The Part-Triumph of a Figment. — The mass-man is the closest approximation in reality to the individualist’s mental abstraction of the individual.

Self-Assured Slump. — Feeling is the pathway to the spirit, says the man sinking into the mire of the body.

Out of Self-Control and into Outer Control. — Self-control is the control and rightful-ordering of desires and passions by the rational self. Liberation, as promoted by liberals, socialists, and other libertarians, is the setting-free of desires and passions from the command of the rational self, the thraldom of the latter to the former, and the manipulation and control of the desires and passions by outer forces over the vanquished self. This is the “free man” which the libertarians promote: the man without self-control, not a master of his passions, but their thrall in “free expression” — and a thrall also to those who know how to manipulate and control the passions of others.

The Marcher-Lords of Mediocrity. — Mediocrity bestows the title of excellence upon those who secure its far-flung borders.

A Deadly Curse. — O, let our enemies grow strong in the habits of safety!

Sub Specie Modernitatis. — All that which our forebears thought to note as degeneracy: well, they must have been mistaken, for it led to us.

A Pretty Dichotomy and True. — “Equality is a pretty lie because it pretends to assert commensurability with respect to incommensurable things. When we give up on the idea of equality though it is tempting to replace it with the idea of inequality. This is a mistake. Like its yin equality, the yang inequality carries with it a connotation of commensurability: two things which are unequal are quantitatively comparable along some axis, and one is greater than the other along that axis. So to conclude that (in a comparison of incommensurables) inequality is the case from the fact that equality is false is to make the same mistake that got us here in the first place.” ¹

With due respect for the author, I must nonetheless disagree. No connotation of commensurability or quantifiability is carried within the concept of inequality per se. Whether or not two things are commensurable, they are unequal by dint of being in fact two things and not one and the same thing. (Incommensurability means we cannot tell of two things which is the better, the greater, etc, not that we do not know that they are unequal in some way.) “Incommensurable” is not a third option between “equal” and “unequal”. There is no third option. Either A or not-A, equal or unequal. Hence, giving up on the idea of the equality of things — i.e., regaining humble sanity — just means accepting their inequality, commensurable or not.  

. . .

1. Zippy Catholic, “All men are not created unequal”, Zippy Catholic (weblog), 14th November 2012.

Gripes and Bad Faith. — It is anti-democratic to complain about the result of a democratic election. Yet, weirdly, the democratic participant is wont to believe that only he is permitted to complain about it. Lending words to his incoherence, he tells the non-voter, who, unlike him, has not endorsed the election by his participation, that he, the non-voter, must not complain about it. Weird, yes, but not out of keeping with the democrat’s ever-present urge to invade the non-democrat’s territory and claim it as its own.

He who does not vote in an election has no right to complain about its result.

Naturally we dutiful non-voters strongly deny the truth of this and are not wholly disinclined from telling the little blighters who claim it to buzz off and die. But we may also say to them:

I. If you vote in an election, then you must endorse the legitimacy of the process including its result, or else be guilty of bad faith. (You agree in participation of the process to be bound by the rules thereof, which include the acceptance of the legitimacy of the result.) 

II. You voted in the election. 

Therefore,

III. You must endorse the legitimacy of the result, or else be guilty of bad faith. 

But (you complain): 

IV. The result is a disaster. 

Therefore,

V. You must endorse the legitimacy of a disaster about which you complain, or else be guilty of bad faith.

To that, we may kindly add: Can I get you another drink? You look as though you need one.

Apropos of the Social Body. — It is not the surgeon we should fear; it is the anaesthetist.

Food for Unthought. — Appeal to reason through rational argumentation does not work well today because the mindset of secular leftism is irrationalistic. That mindset is also disjointed, incoherent, and given to distraction. Hence, one moment a man is claiming that rational argumentation is “mere word-games”, “fiddling with language”, etc, and the next, he is claiming something on its basis.

  The secular leftist accepts no greater authority than his own desires. Reason cannot lead him. (Nevertheless, to a promissory idol of those desires, he may give the honourable name of reason.) As long as rational argumentation remains the slave of those desires, he can praise it, but otherwise he scorns it as unconnected with reality, which for him is merely the occasion for his desires. (His inheritance from romanticism.)

  Since he will go only where his desires lead him, regardless of whether those desires are rationally ordered, rational argumentation has little force against him. Indeed, he even draws strength from the rational argumentation made against him. For argumentation suggests to him a matter open to question, and anything that is open to question, but which is not in accord with his desires, he finds easy to dismiss.

  Secular leftism, like all evil, is parasitic upon good. Rational argumentation is food for secular leftism as blood is food for leeches.

. . .

Adapted from a comment made to Bruce G. Charlton, “The Counter-Productiveness of Arguments for the Reactionary”, Bruce Charlton's Miscellany (weblog), 24th October 2012.

Mass-Media in a Nutshell. — “Typical of adolescents the mass media display impulsivity and unstable moods; alternation between hedonism and blaming; between aggression and cowardice; sarcasm and sentimentality; impossible idealism and indignant charges of hypocrisy; wild recklessness and paralyzing guilt; snide arrogance and hero-worship — is obsessed with novelties, fashion and peer approval; is extravert (needing continual external stimulation); and is emotionally cold, selfish and manipulative while burning with resentments, bursting with personal entitlements, prone to self-pity, and zealous for abstract ‘justice’ which other people fail to live up to.”

Bruce G. Charlton, “The Adolescent Society – Uganda to the UK”, Bruce Charlton's Miscellany (weblog), 10th October 2012.

Fine Persecution. — Every society has before it an ideal of the kind of society it ought to be, and every society, in order to uphold that ideal, needs to persecute those within it who are at odds with that ideal. Once again, however, the deep mendacity of liberalistic society manifests itself in that it denies the persecution which it carries out against its hated enemies, namely, those at odds with its ideal. This denial of the persecuted status of its enemies — along with the ridicule of them when they claim it — are additional elements for the intensifying of their persecution.

Mark of the Animal. — It is an odd prejudice which holds that it is not a limitation of science that it does not answer the most basic metaphysical questions, but rather a failure of metaphysics that it asks them. Consider the weirdness of this train of thought: a rational-empirical method of ours, which has the scope to answer questions a, b, and c, does not answer questions x, y, and z, therefore, questions x, y, and z are illegitimate as rational questions in general. This has more the character of animal territoriality than of rationality.

A Refutation of the New (i.e., Individualistic not Socialistic) Libertarianism, Effected in Much Fewer Words than this Title, by Means of a Simple and Glaring Fact which at Least the Old (i.e., Socialistic not Individualistic) Libertarianism (e.g., Marxism) Recognised. — Man is a social animal.

Humans and Triangles. — That human nature is unchangeable and everywhere the same does not mean that all humans are always and everywhere the same. Likewise, that the nature of triangularity is unchangeable and everywhere the same does not mean that all triangles are always and everywhere the same: there are equilateral, scalene, and isosceles triangles, big triangles, little triangles, more perfect ones, less perfect ones, red ones, green ones, iron-wrought ones, and so on. Humanity and triangularity are the bare determinations or essences by which something counts respectively as a human or a triangle in the first place rather than as a salmon or a square.

The change from a culture of honour to a culture of dignity was accompanied of course by a great loss of dignity.

Modern life draws deep from the surface of things.

The expectation that someone will turn up and do the logically impossible is the reverence that misology pays to inventive genius.

Let niceness be reckoned amongst the most powerful forces of the underworld. Once the Devil is unchained, niceness invites him to tea.

With every step of the social and political movement for emancipation, there arises the kind of man who is more in need of repression than the one before, and so advances the movement for enslavement.

Art and religion are always a danger to the mechanical regime. They threaten the restoration of humanity.

Stereotypes possess high-predictive value. It is odd that so many self-declared friends of science reject them.

A Celebrity Speaks. — “At least 260 species of animal have been noted exhibiting homosexual behaviour but only one species of animal ever, so far as we know, has exhibited homophobic behaviour — and that’s the human being. So ask which is really natural.” ¹

  Countless species of animal have been noted exhibiting coprophagy, some species are even able to fly, but only one species of animal, ever, so far as we know, has exhibited rational and moral behaviour, albeit sometimes boasting the ability to make glaringly-bad arguments — and that’s the human being. So ask which is really natural. 

. . .

1. Stephen Fry, quoted by Richard Alleyne, “Stephen Fry: 260 animals have gay tendencies but only humans are homophobic”, telegraph.co.uk, 5th October 2012.

The Nuclear Age. — How does one rationally argue with people who are so sunk in irrationalism that they refuse to admit — when it suits them — the validity of logical thought? With those who take the nuclear-option against one’s arguments (but not, of course, against their own): that logic itself is just word-juggling with no rational link to reality? The answer is easy and soothing: one should try not to. But the realisation of the pervasiveness of this so-called postmodern attitude is hard and shocking.

A Voltarian Spuriosity Translated. — I disapprove of what you say, and, whilst vilifying you, I will not pass up the opportunity to sound magnanimous.

The Idea of a Sham-King. — “A king’s duty is to remain above politics” — impossible: he who remains above politics is not a king — “. . . and call a halt when the ship of state is about to crash into the rocks.” ¹ If he can call a halt, then he is not above politics.

. . .

1. Taki, “The Magical Mystery of Monarchy”, Taki’s Magazine, 21st July 2012.

Under Egalitarianism. — To praise as superior is still permissible, and even commended, so long as it is clearly untrue.

He who seeks to cast off what he feels to be the burdens of history and inheritance may well succeed in achieving the levity of an idiot.

If the fact/value dichotomy were a fact, it would derive no value from it.

The cosmopolitan belief in world-peace and universal brotherhood would have remained a poky little European affliction had it not been for warfare, global conquest, and mass-extermination.