Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 3:07 pm
Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 1:03 pm
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 12:57 pm
I’ve written numerous posts, here and in other threads, expressing my ideas. Did you read them?
Probably not. Do you read all my posts?
Harbal, you tell me (and the Forum) that you are here principally for purposes of entertainment. In my view that would be nearly the lowest level of relationship to *the world of ideas*. The answer is yes, I read everything written on a given thread by those attracted to express themselves here in relation to ideas, to culture, and as I often say *to what is going on in our present*.
I have
purposes and these purposes I reveal so that those who care to read my posts understand what I am up to without ambiguity. My most basic interest, if I had to localize it, is in the origin of Occidental civilization. All of us are *outcomes* of the processes that were organized and put into historical motion in those early centuries. Nearly everything that we define as *having value* and being valuable* was defined through philosophical and religious processes by those men who cared to work in relation to
values.
My focus always turns around the Greco-Christian world. It is entirely foundational to the Occident. As such it will not ever be subtracted from it though, it appears, many millions of people suffer from a lack of education and exposure to it (basically this means lack of exposure to a Liberal Arts education). My view is that, even if one is not, say, a *believer* (in the sense that our own Immanuel Can is a believer) there is a way to understand what these men were up to and what values and ideals motivated them. And to state it again it is out of all of these considerations, all of this work, all of this defining a structure in values, that The Occident arose.
You are so far outside of contemporary current events and the *conversation* going on that nearly none of this is immediately intelligible to you. Therefore one cannot in fact talk with you but all conversation with you is talking at you. In short (and as I say so often) you lack fundamental preparation. And -- this is crucial -- you have no interest nor intention in getting it. It is as you say: you are here for the entertainment factor. However, and this is true, you can reason and you can debate (as for example in your long debates with Immanuel Can). But in the end you repeat what you start with. Your end-point is your start-point. You have no means, literally none, to understand what has motivated the men who constructed our civilization. You have no way, literally none at all, to capture even a slight glimmer of what they meant, and what could be meant, by the notion of divinity. You are completely excluded from all of this -- and there you remain
by your own choice.
Similarly, Flash and Gary are men who have arrived at their *position* -- their location as products of our culture but more specifically in Postmodern deviations -- through what I refer to as paths or causal avenues. I understand that if I make defining statements about this *locality* that it is condemned as ad hominem but I reject the fallaciousness of attaching proper and fair labels to those positions that we ourselves hold to. In the sense, as I say, that you-plural have committed your wills to a refusal to move any farther into the real of consequences when one investigates *the world of ideas* in relation to our culture and civilization.
I said that I face a *purpose* and that means an objective, a focus, something I am working toward. It all revolves around by own existential position in respect to those *higher ideals* I am always referring to. As I deal with you-plural -- errant, confused, opinionated, rebellious children in whom the Child's Willfulness is so strong, so determining -- the only thing I can really do is to try to understand how this *child* came to be. I.e. what are the causal chains that produced him -- indeed allowed him to have such power in the present. Once a child has become so indulged in that willfulness that is often so destructive to the child and so terrible for the parents, reigning in that will is often next to impossible. Once one has established himself on such a rebellious road there is little one can do except to let him go his own way.
It is my view that this is, and it is a reductive image and a generalization but these are useful for organizing understanding, the condition of many people today. Why and how did this happen? Well, that is the question that most interests me. But as I say that question is best one that I direct to myself. So my focus in *confronting* those boisterous, willful children who so often take issue with those moral formulations they are in open rebellion against, I use as a way to confront my own internal disorder. I always say: I am as much a product and an outcome of these *processes* I refer to as anyone else. I
include myself in my general critique.
You are of course unaware, and unconcerned, that culturally there is what we could realistically refer to as a *reform movement* that is taking place in our culture now. At a very low level I could refer to MAGA and those people who, I think genuinely, feel that their country has gone off its track. I don't need to illustrate who these people are. But I do need to be, and I choose to be, aware of what they are *calling for* and what are the ideational and ideological bases of their thought, however crude, however raw, however badly expressed or defined it is.
And then there is another level I consider to be much higher though it is harder to describe and indeed the description is fraught with dangers and difficulty. Allow me to
abbreviate what I refer to by referring to the philosophical position of Richard Weaver. It is in essence a philosophical position in respect to corruption, decadence, nihilism and a group of *wrong tracks* that have been taken by leading men who then influence the multitudes. Weaver proposes, I think, a remediation of these errors. Anyone who reads his essays with seriousness will have little choice but to ask *Where do I stand in regard to this problem of decadence?*
I do not refer
to you of course! Since, I gather, you don't read anything. You simply will not be bothered.
Unlike you I have *family responsibilities* and I do not believe I have any choice but to deal on these issues. That is why I always refer to *education* and what we will teach our children.
I use these
often dead-ended from the very start pseudo-conversations entirely for my own purposes.
What I will say finally in regard to Wizard is that he is a thousand times more involved with
the real essences of those things that have value than any one of you (Flash, Gary, etc.) In comparison you are wasted, tired, even vane men who do little else but blather and oppose the value-structures I refer to. (Gary is more moved by genuine concerns, for example, when he talks of his opposition to war and war-materiel production and also some other areas).
And that is why there is much more to be gained in taking some idea expressed *shotgun style* and doing the work on it that reveals and brings into relief the genuine philosophically-valuable idea that is there.
In this sense those of us with *critical positions* are obligated to purify and further rationalize the ideas we are working with.
