Thus the great founders of Western civilization are not the geniuses, explorers, conquistadors, generals, etc., but the quiet, dependable, beta nerd, who is supposed to have existed in 17th C as well in the form of a craftsman or scientist or something like this (which is inaccurate; a shopkeeper would be the correct analogy, but they won't admit that). You'd call it self-serving, but in fact it's all they know...they are this way themselves, they know very little history or about the variety in regimes and cultures within Europe, and the most vivid dangers or alternatives they see are blacks on one hand and Chinese on the other. This explains nearly all their sexual neuroses and concerns and their model for evolution and for European history.<br />
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That it's a retarded view that can be disproven with consideration of a few historical facts--for example that blacks are the most reliably docile group, have been slaves to every civilization that has come in touch with them, have been recognized as good and submissive slaves, and have been recognized to prosper under slavery; or that Nordics have never been seen either as altruistic or docile by other peoples--won't change anything because unfortunately "HBD" the way it's conceived of right now is meant to fulfill some psychological or political function. And the carriers of HBD are the carriers of "game," which is largely an IT community as far as I can tell, and motivated by the same impulses. That some of these impulses may be understandable and excusable is one thing, but you can't let the male equivalent of Starr decide that the essence of Western history is "kindness to puppies."<br />
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<b>popfop:</b><br />
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HBD is identity politics for white collar meritocrats and normcore bloggers. The ideal society for them would be the postwar United States especially in regards to its technocratic elements (i.e. companies like MITRE which work with the US military as well as the private sector). These are people from the aspirational middle classes who primarily work in STEM, business or financial services and as such consider themselves productive members of the system. They see the current decline of the West as something that can be reversed with a few policy changes. Their ideas rarely involve a critique of a managed mass democracy, which is considered fine as long as it serves the correct demographics. As their view of human societies are reductive to only materialist and scientific interpretations, they are incapable of understanding necessary irrationalities such as myth-making and the expending of passionate energies for reasons other than increasing future safety and comfort.<br />
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<b>Thoughts:</b><br />
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HBD-ers are autistic <b>conformists</b> -- what is bolded being the most descriptive single word to describe a bag of separate stupidities. They would be out of place in the West and rather belong to *China*, which they secretly envy and always have some positive word for.<br />
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Great geniuses, explorers, generals and the like, have had the same values as very great scientists and technical thinkers - that is creativity. Such creativity might be expressed by different subject matters, ranging from political action to some abstruse dimension of thought. Creativity must be combined with depth, which is why "businessmen" and most engineers, despite being 'creative' in some way perhaps, are shallow and cannot be called great men. (Politics adds depth to pure action, as architectural visual content adds depth to music, and allusion depth to literature.)<br />
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These are truisms but they are completely lost on the HBD "blogosphere" - and the Chinaman, Buddhist, astrologer, etc., are as far as ever from learning it.<br />
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I have spoken before of the static society that is "Singapore". Any examination of Singapore reveals the kind of utopia that HBD beta nerds furiously masturbate to in their sleep.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.unz.com/pfrost/young-male-and-single/#comment-989926">Young, Male and Single</a> - June 28, 2015</b><br />
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<b>Bronze Age Pervert:</b><br />
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At the risk of being harsh, I have to point out that this is exactly why Peter Frost and to some extent Sailer have been called the “cuckold HBD” crowd. This article contains many half-truths and some outright lies. For example, if you actually check the relevant figure, which is children born to white mothers where the father is not white, the figure for children with “hispanic” fathers and white mothers is close to 6% and the figure with black fathers is about half that much. So if Frost wanted to focus on the problem of racial sexual competition he would mention this figure, which in fact he distorts, leaving the reader to think that the majority of the 11-20% is because of interracial mating with blacks. In fact the bulk of that 11% is with “hispanics,” which you have to put in quotation marks because my bet is that the vast majority of those are South American Spaniards and not 4’7 mestizo cholos. The figure in fact for children born to white mothers with black fathers is around 3%. I don’t know about the “undeclared” figure of around 9% but there’s no reason to assume most of those are black either.<br />
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This is par for the course, as Frost has denied in the past, for example, that there is an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency among Western populations worldwide, when there is a lot of evidence for such deficiency. But there is a pattern to his denials or distortions, which is that all of thse fuel different aspects of his cuckold fantasy; so because of this article and because of his general take on things I’d put my money on it, that he watches interracial porn and has fantasies about white male feminization, which he discusses above as if it is a real problem or “strategy,” rather than a statistical blip that is mostly the practice of a certain kind of homosexual.<br />
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One thing he doesn’t discuss at all is the problem of female obesity in the West (and the likely fact that many if not most white females who breed with or marry blacks are obese and/or aged). To any reader of heartiste or similar blogs, and any observer of day to day life in the USA, this problem of white female obesity and in general white female undesirability (disagreeableness, bitchiness, sloppiness in dress, etc.) would seem to be a much bigger problem for young single white men, but of course Frost doesn’t mention this. Why? Because white female desirability is central to his cuckold fetish, without which it would whither. Note that he compares American women to East European women, which is absurd.<br />
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Finally you should know that I don’t say these things about Frost (or Sailer) just because of this article, but because of their general, and ahistorical, take on the history of Western civilization (a more appropriate name than “white,” which was never a self-identifier except in the colonies). You can see this nonsense in the last paragraphs where he complains about “Don Juans” (as if Italian culture is not even more central to Western history and culture than NW Euro), and where he has this image of “shy” beta workalike NW Euros who “built civilization.” This is garbage, as civilization was built by alphas, not betas. This is a longer discussion, but Frost and Sailer are indeed beta IT-type guys or nerdoids who see themselves and their type as foundational to Western culture, when in fact they are another symptom of its decline. Conservatives in the 19th century were already complaining about how culture was decaying because the democratic age gave dominion to the meek shopkeeper and the calculating bourgeois. We’ve forgotten this and foolishly identify “white civilization” precisely with the meek shopkeeper. But it was not always this way, and the Viking and Finn were not seen as anything like “beta” even quite recently.<br />
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The point is this, that if Western society is indeed “beta” then it deserves to fail, and it WILL fail. The right to rule doesn’t and shouldn’t belong to accountants, shopkeepers, programmers, and timid calculators…and never did.el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-7764889361398498252015-02-23T15:43:00.002-07:002015-05-17T11:58:12.757-06:00The Sham of Willpower<br />
<b>>it's called willpower bro maybe you should try it</b><br />
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Those normies who preach "willpower" had early positive experiences both at home and among peers that heavily outweighed the negative experiences. Therefore, it's easier for them to motivate themselves due to self belief and high self-esteem that has been reinforced into them early on and has carried through into adulthood. Any "bump" in the road will be met with a shrug as they'll simply remind themselves of all the positive experiences and "get on with it". Most of us here on the other hand have dealt with overprotective parents, lack of male role models, abuse, rejection from peers, humiliation, and failure in most of our goals (resulting from the aforementioned). Naturally, we resort to distract ourselves using the internet and video games where no one will judge or berate us. This leads to further social isolation and seeing how most things that normies and society consider "meaningful" involve some sort of interaction with normies at one point or another, we inevitably fail. I feel for the wizbros who are forced into wage slavery or college, because the slightest bump/misfortune is met with crushing depression because we know it only gets worse, and it sure as fuck does.<br />
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-- Anon from WizChan.orgel grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-75325435187243077822013-11-15T19:51:00.000-07:002015-04-29T10:58:19.333-06:00Nothing Is Shocking<br />
There is no shock any longer. We've had to invent novel sins (such as "racism" and "homophobia") into order to preserve our capacity for outrage, and therefore the thrill of violation. For this reason there are Jewish Nazis. The swastika for them is a sexual talisman, evoking concupiscence when the taboo is dead from continual transgression. Eventually, all such prurience ends in boredom & impotence. This impotence spawned the Marquis de Sade. When one becomes acclimated to de Sade, there is only either madness, or Faith.<br />
<br />el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-43498449449392319122013-09-21T09:35:00.000-06:002013-09-21T09:47:55.208-06:00What is Happiness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>The following was written GetBig.com forum user Uberman during a conversation on Happiness</i><br />
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<br /><b>Post 1:</b><br /><br />Happiness is linked to knowing because knowing is dominating controlling the environment, other life forms, whether they are vegetal or animal, which proves dominating underlies the feeling of happiness. Knowing, controlling, dominating, means better odds of survival, means being happy. Being happy is linked to knowing that you have better odds of survival than others.<br /><br />Many people are happy believing in systems of beliefs that "work" (ie insure their survival and the survival of the loved ones who reinforce by their alliance with them their own survival) simply because..it works. It produces and cover their daily need for gratifications, chemical recipes of happiness in their brains that allow them to last one more day. Most people are happy because they follow daily routines that produce "well being" in their lives; they could’t tell why or how they got there, the conditions were just ideal for them, as simple as that.<br />
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Everything is just fine in their minds, everything has a meaning, an explanation, even what is unexplainable, which is reassuring. These beliefs also make them the good guys while giving a meaning to the enemies, the bad ones. It justifies everything geographically, temporally and emotionally. Look at how nihilist end -Vincent van Gogh, Nietzsche, Darwin etc, they all experiment with everything in life, atheism, nihilism, homosexuality, bisexuality etc; they all end crazy because the clear understanding of what is really "going on" actually drives anyone looking for a positive, pure, meaning of life to madness. Religions actually keep people away from madness and the will to destroy the absurd world, because if you re not part of the world, if you don’t participate, build, insure its survival, you re actually fighting to destroy it, life is binary, you either build or destroy, if you re not building, you re destroying. And good luck finding out for sure if someone is actually trying to create, help, or destroy.<br /><br />Anyone interested in understanding nihilism / atheism and generally how we give a meaning to our lives should read Eugene Rose's work.<br /><br /><b>Post 2:</b><br /><br />I'm still not finished reading the Bible so obviously I'd have a hard time saying i have "faith", and nowhere do i find humans or phenomenon that would allow me to find and hold it once and for all. Actually it's a work in progress. Sometimes I feel like I start to understand what faith is, just to find I lost it the second after. It is indeed, quite an effort that is required, just like when you want to build muscles -naturally-. I'm currently exploring the opposite side of faith, the dark side of the coin. Most self proclaimed atheists (atheism being "in" nowadays it's pretty smart to tell everyone you’re "in") claim religion and Christian-ism are a bunch of bulshits created to control them , failing to realize it is the anchor for a stable and productive life that keeps regenerating itself while atheism lead most people to stop breeding after several generations of believing in it. The funny is that they're also scared by sheer, unadulterated nihilism, which means they still hold Christian values deep inside their minds. They pretend to be atheist yet "believe" in the seven days of the week, have Christian names and so on. Be honest and push your reasoning to its most perfect nature; nihilist, then. Oh wait, nihilism causes one to want to end his life after a while. It means no more hamburgers, no more sex -or porn for most- no more TV, no more video games...no more hope for joy and happiness.<br /><br /><b>Post 3:</b><br /><br />You don’t get it. smart, intelligent people, are unhappy because they realize how vain and bestial life is at its core. Only dumb people can "love" and "feel", aren’t drowning in their cynicism, this is why they procreate while "intelligent" people don’t, as simple as that. Again, intelligence has nothing to do with happiness; dumb people are often a lot more happier than smart people.<br /><br />All our behaviors and thoughts processes are animalistic in the first place, we want kids for the same reasons other animal species "want offsprings". Fact is we don’t "want" shit, all of this is pre programmed behaviors, it's genetical. Those who "choose" not to have kids simply despise life and other living beings, they are sociopath and they want mankind to disappear. They all probably disappear, those who will stay will evolve to adapt to whatever happen on earth. As simple as that.<br /><br />Oh BTW, mankind is divided into two main categories; poor dumb people who want to be rich, and smart rich people who want to stay rich and manipulate, dominate the poor and keep them below themselves.<br /><br /><b>Post 4:</b><br /><br />Again, nobody is "happy", everyone is only pretending to be happy. Everyone knows there are too many people, not enough jobs. Everyone says he hates his job, yet does his best daily to prevent any newbie from being recruited, anyone from taking his place, even if it's a shity place. Everyone criticizes the boss in front of his colleagues, and criticizes his colleagues in front of his boss. And the boss knows it well.<br /><br />Life is war. Everything is an instrument to wage war, words, feelings, happiness happen when you successfully dominate , kill, when you see others fail. Anger, frustration, sadness happen when you fail to dominate, are dominated. Hope is when you envision yourself or you offsprings dominating others.<br /><br />There is no way mankind can last forever, our so called intelligence, consciousness -of being animals- are only other weapons to wage war against others.<br /><br /><b>Post 5:</b><br /><br />"maturing/aging" = realizing you're an animal struggling for its survival against all the human competition. If you have money , if you re surrounded by "loved ones" -people who want you to succeed, dominate, where they weren't able to dominate so basically who live vicariously thru you- who give you advice on how to fuck people in the ass instead of being fucked in the ass by them, it's easier to cope... Others simply become violent, angry, jealous, or kill themselves realizing there is no justice or fairness in life, it's simply about adapting better than others and winning when they lose.<br />Having kids they can get money for your retirement, it's easier to defend yourself, survive in the specie if you create your own loyal group.<br /><br />The funny is that ultimately our whole specie will get extinct anyway. So most people simply come to the conclusion, while i'm here, why not simply dominate blindly without caring about all these bullshit like religion, philosophy etc, -how useful are they for a poor man? it won't help him much, all of this is just a hobble for rich people who don’t have to survive daily killing others for a job and food- life is pain for everyone so lets be happy making others having a painful day. Now multiply this belief/behavior by 7, 8 9 billions of individuals.<br /><br /><b>Post 6:</b><br /><br />Well I’ve written extensively on this subject months (years) ago, browse my post history, but I’d add this. <br /><br />Beauty, strength, money, all fade away, none of these strategies of survival last forever. It s what you do with what you have at the moment you have it that matters, it's how long you maintain your strengths, it's how you reverse your weaknesses, that matters. There are people who are good looking, rich, powerful, yet are unhappy. I think our society makes it a religion to "find happiness", not understanding how it works, in fact most people get sick of looking for something that simply doesn’t exist; constant happiness. People were a lot happier on a more consistent basis in the past it is a fact. People in the past were not looking for happiness, but to please God. And they were happier.<br /><br />Constant happiness? This is not what we have been designed for; happiness is just an emotion among many others. Life is a roller-coaster of feelings. There are people who have been, felt, miserable all their lives but raised kids who dominate, are happier than others by a wide margin. The me generation has no clue about history, nor can envision the future; they’ll never reach the maturity to raise kids properly enough for them to survive.<br /><br />
Fact is happiness is more easily found for everyone following basic principles more than buying into the last trend that in order to steal money from your pocket will "reveal" you a shortcut to reach it.<br /><br />There is a bigger picture, experience, at work, and you have to see beyond individuals.<br /><br />Just consider the fact that once economies collapse, not matter how good looking or rich you are, if you are at the wrong place at the wrong moment, you're good looking body and its pockets full of money dont mean shit.<br /><br />The Bible says only the humble, down to earth, who finds his happiness in the simplest things will be saved, will live long...will be part of tomorrow. Only he will have hopes. We are blades of grass, and some of them are greener than others. We are just toys in the hands of something bigger than us. Our "feelings" are not even ours per se, they're just strategies of survival genetically embedded in ourselves and we didn’t choose just like we didn't choose most of our physical attributes. Our only choice is to decide what to do with them.<br /><br />Life is a challenge, an experience, full of traps and one needs a strong spiritual, mental discipline to go thru it without "failing". Many good looking, strong, rich people have died since the birth of mankind. Many of their genes have been saved and cross mixed generation after generation. Many dumb, ugly people have survived the same way; they were "inferior", still they still exist. The real question is, what is the point of all of this ? Are we just a bunch of randomly mixed, generated, strategies of survival, is the only purpose of our existences to struggle for survival against others individuals , against the weather, other animal species, who are as vain and lost as ourselves and who just want to dominate without having to be someone else slave?<br /><br />I don’t believe that we re designed to be constantly happy or unhappy. Life as a human being is about more than that; it's about surviving whatever the way you survive. Now, a lot of people think that all strategies of survival are equivalent, that being a whore, a murderer, a robber, is justified and just as good as studying, working, etc if it allows you to survive, others aiming at the betterment of mankind until a perfect being is obtained believe that you have to constantly improve your thoughts and/or body it gives a meaning to their existences and to the process of reproduction in humans. When they choose not to fall for a sin, they see the difficulty of that choice as a step in the good direction.<br /><br />It is also funny how some ugly people give birth to good looking kids and how good looking parents give birth to ugly kids. There are so many things we don’t understand.<br /><br />
Ultimately I think preppers have better odds of survival than yuppies from the cities.<br /><br />On a side note I think that male beauty isn’t as fun as it seems to be. I'm quite handsome myself and the more I age the more I attract young girls teens and women of all ages, pretty surprising considering i was a very insecure pimple face when a teen. As a result, I have more and more occasions to seduce and be seduced by women of all ages who want the best partner to breed with. It actually makes my life harder, more painful, because most of these women when they figure I am married have a daughters, suddenly realizing they cant "have" me start to hate on me, because I won't be their lover. How many of them also hate on me because I am the one they would have loved to start a family with but "unfortunately" they ended with the skinny fat/ fat insecure asshole. So at first glance they all fall in love then quickly turn into w(b)itches as soon as you don’t answer to their attempts to flirt with you.<br /><br />Because they’re little girls who aren’t used to not get what they want.<br /><br />Anyway in most cases it only results in more troubles for me than anything. So, beauty definitely has its pros and...cons.<br /><br />I am afraid it's all a lot more complicated than that; if only good looking, powerful, rich people were allowed to reign, be happy, most ugly , poor people would just kill themselves right? But life is a gigantic (infinite?) experience where anything can happen, and the result of this struggle for survival is "feelings", emotions that make us feel alive. It is fascinating how we create, fabricate, give, a meaning to things with our brains, when simply put, most of what exists, is "happening", is only struggle for survival by various life forms of all kinds.<br /><br />There will be major events that will see the world population decrease massively, just like it happened countless times in the past.<br /><br />The real question is... who is saved, and who isn’t, who adapts, who doesn’t. Where does all of this go. What do we want for our kids and grandkids.<br /><br /><b>Post 7:</b><br /><br />Any over exaggerated, extreme activity , hobble, behavior, at some point destroys you more than it makes you healthier or fitter. Especially when it requires you to use drugs. I said it countless times, it's all fun and games until you reach your 40s/50s and you re lonely with a bad back, bad knees, bad elbows, ruined internal organs and so on. Life is a marathon not a sprint race.<br /><br />I can understand fit, mostly ectomorph/mesomorph genetically gifted people of rich upbringing who spent their life working out -because they had the free time to do so- might come to the conclusion that they are some kind of ubermen whose shit doesn’t stink, still they often come across as complete douche-bags with nothing else in life but their fucking "competitions" "challenges" "records". I wouldn't be surprised if most of them came from dysfunctional families and were raised by either single mothers or fathers who lived vicariously thru them and got them into sports at an early age. Most of them are cynical, hypocritical and somewhat unable to feel anything for someone else but themselves. They come off as cold , scornful and hateful. It must be hard to constantly pretend being perfect, hard to never be satisfied with anything. Clearly childhood related issues.<br /><br /><b>Post 8:</b><br /><br />Why would I? I have time to enjoy family and focus on my daughter, Wife also works part time, we save enough and have something to give our daughter... Sorry I don’t see the point -exhausted stressed colleagues who work 40 hours a week and can only say "good evening" to their dysfunctional families, then go watch TV and rush to bed, i know how it works- especially considering there are too many people, not enough jobs, that the phenomenon is increasing and will end with wars as it always does; is there a need to mention the millions of over-diplomed people i work with whose pieces of paper are worth trash ? Not only there are too many under qualified people, but at the same time there are more and more over qualified people, and we are actually DESTROYING jobs with technological "progress". Sorry i don’t believe in your paradigm anymore. Also, to be honest, I hate the city and the fools who live there more and more. The less time i spend there the better i feel. I see all of this thru the eyes of the Bible, sooner or later it s going to explode and everything will somewhat be reset. Once it happens, it's not diplomas you're going to need. Oh, and working on improving your house and farming are actually the only kind of skills that are truly useful.<br /><br />Societies based at 80% on services jobs are going nowhere when economies collapse. 80% of people will lose their jobs. You have to see long term. Also having kids just modifies everything in the way you see time, space and life in general.<br /><br /><b>Post 9:</b><br /><br />The 1 % need the 99% to be the 1%. The point of life is not to be "enlightened", but to survive, adapt, dominate. The "enlightened" dalai lama wouldn't be shit if he didn’t have tons of people to serve him.<br /><br /><b>Post 10:</b><br /><br />People marry to survive. To play the game, because they’ve been conditioned to do so. All behaviors are animal behaviors. Some survive better alone. Fact is, there is no point , purpose, to all of this. All life forms only follow blind predeterminate paths, behaviors, they don’t choose and simply reproduce subconsciously. All life forms have for only point in life to survive until they can reproduce, and every single human behavior just like any animal or vegetal behavior is a strategy of survival. There s no good or evil, there is what survives, and what doesn’t. Nobody cares about what doesn’t survives. Life is a free for all and you only feel good when you win. Most people goal in life is to win as much as possible instead of losing, because losing makes you feel bad. Most people lose, fail, constantly as there are more and more people on earth, and only 1% of them are winners. It means 99.9% of mankind is made of losers who hope to become winners. Their only goal in life is to win. At all cost. Some people haven’t been conditioned to marry in order to survive, some people have been conditioned to survive alone. Some people hate mankind, life, but stay alive just to destroy it and to benefit from all the good feelings it can provide them. Their motto is i didn’t choose to be here so at least let's enjoy it at all costs. None of this, makes sense; sense is just something we create but ultimately everything in life is all about killing or getting killed.<br /><br />BTW the point of marrying someone and making alliance with others, families etc is to dominate in society. We're always dominating, or being dominated by someone else; most people when they leave an influence, are only doing it to submit themselves to another influence.<br /><br />The more people there are on earth, the less people can stand each others. It s easier to appreciate others when they are few, when you need them because they are rare. When you live in cities full of people, you know you can replace anyone with anyone else, basically you realize nobody is unique, important, as you slowly realize we're just all copies, clones, of each others, all trying to make up bullshit unique personalities, characters, all influenced by the very same models, books, movies, characters. The more people there are, the more people start to hate on each others, it is probably a subconscious , purely animalistic process which randomly leads the human race to purify itself from within with wars. In these wars it's not the good guys who win, it's the biggest assholes, the strongest ones, the smartest, fastest ones. Then they write history and make themselves the good guys. The more people you see everyday, the less you care about them this is the irony of living in cities, everyone wants its share of happiness , domination, all pretending to enjoy being with each others, when in fact deep inside themselves they want to jump at each others throats and are just calculating their next plays to fuck each others.<br /><br />Life is a struggle, life is about survival, and everything that exists is strategy of survival. Happiness only and solely happen when you're winning. But even if you win, in the end, you lose. Your only solace is either to think at least my kids, grandkids, will dominate more than i did, or, for a growing number of people, especially nihilistic atheists, they think ; they , we, life, this ironical, cruel joke, will end one day anyway, so lets abuse everything as consequences don’t matter anyways.<br /><br />All life-forms, animal, vegetal, species, die, disappear, are unable to adapt anymore at some point. Between the birth of life and its doom, it's all about constant war, constant struggle, constant pain for 99% of life-forms, especially humans who are conscious while vegetal and other animal species aren’t. They're born, they die, they simply don’t care. Again, humans are animals who are conscious of being animals. That makes them somewhat different from all other life forms on earth. Still their lives, existences, purposes, are conditioned by mostly all the same principles, rules than other life-forms. Our only difference is our ability to give a meaning, sense, to what we see, understand, but this ability is still in intrinsically in itself, just another strategy of survival among countless others.el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-19208180183383271422013-09-20T14:07:00.001-06:002013-09-20T14:14:08.585-06:00Abortion of defective kids<i><b>Originally posted on <a href="http://mypostingcareer.com/forums/topic/7355-abortion-of-defective-kids/page__st__20#entry155665" target="_blank">MPCdot.com </a></b></i><br />
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In his book "A Farewell to Alms," Gregory Clark talks a lot about the Malthusian trap: the fact that, historically, when living standards rise, populations inevitably increase to swallow up the surplus wealth, pushing living standards right back down to subsistence level. To escape the Malthusian trap, you need a population that desires a high standard of living, and only has children when they can be raised at that standard.<br />
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While an emphasis on living standards is the requirement of Malthusian escape, that requirement is only met through reproductive restraint. On the surface, abortion might seem like a way to obtain that restraint -- have as much sex as you want and abort any excess kids. And humanity has a long history of infanticide, so it's not terribly unreasonable to expect this approach to work.<br />
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However, this is not at all what we see in the world, either today or in times past. Cultures which practice infanticide do not tend to escape the Malthusian trap, no matter their emphasis on material wealth. On the other hand, cultures which both emphasize high living standards and traditional Christian sexual morality have fared much better. I think there are two reasons for this.<br />
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First, I believe sexual restraint simply works better than abortion at curbing runaway reproduction. Rather than quenching sexual desire, sexual activity actually stimulates it; so if a country is laissez fare about its sexuality, and presents abortion as a kind of "get out of jail free card," there will be lots of sex, and while there will also be lots of abortions, it's simply human nature that childbearing will ultimately outstrip infanticide -- look at China, India, etc. On the other hand, a country which discourages infanticide tells its inhabitants that if they have sex, they will be liable for any resultant children; combine this with a requirement that sex only occur between married people who can afford to support any resultant children at a high standard of living, and you would expect said society to have fewer marriages overall, with those marriages occurring later in life and resulting in fewer children. The sexual passions are thereby kept in check, as is reproduction, and the nation escapes the Malthusian trap. This is exactly the phenomenon that Clark documents in the contrast between Europe and Asia leading up to the industrial revolution (although he did not explain it this way).<br />
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Second, I think you are infinitely more likely to have an industrial revolution -- that is, large increases in productivity -- when the sexual passions are restrained. Sexual activity can cost much more than the straightforward costs of child rearing. Single people seeking sex will spend inordinate amounts of time, energy, and money obtaining it. When society doesn't sacralize sex, it rapidly becomes everybody's favorite, all-consuming recreational drug. I think this is just common sense, the proof of which surrounds us. Feral women dressing like call girls and men devoting themselves to booze and "pickup" during their 20's and 30's are the clearest evidence of this cost, as is our increasingly sex-saturated media and popular culture. I think the growing narcissism of the facebook generation is a second order effect and also a huge waste of resources. (Really, who has time to cure cancer when there are skirts to chase and selfies to post?) This is in stark contrast to a culture of sexual sobriety. You can poke fun at Puritans and Victorians all you want, but they are the founding stock of our prosperity increases. A man who sees work simply as a way to fund his fornication will have a very different kind of career than a man who considers his vocation an opportunity to serve God, family, and country.<br />
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White people tend to think of abortion as a tradeoff between benefits to parents and society at the expense of murdered infants. Rabid pro-choicers aside (and even they are more talk than walk, I suspect), whites feel that there is something wrong about abortion. Does anybody really expect pro-choicers to make the case for tossing unwanted infants in the dumpster? I doubt it. But leaving unwanted children to die of exposure is historically commonplace. Even the most callous modern whites are far more sensitive about the rights of new members of society than our distant ancestors, they just don't realize it. Instead, they tend to focus on whether or not aversion to abortion is valid, and if so, in which circumstances, and to what extent. But why do whites have that feeling at all? I think that's the more interesting question. Here's my take:<br />
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Hunter-gatherer tribes have barbaric sexual morality and are rife with infanticide, but they also don't stockpile wealth and are constantly losing members to tribal warfare, so they never become malthusian. But I think that once a people begin to stockpile wealth through agriculture, they become haunted by the ghost of Malthus. Traditional Christian sexual morality provided a way out of the trap by changing man's relationship with his sexuality in a way that restrained population growth and freed energy to invest in productivity-increasing work. I believe that Christendom selected for an innate revulsion to infanticide by shunning (or stoning) those who didn't submit to its sexual norms. In my opinion, that's why Orientals can abort with abandon while even borderline white people like the Irish are disgusted by the practice -- it's more a result of breeding than it initially appears to be.<br />
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That the descendants of Christendom, with their aversion to abortion, have come to lead the world indicates that a disposition against infanticide is a survival benefit to the group. Allowing abortion might therefore be a Faustian bargain: we could be kicking the legs out from underneath the very table which supports prosperity. This may extend to anything that loosens traditional Christian sexual morality to some extent, i.e. contraceptives. At the very least, it seems to me that the three pillars of prosperity are reproductive restraint, preference for high living standards, and investments in technology -- and I think this is all undergirded by sexual restraint.<br />
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A commentator on Cochran and Harpending's blog noted that the past few generations in black America -- where thugs have many children by several baby mommas who support their spawn on welfare checks -- has been like a "Pitbull Breeding Experiment." I'm inclined to agree, and I see parallels in the possible unintended consequences of shifting abortion norms. Sexual passion is a powerful beast, we tamper with its yoke at our own peril.el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-239398339569610602013-05-26T18:29:00.002-06:002013-09-20T13:54:56.517-06:00Girls and Sons<br />
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<b><a href="http://getbig.com/boards">getbig.com/boards</a> user uberman</b></div>
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<b style="font-style: italic;">Girls and sons</b> who have not been loved by their fathers seek attention once teens and adults to compensate for what they didn't have originally. Fathers either left them alone, or were distant most of the time and not encouraging them. Some even despised them which would shape their personality and the way they don't interact with others for the rest of their life.<br />
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They are extremist in everything they do, always looking exaggeratedly for attention, and have troubles adapting to society's rules, because they also have troubles defining their own identity and respecting authority and hierarchy.<br />
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Also, boys who got picked on by others during childhood and adolescence -often sons without a father figure- try to compensate by lifting weights, to develop muscles and survive in their male world. They re insecure because they re girly, childish, feminine having been raised by a single mom. They lift obsessively hoping it will transform them into men, to compensate for their lack of influence from a father figure that was not there. Unfortunately, they can get as big as they can it doesn't cure their insecurity and who they truly are, how they grew up being raised by a single mom. They are not as manly as other men whatever they do, and they often have a big lack of masculine presence they don't know how to balance, hence often being borderline homosexuals while trying to get their manhood back thru various manly activities (MMA, Cars, Weight Lifting, Etc). They are often the ones that, in order to get respect from other males will go the steroids route to get even "bigger" attempting to cure their insecurity , but being natural not being "enough", they still feel "too small", insecure, amongst other males. The lack of a father figure also often means they didn't have guidance to continue studies and are often working shitty manual jobs.<br />
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<b><i>Atheists don't want kids</i></b> cause they don't want to face their animality, and their mortality; so they abuse leisure to forget about death. You end with people in their 50s who are lonely and have no offsprings, no access to eternity. At this point needless to say, it s too late; so they can only become cynical and sarcastic about people who have kids. Its immaturity, they don't accept the fact they re just animals, they want to keep thinking they re unique, gods themselves, not just a seed among billions of other seeds of the same root. Atheists generate atheists, who after some time stop reproducing, only believers accept, embrace their animal condition and give it a meaning, while atheists are lost and abuse everything without finding any kind of solace in love, a love they cannot understand anymore.el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-4790901931269897842013-05-11T18:20:00.001-06:002013-05-11T18:33:22.989-06:00Osama Bin Laden: The Anti-Modernist<b> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Saloforum.com user Angocachi</b>:<br />
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I'm 50-some pages into Michael Scheuer's biography on Osama Bin Laden. Some notes that standout in my mind, because I had either been unaware of it or thought otherwise;<br />
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- Osama was Ayman Al Zawahiri's mentor and trans-formative figure and not the other way around. It's often been stated that Zawahiri was the brains behind Bin Laden, but this misconception was produced by Saud to try and pin Al Qaeda on an Egyptian rather than an Arabian millionaire. I'll cite loosely from an awesome list Scheuer gives to drive home the point that OBL was the brains, and Zawahiri a sidekick. Zawahiri wanted to overthrow the Egyptian government and march on Jerusalem, and this was his only goal before joining Bin Laden. He believed Jihadists should strike the near enemy, until Osama convinced him the prerequisite of striking the foreigners behind the anti-Islamic regimes. He believed in small secret organization rather than a highly public and 'too large to count the members of' organization until he met Bin Laden. Zawahiri believed they could only topple the secularist regimes by military coups, until Bin Laden convinced him of insurgency. Zawahiri was bordering on Takfirism before Bin Laden got a hold of him. Zawahiri was against publicity until Bin Laden showed him the importance of the media and spotlight. Zawahiri was a Qutbi until Bin Laden took him in. Zawahiri's EIJ failed and was broke, Bin Laden dusted him off and told him that the US was the force behind the Egyptian government and turned his focus on America.<br />
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It's true that Zawahiri is an intellectual, but Osama Bin Laden was a superb thinker as well. Al Qaeda was Bin Laden's vision, and it was Zawahiri who was shaped by him, not the other way around.<br />
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- Osama's mother may have been an Allawite or had Allawites in her family, Scheuer doesn't know but he's heard the rumors and the reasons behind them are intriguing.<br />
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- Osama's idols were Khalid Bin Walid, Nur Al Din, Saladin, and Ibn Taymiyyah.<br />
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- Osama went to an elite school as a boy. Compared to the brilliant students he attended class with he was average, but compared to the general populace he was a 1 in 50 student, according to his teacher.<br />
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- Osama was not a Qutbi or Takfiri. He did not believe in Qutbi's big ideas; that the Ummah had fallen back into paganism, that bad Muslims should be declared non-Muslims and fought, that Jihad is an offensive duty and the non-Muslim world had to be conquered. Osama wasn't about restoring Muslims to a pure Islam or eliminating heretics and non-fundamentalists. He wasn't about subjugating infidels, and he believed Jihad must be defensive.<br />
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- He's never advocated killing the Saudi family and in fact has admired a handful of them. Rather, he wanted to depose them and put them on trial... at last. There's no indication that he wanted to lynch them or have a shoot out with them, as the regime in Libya met its end.<br />
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- He was a Spartan and Survivalist, and believed a man should not provide comforts and luxuries for himself lest he grow lazy and cowardly. He shunned air conditioning and cold water, wanted to live as basic a life as possible. It wasn't a religious tenet, just a personal ethic.<br />
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- Like his father, he didn't believe in borders between Muslim countries. He was a true pan-Islamist.<br />
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- Michael Scheuer shits on a great number of other books, articles, public statements and films on OBL and AQ. He laments the knuckle-dragging demonization of OBL, poorly sourced accounts that rely on OBL's enemies to tell his story, and so on. He rejects Lawrence Wright's 'The Looming Tower" as naive and inaccurate, but still worth a look.<br />
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On the other hand, Scheur despises the Neoconservative commentators; Douglas Feith, Bernard Lewis, Charles Krauthammer, George Weigel, John Bolton, William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Victor Hansen Davis. The Weekly Standard, Wallstreet Journal, Commentary, National Review, Frontpagemagazine and Powerline are all lying about Al Qaeda, and they're trying to divert public attention away from American foreign policy, especially toward Israel... Scheuer says.<br />
<br />
Scheur gives his approval to Peter Bergen, Abdel Bari Atwan, Steve Coll, and Brynjar Lia.<br />
<br />
The book is damn good.<br />
<br />
<b>Saloforum.com user Thomas777</b>:<br />
<br />
Bin Laden was an anti-modernist I believe - he told Mullah Omar that Afghanistan was important because the conditions there (and the simplehearted piety of the Pashtun people) allowed Islam to thrive in ways that it could not in more developed and ''normal'' operational theaters. Bin Laden also would frequently say that the caves and mountains (like Tora Bora) reminded him of his ancestral home in Yemen - and both were similar to the caves that the Prophet took to when he was blessed with revelatory visions.<br />
<br />
Osama would watch television news a lot because as a man leading a war effort, he had to stay abreast of information and utilize propaganda to his advantage, but he otherwise disdained media and viewed the use and consumption of it as decadent and un-Islamic. It was noted that the only modern things he used/owned were televisions and his AK-47, as these things were both essential instruments of war. el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-78174332634752695042013-04-05T17:07:00.000-06:002013-04-05T17:15:32.258-06:00Thomas777 II<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Westboro Baptist Church & Gay Marriage</span></b><br />
<br />
<b>supplanter:</b><br />
this is the cool new thing on facebook<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtbFV0HGKPyHMm0rFFjsSVhl308_7BSfYR2sLYxjiNOADsPZyFpAzxFWtN__utfWjABtyW8CXqUZxnqjNJXCUyH8ipL5drh_U3n-StMYvfR-pf_HqsTQu3TTmTQvajp-ZbFfhkLujRusA/s1600/484121_467417769996599_973756134_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtbFV0HGKPyHMm0rFFjsSVhl308_7BSfYR2sLYxjiNOADsPZyFpAzxFWtN__utfWjABtyW8CXqUZxnqjNJXCUyH8ipL5drh_U3n-StMYvfR-pf_HqsTQu3TTmTQvajp-ZbFfhkLujRusA/s1600/484121_467417769996599_973756134_n.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<b>supplanter:</b><br />
something to do with homopervs<br />
<br />
<b>Asterion:</b><br />
I'll have to look that up<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
I prefer the swastika. Might not be cool or trendy, but that's ok<br />
<br />
<b>Asterion:</b><br />
I couldn't find the meaning of it. I've seen the yellow equals on blue background up till now; what does red-and-pink signify<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777</b>:<br />
Torn rectal tissue<br />
<br />
<b>Asterion:</b><br />
Makes sense<br />
<br />
<b>NeoCornelio:</b><br />
thomas, apparently Schmeisser has been doing drugs and having sex with one of the daughters of the phelps<br />
<br />
<b>NeoCornelio:</b><br />
what do you make of this<br />
<br />
<b>Asterion</b>:<br />
<i>"the Red take over of Facebook in support of the LGBT community against prop 8 and the arguments against Same Sex marriage"</i><br />
<br />
<b>Asterion:</b><br />
Man, was my Facebook red! The Reds are revolting<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
speaking of homopervs i was just reading about the robert hone case. two gay yuppies, both involved in gay equality stuff, and their houseboy drugged, sexually assaulted and murdered a straight house guest<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
Schmeisser is a good man, Cornelio.<br />
<br />
<b>supplanter:</b><br />
if schmeisser were to have joined wbc for shits and giggles he would be a good man.. seemed pretty into it and serious not too long ago<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
Nothing wrong with being serious about WBC. They terrorize shabbos goy losers, Jews, fags, and other scumbags<br />
<br />
<b>supplanter</b>:<br />
wbc is a fed op<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
I think WBC is silly, but whatever turns them on. Liberals and Neocons need to be shit on. Whoever is doing that is ok IMO<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
I don't think they're a fed op. If they were a fed op, they'd be pulling Tom Metzger type stuff - advocating terrorism but curiously never being indicted<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
WBC are just nutty holy rollers - their views are actually normal Baptist views. Its their stunts and media presence that is goofy, not their opinions<br />
<br />
<b>supplanter:</b><br />
wbc has done more for gay rights and marriage in the past few years than what the homos have accomplished in thirty<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
i think i agree with supplanter on this one<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777</b>:<br />
Yes and no - people who back ''gay rights'' have serious problems. Its not like otherwise right-thinking people are swayed to this view by goofy stunts performed by Bible bangers<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
I think guys sucking each others dicks in public like you see at the Folsom Street Fair is more disturbing to people than an old man and a few ladies holding signs making fun of homosexuals<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
though on the other hand, it is interesting that they put themselves in the scapegoat position so all the lib hivemind rage is directed at them<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
most videos of their protests show how ugly and disturbed their opponents are<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777</b>:<br />
WBC exposes liberal bigotry anyway. Fags shouldn't care what Baptists think of them. If you're an atheist, who cares what other people think? Liberals are just self-righteous bigots who hate people who aren't like them. They're actually more like the Puritan extemists than WBC types are.<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
people even petitioned the state department to have them listed as a terrorist group<br />
<br />
<b>popfop</b>:<br />
save us hilary clinton from the bad words!<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
Christians should carry out ''terrorism'' - they're dropping the ball by not doing so.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
Americans are all basically atheistic - save for minority outlyers. Pious Protestants, a handful of believing Catholics, etc.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777</b>:<br />
This is why its hilarious that retardo goys claim people like George W Bush are Christian extremists. They think Yale men and country club Brahmins are a bunch of Theocrats. Its hilariously out of touch with reality<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">East Germany & Deutsche Demokratische Republik</span></b><br />
<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
thomas, you read Honecker's autobiography?<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777</b>:<br />
I've read excerpts from it, but not in its entirety<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
Honecker is interesting because he was sort of a compromise between the tough and brutal KPD men like Mielke (and like Thalmann was) and the dour academics like Ulbricht. He was a consummately serious person. He personally hated Gorbachev, interestingly. The Sovs thought Honecker was too much a Stalinist, the West Germans thought he was too cozy with Moscow for comfort. Odd situation<br />
<br />
<b>popfop</b>:<br />
what do you make of the DDR?<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
it seems they had a high standard of living for an Eastern Bloc country<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
The DDR realized Sombart's vision of ''German Socialism'' is my take on it. This was combined with a Prussian heritage. That's what Communism in a ''pure'' sense looked like in practice - it was far more doctrinally Communistic than the USSR was after 1953<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
The DDR had a reasonably high standard of living, and in the 70s, its per capita GDP exceeded that of England's working class. What killed the DDR was the internal situation in the USSR and the fact that the DDR was the literal front like of the Cold War - it couldn't sustain its military committment against NATO.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
I'll make the post you suggested this week<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
cool, thanks<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
When Trotskyites, Maoists, Chomsky accolytes and others claim that Marxism in the East Bloc was irreparably ''deformed'', they're talking literal shit. The DDR was a Marxist state. It cannot really be argued otherwise. It was anti-Jewish, authoritarian, and not particularly internationalist, but this was dictated by the global military situation - it was a state mobilized for war out of necessity. The DDR was nonetheless a ''real'' Communist country. Communism isn't something else - its not money-driven democracy, its not Maoist despotism, its not neo-feudal bartering in the Third World.<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
i know Bertrand Russell wrote a book on socialism in the at the turn of the 20th century and had a whole chapter on Bismarck<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
is this considered "German Socialism"?<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
i think Trotskyism in practice would have just been hyper Jacobinism<br />
<br />
<b>popfop:</b><br />
there's no way it would have been sustainable<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas777:</b><br />
Bismark's Prussia was the foundation, sure - Sombart expounded this tendency further though. Spengler appropriated a lot of Sombart's thought, but tailored it to Conservative principles. Sombart himself was a Left-Hegelian, but he was also a German Nationalist. German Socialism to me is the culmination of Fitche - Hegel - Schopenhauer - Nietzsche - Sombart. Its a peculiar phenomenon. Americans don't really understand ''socialism''. They think ''socialism'' is old people demanding entitlements, Jesse Jackson hustling for federal pork, etc.<br />
<br />
<br />el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-3891270445216740072013-03-27T00:18:00.000-06:002013-03-27T00:18:04.295-06:00What is a Liberal Hick?<br />
<br />
<b>PLEASUREMAN</b> - <a href="http://mypostingcareer.com/">MyPostingCareer.com</a><br />
<br />
I might write a piece on it someday if hicks ever interest me enough to do so. For now, just a short note.<br />
<br />
The defining characteristic of a hick is that, despite evidence that he is sheltered and insulated from anything more stimulating than a bingo game, he assumes otherwise because he owns a television and/or radio. Were he to be aware of the outside world and his relative inexperience with it, he would cease to be a hick and instead would probably rise to the level of bumpkin.<br />
<br />
I describe the hick as he is; I am neither for nor against him. In a healthy society he is perfectly acceptable--if a little sure of ideas he has merely selected from a choice of two or three large print books. But then, his conviction that his hamlet or town has really settled the ideal way for man to live is part of his charm--he's not one for very much novelty.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, these very circumstances have left him vulnerable to pathological thinking--his mental immune system is very weak and the noise of mass society easily overrides it. At best he stubbornly (but inconsistently) resists the propaganda, telling people that God does not want gay people to marry and that blacks were better off before the civil rights era, but the result is that his own children think he's bigoted and stupid. He's never had to think about why or how his hick town functions, much less the world beyond his county line.<br />
<br />
At worst the noise of mass society causes him to become more extreme than conventional liberals--he naively and eagerly accepts the new programming, and points his small-minded small town indignation at anyone who doesn't. That indignation was an organic way to make sure people in town cut their lawns and didn't start trouble, but once the hick is infected with this mental virus he attacks anyone who cautions against his new programming. You might get a liberal to admit that he feels safer, even though it's totally racist, now that his kid is in a white school. The hick will double down and say he wishes his children were in an all black school so they could serve as role models on white privilege day (Louis CK was so right!). The non-hick liberal is a reasonable hypocrite--the hick is just an idiot.<br />
<br />
The problem is that the hick gets full exposure to mass society through the media, but his local customs and institutions aren't strong enough to defend against it. This is predictable, because for most of the existence of hick habitats no such thing as mass society existed. The hick as he was could only survive thanks to the gentleness of nature--a gale blowing from New York was barely a breeze by the time it reached him. But now nature--mass society--is massive in its turmoil and destructive reach. The hick is sure the storm will blow some wonderful nigger families into his area so he can show everyone how much he's learned from television.<br />
<br />
And of course when trouble comes as a result of his naivete, he'll be the first to point his finger J'Accuse style and rage about racism. He'd vote for the cornball nigga Obama twenty times if he could. Hicks learn what they can learn (not much) and are then certain about it forever. Therein lies the problem.<br />
el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-37658875149116682002013-03-15T23:44:00.002-06:002013-03-15T23:48:49.125-06:00Dalai Lama on Cultural Genocide<br />
<strong class="bbc"><a href="http://mypostingcareer.com/forums/topic/6634-cultural-genocide/">From the messageboard MPC</a></strong><br />
<br />
<strong class="bbc"><span style="font-size: large;">The Dalai Lama speaking about Tibet in Geneva, Switzerland, on March 10, 1997:</span></strong><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The unabated influx of immigrants to (our country), has the effect of overwhelming (our) distinct cultural and religious identity and reducing (my people) to an insignificant minority in their own country, amounts to a policy of cultural genocide"</blockquote>
<br />
<u><b>Terrence Rhine:</b></u><br />
<br />
I've always sort of respected real leftists who hate the Dalai Lama. They're being consistent; airhead Hollywood-type libs are going completely against their intra-national beliefs (anti-religion, anti-nationalism, socially liberal) when they gush over him because of their ditsy crush on Buddhism<br />
<br />
<u><b>PLEASUREMAN:</b></u><br />
<u><br /></u>
It's a good line to save for a dinner party where some friend of a friend pipes up about gay marriage: <i>"With all due respect, I have to side with the Dalai Lama on this one."</i><br />
<br />
<u><b>TAO:</b></u><br />
<br />
<br />
The Dalai Lama is great for trolling because 99% of shitlibs believe he's this peaceful and gentle man who talks about tolerance and enlightenment and non-violence (which for them means he'll agree with all their poz and insanity) unlike that NAZI OLD BACHELOR from Rome, while in reality he's also a Horrible Bigot and Unacceptable Socially Regressive Individual.<br />
<br />
Some old quotes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I feed birds, peaceful birds. I'm non-violent, but if a hawk comes when I'm feeding birds, I lose my temper and get my air rifle."</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"But if someone has a gun and is trying to kill you ... it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun."</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>KhalidSheikhHorowitz:</b></u><br />
<br />
The liberal doublethink on this issue is hilarious. Tibet was an agrarian, feudal, theocratic state before the Chinese invaded. Buddhists/Shintoists were banzai charging and launching kamikaze attacks throughout the Pacific War for the God-Emperor. Muslims stone adulterers, behead infidels and martyr themselves with regularity but no the neutered and emasculated caricature of Christianity that exists in the West, that's the real threat to liberal society.<br />
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Sinister Albanian Dwarf and Hateful Bigot</div>
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<b><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="color: red;">See also</span></b><br />
<a href="http://thattimehascome.blogspot.com/2012/03/dalai-lama-lite.html"><span style="font-size: large;">Dalai Lama Lite</span></a><br />
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<br />el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-47351117672248203542013-03-15T22:02:00.004-06:002013-03-15T22:02:48.785-06:00Zorba the Israeli<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">* Zorba the Israeli By Sh1ri L3v-Ar1 | Jul.08, 2008</span></b><br />
<br />
<br />
"I expect nothing. I fear nothing. I am free," reads the epitaph on the grave of Nikos Kazantzakis, located in a cemetery in Heraklion on the island of Crete. Kazantzakis, of "Zorba the Greek" fame, is not merely an author, poet, translator, and philosopher - he is an institution.<br />
<br />
His status as an institution extends beyond the borders of Greece. The International Society of Friends of Nikos Kazantzakis operates throughout the world in order to preserve his heritage. Among its activities is the publication of an annual journal and the organization of events focusing on the author and his work. The society was established in Geneva 20 years ago and has branches throughout the world, including in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and of course Israel.<br />
<br />
On Saturday evening, a few dozen people convened in the expansive, lovely home of Greek Ambassador to Israel Nicholas Zafiropoulos in Kfar Shmaryahu, at round tables on the pool patio. A Cretan-style meal was already laid on the tables, accompanied by ouzo-spiked lemonade. A small stage was set up on the side. This was the annual meeting of the Israeli branch of the International Society of Friends of Nikos Kazantzakis.<br />
<br />
Established in 2005, the branch currently has about 20 members, who meet to talk about Kazantzakis and his work.<br />
<br />
The first two annual lectures were delivered in a private home in Tel Aviv, but last year Zafiropoulos opened his home to the group, which returned for this year's annual event as well.<br />
<br />
Breaking teeth<br />
<br />
Daniel Dalyot, a geriatrician from Tel Aviv, founded the society's Israeli branch. "I've had an attachment to Greek culture since childhood," he says. "I received 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey,' as gifts and have loved Greek culture ever since. I first traveled [to Greece] when I was 16, and I love Greek music very much."<br />
<br />
Dalyot is not alone. Many Israelis have fallen in love with Greek culture.<br />
<br />
Many are attracted primarily to Greek music and food, but they are not the only draws. A growing number of Israelis in the arts, media, and other professions study Greek, travel to Greece frequently and draw inspiration from Greek culture.<br />
<br />
Several members of the society study Greek with teacher Leon Siam, a singer and native of Thessaloniki who immigrated to Israel in the 1970s.<br />
<br />
They listen to familiar Greek songs and study their lyrics. "It is an extremely difficult language," Dalyot says. "We are still breaking our teeth after a year." Screenwriter and film critic Kobi Niv, who attended the event on Saturday night and who studies Greek with Siam, explains, "I got involved with Greek culture via Aris San [a Greek singer who emigrated to Israel] and Yehuda Poliker [an Israeli singer-songwriter who is the son of Greek immigrants]."<br />
<br />
Yehuda Melzer, publisher of Sifrei Aliyat Hagag (Books in the Attic) and a former philosophy professor, connected with Greek culture by means of his partner, Lily Eiss-Perahia, who divides her time between Israel and an Aegean island.<br />
<br />
He spends two months a year on the island and has already befriended some of its prominent cultural figures, including director Theo Angelopoulos and a few writers.<br />
<br />
"It's the combination of the landscape and the people," Melzer says. "Greeks have an endless ability to be happy, and we Israelis can only learn from them."<br />
<br />
Nikos Kazantzakis was born in Heraklion on the island of Crete in 1883. He studied law at the University of Athens and, later, philosophy at The University of Paris-Sorbonne.<br />
<br />
He translated Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Darwin and Henri Bergson into and wrote poems, stories, novels and diaries of his travels to Spain, Italy, Egypt, and Russia. Kazantzakis died in Germany in 1957 and was buried in his birthplace.<br />
<br />
His most famous book, "Zorba the Greek," was published in 1946. Its appearance in English in the United States, in 1954, made its author a runaway success that exposed him to the rest of the world.<br />
<br />
The novel was published in Hebrew long before Greece became a popular tourist destination for Israelis. In 1958, Hanoch Kalai's Hebrew translation of "Zorba the Greek" became the first title in Am Oved's Sifriya La'am (People's Library) imprint.<br />
<br />
A new Hebrew translation by Amir Zuckerman was issued in 1995 with the book's original title, "The Life and Adventures of Alexis Zorbas."<br />
<br />
The novel was also adapted into a monumental film starring Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates and Irene Papas.<br />
<br />
The acclaimed novel depicted a friendship between a European intellectual and a miner, who was also a con-man, a potter and a santuri player - and above all an artist in living the good life with an expert ability to seize the day and realize his passions.<br />
<br />
Zorbas became an adored figure in Western culture, and his prescription for life, passions and animal instincts were idealized. He came to represent all of Greek culture.<br />
<br />
Kazantzakis wrote many books. "The Last Temptation of Christ" roused a storm of controversy when it appeared.<br />
<br />
The novel presented Jesus as a human, flesh-and-blood figure who grappled with passions and with temptation.<br />
<br />
In 1988, the film version of the book was released, directed by Martin Scorsese with a soundtrack composed by Peter Gabriel.<br />
<br />
The film also provoked scandal and was banned in some countries.<br />
<br />
On Saturday the novel was the subject of a lecture given by Kazantzakis society member Stelian Luznan. Luznan, an electrical engineer from Tel Aviv, spoke about the association between Kazantzakis's theological approach and the thinkers who inspired him - Buddha, Nietzsche and Lenin.<br />
<br />
Kazantzakis is considered a national writer in Greece, and some consider him to be a nationalistic writer. He was a proponent of the use of the popular Greek spoken on the street, and engaged in frequent battles with Athens intellectuals after arriving there in 1906.<br />
<br />
Some considered Kazantzakis to be a kind of Zorba himself. He drew his glorification of the instinctual, the passionate, from the philosophies of Nietzsche and Bergson. As a boy he attempted to work in the coal mines in Crete, where he befriended a full-of-life Macedonian named Yorgos Zorbas.<br />
<br />
<b>Kazantzakis was also a great fan of the Jewish people</b>. He made many Jewish friends during his years in Europe. <b>"He was fond of Jewish subjects and studied Hebrew with a rabbi in Crete,"</b> Dalyot says.<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">* Kazantzakis The Judeophile</span></b><br />
from Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis<br />
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el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-43430903325551728572013-01-29T02:17:00.003-07:002013-01-29T02:19:00.005-07:00Mussolini's Greek Island<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Chapter 8 <span style="text-align: center;">THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF OCCUPATION</span></b></div>
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The low status of poorer, especially unmarried women, made them vulnerable to sexual exploitation. The sudden rise in casual sex in return for food, threatened social conventions and the island’s clergy remonstrated about what they saw as the ‘vertiginous decline in morality’. Of the many girls and women who resorted to relations with Italian soldiers in order to survive, most were aware that there would be a high price to pay for transgressing taboos. But faced with starvation, unmarried women’s options were restricted; in a dowry-based marriage system, girls from destitute families had little prospect of any wealth in the future and stood much less chance of getting married after the war. The social importance vested in the dowry was such that some women refused to sell their embroidered linen dowries even when they were starving because, as they said, it had taken them years to make and they would not be able to do so again. Women’s poor prospects and social worth were undermined even further by the general indigence of the population and indeed it is likely that in some cases their own relatives sent them out to procure food from the Italian soldiers, in return for sex. (In fact, the practice existed elsewhere: in Italy, police reports gave evidence of families suffering from near-starvation who exploited their daughters in this way).<br />
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Although it was rumoured that Catholic women were more disposed to trading sex for food, which was ‘widespread’ in the town, Orthodox women were equally vulnerable. In fact, most soldiers had little contact with the majority of the Catholic population as they were garrisoned in Ermoupolis.Rigoutsos expressed shock that women from ‘good families’ resorted to ‘prostitution’, suggesting that on every level of society, no one was immune from the degrading consequences of famine. It was well know that, in the murky moral climate of a society in crisis, there were those who were ready to exploit this particular ‘market’, resulting from the Italian army’s demands for sex. These dealers were rated as the most amoral among Syros’s newly rich profiteers. According to Mihalis Stefanos, women were used to extract export permits from the Italians in exchange for a few scraps of food; the women then handed over the permits to the ‘irreproachable Greek operating behind the scenes’. Stefanos thought that the aim was to accustom the girl who returned ‘to be subjected to humiliation time and again, just to get something to eat for a short while’. He reviled his ‘fellow-citizens’ for their betrayal of their own society and nation. For him these men were traitors whose behaviour threatened the moral fabric of the island community. The perception that there was a link between the trade in permits and prostitution was common and came up in the first newspapers published after the occupation by the communist-led resistance group EAM. On the whole, the blame was cast on the women, and scabrous songs and jokes expressed the community’s disapproval of women who associated with the occupiers. Nevertheless there was an awareness that these transactions had ‘protected the lives of the women themselves and entire families’.<br />
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The harshness of sexual trading was mitigated in cases where men and women negotiated a stable agreement providing for their mutual needs, or were drawn together by genuine affection. One Orthodox interviewee, living in a village outside Ermoupolis during the occupation, was very reluctant to admit that she was a ‘housekeeper’ for an Italian soldier although this enabled her to survive after her brother and sister had died of starvation. But the scars of the past have still not been effaced and even today both she and her daughter are still reticent about the social stigma attached to her behaviour.el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-32313607188262650122013-01-13T02:43:00.002-07:002013-01-13T02:45:56.638-07:00Who was Rasputin?<br />
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<b>Matthew Raphael Johnson - Who was Rasputin?</b></div>
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<b>A Review of Rasputin: Neither Devil nor Saint, by Dr. Elizabeth Judas</b></div>
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Of all the topics in Russian history that have interested me over the years, few were as mysterious as the relations between the Royal family and Gregory Rasputin. I knew a few things: first, that the tsarevich was sick with hemophilia, and Rasputin had some sort of ability to heal him. Second, I knew that Rasputin had some influence over policy. And third, I knew that Rasputin had little control over his libido. With this information, I began to dig deeper into the life of this mysterious man. Unfortunately, I began to realize just a quickly, that what I thought I knew about Rasputin was false.<br />
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Up until recently, revisionist material on Rasputin was very scarce. Among the patriotic elements in Russian society prior to the revolution, only the royal family itself seemed to have any use for him. Outside of a few rather sectarian circles presently in Russia, Orthodox people either dismissed him, or condemned him as a fraud.<br />
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Recently, Liberty and Life publishing in California released a small book on the life of Rasputin from one who actually knew the man, a certain Dr. Elizabeth Judas, who was the wife of Alexander Ivanovich, an officer in the tsar’s secret service. Furthermore, the author’s uncle was a major figure in the imperial government. For years, this manuscript has lain rather undisturbed, out of print for decades and completely ignored by mainstream Russia scholarship. Alas, I myself, though immersing myself in Russian history and literature until it poured from my ears, had never heard of this manuscript, nor had any other revisionist writer in this field writing in English.<br />
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I was able to read this volume in two sittings. Now merely because it is short (216 pages in large fonts), but also because it is a gripping story. Nothing anyone has told you about Rasputin has even a shred of truth to it. Rasputin was a victim of revolutionary politics from without, and anti-tsarist palace intrigue from within. In the final analysis, this is the conclusion of this book.<br />
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***<br />
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Through a series of very interesting events, events that themselves tell much of local politics in the early part of the 20th century, the author, as a young child, met the acquaintance of Rasputin while living in Siberia, where she had many relatives. She knew Rasputin long before the tsar did. It was the author’s uncle, Dr. Lebikov, who first suggested to the royal family that this rather charismatic wanderer (Rasputin was not a priest, nor a monk, nor did he ever have a desire to be ordained or tonsured) from Siberia be brought to the palace to pray for the ailing tsarevich, Alexei. Now, the tsarevich was sick, he suffered from acute pains in his stomach, he never had hemophilia, nor is there any evidence of this serious disease among his medical records, or even within the correspondence between Nicholas and Alexandra, which, by the way, was conducted in English.<br />
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The distracted royal couple had no difficulty in permitting this Siberian religious man entrance into the palace. Though his appearance, with long hair and beard, wearing traditional Russian peasant dress, did cause a stir among the nobility at court, many of which were incensed to find such a commoner at the palace.<br />
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A few things need to be said about this. The great flaw in Nicholas’s reign was his inability to control the powerful and obnoxious nobility (including other more distant members of the Romanov clan). This was no easy task. Not only did Nicholas have certain familial responsibilities towards them, they also were possessed of political power in their own right, as well as access to substantial fortunes. Nicholas illustrious father, Alexander III succeeded in controlling this element, which is in part explanatory of why terror activity and revolutionary politics substantially subsided during his reign. Of course, Alexander was very different from his son, being much larger and more intimidating, Alexander personally often used physical coercion to control the more restless members of the clan. Nicholas was not of this temperament, being more refined than his father, but he eventually paid for his lack of a hard line in this matter.<br />
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Furthermore, Nicholas was a Slavophile: this means, in a nutshell, that Nicholas believed that Russia’s strength was in her peasantry, her agriculture, the commune and the church, all of which Nicholas was attached to not merely as a political figure, but also as a Russian man. To Nicholas, Rasputin represented the best in the Russian peasant: hardy, simple, pious. Rasputin made a powerful impression on the royal couple.<br />
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Rasputin was religiously opposed to the use of hypnosis or any sort of “mesmerism” in religious life; he made this clear to the author on many occasions. There is no evidence that he was a part of any sect that used these techniques, nor is there any proof he was even aware of their techniques apart from reputation. Rasputin was able to calm Alexei during his times of physical pain, and it was in this that his services were important. Rasputin did not cure Alexei of anything, but though prayer, was able to soothe the nerves of the young heir. He never took any credit for his services, saying only that God is responsible for the alleviation of Alexei’s pain. Nor did rasputin seek any reward for his services, and was very quick to leave the palace when he was no longer needed. In fact, it is worth nothing htat Rasputin routinely left the company of the royal family with intentions to go back to Siberia. It was only through the pleading of the royal couple that he returned. A rather curious form of behavior for someone who was “power mad.” In fact, twice, Rasputin packed up to leave for his native land, but was enticed back by Alexandra who clearly needed Rasputin to soothe the tsarevich.<br />
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Consulting eyewitnesses, there is no evidence that Rasputin had any political agenda whatsoever. There is substantial reason to doubt he was even a monarchist, though he respected the reigning royal family. The author claims that rasputin told her that praying for ht tsar was wrong, and only the poor and needy should be prayed for. However odd this statement might be, it hardly reflects any belief in royalism.<br />
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It did not take long for Rasputin to make enemies. The first sin he committed was to foil an assassination attempt on the heir to the throne. Apparently, several members of the palace nobility were ordering one of Alexei’s nurses to rub a certain powder on his rectum. The nurse was told that this was a medication brought back from the Middle East to treat Alexei’s condition. Rasputin, suspicious, asked that it be analyzed, only to discover that it was poison. As soon as this concoction was no longer applied, the tsarevich’s illness disappeared. There is no question, in Rasputin’s mind after this, that there was a cabal in the palace against the young heir. Rasputin’s days were numbered, and he knew it. But it was this incident that sealed the bond of trust between the royal family and Rasputin.<br />
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It didn’t help matters when a certain Prince Felix Yusapov approached Rasputin, asking him to intercede with the royal family for the oldest Romanov daughter’s hand. Rasputin, after being offered a bribe, refused. Eventually the story began to circulate, and Prince Yusapov moved to England to avoid further embarrassment. From there, Yusapov began to circulate stories about Rasputin at the English press. Among his accusations was that Rasputin was a Jew, that he had an out of control libido, and that he was an alcoholic. From this time on (about 1909), the stories about Rasputin began to get their start.<br />
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The murder of Rasputin is also treated in this book, but one with substantial revisionist material. It is normally told that Rasputin was killed after nearly every conceivable form of killing had failed: from poison to bullets to drowning to beatings. Rasputin was murdered by a group known as the “Mad Gang,” a group of extremely high ranking but also very liberal nobles and politicians who sought the eventual overthrow of Nicholas (and the monarchy in general) and their own installation in power. Among whom was Duma president Rodzianko, Vladimir Purishkevich, and Prince Yusipov. Apparently, according to later police reports, Rasputin was aware of the reason the liberal Prince Yusipov wanted him at his house, though the cover story was to pray for his ailing wife. In several confessions from Yusipov, he said that he first wanted to poison Rasputin, but he refused to eat the cakes especially prepared for him, nor the wine; all of which was poisoned. Eventually, he simply shot Rasputin, and eventually dumped his body into the river Neva, where, according to the autopsy, he died of drowning. It was a rather quick affair, bereft of the drawn out will to live so popular among cinematographers.<br />
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***<br />
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Much of the upper nobility in St. Petersburg was frankly being converted to liberalism as the 20th century got started. Many of them resented the traditionalism of the Emperor (though a traditionalism strongly tinged with practical good sense), and certainly, the presence of an “uneducated hick” at court. It might be mentioned that Rasputin was not uneducated, though he certainly had strong peasant roots.<br />
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Many of the nobility through their weight behind the liberal reformers, and, slowly but surely, the upper reaches of the nobility were turning against Nicholas. The Emperor was surrounded by turncoats and traitors, each viewing himself as the future president of a republican Russia, or even as the next Emperor. It reached a point where, except for a few trusted intimates, Nicholas was unsure who he could trust. Ultimately, it was Rasputin and Alexandra. As proof of this, here is the official exoneration of Rasputin made by the revolutionary Provisional Government (i.e. the anti-tsarist government under Kerensky, prior to the Bolshevik takeover) in July of 1917:<br />
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<i> 19 July 1917</i><br />
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<i> This testimonial delivered to Mikhail Mihailovich Leibikov certifies that not a single indication of Gregory Rasputin’s political activity was disclosed by the High Commission of Inquiry. The inquiry into the influence of Rasputin on the Imperial Family was intensive but it was definitely established that that influence had its source only in the profound religious sentiment of their Majesties. The only favor Rasputin accepted was the rental of his lodging, paid by the personal Chancellor of his Majesty. He also accepted presents made by the hands of the Imperial Family, such as shirts, waist-bands, etc. That Rasputin had no connections with any foreign authorities. That all pamphlets and newspaper articles on the subject of Rasputin influence and other rumors and gossip were fabricated by the powerful enemies of the emperor. This statement is given under the signature and seal of the Attorney General of the High Commission.</i><br />
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<i> V.M. Rudnev (signature)</i><br />
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The fact is that the Provisional Government, set up after the formal abdication of the Tsar in 1917, had full access to all the private and public papers of the Tsar, the Duma and all government ministries. Never has such an exhaustive commission into the form, behavior, structure and functioning of the royal government ever been attempted, and certainly, can never be again, given the full access to all records the Commission had (much of which was destroyed by the Bolsheviks for obvious reasons). They found, not only no moral problems with Rasputin, but also that the Imperial government maintained the highest standards in personal dignity while holding office. And all this from the sworn enemies of the Imperial government.<br />
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Significantly, the author reports many of the spiritual teachings of Rasputin. He never sought disciple, but he certainly attracted them, and one of his most ardent was the author. Now, here is where things get sticky. Though there is no direct evidence that rasputin was ever a member of one of the small sects that dotted the Russian landscape, some of his teachings are eccentric in the context of Russian Orthodoxy, a view the royal family was certain he espoused. Here, for example, are a few of the spiritual maxims Rasputin made central to his teaching (as reported by the author):<br />
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1. Be master of your own Will<br />
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2. Don’t worry<br />
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3. When in doubt, wait for light<br />
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4. Never show temper<br />
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5. Keep unpleasant opinions to yourself<br />
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6. Take all advice offered to you, but act on your own judgement<br />
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7. Be genuine and sincere<br />
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8. Understand your own powers<br />
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9. Understand your own weakness<br />
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10. Have faith in men and yourself<br />
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11. Love truth and justice supremely<br />
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12. Hold the eye of energy upon life’s ultimate goal<br />
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13. Seek light and life up to al light possessed.<br />
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According to the author, these were the central maxims of Rasputin’s life. Now, as nice as some of them are, there is a rather odd absence of any reference to God, the Trinity, the church or Jesus. The continued, undefined and deliberately vague use of such terms as “Will” or “the light” are certainly representative of sectarian and semi-gnostic views. He makes reference to faith (#10), but no reference to faith in God. #11 tells us who to love, and it’s not God, Christ, or anyone else. It is the vague and abstract words “truth” and “justice.” Of course, there are 13 maxims that made up his “commandments,” a number loved by Masons and other occultists. This is hardly the language of Russian monasticism, and therefore I remain highly suspicious of the author’s conviction that Rasputin was just a good, simple Christian. There is no mention of Rasputin ever receiving communion, going to confession or other practices normal to Orthodox life. This would explain the nearly universal suspicion of Rasputin exhibited by the upper clergy in the church, which the author fails to explain any other way.<br />
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In short, this book is a well done revisionist understanding of Rasputin from one of his ardent supporters and disciples. There is every reason to believe her most important points about the man, and his enemies, largely because they derives solely from eyewitnesses and police reports. For this reason alone, it is an extremely important book. It will not be taken seriously by scholars in “Russia studies,” for it proves one of the major points made by monarchists, then and now: that the nobility in St. Petersburg was anti-tsarist and viewed “parliamentary democracy” as merely a means to gain power under the ubiquitous slogan of “human rights.” Dr. Judas clearly, and though first hand accounts solely, bears this age-old contention out. The peasants were right after all: the tsar was good, his bureaucrats and nobles, bad. This refrain is to be found in peasant folk songs and dances from the 15th century onward, and Dr. Judas shows they were not too far off.<br />
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Rasputin was clearly not a bad man, but neither was he an Orthodox one. He spoke of Christ, but did not believe he founded a church. He told men to put their faith in one another rather than God. Nevertheless, had he been listened to, world history would be radically different. He was a quick-witted, educated and very practical man who strongly respected the royal family and wanted their protection, and nothing more. Rasputin correctly predicted that Russia’s entering into World War I would be the end of her, and this prediction, among other things, earned him the hatred of the Petersburg salon crowd. “Neither Devil nor Saint,” a very appropriate title.<br />
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*******<br />
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Reply from Majorie Rich<br />
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Dear Matthew:<br />
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It was a real pleasure to read you again. I enjoyed your review of Dr. Judas's book, but I do disagree with a lot of her claims, and will tell you why. All my quotes and remarks are from The Fall of the Russian Monarchy by Benard Pares who was Professor of Russian History, Language and Literature, University of Liverpool 1908-18 University of London 1919-36. In his Introduction he says: "I know of no period of history which is so rich in first-hand materials. That is, of course, due to the Revolution. It is true that a good many materials that I was following up have been lost for ever; for instance, being allowed to live with my regiment that I liked at the Russian front during the War, I found it easy to obtain a lien on the regimental records; but these, for the most part seem to have disappeared. On the other hand the Revolution opened access to a vast number of materials of infinitely greater value, many of which, without it, could hardly ever have been known to the public–private letters of the most personal kind passing between the chief actors in the period, diaries and other personal records. Here, as a student of history, I must pay the warmest tribute to Professor Michael Pokrovsky, the communist historian, to whom fell the priceless opportinity of making the greater part of this rich material accesible. Pokrovsky carried his extreme views into his historical studies, and they have now been discarded in the Soviet Union; but he had those instincts of scholarship which has always been so precious to the academic world of Russia, and in organizing the the work of research and publication under his leadership, he did not forget he was a historian."<br />
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I don't believe her claim that the young Alexis did not have hemophilia, and as you mentioned, there are many contradictions. It was through the boy's illness that Rasputin was brought into the palace. He may not have "cured" the illness, but there is no question that he brought relief from his pain. As his last nurse, Teglova, put it to Sokolov, "Call it what you will, he could really promise her (Empress) her boy's life while he lived." So it is easy to see why the Empress turned a deaf ear when Rasputin's many escapades were reported to the Tsar. And some. like the monk, Illidor, and the Bishop Hermogen, were dismissed and sent to different monasteries outside St. Petersburg. Lucas claims that Rasputin, as a Christian, was opposed to hypnosis. Pares wrotes; "Rasputin had already become a great preoccupation to-the principle Ministers. When Stolypin's children were injured by the attempt on his life in 1906, the Emperor had offered him the services of Rasputin as a healer. Later there was an interview between the two at which, according to the account that Stolypin gave to Rodzyanko, Rasputin tried to hypnotize this fine, sturdy and sensible man; Stolypin described how repulsive it was to him. He made a plain report on Rasputin to the Emperor. At the beginning of 1911 he ordered Rasputin out of St. Petersburg and the order was obeyed Stolypin's Minisater of Religion, Lukanov, on the reports of the police, ordered an investigation, and abundant material was forthcoming. From this time ,onwards, the Empress hated Stolypin." For Judas to claim that Rasputin had no political agenda, is ludicrous. All through Pares'book Rasputin brags about not only his sexual conquests, but his polital importance to the Tsar. He was no monarchist, and despised the nobility and declared them members of another race. Surprisingly, he and Count Witte, who held the same views, became friends, One thing I agree with then on, and that was, they both opposed the war and "English diplomacy." Pares says; "On Witte's side, with his rather obvious cunning and predilection for intrigue, it is almost certain that he would be one of the first to gauge Raspotin's political importance and to make use of it." I doubt that Prince Yussupov moved to England to "avoid embarrassment", but he moved there to attend Oxford. I remember that well, as he took an entourage of servants with him, quite unlike most college boys. I do not believe that any "Mad Gang" members killed Rasputin, but I do believe Prince Yussupov's account, plus and Rodzyanko's account in his "The Reign of Rasputin." However, I would not at all be surprised if the "perfidious Albion" didn't have a hand in it.<br />
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I was going to list some of the scandalous things that Rasputin did, and was investigated for, but I would run out of time and patience. Nowhere does Pares mention V.M. Rudnev, who gave the Duma findings, but Radzinky does in his "The Last Tsar." He says: "One of the most valuable materials for illuminating the personality of Rasputin was the observations journal kept by the surveillance established for Rasputin by agents of the secret police. The surveillance was both external and internal, and his apartment was under constant watch....Since the periodic press paid inordinate attention to Rasputin's unruliness, which became synonymous with his name, the investigation has given this issue proper attention. The richest material for illuminating this aspect of his personality came from that permanent secret surveillance of his apartment, which made it clear that Rasputin's amorous exploits did not go beyond nighttime orgies and young women of frivolous conduct and chanteuses, as well as with several of his suppliants....As far as his proximity to ladies of high society, in this respect the surveillance and investigation obtained no materials whatsoever." A far cry from Judas's claim. It did proves Rasputin a braggart." In pointing out the Tsar's weakness as a strong leader, does she think that historians blame Rasputin for the Revolution, so she wants to put the blame elsewhere.? That Revolution would have been carried out whether Rasputin had been born, or not. Not being a hard autocratic leader, the Tsar gained Sainthood. Pares saw the Tsar's diary, and his last entry. "Avdeyev was replaced by a Siberian Jew, Yurovsky, a man with a most sinister face and record. Nicholas notes in the last published entry in his diary," This specimen we like least of all."<br />
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You aptly called the spiritual maxims of Rasputin what they were. Thirteen, the number beloved of the Freemasons and other occultists. Dr. Judas could have known Rasputin all her life, but that s doesn't make her appraisal of him accurate. I have friends that have known George Bush all his life, and in spite of the damning evidence of his failure as a leader, still support him, and some even think he is intelligent I hope that this lengthy epistle hasn't bored you, as you know more about Russia than anyone I have ever read.<br />
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My best wishes to you and yours, Marjorie<br />
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Dear Majorie: You are very correct. However, I do think that Judas needs to be read, as she was an eyewitness after all. There can be no doubt that other eyewitnesses have contradicted her testimony. I am certain that Rasputin was not a Christian in any recognizable sense and this is the most significnat aspect of Judas’ book of all: even his greatest admirers, when sizing up his religious credentials, saw no room for Christ or even the Trinity in Rasputin’s words. MRJ el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-37647834603720288412013-01-04T07:18:00.000-07:002013-01-04T07:30:59.547-07:00War of the Babies by Gary Brecher<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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<i>This articles was originally published in <a href="http://www.takimag.com/site/article/war_of_the_babies_when_modern_warfare_and_demography_square_off_demography/">Taki's Magazine</a><a href="http://www.exile.ru/blog/detail.php?BLOG_ID=19201&AUTHOR_ID=#2501588341654666"> </a>on May 6, 2008.</i> </div>
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What
was the most important battle of the late 20th century? You could argue
it was the one that took place on the southern border of Morocco on
November 6, 1975. Of course, we’re not talking about another Stalingrad
here. In fact, what happened that day isn’t usually called a battle at
all. Its official name is “The Green March.” On one side were 350,000
unarmed Moroccan civilians carrying green (Islamic) flags, and on the
other -- miles inside the border, because they were hoping not to have
to confront any of the marchers -- was a shaky, demoralized token force
of Spanish troops pretending to defend a former Spanish colony, the
Spanish Sahara. </div>
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The Spanish Sahara hangs below Morocco where the Sahara meets the
Atlantic like a crumbling brick wall. It was about the least desirable
chunk of coastal Africa around, with no water to speak of and a tiny
population, which is why the Spanish got it. By the time the European
powers were ready to divide up Africa in the late nineteenth century,
Spain had long since lost its glory and tended to get the scraps and
leftovers. </div>
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But one thing we’ve learned over the last century is that on this crowded, hungry planet, there’s no such thing as worthless land. Spanish Sahara has proven that: in the 30 years it’s belonged to Morocco, big money has been made from the fishing off the coast and the huge phosphate mine at Bou Craa, a hundred miles inland. </div>
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That’s why the Moroccan King Hassan II, a wily old sultan with friends in the CIA, decided it was worth his while to ship all those loyal subjects down to Morocco’s southern border, hand out little green flags for the cameras, and send them across the border toward those Spanish troops. </div>
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The Moroccans had to think outside the traditional military-conquest box, for the simple reason that Morocco’s armed forces are pathetic. They’re so bad their only contributions to military history have been in the “slapstick comedy” department. For instance, the Minister of Defense once tried to have fighters from the Moroccan Air Force kill Hassan II by shooting down his Boeing 727 as it came home from a foreign trip. They failed. Seriously: jet fighters failed to intercept and destroy a big, fat, slow civilian airliner even when they knew its exact flight path. A military like that pretty much has to resort to unarmed conquest, because its chances in a fair fight are zero.</div>
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Of course the Moroccans had the advantage of facing a weak, dispirited colonial Spain just at the moment the Spanish dictator, General Franco, finally got around to dying. If you’re old enough to recall those early SNL seasons, you probably remember Chevy Chase’s running joke, “This just in: General Franco still dead!” The reason that joke worked is that it took the old General a long time to die, and that meant that greedy up-and-coming regional powers like Morocco had plenty of time to plan ways of getting their hands on former Spanish colonies. </div>
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It may not have been very exciting for combat fans, but it was an
extremely effective invasion. The Spanish troops didn’t fire a shot. The
marchers walked over the border, got sand in their shoes, shouted about
how this sacred patch of waterless, flat desert was now an integral
part of the Kingdom of Morocco, and went back home. And since then, the
Spanish Sahara has been dominated by Morocco, although the local
guerrilla army, POLISARIO, gave them some serious problems for a while. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What makes this weird episode my nominee for “Most Significant Battle
of the Era” is that it showed the new way of winning disputed
territory. If there’s one thing that we should have learned over the
past hundred years, it’s that traditional armed conquests are getting
less and less effective. This is one of the most surprising twists in
all military history. All through the nineteenth century, the European
powers, led by the British and French, took the land they wanted on the
grounds that they had better military technology, transport and
organization. Locals who disputed that notion tended to disappear as
casualties of inevitable progress. And that was just an updated version
of what had been happening all over the world for thousands of years:
bigger, stronger tribes displace and wiped out weaker tribes whenever
they could. That was the norm, even in pre-contact North America, where
the Navajo were displacing the Ute in the American Southwest long before
the white guys showed up.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now, even though the balance in conventional warfare is if anything tilting further toward the first world, the technologically advanced and organized countries are in retreat, and the former victims are pushing back, not just claiming their old territories but infiltrating the former colonizers’ countries. What matters now is morale, national will. The Spanish didn’t have it, and the Moroccans did. So even though the Spanish troops could have wiped out those unarmed marchers, they failed to open fire. Weapons are only weapons if you’re willing to use them. A technologically advanced army without the will to fire is no army at all. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Only us dedicated war nerds seem to realize how weird this is, how
totally unprecedented in military history. Until the 20th century, the
problem wasn’t usually getting militarily superior forces to open fire
-- it was getting them to stop before the weaker tribe, army or country
was totally wiped out. I don’t know of a single case, before the 20th
century, of a militarily superior tribe or nation lacking the will to
defend its territory, or for that matter, take the territory of weaker
neighbors. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The 20th century was the big turning point. New powers like Germany and Japan tried to imitate the older colonial powers of the 19th century and suffered total, disastrous defeat, even though they usually prevailed on the battlefield. That’s the weird lesson of the two world wars: military superiority in the narrow sense just doesn’t cut it any more. Despite the total battlefield dominance of the Wehrmacht (and to a lesser extent the Imperial Japanese forces), Germany and Japan ended the war not just without additional territory but with their home territories in ruins, their cultures gelded, their birthrates for generations to come among the lowest in the world.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Even the older colonial powers, Britain and France, finished the
century in big trouble, without the will to resist the immigrants from
the colonies they’d once ruled. We’re at a very strange moment
militarily: our weapons still work but our will is gone. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The colonies that were established earliest are the most successful.
For example, northern North America, now the U.S. and Canada, passed
into permanent possession of the European settlers (or so it seemed,
until recently). Two things determined this: first, they were settled in
the 17th and 18th century, before conscience set in, and because most
of the native population had been relatively tiny groups of
hunter-gatherers (which also holds true for Australia, though it was
settled much later). Everywhere else -- in Latin America, Africa, Asia
-- the locals have been pushing back the colonizers without coming close
to what old-style military theorists would call military superiority.
That’s what we’re seeing now in South Africa, and more slowly in Europe
and the southern United States. In other places, especially those
colonized by the French (who were never as good at it as the Brits),
huge colonial populations were totally eliminated, like the million-plus
French residents of Algeria. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So there’s a shocking lesson that military buffs have been slow to
face: military superiority doesn’t matter nearly as much right now as
birthrate and sheer ruthless will. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Ah, birth rate -- funny how it’s become such a taboo subject for both
Left and Right. The Lefties wouldn’t dream of telling third-world
people to limit their baby-making, and most right wingers can’t bring
themselves to endorse birth control even if it could slow the
destruction of their own countries. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So birth rate is a weapon without a counter-weapon right now. So it
tends to win. The Moroccans made it clear that the Green March was all
about birth rate. The number of “volunteers” they sent to the border was
350,000, exactly the number of births per year in Morocco. So this was
basically a ”<i>Lebensraum</i>” argument like the one the Germans tried
earlier in the century. You might have heard about that one, a little
dust-up called the Eastern Front. And you might be saying right now that
if any policy ever failed decisively, it was the Nazis’ attempt to
elbow themselves a little living space from Stalin. Which is totally
true. But the Nazis tried it the old-fashioned way, with armed conquest.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To succeed in the post-1918 world, the world Woodrow Wilson dreamed up where “small nations” have rights even if they can’t defend them, you need to use slower, less obviously military methods, like birthrate and immigration. The classic example of this kind of slow conquest is Kosovo. The Serbs could always defeat the Albanians on the battlefield, even when outnumbered, but the Albanians had a huge advantage in the most important military production of all -- babies. According to the BBC, the birthrate of Kosovo Albanians 50 years ago was an amazing <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1999/06/99/world_population/382980.stm">8.5 children per woman</a>. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Serb/Albanian conflict offers damn near perfect lab conditions to
prove my case that birth rate trumps military prowess these days,
because the Serbs always beat the Albanians in battle, yet they’ve lost
their homeland, Kosovo. Here again, we can blame Woodrow Wilson and his
talk about “rights.” In places where tribes hate each other, a tribe
that outbreeds its rival will become the majority, even if it can’t
fight. So, after generations of skulking at home making babies, letting
the Serbs do the fighting, the Albanians finally became the majority in
Kosovo and therefore the official "good guys," being oppressed by the
official "bad guys," the Serbs. At least that’s the way the nave
American Wilsonian types like Clinton saw it. So when the Serbs fought
back against an Albanian rebellion in Kosovo, and dared to beat the
Albanians, Clinton decided to bomb the Serbs into letting go of Kosovo,
the ancient heartland of a Christian nation that had spent its blood
holding off the Turks for hundreds of years.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Kosovo Albanians proved that military skill doesn’t matter, because they tried and failed to conquer Kosovo the old-fashioned way: armed rebellion by the Kosovo Liberation Army. It was a wipeout: local Serb militias, a bunch of tired middle-aged part-timers and cops, crushed the KLA. What happened next is a beautiful illustration of the way losers win these days: the Albanians took the bodies of KLA men who’d been killed in battle, stripped all weapons and ammo from them, and showed them to gullible Western reporters as victims of a Serb “massacre.” It was a massacre, all right, but only because the KLA couldn’t fight worth a damn. Alive and armed, they were a joke; dead and disarmed, they helped win Kosovo by making their side the "victims," which led directly to U.S. military intervention. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To win the way the Albanians won in Kosovo, you need to make a lot of
babies. It’s that simple. And to see how it works, you have to drop the
namby-pamby liberal idea that people only have babies out of “love.” In
lots of places on this planet, baby-making is a form of weapons
production. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In some places, it’s open policy. For example, in Palestine there’s
an all-out birthrate war going on between the Palestinians and the
Israelis. And one of the most frustrating things about this kind of
struggle, from the Israeli perspective, is that the worse you make life
for the people in the occupied zones, the more kids they have. The Gaza
Strip, for instance, has one of the highest fertility rates in the world
outside Africa, at <a href="http://www.indexmundi.com/gaza_strip/total_fertility_rate.html">5.6 kids per woman</a>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The rate for Israeli overall is about 2.8 children per woman, high
for a rich country. But the most amazing rates anywhere, even higher
than for the Gaza Palestinians, are in the most extreme Zionist groups,
the Haredi “ultra-orthodox” Jews. Until recently they averaged eight or
nine children per woman. There was actually a <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/944048.html">big panic</a> in the Israeli settler press when news hit that their rate had dropped to a mere 7.7 kids per woman.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That’s actually higher than the rate for Mali (<a href="http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=31">7.38 per woman</a>), which has the highest birthrate in the world. <br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The settlers don’t hide the fact that they’re producing as many kids
as they can in order to change the demographics of “Greater Israel” in
their favor -- above all to make sure the Palestinians never become the
majority. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What’s interesting is that there were plenty of voices in the
ultra-Orthodox community in favor of using Israel’s military superiority
to settle the problem the old-fashioned way, by expelling or wiping out
the Palestinians. Those people lost out; their leader, Meir Kahane, was
assassinated by an Egyptian cabbie in New York, but he’d lost the
debate long before he died. You just can’t get away with those methods
these days, not even with every born-again Baptist Zionist in Texas
backing you to the hilt. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If you want an example closer to home, just go to Northern Ireland
where the Protestant majority the border was designed to maintain has
been getting smaller and smaller, thanks to the higher birthrate among
Catholics. As of 2001, the Catholics were about <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/apr/12/northernireland.northernireland">46% of the population</a>, up from 35% in 1961. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But as the dreaded “Catholic Majority” date approaches, a funny thing is happening up in Ulster: the Catholic birth rate is slowing down even faster than the Protestant rate. This always happens when a tribe breaks out of its slums into the middle class. This illustrates one of the real brain-twisters of contemporary demographic struggle: if you really hate the enemy tribe, the best thing you could do would be to make them rich. Rich people don’t have nearly as many kids. Of course there are exceptions like the Ultra-Orthodox Israelis, who are fairly well-off and just dedicated to making as many kids as possible, but generally, money distracts people from starting big families. So the old methods of keeping down the enemy tribe are usually counter productive. If the Ulster hotheads like Ian Paisley had had their way and kept the Catholic s down in the slums, their birthrate over the past 30 years would have been much higher and they’d be ready to stage a Kosovo-style “majority rule” <i>coup</i> like the Albanians did against the Serbs, complete with the USAF blowing up every television tower in Belfast like we did to the ones in Belgrade, just to teach those Serbs a lesson: “No TV till you let your little Albanian brother have Kosovo!” </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Makin'em rich is the only way you’re going to settle the kind of conquest-by-immigration we’re seeing now in Europe and North America. Nobody will even say honestly how many illegal immigrants there are in the U.S. right now, but just from what I see driving to work, I’m inclined to go with the higher estimates, something up to 20 million people who snuck in from Mexico and points south looking for work. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As far as I know, nobody’s claiming the Latino immigrants decided to
have a lot of kids as a way of reconquering Texas and California, the
way the Israeli settlers are doing. <i>La reconquista</i>, if it happens, will be an unforeseen result of rising birth rates and falling death rates for countries like Mexico that are just moving up from the third world to, say, the second-and-a-halfth. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
By 1970, Mexico was at that dangerous stage where there’s just enough
basic medical care to keep people alive, so death rates are falling
sharply, but people are still poor enough to want a lot of kids. Between
1970 and 2000, the Mexican population doubled, from 48 million to 98
million. So on one side of the Rio Grande you had a lot of young poor
people, and on the other, a lot of money and companies eager for cheap
labor. And a muddy little creek like the Rio Grande wasn’t nearly wide
enough to keep those two groups apart.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As the population of Mexico increased and the living standard rose,
the fertility rate actually went into an amazing dive, to the point that
the rate for Mexican women now is only <a href="http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=31">2.39 kids per woman</a>, just two places up from Israel’s 2.38. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And the only thing that’s brought the Latino birthrate down -- in their home countries, not among the ones who immigrated to the U.S. -- is getting enough money that peasant families start thinking of themselves as consumers, and get more excited about buying a new truck or a flat-screen TV than having little Jos. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is all pretty slow to unfold, compared to traditional military conquest. Birth rate takes decades to have an effect; the Albanian victory in Kosovo is the result of birth rates from the mid-20th century. And in some parts of the world, like the US and Europe, immigrants have a history of being absorbed by the locals rather than sticking to the old tribal hatreds in the style of the Balkans and the Middle East. It’s a cultural deal, after all, not racial. Studies of the U.S. Hispanic population show that within a generation or two, most American Hispanics are ranting about policing the borders and keeping those damn immigrants out of the country.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What’s really weird -- and I can testify to this from my own experiences growing up -- is when the local culture infiltrates the immigrants, like the fact that Mexicans in the U.S. are deserting the Catholics and becoming born-again Protestants. Go to any of the younger, feister churchers in the U.S. like the Church of the Nazarene and you’ll see lots of Mexican families with plenty of kids, singing old Scottish hymns in Tex-Mex English. In fact, I ran into a really hilarious article by a U.S. Baptist writer who worried that the Baptist birthrate is going down while the Nazarenes are having babies at a rate of three-plus per woman. So the nightmare scenario that anti-immigrant bloggers are always predicting, where the U.S. turns into one giant Mexico, might end up being true in what you might call “racial” terms -- I mean, your second-grade class photo might be two-thirds Hispanic -- but those Hispanic faces would have absorbed a whole born-again American world picture that actually comes from the Scots-Irish who settled the American south hundreds of years ago.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is one point where people’s anxiety over these slow, demographic
conquests splits according to their real fears: do you just not want to
see that kind of face when you go outside, or do you not want to import
the culture of the immigrants’ home country? The whole debate right now
is so censored, so totally dishonest on both sides, that nobody will
come clean about which it is. I suspect for some people it’s the faces:
they want the faces on their street to be the same shape and color they
were when they were growing up. If that’s what you want, then no matter
where you are, I can guarantee that if you’re rich enough to worry about
things like this (as opposed to where your next meal’s coming from),
then yup, you definitely have grounds for worry. People move around to
where the food is, the money, the good grazing, the jobs. The Germanic
tribes who moved in on Europe a couple millennia back took a more
reasonable view; they called wars “the movements of the peoples.” The
Huns push the Goths off the steppe, and boom! Next thing you know, the
Goths are wiping out a Roman army at Adrianople. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The faces are going to change. We are in a new military-historical era, in which the only states with the sheer will to resist slow “conquest” by immigration were the Stalinist states. Of course they didn’t have much of a problem there anyway -- not too many immigrants trying to sneak into North Korea or the old USSR -- but even if they had faced real demographic challenge, they had the will to open fire. The Berlin Wall is a nasty case in point, where the will was used to stop people leaving.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But those Stalinist states are not exactly a growth industry these days, and no liberal democratic state has the will to shoot down unarmed people trying to get in (or out, for that matter). Even the Israelis, who are maybe the fiercest first-worlders on demographic issues, don’t shoot the poor Africans who cross to Beersheba for jobs in the cafes. They just send them back to Sudan to be shot there. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So the movement of the peoples, the slow demographic wars, are going
to go on. We just don’t have a counter-move, except maybe bombarding
poor people with money to stay home. Basically, no matter where you are,
the complexions and the features you see on the streets are going to
change. If it’s any consolation to face-fascists, Europeans got their
licks in first, so to speak. Not many African-Americans around with pure
African blood; not many Mexican Indians without some Spanish in them.
So now the faces blend the other way. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
For most people the real worry, if they were allowed to even say it out loud, is culture: if you’re French, you really don’t want Paris turning into Kinshasa, because let’s be honest, Kinshasa is a Hellhole. If you’re English, you don’t want London turning into Karachi, because Karachi is a nightmare. If you’re American, you don’t want Houston -- oh Hell, ever been to Houston? If you have half a brain, you don’t want Houston at all, the lousy sweatbox. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The thing is, most of the people who invaded from those places tend
to agree with you. That’s why they moved in the first place. Nobody
knows what a Hellhole the Congo is like a Congolese. I read somewhere
that on the Congo riverboats, they have these slang terms for the
different decks. The first-class deck they call “Europe.” The
second-class deck is “China,” meaning not that great, but livable. The
third-class deck is “Congo,” and nobody wants to be there, least of all
the Congolese. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So to assess your situation in terms of the new conquests, you have to decide whether you’re in a Kosovo -- two tribes hating each other forever, turning out babies as weapons -- or that Congolese riverboat, where nobody wants it too “authentic” if they can help it. There’s a lot of blurring and overlap between those two models, sure. Take Northern Ireland: a lot of yelling, a lot of noisy tribal hate, but I just don’t think they have it in them to be another Kosovo. Too interested in TV and cars. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That’s what’s funny about the debate right now: the diehards in the
U.S. and Europe wish we had the old ruthless will to seal the borders,
but the “weakness” of the advanced countries generally works pretty well
to turn the immigrants into immigrant-hating locals in a generation or
two. The old model, bayonets on the border, isn’t even in the running.
Time to face that fact. So the faces will change.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If you can handle these new faces, you’re likely to be surprised to
see your “weak” American or European culture win out, slowly,
un-gloriously but surely, and you may live long enough to see a whole
new crop of pols who look like they just came from Karachi or Kinshasa
until you turn the sound on and hear them ranting about how we need to
get rid of all these damn immigrants.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Gary Brecher is the author of the book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/War-Nerd-Gary-Brecher/dp/0979663687">The War Nerd</a></i>. </i></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">See also: <a href="http://thattimehascome.blogspot.com/2010/03/twilight-of-godless.html">Twilight of the Godless</a></span></b><br />
<br /></div>
el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-7419924852410805662012-12-30T21:20:00.000-07:002012-12-30T21:20:21.559-07:00Rachel Weisz on why Hollywood prefer blondes<br />
<b>Rachel Weisz on why Hollywood Jews prefer blondes</b><br />
By Danielle Berrin - jewishjournal.com October 22, 2009<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i.imgur.com/hXNI9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i.imgur.com/hXNI9.jpg" width="246" /></a></div>
Among studio executives, the name Rachel Weisz is not synonymous with “box office draw,” even though Weisz has appeared in a few blockbusters. She was the leading lady in a little franchise called “The Mummy” and played the voice of Saphira in the movie “Eragon,” based on the bestselling series. In general, Weisz is thought more of an actress than a movie star, but that may be about to change.<br />
<br />
An article in today’s Variety declared that Alejandro Amenabar’s Spanish-backed epic “Agora,” starring Weisz, enjoyed an unexpected opening in Spain where it grossed $17 million during its first two weeks. Those numbers are decidedly unimpressive by U.S. standards, but for a film that cost $70 million to make and failed to find distribution after its premiere at Cannes, Variety found the numbers “stunning”.<br />
<br />
But I’m more stunned by Weisz, who may be Hollywood’s best kept secret. According to The-Numbers.com, a box office database for movie stars, Weisz’s resume has grossed more than $2 billion worldwide ($860 million in the U.S.) with an average gross of more than $35 million per film. Her average opening weekend clocks in at around $11.2 million which puts her on par with Nicole Kidman, who, according to the same Web site, has an average opening weekend of $11.4 million. If the numbers are correct, that means Weisz is only about $2 million shy of matching Julia Roberts’s average opening weekend ($13.4 million) as well as Jennifer Aniston’s ($13.8 million), both of whom are considered two of the biggest movie stars in the world. In fact, according to The-Numbers.com, Roberts is ranked no. 37 on the list of highest grossing movie stars of all time. (Then there’s Angelina Jolie with an average opening weekend of $15.8 million.)<br />
<br />
Weiss still needs $500 million to catch up to Jolie’s domestic gross and more than $1 billion to reach Roberts, but her average opening weekend is well suited to the competition. Not that Weisz cares—she is famously content with her private life and avoids getting caught up in the ills of Hollywood.<br />
<br />
“Believe me,” Weisz told Blackbook in April 2009. “I get it. I’m living with a nice man, and I have a nice job and a happy family, blah, blah, blah… ”<br />
<br />
Weisz lives in Manhattan’s East Village with her fiancé, director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler). She was raised in northern London, in the Hampstead Garden Suburb, by parents Edith Ruth and George Weisz. Her mother was a teacher and later became a psychotherapist; her father, an inventor, who was born in Hungary but fled to England to escape the Nazis.<br />
<br />
Below, Weisz talks about being Jewish in Hollywood in a 2001 interview with writer Emma Forrest for Index Magazine.<br />
<br />
EMMA: When we were at the drugstore you innocently opened up Talk Magazine and I heard a shriek of dismay.<br />
<br />
RACHEL: Yeah, I literally saw not only the most disgusting, but the most ridiculous photograph I’ve ever seen of any woman.<br />
<br />
EMMA: And who was it of?<br />
<br />
RACHEL: It was me. [laughs] It was me photographed by David Bailey, who had some kind of concept that because it was for a Russian film, I would be wearing a Russian hat. But you can’t really see the hat, just fur everywhere. And my nose looks like it’s … just a really outsized nose, you know.<br />
<br />
EMMA: But, you see, you’re holding back from saying what you said at the store, which was that you thought you looked too Jewish. Is it limiting as an actress to be perceived as being too ethnic in any way?<br />
<br />
RACHEL: Well, I think you and I have always felt the same way — that we’re Jewish but we can get away with just being exotic. We’re kind of Jews in disguise. Those cultural stereotypes about the Jew with the big hooky nose and the fleshy face rub off on you. That’s terrible to admit, isn’t it.<br />
<br />
EMMA: Well, it’s that Jackie Mason joke about how no Jewish woman wants to look Jewish: “‘You think I look maybe a little Italian, I look a little Russian, perhaps I can be Spanish?’ … ‘You look Jewish!’”<br />
<br />
RACHEL: Hollywood’s run by Jews. I was advised by an American agent when I was about 19 to change my surname. And I said “Why? Jews run Hollywood.” He said “Exactly.” He had a theory that all the executives think acting’s a job for shiksas.<br />
<br />
EMMA: Of all the self-loathing Jews in the world, the most self-loathing are the Hollywood Jews. They don’t want to see images of themselves on screen. That’s why Lauren Bacall had to hide her identity, and Winona Ryder changed her name from Horowitz.<br />
<br />
RACHEL: <b>In some way acting is prostitution, and Hollywood Jews don’t want their own women to participate. Also, there’s an element of Portnoy’s Complaint — they all fancy Aryan blondes.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-919045657458924362012-12-26T01:56:00.001-07:002012-12-26T01:57:19.921-07:00Ezra Pound on Money <div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Ezra Pound on Money</b></div>
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Carolina Hartley May 26, 2010</div>
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We're never far from money. We spend most of our time and energy in quest of money.<br />
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But how did this thing become an intermediary between us and the world around us? Before money, we bartered. Why did money supplant barter and who is custodian of the money system?<br />
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These questions are dangerous: they cost Ezra Pound twelve years. Pound was a victim of political persecution at the behest of financiers and their minions like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. These people feared Ezra because he asked “what is money for,” and came up with an inconvenient answer.<br />
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Pound understood that money is ticket for exchange. People who make things can trade more easily with other people who make things using money. There should only be as much money as there are things to trade. Another way of saying this is: money supply should increase and decrease along with the change in economic output.<br />
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Here's the rub. If money supply grows faster than the amount of things made, then theft is taking place. The thief creates extraneous dollars and spends them first: at the time when the rest of us expect a dollar to be worth a certain amount. By the time the thief's dollars have been absorbed into the economy, we notice our dollars are buying less. This is inflation. The thief has dipped into our savings and traded with shoddy bills.<br />
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What happens when money supply shrinks compared to things made? Then a new characteristic of money emerges. Things made don't always last — take bread for instance. A baker must sell his bread in a matter of days, otherwise it's lost. Money isn't bound by such considerations. A thief can horde money until the baker's goods rot, then buy his bakery at a huge discount. <br />
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The “thief” in both these examples holds a special place in society: he controls the supply of money and “future money” called credit. Controlling money supply is economic power; it is a sovereign privilege. The people who really control a nation control its money supply. [1]<br />
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Pound's criticism of the financial class was that they were bad sovereigns. They managed money supply for their own benefit: they were thieves. In contrast, the Founding Fathers were good rulers because they designed a system where Congress managed the money supply; and Congress was answerable to a large swathe of the population.<br />
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Pound identified the grasping, vampire-like nature of international finance, and the venal nature of its supporters in national governments.[2] He was interested in finding ways to systematically limit their power: perfecting what the Founding Fathers started in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. This is why Pound studied in the work of Silvio Gesell.<br />
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One of Gesell's ideas was to eliminate the disparity between money and perishable goods. A way to do this is to discount large bills over time: holders of large bills would need to get them stamped every month, each stamp representing a decrease in their value. This way, hoarders bear the cost of their behavior and investment is encouraged. Small denominations would not be discounted.<br />
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Gesell recognized that the economy is like a body and money is like its blood. If blood builds up systematically in any one place, a disease results. His discounted script discouraged people from taking advantage of others' simple lack of cash. (Note: this is very different than being forced to lend to people who aren't creditworthy.) Saving in the form of investment was systematically encouraged.<br />
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Pound notes that Gesell's system worked imperfectly in Alberta, Canada mostly due to planning errors that could easily be fixed. The system worked very well in the Austrian village of Wörgl, and it was promptly closed down by mainstream financial interests.<br />
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These financial interests were trying to preserve their privilege: they benefited from the increasing productivity of the societies they milked. Pound didn't see how being born into a banking family; or buying the latest politician; should give them the right to those benefits. Ezra liked the ideas of Major Clifford Douglas: the people who worked should accrue those benefits. This is the essence of Social Credit. <br />
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The text of the 1933 version of Major Douglas' book Social Credit, can be found here. Pound appreciated Maj. Douglas' ideas, but thought they needed further exploration. What Pound really felt passionate about was fixing the money problem. Ezra wrote during the Great Depression when, much like now, people were captivated by the supposed security of gold.<br />
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Pound was never an advocate of gold-backed money. He understood how easily such systems can be subverted by controlling the supply or the clearing market for the backing commodity. Much of Britain's power during the 19th century came from the fact that London was the clearing market for gold; and other nations used a gold-standard currency. They had to go to England to manage their money!<br />
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In Ezra's words:<br />
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The trick is simple. Whenever the Rothschild and other gents in the gold business have gold to sell, they raise the price. The public is fooled by propagandizing the devaluation of the dollar, or other monetary unit according to the country chosen to be victimized. The argument is that the high price of the monetary unit is injurious to the nation's commerce.<br />
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But when the nation, that is, the people of that nation own the gold and the financiers own the dollars or other monetary units, the gold standard is restored. This raises the value of the dollar and the citizens of “rich” nations, as well as citizens of other nations, are diddled.<br />
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Preventing nations from being “diddled” is why Pound supported Fascism in Italy. He saw Fascism as the only system available to the Italians that was likely to deal with the threat from international finance. Mussolini's Fascism let Italy be ruled in an Italian fashion — and until Anglo-American banking interests were threatened, things worked better in Italy than they had in a long time.<br />
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Pound never supported Fascism in America. We have our Constitution, which describes a government for Americans run in the American fashion. If it ain't broke, don’t fix it. Pound realized that America's challenge was implementing the laws we already have. Read Jefferson and/or Mussolini for his whole argument. [3]<br />
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Ezra was a true economic historian. He explained his analysis in the following way: <br />
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“The definition of an idea, as observed by someone who understands the events of the day, may shed more light on the historical process than many volumes.”<br />
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“History, as seen by a Monetary Economist, is a continuous struggle between producers and non-producers, and those who try to make a living by inserting a false system of book-keeping between the producers and their just recompense.”<br />
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“The usurers act through fraud, falsification, superstitions, habits and, when these methods do not function, they let loose a war. Everything hinges on monopoly, and the particular monopolies hinge around the great illusionistic monetary monopoly.”<br />
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Pound's analysis identified the canker in American life: the cooperation between government and finance to defraud the public — the “monetary monopoly.” Monopolies don't exist without tacit government approval. Beneficiaries of the financial monopoly have collaborated with venal officials against producers for a long time. The history of the largest American fortunes, since the Civil War at least, have followed this trend.<br />
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Historically, banking was begun by families as private businesses. As these businesses grew and issued receipts for gold and silver deposits, they gradually developed “fractional reserve” banking by issuing more notes than they had gold on deposit. Although kings would mint coins of gold and silver they owned at their royal mints, fractional reserve banking was a dangerous business, and Kings did not want to gamble with their sovereign power by going into that business. Rather, kings and especially parliaments, became dependent upon these fractional reserve bankers for loans, and would grant monopoly charters to a group of private bankers to create a national or central bank which would then have the power to regulate the size of the money stock through its fractional reserve activities, as it collected taxes, issued the national paper currency and sold sovereign debt on behalf of the government.<br />
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These national or central banks conferred significant advantages on the private banks that organized and owned them. Private banks were allowed to borrow at the discount window at special rates provided that they posted reserves with the central bank. Of course, the real advantage of the central bank for its owners and organizers was inside information. During the years of the gold standard, having a seat on the board of a central bank meant that the insider would know when emergency borrowings ticked up, telegraphing the probable start of a bank crisis and stock market crash. In the case of war, it was an easy task for a private bank with seats in several different national banks to calculate the deposits and income of the contesting states and the loans they secured to raise their armies, thus allowing the privileged few to bet on the probable winner.<br />
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The gold standard was popular among bankers for the simple reason that the supply of gold increased irregularly but on average more slowly than the increase in population, meaning that the value of loans would gradually increase over time as would the burden of repayment. Debtors resented the power of gold, hence William Jennings Bryan’s political appeal and his famous “Cross of Gold” speech. Coincidentally the gold standard was finally abandoned in 1971, six years after the birth control pill descended upon the civilized world.<br />
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Pound recognized two very important threats to the international banking community that arose out of the Third Reich. First, Hitler abandoned the gold standard, meaning that Nazi Germany suddenly had the power to prevent defaulting on its future debt simply by printing money — a power that the U.S. copied from Germany just as it copied the autobahns. Second, and much more important, the Reich took back the power of central banks by financing infrastructure projects directly, issuing notes in payment to the laborers, contractors, and suppliers rather than first borrowing the money from a central bank at interest. (See here and here.) If this practice had spread, bankers would be no more powerful than plumbers.<br />
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Furthermore, as long as the supply of this newly printed money in the form of notes matched the increase in GNP and future productivity from these new highways, rails, and factories, the printing of money would not necessarily produce inflation. The Reich also issued debt directly to German citizens and businesses to finance Hitler’s economic miracle, but the central banks lost control over the money supply and lost the ability to trigger banking panics and depressions inside the Reich. It was a mortal threat, and it had to be stopped. Pound was right. <br />
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Hitler’s experiment in freedom from banking was broken, and the finance/government partnership was preserved at the cost of millions of lives in World War II.<br />
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This finance/government collaboration explains the American elites' love affair with international socialism. They don't know how to make money any other way. Competition is a sin. Government organized monopolies are profitable when you control the government. If there are no national restrictions on moving profits around, they can hide their loot offshore. The perfect crime.<br />
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Pound recommended the writings of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Martin Van Buren[4] for a practical explanation of how the young Republic wrested itself from London finance. He recommended Classical study (Aristotle's Politics and the works of Demosthenes) for understanding the tricks financiers use. Nationally-controlled money was popular politics until the Civil War; when Pound notes a collective amnesia took the mind of the American public. Tragedy and forgetfulness. This is also the time when Lincoln let the bankers back in with the National Banking Act. <br />
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Ezra didn't revel in victimhood. The “monetary monopoly” was made possible by voters' laziness. In his ABC of Economics, Pound castigates the American public for letting its money fall into the hands of enemies and irresponsible men. Americans circa 1930 were ignorant about money and banking; the situation now is even worse. It is a national tragedy that we have been lazy enough to let Congress sell its responsibilities; and let hostile elites control our credit. <br />
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The way to fix the situation is to dissolve the Federal Reserve; force Congress to manage money supply as described in the Constitution; and vote the venal or incompetent out of office. The revolutionary patriots gave us the tools; we need to step up to the plate and use them.<br />
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Our amnesia and laziness have had a lot of help. Pound pointed out that hostile elites were overrepresented in academia and the media — a situation which has worsened with time. Now we are reaping the harvest: schools devoid of the Classics; universities teaching castrated Economics; and Gloria Vanderbilt's boy on TV. Ezra saw it coming, and he told us how to fix it.<br />
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Carolina Hartley has a degree in Finance and Economics from the University of Chicago. She is also student of aesthetics and social history, though not from the orthodox perspective.<br />
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[1] Pound's repeated recommendation of Christopher Hollis' work The Two Nations is based on the book’s excellent explanation of British economic power over the centuries. Return to text.<br />
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[2] "Ezra Pound Speaking": Radio Speeches of World War II. Edited by Leonard W. Doob. Greenwood Press, 1978. Return to text.<br />
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[3] Pound recommended the correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and the writings of Van Buren for the economic history of the United States. <br />
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Pound's Pamphlets on Money are excellent; the first “An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States” and “A Visiting Card” are particularly useful. (Published by Peter Russell, London. 1950.) Return to text.<br />
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[4] The Works of John Adams: Second President of the United States: with A Life of the Author, notes and illustrations, by his Grandson, Charles Francis Adams. Little, Brown and Co. Boston 1850–56.<br />
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The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition, XX Volumes, Washington, 1903-04.<br />
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The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren, written in 1854 and remaining in manuscript until its publication as Vol. II of the “Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the year 1918,” Government Printing Office, Washington 1920. <br />
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Pound also recommends Jefferson and Hamilton by Claude G. Bower.el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-9847541354499545332012-12-24T03:40:00.001-07:002012-12-24T03:42:12.459-07:00Sts Peter and Fevronia of Murom as Exemplifying Russian Royalism<br />
<b>The Tale of Sts Peter and Fevronia of Murom as Exemplifying Russian Royalism</b><br />
Matthew Raphael Johnson<br />
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The Tale of Sts Peter and Fevronia of Murom was never taken as a canonical part of their vitae. While these two saints were indeed monarchs of the city of Murom at in the midst of the Russian middle ages, this particular story seeks to find the mentality behind their rule rather than the literal historical truth. Its purpose is to exemplify the nature of Old Russian morality and political theory in a manner where common folk can understand it. And for this reason it is worth analysis.<br />
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This story was written, according to some, in the early part of the 16th century, and was meant to be held up as a model for royal rule and its problems. The beginning of the story concerns St Peter's father, Prince Paul, as he justly rules the city of Murom. As it happens, a demon regularly comes in the guise of Paul in order to debase and defile the princess. The demon is called a “serpent” and is solely concerned with destroying this Christian marriage. Since Paul cannot be in two places at once, it does not take long to figure out that this person in the princess’ bed is not the Prince, but a demon, a changeling so common in medieval literature. A changeling in medieval literature can be one that has no integrity, a vapid figure that serves whoever is in power. It can also be a monster, a wizard that has mastered the science of genetics and hence, can change his makeup at will. Even more, a changeling can be an illusionist, one who depends on misdirection and double talk to get his way. All might be summarized in the form of the demon here, one who seeks to defile the princess because she is an Orthodox ruler, the worst affront to Satan, who seeks rulers only after his own heart.<br />
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Prince Peter is called in to kill the changeling, and the blood from the serpent stains the skin of Peter, creating an attack of a severe skin disease that leads to severe scabbing. It will not go away, but does refer to the lifestyle of demonic people: blood was and is considered in the medieval era as the source of life, the basis of one's “genetic makeup” and, in some sense, the very life of one's mentality, the lifestyle of the person. Hence, in this case, the demon or wizard who is capable of becoming the prince has a lifestyle that seeks to debase pious women, turning them to a worship of himself, and hence, his lifestyle, his blood, can harm all that see it, or come in contact with it. As a result, Peter seeks to be cleansed, and he goes to the village of Charity, not far from Murom, that is famed for its doctors.<br />
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The doctors of Charity are all female. They represent the Russian view of women at the time: smart, strong, wise, and the guardians of tradition and piety. The female doctor completely outwits Peter's machinations, and hence gains his respect. The maiden he first meets and the doctor she introduces him to are all quite talented and wise, all of whom are pious and seeking of moral rule.<br />
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However, the first maiden he meets is Fevronia, a woman of low station, as her father is a collector of pitch for construction. Noah used pitch to cement together the pieces of the ark in the Old Testament, and it might be the case that the symbol of pitch is used to show that her father is very pious, and might well be the laughing stock of the area for so being, as Noah was. It may also mean that the author sees that a storm is coming in society, and hence, the symbol of pitch is used to show how pious people must all band together for safety in the face of danger. Either way, Fevronia's low estate is important because it leads to many problems later on. For her part, Fevronia holds that if she assists in the curing of Peter, then she must web him, and thus, become Princess of Murom.<br />
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The cure itself concerns the application of a salve made primarily from leaven, upon the wounds of Peter, all except one scab, which must remain uncovered. The central ingredient of leaven can only be the Eucharist itself, where the Orthodox world holds that the leaven is representative of the Holy Spirit, the leaven of the Orthodox community and the cause of its improvement and growth. Since Peter has been infected by the lifestyle of the demon, fornication and the notion of sex as conquest, he needs the purity of the Eucharist, as well as the humility to take Fevronia as his mental superior and his wife, though she is of low station. Repentance comes before communion in that Peter is forced to concede that the women of this village are smarter and wiser than he, and thus, is humbled by it. The purpose of leaving one scab uncovered is to remain in some level of sin, since St. Paul holds that these sins can serve to humble us, the “thorn in the side” of our moral life that keeps us mindful of our own low station as sinners.<br />
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What is truly significant is that when Fevronia weds Peter and, after the death of Paul, becomes princess of Murom, the boyars become angry, “outraged” that such a low born woman should rule over them. The aristocracy, especially the women of the upper classes, rain down abuse on the new princess for the most trifling of issues, especially her habit of eating all the crumbs off her plate after dinner like a commoner. The behavior of the boyars are central to this story: they are the principle of division in Russian society, they care not for justice, but only for that which justifies their money and oligarchical rule. In disgust, Peter and Fevronia abdicate the throne, to the horror of the nobility.<br />
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This must have been written during the reign of Ivan IV, since he too abdicated the throne and was followed by the boyars who could not rule without him. The coincidence is too striking. In both cases, the nobles cannot rule, since the people hate them and, more importantly, that they will merely fight each other for honors and thus, the city will fall into civil war. This is the real purpose here: the Russian aristocracy is the enemy of the state and of Russian Orthodox unity. A true monarch cares about the Law of God and the common good, while the aristocracy cares only about honors and wealth. But in order to enjoy this, they must defer to the monarchy, placing them in a humiliating position.<br />
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Like the case of Ivan IV, Peter and Fevronia come back to rule, and the author, in some detail, holds out the nature of their rule and as a result, gives us a real glimpse of how literature Russians in the 16th century viewed royal justice. The points the anonymous author makes are these:<br />
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First, that alms giving is one of the first duties of monarchs. They are to give of their own personal fortune to the poor, to the building of churches, schools and hospitals. This is the first mark of a just ruler, the giving of himself and, unlike the aristocracy, taking no account of the money itself, but the good that it will do in society. Second, the monarch will love all equally, without regard to station or place in life. This was one of the things that Fevronia was attacked for by the aristocracy: she took no account of class, but only of the person as God's image. But this becomes important for the Russian view of monarchy, that class should not have any bearing on royal justice, bit only God's law should be done.<br />
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Third, the royal family should hate, but hate only those who exploit the people, that is, the aristocracy, the old boyars who care nothing for law or the common good. Historically, the wealthy of a society overthrew European monarchs in the 19th century solely in order to create capitalism and democracy, where only the wealthy rule, but they do it through “free elections” where one faction of the wealthy can be elected over another. Democracy, as the 19th century view had it, was a means for the wealthy to overthrow the monarchy and hence, divide up the country among themselves, and succeed in calling this “freedom” and “legal equality.” This was the ultimate upshot of the 19th century revolutions, the wealthy, including substantial parts of the old nobility, sought once and for all to overthrow the old monarchy and hence, replace it with oligarchy.<br />
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Fourth, though the monarch should always hate these exploiters and their double-talk ideology, they should never be angry. This is taken as central to royal rule in this Tale, as anger might lead to acts that are not tempered by law or mercy and hence, the monarch must always keep his temper in check. Fifthly, the monarch should use his own money, as well as that of the wealthy, to always make sure that the poor are fed and housed. Poverty is not going away, some will always lose out in the immoral race for wealth. The most that a good state can do is make sure that the poor never go below a certain point, and for this author, this safety net should come from the wealthy themselves, including the royal family. And lastly, the royal family, as exemplified in this piece, should take royal vows at their retirement, so as to do penance for their own sins as well as to serve as an example to others.<br />
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Hence, the story of Sts Peter and Fevronia of Murom can be taken as a mirror for Russian princes. Though the story is simple and easy to follow, it is saturated with moral ideas and concepts that give us a glimpse of the basic social ideas of the time. Marriage and woman were sacred as they represented the transmission of the Orthodox faith and the piety of woman was to be an icon for all to follow. Women were not to be weak or timid, but strong defenders of the faith and keepers of the folk wisdom of the people, a fold wisdom that brought the Russians through the Mongol occupation, mass slavery from the southern tribes and the endless wars with Poland and Sweden to an empire. While many alienated academics scoff at “folk wisdom,” the fact is that it has done more than the artificial and plastic morality and TV-pop culture of today to maintain a strong, hardy population that was capable of dealing with a level of suffering that the American couch potato could never imagine, let alone survive.<br />
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Hence, this Tale should be read and made a part of one's emotional and intellectual baggage. It is itself an icon of Old Russian piety and political ideas, simple and based on common sense. It shows the power of folk wisdom and its ideals, in that it is this wisdom that has brought Russia through its intense sufferings to see a growing population and a strong empire. How “primitive” can it be? Folk wisdom is nothing other than the practices that have brought a people though suffering and form the very backbone of the organic nation—the folk, the people. Without it, you have the modern couch potato, the most oblivious product of western “progress” and “positive science.”el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3440999184561015495.post-4889240505011594882012-12-24T03:28:00.000-07:002012-12-24T03:42:25.665-07:00Is There Salvation Outside of Orthodoxy<br />
<b>Is There Salvation Outside of Orthodoxy?</b><br />
Matthew Raphael Johnson<br />
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Orthodoxy, throughout its 2,000 year history, has claimed, without interruption, that it is the repository of the Apostolic faith, that is, it is the place where the ancient doctrines of Christianity can be found. Therefore, the claim is made that truth has as its fundamental value salvation, that is, salvation cannot derive from falsity, error, schism.<br />
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Modernist Orthodox have, above all things, rejected this fundamental dogma of the faith, that salvation is a function of truth, that is, of true belief. Therefore, they have, to one degree or another, become apostates from Orthodoxy. From its central idea that truth, happiness and salvation are one and the same thing.<br />
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The purpose of this brief paper is to outline, for non-Orthodox who wish to know, the basic ancient writings on the question of truth, Orthodoxy and salvation. First, though, here is a quote from the infamous meeting of the World Council of Churches in Barr, Switzerland, in 1990; it is significant because it lays out the groundwork for the ecumenical agenda:<br />
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<i> "We see the plurality of religious traditions as both the result of the manifold ways in which God has related to peoples and nations as well as a manifestation of the richness and diversity of humankind. We affirm that God has been present in their seeking and finding, that where there is truth and wisdom in their teachings, and love and holiness in their living, this like any wisdom, insight, knowledge, understanding, love and holiness that is found among us is the gift of the Holy Spirit. We also affirm that God is with them as they struggle, along with us, for justice and liberation. . . .</i><br />
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<i> This saving mystery is mediated and expressed in many and various ways as God's plan unfolds toward its fulfillment. It may be available to those outside the fold of Christ (Jn. 10.16) in ways we cannot understand, as they live faithful and truthful lives in their concrete circumstances and in the framework of the religious traditions which guide and inspire them. The Christ event is for us the clearest expression of the salvific will of God in all human history. (I Tim. 2.4). . .</i><br />
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<i> We feel called to allow the practice of interreligious dialogue to transform the way in which we do theology. We need to move toward a dialogical theology in which the praxis of dialogue together with that of human liberation, will constitute a true locus theologicus, i.e. both a source of and basis for theological work. The challenge of religious plurality and the praxis of dialogue are part of the context in which we must search for fresh understandings, new questions, and better expressions of our Christian faith and commitment."</i><br />
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This pseudo-intellectual obfuscation and mystification of the WCC (financed by the Rockefeller family), was signed by nearly all the world’s Orthodox churches. However, the Orthodox church rejects these ideas, as evidenced by the citations below. Most New Calendar Orthodox believe the heresy that salvation is possible outside the canonical boundaries of Orthodoxy, however, this is an error, and one that destroys the specific mission of the church in the world. For recent converts, it is rather difficult for these Americans, whose spirituality was formed by the secularized, neo-Protestants whose teachings change with the seasons, cannot stand the rather “strong milk” of Orthodox teaching on this most important of matters. The purpose of me compiling these sources is to let the converts know that Orthodoxy has always spoken with a clear voice on these issues, and new calendarist bishops do not have the power to change this. The Antiochean, Greek and OCA branches of Orthodoxy hold to the heresy of universal salvation (except, so I hear, for people like me) so as to be accepted within the Protestant ecumenical bodies whose grant money keeps the new calendar seminaries going. The reality is, however, that Orthodox teaching is clear and uncompromising, as these citations show.<br />
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* Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not according to the tradition which he received from us. (II Thessalonians 3:6)<br />
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* Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. (Matthew 10:34-36)<br />
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* A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, "You are mad; you are not like us.” (St. Anthony the Great)<br />
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* Follow the straight path which has been charted by our Lord Jesus Christ, and do not allow yourselves to be encircled by sin...Today's path which is followed by various societies is directed towards sin. The cause of this is the development of civilization - of wrongly conceived civilization - towards which the various leaders are striving by diverse means to direct mankind, trying to create a new way of life, different from that prescribed by the Lord. (Saints Raphael, Nicholas and Irene of Lesvos.)<br />
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* Those things which the holy Fathers laid down as law and all that is of our Church is good holy, both in soul and body. And whatever is done outside our Church is all of the devil. (St. Kosmas Aitolos)<br />
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* For whomever the Church is not mother, God is not father. (St.Cyprian of Carthage)<br />
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* The Church is the salt that salts the whole world, preserving it from putridity. (Venerable Ephrem the Syrian)<br />
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* I, my Christians, read both about priests and about impious people and about atheists and about heretics; I investigated the depths of wisdom. All faiths are false, fake; all are of the devil…Only the faith of the pious and Orthodox Christians is good and holy. (Saint Kosmas Aitolos)<br />
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* Concerning the fact that those belonging to the Church must not be allowed to go visiting the cemeteries or the so called martyria of any heretics, for the purpose of prayer or of cure, but, on the contrary, those who do so, if they be among the faithful, shall be excluded from communion for a time until they repent and confess their having made a mistake, when they may be readmitted to communion. (Canon IX of Laodicia, Also approved by the Ecumenical Synods).<br />
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* Let any Bishop, or Presbyter, or deacon that merely joins in prayer with heretics be suspended, but if he had permitted them to perform any service as Clergymen, let him be deposed. (Canon XLV of the Holy Apostles.)<br />
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* There is one religion only, the Orthodox Christian Religion. And this spirit the orthodox one is the true one. The other spirits, are spirits of delusion and the teachings are mixed up. (Elder Porphyrios +1991)<br />
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* If any man receive not Baptism, he hath not salvation; except only Martyrs, who even without the water receive the kingdom. For when the Saviour, in redeeming the world by His Cross, was pierced in the side, He shed forth blood and water; that men, living in times of peace, might be baptized in water, and, in times of persecution, in their own blood. For martyrdom also the Saviour is won't to call a baptism, saying, Can ye drink the cup which I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? And the Martyrs confess, by being made a spectacle unto the world, and to Angels, and to men. (Catechetical Lectures Of Our Holy Father, Cyril, Archbishop Of Jerusalem - Lecture 3.)<br />
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* All the teachers of the Church, and all the Councils, and all the Divine Scriptures advise us to flee from the heterodox and separate from their communion. (St. Mark of Ephesus)<br />
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* Concerning the necessity of not permitting heretics to come into the house of God, so long as they persist in their heresy. (Canon 6 of the Council of Laodicea)<br />
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* Do not err, my brethren: if anyone follow a schismatic, he will not inherit the Kingdom of God. If any man walk about with strange doctrine, he cannot lie down with the passion. Take care, then, to use one Eucharist, so that whatever you do, you do according to God: for there is one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup in the union of His Blood; one altar, as there is one bishop with the presbytery and my fellow servants, the deacons. (St. Ignatius Of Antioch, Epistle to the Philadelphians, 3:2-4:1)<br />
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* He that saith not ‘Anathema’ to those in heresy, let him be anathema. (Seventh Ecumenical Council)<br />
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* Neither the Papist nor the Protestant church can be considered as the True church of Christ. The first was altered by a number of innovations and the accursed despotism (Primacy) due to which resulted the schism from the Orthodox. The same goes for the Protestants whose innumerable innovations lead to total anarchy and chaos. Only the Orthodox church maintained the teachings of Christ flawlessly without a single innovation. Only in the Orthodox church does unity exist. The unity which the Savior was petitioning from the Father saying, "Holy Father keep them in your Name those that you gave me so they can be one just like we were one." (John 17:11...) (St. Nektarios of Aegina)<br />
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* St. John the Almsgiver said: We shall not escape sharing in that punishment which, in the world to come, awaits heretics, if we defile Orthodoxy and the holy Faith by adulterous communion with heretics. (The Life of St. John the Almsgiver.)<br />
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* That one must not accept the blessings of heretics, which are rather misfortunes than blessings. (Canon 32 of the Council of Laodicea.)<br />
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* The fact that we do not become indignant over small matters is the cause of all our calamities; and because slight errors escape fitting correction, greater ones creep in. As in a body, a neglect of wounds generates fever, infection and death; so in the soul, slight evils overlooked open the door to graver ones . . . But if a proper rebuke had at first been given to those who attempted to depart from the divine sayings and change some small matter, such a pestilence would not have been generated, nor such a storm have seized upon the Church; for he that overturns even that which is minor in the sound Faith, will cause ruin in all. (St. John Chrysostom, Homily One on the Epistle to the Galatians.)<br />
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* Those that are not reborn by the divine grace in the only One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, they do not consist of (comprise) any church, neither visible nor invisible. (St. Nektarios of Aegina)<br />
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* The sixteenth century gave birth to four great beasts: the heresy of Luther, the heresy of Calvin, the heresy of the Jesuits, and the heresy of the new calendar. The heresies of Luther and Calvin were refuted by [such and such] . . . As for the heresy of the new calendar, this was condemned by a decision of the great Ecumenical Council that met in Constantinople in 1593. (Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, Confession of the Orthodox Faith, p. 4)<br />
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* But what a thing it is, to assert and contend that they who are not born in the Church can be the sons of God! For the blessed apostle sets forth and proves that baptism is that wherein the old man dies and the new man is born, saying, 'He saved us by the washing of regeneration.' But if regeneration is in the washing, that is, in baptism, how can heresy, which is not the spouse of Christ, generate sons to God by Christ?" (St Cyprian of Carthage, "The Epistles of Cyprian," Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5, 388)<br />
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* Caecilius of Bilta said: I know only one baptism in the Church, and none out of the Church. This one will be here, where there is the true hope and the certain faith. For thus it is written: 'One faith, one hope, one baptism;' not among heretics, where there is no hope, and the faith is false, where all things are carried on by lying. (The Seventh Council of Carthage Under Cyprian, (200-258 AD), September, 258 AD, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5, pg. 565)<br />
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* Marcellus of Zama said: Since sins are not remitted saved in the baptism of the Church, he who does not baptize a heretic holds communion with a sinner. (The Seventh Council of Carthage Under Cyprian, (200-258 AD), Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5, 570)<br />
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* Orthodoxy is such happiness, such riches! It alone teaches and provides all the paths to salvation. No Catholicism, no Protestantism, no other form of faith or denomination, gives that which the grace of the Holy Spirit gives through Holy Orthodoxy. (Vol 3, 1. Blessed Elder Sampson (+1979))<br />
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Now, one might indignantly ask, what of those who have never heard of Christ, or of Orthodoxy specifically? Though as this is becoming more and more an irrelevant question, it is a legitimate one, and a few ideas might be required here:<br />
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First, there is an old Russian custom that St. John the Baptist approaches very human soul at the hour of death and preaches to them about Christ. To reject him is to reject missionary labors on your behalf.<br />
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Second, there is also the question of the acceptance or rejection of the religious system one is raised under. The honest seeker, one who rejects the paganism, for example, one has been brought up with is truly a struggle, and may well earn a place in heaven after being suitably preached to at the point of death. If however, one finds his religion satisfactory, one has a problem.<br />
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Thirdly, there is the continuous prayers for the dead performed by the Orthodox church on a daily basis. The time between the particular and the final or general judgement is a time where the church, which is the mind of Christ and His manifestation, intercedes for those who have departed in the faith, and for all departed souls. For example, an elderly Japanese woman, a neighbor fo mine, passed away. While she was in a coma, I prayed in her stead that I had accepted Orthodoxy in its fullness, and begged the saints to accept this prayer as if it were from her. I guess I’ll find out later if it worked or not, and I urge Orthodox people do perform this practice for all heretics and pagans who are dying.<br />
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Fourthly, those who are mentally retarded or otherwise incapacitated are incapable of committing sin and therefore salvation is automatic for them. The same goes for aborted babies, etc. The heretical Church of Rome struggled with this issue because they believe that the sin of Adam is hereditary, while Christianity has always understood this sin to manifest in the endless propensity for human beings to do the wrong thing. Therefore, the “unbaptized baby” question is irrelevant for the True Faith.<br />
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Fifthly, there is a question about the nature of Hades, or what the papists might call “Limbo.” Archbishop +IOANN of the Synod of Milan, a theologian of extraordinary abilities and the spiritual son of the Valaam/Pskov elder and Schema-bishop +THEODORE (Irtel), is of the opinion that hades was not destroyed at the Resurrection, but remains, in some form, to provide a place of natural happiness (though not the presence of God, and therefore this happiness is not unmixed with sorrow) for those who have departed outside the faith for faults not of their own. This is a highly controversial stance, and I hold a position of neutrality on it. Some church fathers have held that the “Bosom of Abraham” is just this place (whether one wants to call it Hades or not), a place that papists forgot about, and then reinvented it as “Limbo” centuries later.<br />
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However one cuts it, the principle remains, only Orthodox people exist in heaven, and no other. Whether or not such people have been evangelized at the hour of death is of no concern to Orthodox people currently alive, but is a position of ancient lineage in the Christian confession.<br />
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“If Salvation is difficult while Orthodox, imagine how difficult it is when one is not Orthodox.” –Blessed Fr. Seraphim Rose.<br />
<br />el grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02263021520205652693noreply@blogger.com0