seeds wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 7:07 pm
Because, how in the world can your following statements…
"...It is true that in the realm of ideas I do side with Renaud Camus..."
...and this...
"...I entertain the sort of ideas [Jonathan] Bowden talks about..."
...be construed as you "standing back" to view things...
"...from a removed angle..."
...
Well, thank you for your inquiry. But let me make a few initial comments of a defensive sort before I answer. You find even the reference to 'considerable ideas' or the 'entertainment' of ideas as utterly unacceptable. I would suggest to you that you are a decent example of a man who has had installed in him, and who installs in his own self, a range of ideas that seem 'right' and 'good'. So, when you encounter the ideas of people like Camus or Bowden (and you encounter them extremely superficially)
something rises up out of you. The Holy Spirit of indignation. A deeply felt conviction that what you are being presented with is 'wrong' 'retrograde' 'bad' and also 'evil'.
What I do, or try to do, is to locate the *constructs* which give form to these established assertions. But that
too is intolerable.
So I find that you, Iambiguous and also to a certain extent Gary share a common, received platform. It is not one based on reasoned thought. It is based on something else. And I am trying to better understand what it is based on. I have begun to form the idea that it is based in a sort of deformed Protestantism in which the former strict moral precepts and admonitions have been replaced with a semi-religious sentiment in pro of 'social justice', 'egalitarianism' and also 'democracy'. I have recently described this as the ideology of
Homo americanus. But I don't get much response except denial.
In Iambigous' case he simply cannot understand what will result by questioning or interrogating the causal pathway that has led to this common (and deeply American) contemporary stance and attitude that defines our common *outlook*. He must associate
words with worlds (what is thought or conceived with what is brought into political and social manifestation) and, as a result, he can only imagine that anyone who does ask these questions or voice concerns (such as Camus or Bowden) is secretly in service to a clandestine Nazi revival movement.
His efforts, and your efforts, serve a function: to stop dead in its tracks any sort of free, open, thoughtful and detailed conversation on the 'causal chains' of events that have led to the present in America. And this is my primary area of interest. America, the post-Sixties, the postmodern destruction of reasoning capability, and the rise of a virulent and deformed Protestant religious attitude toward those things I mentioned.
On one hand you-plural don't quite no where to slot me -- you especially are confused by a coherent, logical exposition. How can views, contrarry to your own, which to you seem absolutely metaphysically pure and good,
be contradicted? That idea alone involves unthinkable thought. It is surely the Devil's work!
You, Iambiguous, Gary and also Immanuel when he expresses political and social views have been forged in the same furnace. But I submit that you do not fully *see* what formed you. That is, you do not have enough self-consciousness. But this is really common. Very few people can go or will allow themselves to go through the processes of self-analysis to *see* how they have been informed. When I say this you-plural take it as supreme arrogance. As if you are
really being talked down to. That also is
very offensive to Americans. But you evidently have not read well enough your Tocqueville. You simply cannot *see* yourselves. And yet you certainly act with boldness and determination in the world.
If I describe my stance as taking place from a 'remove' or through 'standing back' it is because I have been
doing this for about 15 years now. It began through certain readings which caused me to begin to examine my own predicates. Later other readings furthered that process. And then it became one of examining 'metaphysical presuppositions' (primarily when reading Basil Willey). When he said that we need a
master metaphysician to be capable of seeing our own presuppositions and how entrenched they are, it all made sense.
When I say such things, of course, you-plural get offended and attach negative labels. But there is no sentiment attached to what I say (or what I am beginning to propose). There is no meanness or desire to harm. I simply want to be able to discuss ideas in a far-reaching way and to be able to *think freely*.
Jonathan Bowden helped me extremely (and still helps me) because he is a man who crossed over internal barriers and who shows what results from free thought. This does not mean that I *embrace his conclusions*. But for you-plural that is all it can mean. It must mean that! you will say. And you then thrust yourselves in with intensely moralized opinions in an effort to stop any contrary thinking from occurring. And you see that as being 'morally good'.
I do side with Renaud Camus insofar as I know that a multiculturalism project has a severely destructive side. And I know that those in favor of it come from specific ideological angles. But because I know that on an idea-plane he is 'right' I do not know how or even if those ideas should be acted on. But if I say that --
even that is intolerable to you-plural.
Personally, my view is that you-plural are extremely ideologically confused. You do not really have a sound ground for the pseudo-ideological sentiments that move so powerfully in you. They carry you like a strong current.
And my view is that it is currents such as these that predominantly move our present. Things semi-conscious, things felt, but not necessarily thought-through.
Now watch: all that I have said here will go uncommented in any substantial way.
Yep, okay.
tongues in such an elegant and refined manner, and though I admit to being slightly horrified, I also gained real appreciation for ole Harbal.