Gee, can't you leave me alone :-)
Gee, I just saw that Paul Belien quoted me too.
Yesterday I had an epiphany. The bad signs from the people I had previously put hope in had piled up, and yesterday came the last blow that made the picture complete. I opened a bottle of wine and called my best friend. I described the full picture to her, and the futility of it all, and how I had come to a closure. Then I finished the bottle of wine while writing my "I'm an island" post. I've been thinking for a while about how to formulate a hiatus or goodbye post, not really knowing what I wanted, It's not until I get filled with a decisive emotion that I know what to do and what to write, such as it happened to me yesterday. The emotion was "I'm out of here", "I'm gonna disconnect", and that allowed me for spilling it out. A paradox, the decision not to write any more made me write.
At the core theme of this post was my disconnection and strong criticism of my blogroll shortlist blogs (the ones I read regularly): View from the Right, Brussels Journal, and Gates of Vienna. And within 24 hours they all link and quote me favorably. The quote at Gates of Vienna is by Fjordman (whom I didn't put under much heat, but I did the site of GoV). Even Lawrence Auster writes nicely about me, he's even trying to be helpful in finding me a new moniker. He doesn't go nuts as the last time. And this in spite of me presenting mush stronger and more devastating criticism of him than last time, and directed exclusively at him and not at Jim Kalb. And now Paul Belien. Gee guys, can't you leave me alone! :-)
During my summer break much has been going through my mind. I have rearranged my life and job situation, so now I don't have time to blog anymore. I have filled my life with other things. So don't encourage me! Why is it that these people who I criticize, and lately even want to detach from, are the ones the find me interesting and refer to me favourably? I'm not saying they like me, but it's clear that they appreciate me and find me interesting. My secret dream had always been to have an audience of secular liberals (or rather non-believing ordinary people). They are the ones that should be ripe for the purge of the last elements of Christianity that I'd like to offer--I thought. But no show. Instead I get the Christian pro-Americans. Misunderstand me right here. I think you are great people. But when I was still full of weltschmerz and blogging lust I had the idea of a Tordesillas kind of demarcation line across the Atlantic Ocean leaving the for the Americans to attempt to reinstall the Christian God, while the Europeans should be pushed out of Christianity altogether. The latter one I considered my domain. But no show.
The appreciative responses I've got has come disproportionally from Christian Americans or pro-Americans. Yet another paradox. Does this mean I have to reevaluate my view? Or should I just accept that the world is full of paradoxes? I often wondered recently: Why does Lawrence Auster link and comment upon my posts? I just have this mini-blog that nobody would care about otherwise. He could easily just have ignored me. The same with Paul Belien. Everytime I write something strongly critical about him he links and quotes from that post (even though he doesn't quote those parts). Then it strikes me how they are just lonely alienated guys, just like I am. Driven by curiosity, constantly searching searching. Wanting to bring things to the surface in order to find answers. Of course we have a lot in common!
Back to my secret plan. The post-Christian seculars should be ridiculed out of their Christian ethics. Since they despise Christianity so much I figured that constantly pointing out to them how they act like priestly Christians, yes even Christian fanatics, would be the way of purging them of their slave morality. Someone should draw a cartoon called "The Leftist" featuring monk-looking figures running around like anti-globalist in the street throwing stones--exposing their fanaticism and superstition.
I've been called a prima donna and yes I am. I'm a sensitive soul, and my process of thinking takes quantum leaps by periods of passionate devotion, when I'm all possessed by the fervor. It gets started when I see an anomaly in a picture and a new period of fervor is launched, trying to find a perspective from which to set the picture right. And yes there is pain an agony in these periods. So please don't encourage me!
I'm never going to be anything even close to a poet. My mind is far too square for that. But apart from this, the following quote of Kirkegaard struck a chord within me already as a young man:
What is a poet? An unhappy man who conceals profound anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so fashioned that when sighs and groans pass over them they sound like beautiful music. His fate resembles that of the unhappy men who were slowly roasted by a gentle fire in the tyrant Phalaris' brazen bull—their shrieks could not reach his ear to terrify him, to him they sounded like sweet music. And people flock about the poet and say to him: do sing again; Which means, would that new sufferings tormented your soul, and: would that your lips stayed fashioned as before, for your cries would only terrify us, but your music is delightful. And the critics join them, saying: well done, thus must it be according to the laws of aesthetics. Why, to be sure, a critic resembles a poet as one pea another, the only difference being that he has no anguish in his heart and no music on his lips. Behold, therefore would I rather be a swineherd on Amager and be understood by the swine than a poet, and misunderstood by men.My words would strike people as structures of angular metal rather than anything like the sweet music described above. But it's equally true that the day my soul is no more tormented with new sufferings I would have nothing more to write. And even if I did, I wouldn't know where to start. Not without a decisive emotion driving me. And I actually do not want to do this, I'm looking for a way out. Right now I looking to be a swineherd among swines.
Update: Hmm. I just remembered. A similar thing happened two months ago. Calling the same friend. Likewise declaring that this is it, that I will quit blogging. During my period as Christian civilizationist I had made good friends with great people. I knew, and at this point I felt strongly, how my strong criticism of Christian ethics and the Vatican II would forever change the nature of my friendship with these people. I could see clearly that the phantasmagorian answers I would get in return would make me lose my respect for them, and that to them I'd be a henchman of the evil side. I felt strongly that it wasn't worth it. That friendship is more important than politics. But in the nakedness of this certainty, when relaxing in the completion of the decision, that inner voice appeared saying "No!". And I wrote my series of five articles about Catholicism in one go.
[End of post]
11 comments:
Re you relationship with Lawrence Auster and others:
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 279.
Star friendship.— We were friends and have become estranged. But this was right, and we do not want to conceal and obscure it from ourselves as if we had reason to feel ashamed. We are two ships each of which has its goal and course; our paths may cross and we may celebrate a feast together, as we did—and then the good ships rested so quietly in one harbor and one sunshine that it may have looked as if they had reached their goal and as if they had one goal. But then the almighty force of our tasks drove us apart again into different seas and sunny zones, and perhaps we shall never see one another again,—perhaps we shall meet again but fail to recognize each other: our exposure to different seas and suns has changed us! That we have to become estranged is the law above us: by the same token we should also become more venerable for each other! And thus the memory of our former friendship should become more sacred! There is probably a tremendous but invisible stellar orbit in which our very different ways and goals may be included as small parts of this path,—let us rise up to this thought! But our life is too short and our power of vision too small for us to be more than friends in the sense of this sublime possibility.— Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we should be compelled to be earth enemies.
http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/diefrohl7e.htm
I recently found your blog just as you are debating jacking it in!
Re Nietzsche: he describes the post-christian Man becoming the Last Man, but then a new human type emerges with new values/culture.
He uses the metaphor of approaching Noon where there will be no shadows - ie relics of the past. (Rather similar to Plato's emerging out of the cave and seeing the Sun directly - even though Nietzsche was the anti-Platonist).
But what does Noon look like? Is this what you - and others - are trying to flesh out? Will European man find something worth living and striving for?
I recently found your blog just as you are debating jacking it in!
As I described in my update above, and as I followed up in my comment to Paul Belien, who once again quotes me. I wrote:
Hi Paul, Dear fellow searcher,
When you juxtapose my description of me and you as a searchers, with my concluding sentence "And I actually do not want to do this, I'm looking for a way out", I strikes me how this is just another search. Looking for a way out of the searching is a search in itself. Or are the two actually the very same search? I start thinking that it is. Whenever I thought I had found a way out, and relax in that, it's just the calm before the storm. It's just the prelude to an intensified period of searching. I just commented upon that in an update to my post you link to above. I can see this pattern in me now.
Anyway I should be ending my period of Kirkegaardian lamentation. In my next incarnation I'll come back as a Roman equestrian.
So I think I have realized by now that I will never stop writing, never stop searching. It will just come and go in periods. But this is how it has always been for me!
I can see now that what this process, I'm in, really is about that I'm struggling my way out of the conservative straight-jacket I had put on.
So I will not stop blogging. But I should move away from this blog and this name. I expect that I will find the time for such an effort some time during this autumn. A blog for the new Roman League.
Re Nietzsche: he describes the post-christian Man becoming the Last Man, but then a new human type emerges with new values/culture.
This is great. This is exactly how I see it. Where did he write it?
What people fail to see is that the thing with Nietzsche is not to be a follower of him and become a "Nietzschean". The point with Nietzsche is that he's a link to our Roman values. So is Machiavelli. Nietzsche is merely a stepping stone. We should become Romans!
The new Roman League, standing on the side while watching the Western Civilization (with its two Christianities) self-destruct, while we prepare our community for the new era.
But what does Noon look like? Is this what you - and others - are trying to flesh out? Will European man find something worth living and striving for?
It's very simple. It's just to walk out of the cave and out into the daylight. Stop believing in the shadow theater of the Platonic cave. Stop believing in the lies of the two Christianities. Then the truth is there right in front of you. All we need to know is already in the records of the history of mankind.
While it's just that simple, it can of course be emotionally hard.
The idea of the Last Man and the emerging "Overman" who creates new values if found throughout Nietzsche's writings, especially from the Gay Science and Zarathustra onwards. Which means i couldn't find a pithy quote to back myself up:)
This quote is interesting though - Gay Science 377:
We who are homeless.— Among Europeans today there is no lack of those who are entitled to call themselves homeless in a instinctive and honorable sense, it is to them that I especially commend my secret wisdom and gaya scienza! For their fate is hard, their hopes are uncertain, it is quite a feat to devise some comfort for them—but what avail! We children of the future, how could we be at home in this today! We feel disfavor for all ideals that might lead one to feel at home even in this fragile, broken time of transition; as for its "realities," we do not believe that they will last. The ice that still supports people today has become very thin: the wind that brings the thaw is blowing, we ourselves who are homeless constitute a force that breaks open ice and other all too thin "realities" ...
Enough of the N quotes!
My thoughts re the Roman Empire are summed up by a quote I read many years ago which i think came from Edward Gibbon:
The Roman Empire was magnificent - let us hope the world never sees its like again.
I feel the Roman Empire lacked something - which was why Christianity was so successful. Stoicism was not enough. I find Christianity very poignant - it was beautiful and inspired many people to great things, but it is over.
Personally i would like the EU to collapse into regional city states. Where a citizen would feel towards his state the way a fifth century Athenian or a Renaissance Florentine felt. And states would compete for in the Arts and Sciences and all fields of human endeavor for excellence. Civic pride and Virtu. Though recognising they belonged to a wider culture (a League - Roman?).
Maybe the world is moving in such a direction where this is possible. This would be Diversity with a point. As opposed to Diversity under the tutelage of paternalist pseudo-saints who enforce mediocrity. But maybe this idea is something i read in a Jack Vance novel many years ago lol. (One world with no borders would lead to an eternal, sanctimonius dictorship from which there would be no escape. Lawrence Austers writings would end up like TinTin in the Congo).
With Nietzsche there is no Sun or Truth, only and an endless quest, endless Becoming. So how is it possible to tell that a Roman League isn't something reflecting off the cave wall?
I look forward to your future blog!
Blogging can be addictive.
Keep in mind: you own the blog; the blog doesn't own you.
Blog when you feel like it, but don't let it take you over.
;)
It is the lie of free will that is collapsing within what is truly false Christianity (Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxism and the so-called "evangelical" free will gospel "offer"..)
The visible Church is corrupt --yes. Much of it is an outright lie. But never be deceived that is an accident or the genuine inevitable outcome of actual Christianity. It has taken the occult communist and many others centuries to debauch the public image of the Church WHILE slowly corrupting doctrine so that the doctrine they tried to force on us is obviously self-invalidating.
..and it isn't so much that you are needed as a general conversationist.
It is that an honest rebuke is the life blood of the people. Where else will they get it if not from those who Jesus Christ gives understanding?
Isaiah wanted to hear something good from God for the people. Everyone goes into the desert searching for the good news --the "everything is going to be alright" pronouncement made by God in His Authority. But what you get is the blinders taken off of what was really going on IN and AS the Church --and that it has to stop and that God and His elect can afford it to stop very well.
Imagine wanting to see into heaven the secret stuff but for the good and not at all just to see stuff and being brought there to see only to see instead that the very language in which you grew up was hopelessly corrupt --the language itself --no matter what was said within it --and it was all the people had and had given you to go find God with.
Isaiah 6:1-8 In the year of the death of king Uzziah, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Seraphim were standing above him: each had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he flew. And one called to the other and said, Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory! And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, Woe unto me! for I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts. And one of the seraphim flew unto me, and he had in his hand a glowing coal, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he made it touch my mouth, and said, Behold, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin expiated. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And I said, Here am I; send me.
and then what are you given? They will hear and not understand SO THAT they will perish!
What?! --and God is Holy and Righteous.
Isaiah 6:9-13 And he said, Go; and thou shalt say unto this people, Hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing ye shall see and shall not perceive. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and healed. And I said, Lord, how long? And he said, Until the cities be wasted, without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land become an utter desolation, and Jehovah have removed men far away, and the solitude be great in the midst of the land. But a tenth part shall still be therein, and it shall return and be eaten; as the terebinth and as the oak whose trunk remaineth after the felling: the holy seed shall be the trunk thereof.
Tradition says they put Isaish in a log and sawed him in half for what God did through him as if he had done it on purpose as being merely quarrelous in their lie of what language is per their lie of free will that was their best honesty..
Jeremiah understood that as well:
Jeremiah 15:10 Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole land! I have not lent on usury, nor have they lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me.
I don't think you have resisted to blood yet.
Hebrews 12:4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, wrestling against sin.
But you are in good company..
Proverbs 22:17-21 Incline thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thy heart unto my knowledge. For it is a pleasant thing if thou keep them within thee: they shall be together fitted on thy lips. That thy confidence may be in Jehovah, I have made them known to thee this day, even to thee. Have not I written to thee excellent things, in counsels and knowledge, that I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth; that thou mightest carry back words of truth to them that send thee?
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
This is more for Tim.
Forgive me if I seem primitive in my writing: I reside in the Pine Barrens--I should just simply say The Barrens.
By free will, I assume you mean the belief that man can, under his own power, without Grace, choose God; or, that man needs but an assist from God -- that is Man plus God can choose God. I agree that man has no such free will.
Yet, I add to this denial of free will, the principle enunciated by St. Paul: the man who denies that God exists becomes disordered in his thinking and finally is given over to his perverse passions. Such a one cannot turn back except by Grace and Grace alone. When such a person is found in the Church, he utters god-words without substance; and, as a natural progression, allows tolerance, and finally approval, for perverse behavior. Such a one also comes to demand that "human tradition" is co-equal with scriptural authority--in fact, he is demanding that human/worldly wisdom is superior to scriptural wisdom. When such is left alone to work in the Church, the Church becomes corrupt. In the end, such a church persecutes the Christians and those who have but the appearance of righteousness. this is the modern "liberal" church.
What is one to do? The one who, by Grace, is seeking and the Christian find no food in such wildernesses. And just as God says He spews out churches that are neither hot nor cold, shouldn't we who believe spew out false churches. I read where Paul writes those who offer hospitality to false teachers share in their punishment: does this not also apply to those who support or maintain membership in churches where false doctrine is taught or held as part of it founding principles?
Then shouldn't the Christian obey God and come out of them; becoming an alien upon the earth even more so without the comfort of a community? Do we become alone as Noah?
And what of men such as Conservative Swede? Can such step out into the wilderness (can one come out of Ur-out of his father's house) without Grace? No, he has become homeless and cannot even hope for an eternal home--let alone build a new Ur. But I am thinking that God is acting in Conservative Swede's life, without Swede's free will, by Grace. This is why I said in response to his "I am an Island" article that God is knocking at Conservative Swede's door. I should have said God has seized hold of him.
At least you have friends that are willing to listen to your intellectual stuff. My friends just say that I'm from another planet and that I'm thinking ahead of everyone else and that I'm boring them with my stuff. Or if I tell them that nobody understands me, they just mock me and say that's the condition of the misunderstood genius(we did something about this in literature class back in highschool) and I think it comes from Schopenhauer. Here's some Romanian poetry related to this:
You may build a world, or wreck it, but, whatever you would say,
Everything at last is buried under shovelfuls of clay.
Hands that coveted the sceptre of the universe, ideals
That would scan the whole creation, find their size in four fir-deals.
The procession queues behind you in the old funeral wise,
Splendid as a walking sarcasm gazing with indifferent eyes.
High above the rest, a pygmy will then set out to discourse,
Not to emphasize your merits but to praise his own, of course;
For your name is just a pretext. That is all you can expect.
The succeeding generations are, well, even more "correct".
Failing to attain your compass, will they show their admiration?
Sure, they will applaud the slender biographical narration
Which attempts to prove that never have you been a man that mattered,
That you were just like the others. Everybody is much flattered
If you are not his superior. Everybody will be able
To dilate his stupid nostrils at a scholars' council-table
When your person is his topic. He projected long ago
With ironical grimaces to extol you high and low.
In this way you will be playing into everybody's hands;
He will say that all is wicked who but little understands...
Furthermore, they will endeavour to anatomize your morals,
To find blemishes and mischiefs, petty scandals, petty quarrels, -
All of which will surely draw you nearer to them. Not the light
You have to the world imparted, but your sins, your guilt, your spite,
Tiredness, ill-health, or weakness, anything that is unworth
And is fatally inherent in a mortal lump of earth.
All the pretty smarts and worries of a much tormented mind
Will attract them more than any plans you have ever designed.
Reb.Van,
Thanks for all your comments. I'm glad my posts generated so much interest from you. However, I'm completely busy with other things right now, so I don't have time for more than reading what you write. I will add some comments of mine eventually. It's a bit overwhelming :-)
It's ok, I read all your posts and comments and now I don't have what else to comment on that will overwhelm you. No problem, I enjoyed reading it and I agree with most of what you said and in a way I felt it before, I just didn't put it in words. I told Larry Auster the same thing about liberalism and anti-discrimination. I was just wording it that liberalism wants to make everyone's life turn out the same, regardless of context, choices or ability. Like making a dice roll to a certain number regardless of how many times it's rolled, but as we know, that's impossible. :P
Oh, I was thinking about differences in between Orthodox Christianity and the Catholic and Protestant ones and realized the huge differences. For example, we put the emphasis not on Christ's suffering, but His success in being fearless in front of and defeating evil. And charity isn't that emphasized - it has other ascetic stuff to do before charity like fasting, wearing a headscarf(not a hijab, burka or whatever, you can fully see one's face and it's entirely optional). I think you are the one who said it over at Mangan's. Why would be hard for a Protestant to live in an Orthodox country(besides us having only Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics here)?
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