In reply to a thoughtful comment by TG, Resartus remarked:
The ironic thing about the whole issue…
The people pushing it, won’t be around to see it finish…The people fighting it, want better for their children and beyond…
The originators, can hardly be seen as anything but hating the same….
That invokes the question of malice or incompetence—the latter being, in this case, temporal myopia.
I have a model that categorizes people by their magnitude of foresight:
• \(Order\ of\ 10^{\leq 0}\ years:\) Young child. Next birthday is a major milestone, if one even sees so far. An infant grows from seeing forward only to the next moment, then to the next day, then to the next week, then to the next month—then, to being all grown up next birthday… Developmental maturation is a process of lengthening foresight—just as the domestication of man is largely a process of keeping people generally in a state of arrested development, and of modern democratic ideas making men effeminate through a perverse cultural form of the neoteny that makes women so adorably cute.
• \(Order\ of\ 10^{1}\ years:\) Mediocre, but at least minimally responsible adult. Can keep ordinary commitments. May even succeed in raising a family. Maybe.
• \(Order\ of\ 10^{2}\ years:\) Competent statesman. I said statesman, to distinguish from “politician” in a modern sense. If you cannot or will not set a priority on the likely impact of your policies on people’s great-grandkids—at the very least; preferably, their grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren—then you should be absolutely debarred from any significant office of government. It is the baseline for serious consideration of posterity. N.b. that democracy excludes competence, and enforces the temporal myopia of election cycles, paying favors to campaign donors, etc.
• \(Order\ of\ 10^{\geq 3}\ years:\) Philosopher of historic significance.
Note that these are orders of magnitude, as a rough but useful scale for a taxonomy.
Note also that this scale refers only to serious, realistic thinking about the future. Any child can talk about times a hundred or a thousand or a million billion years from now, without comprehension. Liberals are wont to chatter about “progress” and “the future”, even as they reject such good and necessary forward-looking measures as eugenics. Christians sometimes speak of posterity—even as they preach a dogma that unavoidably destroys realistic long-term thinking, by turning people’s eyes away from this Earth to an illusory Heaven. When they gabble about “eternity”, of course, they know not whereof they speak.
Now, perpend an unalterable fact of life in this world that brings screams of “elitism” from populists and other democrats: Societies are, always have been, and always will be ruled by a ruling class. This fact is so obvious that I am ashamed to say it outright. In the modern age, to say it is as childlike as stating the nature of the emperor’s democratic clothes.
There is much available evidence that the ruling class has lost itself—lost control: As a plutocratic class, they are trapped by the rules, the illusions, and the unavoidable myopia of plutocracy.
On the other hand, there is evidence of a thoughtful long-term strategy for causing exactly this state of affairs. But even this is shortsighted, insofar as one way or another, the death of the victim must cause the death of the vampire.
Overall, a rational strategy for your survival is to get power into the hands of people who (1) think seriously on the order of centuries, at least—and, (2) are not actively malicious, and are preferably even benevolent, towards whatever posterity a “genetic roll of the dice” has made you care about—perhaps even your own. ®
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I once had the idea that everyone wanting to run for a political position should need to maintain a Metaculus account for five years previously, and need to meet a certain threshold of predictive ability in order to qualify. As well as have their stats displayed with their name on the ballot.
I once had the idea that everyone wanting to run for a political position should be shot.
Hello, Raches. Have you ever had an original thought?
Then you must begin a reading program immediately so that you may understand the crises of our age. Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda. Now that I think of it, you had better skip the Romantics and the Victorians, too. For the contemporary period, you should study some selected comic books. I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he’s found himself. His morality is rather rigid, also. I rather respect Batman.
Almost agreed, subject to the words in bold: Democracy is bad. Authority is not gained by asking the opinion of the masses. Unless one is like Hitler. Hitler made democracy great! ®
A better question: Have I ever had an unoriginal thought? Keep reading for a 5,000-word essay on my influences—followed by a 10,000-word essay on how I am the Second Coming of Nietzsche, or maybe Dr. Goebbels reborn. Surely, that will please the crowd. ®
Shooting might be too extreme, but those wishing to run for office might be reasonably required to literally run a gauntlet of their constituents.
Am I to assume that you approve of authority being gained by force or fraud?
Your words in bold, I believe, exclude exclusively those that already have authority, which doesn’t mention how they obtained it. As one who recognizes no authority over me, but does recognize the use of force as an instrument of coercion, I would not exclude those that claim authority in anything that intends to enforce that authority by force or threat of force.
I might concede a master bee keeper’s ability superior to mine, since I have no such ability at all, but I wouldn’t grant that person authority to implement anything that contains any form of sanction for those not inclined to follow his directives. Similarly, I grant no authority to anyone in any official position of authority that the peons might readily recognize as legitimate, regardless of their official title. In particular, the political class is just a pile of sociopaths that haven’t the slightest right to rule over anyone.
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
H. L. Mencken
Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy-a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose.
H. L. Mencken
The state-or, to make the matter more concrete, the government-consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. Mencken
Shooting might be too extreme
I completely disagree. Shooting is the least that should be employed. Better would be drawn and quartered in the public square to dissuade any and all from attempting to gain a position of “authority” from whence they can call upon their associates to quietly form a deep state.
That is a remarkable, and a rather commonplace Christian propaganda trick: Binning the Renaissance with the so-called “Enlightenment”.
In the near future, I intend a post that touches on mediaeval Christianity in a way you may dislike. In some important characteristics, when the masses were de facto forbidden from reading the Bible by the expedient of keeping it in the dog Latin of the Vulgate, Christianity was much less Christian than the various Jewish and Roman forms of primitive Christianity, and modern Christianity. The Protestants were correct to accuse the Catholics of “paganism”—and that’s a good thing! Mediaeval “Christianity” was a schizophrenic mess, with many natively European cultural residues which made it less harmful, offensive, and disgusting. These residues were removed by the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and ultimately, by modern Christianity—that last of which has substantially returned in spirit and form to the Judaeo-Christianity of the Second Century. “Fundamentalist” Christians are no different than liberal “social gospel” Christians in this regard: They are properly called Judaeo-Christians, in the sense of fanatical second-century Jesus-cults.
Those who believe that mediaeval Christianity was a modern “fundamentalist’s” dream are deluding themselves.
Anyway, that is just a teaser. I will give it a topic later, for further discussion. That is a pointed statement.
That Jewish kid’s very most favorite was Batman. Perhaps you may have found a new friend. Do you have an IQ of 148? He found it very important, even in irrelevant and incongruous contexts, to tell everyone that his IQ was 148. I found that personally unimpressive, compared to mine—which I never felt much need to state explicitly—although if mine were really impressive like Ron Unz’s 214 as measured in the second grade (!), I may leak it artfully to reporters while chatting about how I eat at Burger King as I take over the world. ®
Moderator’s hat on: Your characteristic lists of out-of-context quotes, presented without much connection to your argument as if quoting chapter and verse, and oft rendered all in bold, will get More-tagged here—at best. For I am an authoritarian!
Aside, it’s sad that you do not realize that Mencken was politically closer to me than he was to you. Or at least, less far from me than from you. Are you in any way familiar with his work, beyond Internet quote-lists passed about in libertarian/anarcho-capitalist circles? ®
I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.
Never attack a politician, killing them, they learn nothing….
The minute they put their name in the ring, draft their children,
take their spouses, parents etc as political hostages…….
States have to reclaim control of Feds, instead of the Feds running states….
Never let a Carpetbagger run in your state….
Candidates which ever paid taxes in a different state, will always be more suseptible to
support that state from the Federal Level…..
Some like to promote the idea of a draft for pols, but I’m not sure that would help. Unless, they were screened somehow ahead of time.
I see you scrupulously avoid answering my question. You concentrate instead on your straw man that my selection of quotes is not germane to the topic. I, of course, disagree.
Why not answer my question and stay on topic?
Then you assert, without any backup, that your position, whatever that is, is closer to Mencken than my position is.
I first encountered you when you replied to one of my comments under another author’s article, claiming I’m a faux anarchist via an ad hominem; another assertion and also rude. I didn’t know then that you were going to be a regular author on this site. I replied for you to back up your comment with some proof and unsurprisingly, you failed to do so.
I’m getting the impression you can’t take any criticism and simply want an echo chamber for your shallow views. You do have a command of the English language expressed in your pompous prose, but aside from that I don’t see any significant merit in your taking up space on this site since you won’t stay on topic and prefer to malign your inquisitors.
Seriously, ask yourself what qualification any US politician has for being in his/her position besides knowing whose ass to kiss in the political party they joined to get the nod to run for any given office.
There are a huge portion of lawyers in gov’t. They then pontificate on topics they have no knowledge of, like matters pertaining to medicine as the pandemic proves. These people have no actual qualifications to hold office. There are no qualifications to hold office besides lying to the public to get elected.
I’m an anarchist (rules but no rulers) because no one should be in a position to bully other people when they themselves are provable frauds. That the existing political class calls upon other politicians with degrees in medicine or other disciplines does not give them any actual credibility past their own area of experience and education. Once you have someone like a Fauci, he’s no longer acting as a doctor, but as a political hack and therefore can’t be trusted to give his opinion on medical matters.
At least the Chinese bring in engineers and scientists to form their political class. These people have a skill set based upon what’s real and tangible. The US brings in lawyers, economists, actors, bar tenders, phys ed teachers and all other manner of bullshit artists that can’t prove a damned thing.
Yes, the Chinese efforts at meritocracy will be a big contributor to the downfall of the U. S.
“Ratches” is Ron Unz writing under a pseudonym, probably with the assistance of his stable of regular trolls (i.e. Twinkie, Rosie, Tritelia Laxa) who all became re-deployable once he wound down the “Audacious Epigone” project, and probably also with some textual sparkle added by one of his homegrown AIs (he’s the Ted Kaczynski of sock-puppetry). Ron is taking “revenge” against whatever social forces, real or imagined, have exasperated and frustrated him over the years. While taking measures to camouflage his style, he’s dropped hints of his identity all over these pages; and of course, nothing can fully obscure that peculiar brand of autistic condescension that we’ve all come to know and roll our eyes at.
It may come as a surprise to “Ratches,” but his sort of boil-in-bag Nietzscheism is not something his intelligent readers are encountering for the first time. Serious Christians are aware of all this and have digested it long ago. The obvious negative value that this faux contributor is adding to this website is evidence that The Unz Review is in the process of jumping the shark. Originally meant to be a meme harvester of the smart set (a sort of Facebook for those who would never post on Facebook), Ron just couldn’t resist turning his little spook outfit into a vanity press that will meet with the same self-referential end all his other projects have. Eventually he’ll be sitting here by himself, with all of his bots talking to each other, fertilizing his corn with his own excrement and writing bombastic manifestos that nobody will read.
“I once had the idea that everyone wanting to run for a political position should be shot.”
You’re too nice…….
I wanted to get your theory on record here. As you know, I have a long-standing policy of neither admitting nor denying these types of accusations.
Let’s see how that works:
• I neither admit nor deny that I am Ron Unz.
• I neither admit nor deny that I am Satoshi Nakamoto, as I have been elsewhere accused of being.
• I neither admit nor deny that I am literally Adolf Hitler. Yes, someone actually alleged somewhere that I am not “figuratively-literally”, but literally literally Adolf Hitler.
Maybe I am literally Satan, too! I do call myself an Antichrist, in the manner of Nietzsche; but I mean that only philosophically and poetically: Belief in the Antichrist would require belief in the Christ, and I disbelieve both.
Well, Irrelevant Nichtsein, the “Raches = Ron Unz” theory is highly
flattering“interesting” to me. Please feel free to offer elaborate proofs in the appropriate topic. I will probably reign in too much off-topic diversion here, for I an immoderate extremist about moderation. Also, please be advised that “intelligent design” nonsense is mostly banned on my blog, on grounds of waste of time; it would be like allowing Flat Earther stuff. If you want to peddle your pet theories here, you had better make them sufficiently amusing that I let them through as a joke; otherwise, you would be relying on my desire to show how eminently discreditable Christianity is—admittedly, that may give you some leeway. Finally, please be advised that when I establish the Rachesian Imperium as Dictatorship of the World, I will use Jerome’s made-up, Holohoax-style tales of Christian martyrs as inspiration for the handling of annoying evangelicals. ®[This comment is entirely off-topic. Feel free take up the conspiracy theory about me in the Hate Speech thread. Further discussion on this subthread here will be censored, unless it makes me literally laugh aloud. — Raches ®]
The writing style Raches and Ron display are so different I doubt they can come from the same person. It’s not impossible to disguise ones style but would take so much effort that I doubt anyone would bother, especially if one were forced to keep it up for any length of time.
You mentioned the tells you’ve discovered that provides your belief that Ron and Raches are one and the same. As a curiosity, I’d appreciate some insight into your diagnosis as to specifics.
All in all, I haven’t noticed Ron being anything but very reasonable in his replies and I certainly haven’t rolled my eyes when reading his counter arguments. He usually provides backup detail to why he holds a given position and one may agree or disagree but he’s certainly forthcoming unlike Raches.
Yes, I am.
I totally agree with you.
You are under the mistaken impression of your arguments being more interesting than they are. You made the same error in another thread.
Why should I waste time and energy writing a thoughtful reply to a bunch of illogical, ill-informed low-grade ancap drivel—nothing that I haven’t seen before, and found boring long ago, especially compared to the interesting anarchists whom I have known—instead of making new blog posts, writing long replies to others, and at some point answering Yevardian’s more substantial arguments (which, unlike you, are thoughtful, even if wrong)? Indeed, why should I do so at all?
Those are rhetorical questions. Not intended to be answered: The answers are within the questions.
When I said “moderator’s hat on” in the comment to which you replied, that was a hint. I set the topic here. I replied to you for the purpose of explaining what the rules will be here, so that you can obey them—or at least understand why your quote-spam of Mencken, a thinker who deserves better, will get more-tagged at best.
N.b. that according to my sound discretion, I left your argument, stated in your own words, above the fold—with the disconnected quotes below. Your quote-spam is an incongruously, unintentionally ironic appeal to authority; but that is beside the point. You are not even promoting Mencken’s ideas, as I do when I quote others; I doubt that you have even read him, beyond the Internet quote-lists that are popular in libertarian/ancap circles (which I know about, because I really have seen all this before); you just picked a bunch of stuff you heard that seems to agree with you. This type of commonplace quotes-in-lieu-of-an-argument is stupid, and it drags down the quality of discussion. Therefore, I will suppress it.
Don’t like my rules? That is not my problem.
Welcome to Authoritarianism. ®
I see you’re mad with the power given to you and are going to use it as a club against those that can make more sense with the written word than you can.
I’ll leave your patch of TUR to you and those that can stomach your drivel. You are certainly not worth my time.
That must be news to the numerous other commentators who have remarked on my blog—some of them with scathing criticism, which I did not use my moderation powers to molest in any way.
But you are more or less right about one thing: I lust for power. Muahahahaha!
Quoting Nietzsche, as translated by H. L. Mencken:
Muahahahaha!
RoatanBill:
I will give to that the same stock answer that I traditionally give to those who ignore-list me:
You shall now obey Raches’ Rule of Reading: If you want to ignore what I write, then you are unworthy of it—and I decree that you are forbidden from reading it.
Bye. ®
—A quote-list parodying the style of RoatanBill—but unlike his, this is smart and relevant:
“Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.” — Nietzsche
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” — H. L. Mencken
“He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart.” — Nietzsche
“Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive—so wisdom wisheth us; she is a woman, and ever loveth only a warrior.” — Nietzsche
“The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived…. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth.” — H. L. Mencken (an admirer of Nietzsche, who translated some of Nietzsche’s works, and who wrote much about Nietzsche; after some reflection, Mencken observes, “They are laughing at Nietzsche yet…”)
Are you associated with Próspera, by any chance? Asking because of your moniker.
Though I haven’t been around UR much in the last year, I’ve spent an enjoyable hour getting to to know you, Raches. I have even laughed out loud a few times. Then I came across Intelligent Dasein’s theory about you.
I puzzled over it while I continued reading your comments and posts, when I came across something you said, a certain bolded pair of words that can only be meant as an easter egg if you are Ron, or a bit of misdirection if you are not.
Well done either way, you’ve made me quite curious and alert.
Perhaps you could give some of us low IQ voters an idea of how we can pick our leaders given the options that we are given on election ballots ?
Also, you talk down our present leaders. I don’t want to defend them, but can you point to a time when things were better run ?
It is easy to talk about how politicians are scum, but someone has to make decisions. Most people want to live there own lives are neither well informed, nor have the time to become so. You cannot blame them for this, most people want to get on with their lives. A lack of power does not make people virtuous. Could anyone on this thread give concrete proposals about how to find those who could run things better rather than they are now ?
As to the threat of drawing and quartering potential leaders, or making those who want to be leaders run a gauntlet. These processes may satisfy your sadistic inclinations, but are you sure that those who would risk this would be better leaders ? They might just endure this in order to do the same to others. Not all fanatics are saints. I would take my chances with the mildly corrupt.
I’m aware of Próspera on the island and get email from them on occasion, but have no connection to them.
I think their concept is inappropriate for the island, especially now with the Covid nonsense having seriously hampered tourism. What they’re asking for their real estate is absurd. I’ve not bothered visiting their site but concluded that their architect was heavily influenced by the Jetsons cartoon TV series from their advertisements.
It’s possible that the brains behind the initiative are sincere, or were sincere initially, but I suspect its now more PR than anything else. Paul Romer has distanced himself from the project and that speaks loudly.
[Readers are advised that Triteleia Laxa, the author of this off-topic, completely unhinged hate-rant, has willingly induced in herself “what is essentially a state of full drug-induced psychosis”, according to her own words. Caveat lector. —Raches. ®]
Wisdom knows neither you nor Ron, who are not the same person, even if both of you being set against your own femininity has resulted in you both being reduced to empty grammatical structures and rhetorical techniques and vacuous “research.”
You’re both arrested at the nerdy 12 year old boy stage of pompous windbaggery, unable to step back and see your reflection, because you’re too scared and can’t even admit it. See your ridiculously transparent excuse for never having ridden a motorbike 😂
Your “appreciation” of women is late life incel and it seems neither of you have ever had to truly accustomise yourself to one since childhood. You only write yet more dead theory on this subject.
The point is that it is never too late to unrepress your hysteria, to break down your internal barriers and see who you really are, and to learn to sit still without ruminating in self-justifying or self-aggrandising ways and just exist.
Given how solid the structures of your persona are welded, you’re hardly likely to lose control as some mother who used you as an emotional punching bag/crutch. Instead, you would fill that barren structure with a sense of life and may even achieve some σοφία.
This is a harsh comment, but I’m just writing what your posts really say back at you. Maybe there is some real “meaning” somewhere hidden in your writing, but I only see you tripping over your own personal contradictions and denials and confusing those for the world.
In the interests of being constructive, congratulations on no longer feeling you need to put one homoerotic photo of “Professor” Oliver in each piece. You don’t need a “Daddy” at your age. Thank you also for no longer claiming “Nemesis”, who is someone you don’t understand. Immature vindictiveness describes your writing much better.
On the other hand, your conclusion that people who think “on the order of centuries” should be in charge, perfectly sums up your current challenges as a thinker. Only someone as I’ve described above could ever delude themselves that they actually do that. In reality, such an attitude is just a weak cope for banning a bunch of types of experimentation that make you feel insignificant, as the only way in which centuries later is realistically imaginable is if experimentation of all sorts is banned. The heart root of your Unz-tinged philosophy, therefore, is desperately hiding from your own feeling of insignificance.
Finally, please understand that by reading this comment you got the “Nemesis” that is your deepest desire. So please no whinging, you keep begging for such a thing. Try to also prove you have some courage by letting this through moderation unedited. Fortune is only good or bad in what you make of it.
Funny, I thought that Raches might be you.
You are way off-topic. Continued off-topic nonsense will be censored here, at my whim. Take it up in Hate Speech, where I grant you permission to say pretty much most anything you want about me. But please be advised that insults to the Goebbels family, and especially to the honor of Frau Magda Goebbels, are categorically banned on my blog—with exceptions only to be made at my discretion.
I left above the fold your primary insults to myself and Mr. Unz, which I suspect will probably amuse him. Readers will just need to click “MORE” if they want to see:
• Your childishly transparent attempt to manipulate me into being shy of exercising my authority. Your blunt little tool is inoperable here.
• Your completely baseless, stereotypically Jewish-style smear of a “homoerotic photo of ‘Professor’ Oliver”, replete with scare-quotes.
Professor Oliver was, in fact, a professor—and he became a professor before the decay of the academy. Besides his tenured full professorship at the University of Illinois, Professor Oliver held a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946–47; and he researched Italian manuscripts in Italy on a Fulbright Research Scholarship in 1953–54. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 1977. He received his degree of Philosophiae Doctor under Professor W. A. Oldfather, and he strove proudly to uphold Oldfather’s standards in the Classics Department. Professor Oliver specialized in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, as well as modern Italian and other Romance languages. He was a scholarly member of the American Philological Association and, before he resigned his lifetime membership in disgust, the Modern Languages Association.
Scholia’s list of his publications is currently incomplete. He was proud explicitly to repudiate the “publish or perish” attitude of lesser professors, who fill journals with pseudointellectual drivel just to hear themselves talk, and get themselves cited as they cite others; but he did publish significantly more than thereby reflected. Anyway, that link should give a taste of Professor Oliver’s academic work to those with academic logins—or who know how to find the website of Alexandra Elbakyan.
I am probably one of the few (only?) political admirers of Professor Oliver to have read as much of his academic work as I can find. His academic legacy deserves to be conserved together with his political legacy; and the two are inseparable, insofar as his classical worldview informed his political opinions both during his Conservative period, when he was a present-day Cicero, and his later Authoritarian period, when he flipped to hail Caesar. (That will be the subject of further discussion in these pages.)
Now, T.-L., I am reasonably curious about why you are so rankled by my calling a real professor by the title of Professor.
I do note that above and beyond its academic authority, I have invested that title with a spiritual quality—and I have done so in a way that is deliberately designed to upset Jews, which will only be noticed by Jews, because Gentiles will not even understand it:
I have a deep feeling for the Jewish “inner experience”; and I use it now as a weapon. I could (and outside The Unz Review, do) go far beyond this, with Jewish cultural insults, total desecration of Judaism, and extreme Chillul Hashem that would risk culturally upsetting even the non-superstitious Mr. Unz. I do not want to disrespect he whom I call Mr. Unz-Menelaus; thus, I stick here to Jewish things that I guess will probably amuse him, whilst I taunt his adversaries with bits of Jewishness that will undoubtedly hurt their feelings. How dare such a wicked goy as I crown evil Hamans with Jewish glories!
• Your pretenses about Nemesis, in whose holy name I authoritatively curse you. ®
For your patent dislike of me, you now owe me a new keyboard. Coffee, y’know. Thanks a lot. ®
I’m generally with the spirit of this article.
But I’m thinking maybe a multiple of decades or generations is a more realistic scale of magnitude of foresight. Otherwise, how could the results ever be gauged?
Being able to see even 5 years ahead with any accuracy makes someone highly functional; whereas 30 years and beyond, well, that’s a philosopher; and 100 years out is a prophet who will be known only posthumously.
I disagree on “always will”. The past and present is what ties us unequivocally to our primate ancestry. Upon transcendence of this primate hierarchy, we can speak again with a straight face of authentic human evolution. That is to say, we must all strive to become the eye in the pyramid. And until we do, the same sad dysfunctional patterns will repeat over and over.
Homogenize. Decentralize. Multilateralize. And you won’t have to look.
Hahaha…THAT, would be a good method of judging the potentially sneaky and insincere among us.
Thanks for confirming everything I said. I laughed at your continued use of “Professor” for Oliver, not because he was not a legitimate “Professor” but because you’re outing him as a nobody and your infatuation is hilarious. No one says “Professor” Hegel and, with lesser individuals, they only add that title once.
As for the rest of your post, your inability to step back and see your own contradictions is extremely funny. I suspect you have dug yourself into a lot of holes in your life.
Do you know why people like you have to lose themselves in the pedantic details? In intellectual micro-ruminations?
Do you know why you fantasise about Nemesis? Or having your inflated ego pricked?
On a personal level, I find it interesting that you took my anecdote about remaining calm and much the same, perhaps only calmer, when on the strongest hallucinogen there seems to be, at a big dose, as evidence of mental instability. The point is that while other people are taken to what they perceive as an eternity in hell, I enjoyed the trees, the water and, after a while, set about trying to ease the broken relationship of the couple who were “watching” me. It was just how I felt like being.
You tend to have such people sitting by you as many partakers lose their minds and are a danger to themselves and others when they smoke so much for the first time. In other words, I found the time and space to be there for them when they were sobre and I was in my element, which is funny for me.
Overall, I am sorry that this element is so alien and threatening to you, but it is the result of your own choices. Nemesis is just a mirror. It is the person’s reflection that inflicts the pain. Self-recognition is the healer. Try it.
Perhaps this is good for you? I have literally zero idea what any of this means. While I probably believe in spirits and so on, I prefer pagan beliefs to Christian ones. My favourites are Odin or Kali or Nemesis and many others of my feeling. These angels or spirits or powers seem a much more knowable, or at least describable, set of beings than some almighty God like in Abrahamic religions. I have no trouble seeing myself in a place of friction-less light, which might be compared to God, but that may literally be no more than a meditative technique which rests the brain and provides an endless stream of hope and faith. Not that it ultimately matters either way. It makes for a boring conversation, while Odin sacrificing himself on the tree of life to gain spiritual insights is a much better metaphor for how you should deal with your overweening ego. You dream of the end of the world, of suicide, of the Gottdammerung, of Nemesis and don’t realise that they are all the same. Your ego is so inflated that it has devoured what life force you have and now you need to puncture the parasite and stop pretending your worldview of struggle is about anything more than your view of yourself.
But you’re incapable in this life. Too stupid and small in spirit. Heroes are made of a hundred times more impressive stuff. This call comes to you far too early. Maybe in a few lives’ time?
You don’t need to publish this comment. You are the only necessary audience and parts of it I would feel a small discomfort in sharing.
Intelligent Dasein’s pet theories:
https://www.unz.com/anepigone/alt-wrong-paradigms/
[Canned copied-pasted response, latest version: This comment is off-topic. Off-topic personal attacks, fallacious ad hominem arguments, and genuine hate speech against me have their own topic—just for you, sweetie. Further off-topic comments may be censored, to protect discussions from being derailed by trolling and cluttered by spammish no-value insults. I am proud to impose censorship, because I am figuratively-literally more mercilessly authoritarian than Hitler. —Raches. ®]
Nurse Ratched started her “career” writing long-winded comments praising Ron Unz sky-high, almost stopping short of fellatio really, then Ron praised her “abilities to use his deep-linking software”, then she’s invited to be a “blogger”… If I were a naive romantic, I would suspect a love story, (two autistic long-winded, humourless writers who admire each other’s style) but the theory that Nurse Ratched is either a sock-puppet or a bot created by Unz himself really makes more sense.
Anyway, I have no idea what she writes about as I don’t read the blog, and she’s in my “Ignored Commenters” list (now that one was a great idea by Mr. Unz, I agree!), but you’re correct that by adding an anonymous and completely pointless writer who seems to have been created by software (or in any case is indistinguishable from software), UR is indeed “jumping the shark”.
What is this? I did not make this weird comment with a number.
Who is this?!? Mr. Unz??? Nurse Ratched?
Who is impersonating me?
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?
Nobody is impersonating you. You are jumping to conclusions, per your usual custom. ®
This just shows that you’re a very unperceptive reader.
ID is one of the easier commenters to spot.
Mr. Unz is a bit harder; he’s a master of sock-puppetry.
I’m thinking more and more that ID’s theory is right.
Mr. Unz has a lot of sock-puppets or AI bots UR might even be an intelligence operation.
This is my last comment at this stupid and evil blog.
Please whoever it is, stop impersonating me.
If any comment with my nickname from now on appears on this blog, you can make sure it is not me, as I will never comment here anymore – this is the last one.
Thank you. Goodbye.
Alternatively, Roaches and the IDiot are both sock puppets of Ignatius Jacques Reilly.
And just what is the IDiot’s theory, anyway?
I’ll tell you what: Why don’t you take your conspiracy theories about my identity to the only thread where that is even remotely on-topic. If you can make the subject sufficiently popular there, then I will open a new thread for it. Deal?
At least, this is new. Per my longstanding policy, I neither admit nor deny being “Ignatius Jacques Reilly”. (Link, please? I mean, in an appropriate thread.)
I am asking politely, just because I find all of this quite amusing. I could simply censor the off-topic clutter on a thread that is actually important to me; but the theorizing is entertainment to me, not to mention how delightfully y’all are inadvertently flattering me, me, me. ®
You’ve either never read A conspiracy of Dunces and/or don’t recognize what a joke is.
So, IHBT—and you trolled yourself. If you want to ridicule me, it would be less foolish of you to avoid getting the title of the novel ridiculously wrong! You mean A Confederacy of Dunces, methinks; it has been recommended to me in the appropriate thread (in a non-hostile way). I will again direct further discussion of this subject matter to that thread. Aprops the topic here, the short-term gain of this little amusement is cluttering Serious Discussion of long-term importance, which I wish to keep at a German level of Seriousness.
I may not be as serious or unlazy as a German; but I have something like a bizarre cross between a German sense of humor, in its aspect of deadpan dry-ice sarcasm, and a Russian sense of humor, which defies description. Thus, I seriously appreciate BlackFlag’s new theory about my identity. His comment has many levels of subtle humor and metahumor—if I am not reading too much into it—which I probably am—which makes it even funnier. It is almost in the running for Comment of the Year.
No, I have not read A Confederacy of Dunces. I despise modern fiction almost categorically, so I don’t waste time with it. —This comment hereby proceeded to explain at some length a bit about the “almost”: What modern novels do I like? It is not a literary critique—just a casual off-the-cuff shortlist with brief notes—from which Hamsun is my favorite (which will only surprise people who don’t understand me), to Turner (which I do mostly enjoy, including many of the parts that shock people—though my take on it differs from what C.T.’s seems to be), plus one or two more. Then, I realized that I have a blog; and I added the remainder hereof to my ever-growing file of things to expand into blog posts.
Offtopic replies that insufficiently amuse me will not be published. ®
How do you define “modern” fiction though? The logical break-point for me is post-1945, although in the Soviet world the date would have to either be moved earlier or (in my opinion) much later.
Most of the decent latter 20th century writers came from either from the Communist world or (to a much lesser degree) Latinamerica, if I think quickly from the top of my head ‘modern’ writers I’ve enjoyed (to varying degrees), there’s, Nabokov, Bunin [pushing it], László Krasznahorkai, Sergei Dovlatov, Houellebecq [incidentally, ‘Soummission’ is undeniably his weakest work] Amos Oz, Kingsley Amis (sometimes), Don Delillo (he is albeit very hit or miss), Neruda.
As an aside, “A Confederacy of Dunces” is the 2nd-worst book I’ve ever (tried) to read, that had any literary pretensions (i.e., not counting bestselling thrillers, women’s travel novels, historical fiction, pornography and the like). The worst fiction I’ve ever read? Anything ever written by Thomas Pynchon, or D.H. Lawrence.
And yes, I absolutely adore the idea that Raches is secretly Camille Paglia, the more I think about it, the better it gets. Funniest thing I read here since that crude troll usurping Paul Craig Roberts’ comment-handle.