Posted by "organization" = boundaries of people and nation on Thu, 28 May 2015 13:48 | #

* What I mean by organization, specifically and generally, is in regard to group identity and national boundaries of our people.

It has nothing to do with paying and card-carrying membership groups.

Posted by Captainchaos on Fri, 29 May 2015 00:41 | #

Tan clearly has a positive opinion of Hitler which in the privacy of his own thoughts may well border on hero worship (yes, it’s possible that I’m “projecting” - oh fucking well).  Why so?

Two reasons:

1. Tan merely talks shit about Jews on the internet whereas Hitler had the stones and personal influence to round millions of Jews up and put them behind barbed wire.

2. He has not one drop of Slavic blood and indeed significant German ancestry.

I do agree that Hitler probably planned to settle Slavic land with millions of Germans and to reduce Slavs to serfdom.  From the perspective of contemporary “human rights”, bourgeois morality I concede that would be a really shitty thing to do.  But was Hitler worse than the Czars who ruled the vast majority of Russians as serfs for centuries; worse than men like Caesar and Alexander the Great who also sought to grab history by the throat and direct it according to their likewise implacable wills?  I think not.  Yet by the standards of contemporary “human rights”, bourgeois morality the latter would be deemed out-and-out monsters - though we rarely think of them in those terms.

Posted by Caesar / Hitler analogy on Fri, 29 May 2015 05:57 | #

CC, I agree that Caesar is an excellent analogy of how one should come to terms with Hitler; and it is how I believe that I would come to terms with Hitler if I were German. Because that is the way I look at Caesar:

That he had the capacity to take such enormously ambitious campaigns so far provides a certain amount of pride. However, I am not happy with his slaughter of the Gauls and others; or the destruction of ancient European cultures.

Nor am I happy about Rome’s slavery, brutality, overreach, its own losses and the demise of the better aspects of its civilization. However, these things are historically bound, therefore I, and my contemporaries, bear no guilt.

There were reasons instigating Hitler to over-reaction and, as you say, he was coming from what is now an anachronistic view - his enamored of Friedrich The Great and other German campaigners in the East.

It is excellent feedback to note that there were barbaric practices going-on under the Czar along with other practices going-on in east Europe which are abhorrent to present day standards; but it is also abhorrent, shockingly condescending, to say that Hitler’s actions and plans were good and liberating for them.

As a matter of tact, to avoid the hubris of such condescension, I will continue to advocate that we not generally talk in terms of equality/inequality, nor would I tend to use the class ranking term of “bourgeois morality” for our current standard, seeing that as a bit anachronistic as well; but rather cast the effects of Hitler’s campaigns in terms our European human ecology.

It is a more tactful even if largely a diplomatic way of talking to make people feel better, but incommensurable complementarity will tend to be accurately descriptive.

Whereas Hitler’s master/slave view was going to cause conflict and did for its more Darwinistic and quantifying outlook, deterministic of “natural competition and superiority”, seeing boundaries as a matter of force and will as opposed to qualitative ecological disbursement of niches and social coordination, agreement. Quantification and its proneness to false comparison is not the best tact with regard to inter-European relations nor with our enemies.

The results of this “naturalism’ and “the necessity of war”, which were really below human social nature, were catastrophic for European population, species, relations and coordination in our defense.

It was a product of the prevailing 1920’s thinking. Of that era was also “The father of Polish nationalism”, Roman Dmowski - he was a rigid social Darwinist himself (in his defense, however, he was also a staunch anti-Semite). If he were able to pull-off something as Hitler did with regard to other European nations, I can’t imagine trying to tell other Europeans that this is just a personal preference of my friends and I - you say potAeto, I say potaato, can’t have all this bickering and gossip over a little thing like our choice for Hitler, tough nuts if you don’t like it. However, I can imagine expecting them to not burden me with guilt trips for historical anachronisms but to work to cooperate in our mutual defense.

I would look upon Hitler as I do Caesar, in the sense that he was an impressive and ambitious military campaigner, who moved some good ideas along - nothing wrong with taking a look at his good sides. But I would not be proud of his aggrandizement, warring and killing of fellow Europeans, destruction, the crippling effects on our population and ability to coordinate defense for his lack of respect for our full human ecology; lack of tact in coordination of our peoples and effective handling of our enemy(ies) in the end. This has devastated our population numbers, qualitative species, and for its lack of accountability, has made fearful and stigmatized our defense against our enemies, leaving us only more vulnerable.

Nevertheless, neither would I be personally ashamed, nor would I expect present day Germans to be ashamed. We all know what it is like to over-react and overcompensate; yes, we had our reasons, and we could have done better with our perspective as it is now.

I do agree with you that genetic heritage colors one’s outlook.

Carolyn Yeager thought that I was being arbitrarily antagonistic when I noted that Tan’s maternal grandmother was German. But this was actually meant to empathize and provide some explanation as to Tan’s initial perspective - scientific studies show an empathic connection with the opposite sex parent’s mother.

Caesar’s mother being my grandmother as she may, I shall use my cortex to relegate his campaigns to general history which had causes of which I had nothing to do; but noting the effects on our people (I like all European women, incl. Russian, don’t you?) I would not propose him, as a nigger might, as one to represent all. On the contrary, for its pejorative effects on European populations and European advocacy, I would reject on balance his worldview as one to hold-up for advocates of Europeans and European coordinated interests.

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 29 May 2015 06:59 | #

Three “Laneian” questions.

1. What would the white American life actually be if Jewish power and influence was raised to the ground, and the first part of the 14 words was delivered?

2. Does “a white future” mean anything beyond on-going physical security?

3. If it does, what ambition does WN have to understand what that might be?

Posted by DanielS on Fri, 29 May 2015 07:26 | #

Good questions, GW, and I imagine it goes to what you were getting at regarding the benign and healthy aspects of Hitler’s inspiration in organizing his people domestically (which I’d glossed over for attention to his foreign policies).

The questions also connect to our agency to invoke our system

Posted by Golden mean of Racism & Sexism on Sun, 07 Jun 2015 07:15 | #

Colin Liddell is getting closer to our point, viz, that social classifications allow for the practical judgment of systemic management between Cartesian extremes.

Note: blaming only ourselves or only others would be extremes. Systemic racial management necessitates a hermeneutic process to afford practical judgment by surveying back and forth feedback within calibration of hypothesized social classification - gauging its management but also assessing problems from without.

For its linearity, Modernist thinking might confuse this for “inconsistency, waffling, being confused or unfaithful to truth and principle.”

...
Colin doesn’t handle the black/racist balance as well as sexist balance, though in that regard too, it’s dubious that fecundity should be a sole measure of optimality..

Regarding blacks and optimal racism, Liddell is WAY too nice - what Aristotle would call “obsequious” - in his concern for blacks to have a good life. I couldn’t even bear to include that part of the article.

Also showing a lack of judgment is his resorting to the repugnant - obnoxious, elitist - argument of how lucky Africans were to be taken to America as slaves.

Moreover, bringing African slaves to America was a catastrophe for Whites, for normal, optimal Whites first and foremost.

The proper stance for Whites in regard to blacks is a ruled separatism, not co-existence and segregation - anything but separatism will lead to our exploitation, miscegenation of our co-evolutionary treasures and suffering. It is easy to talk of “living nice with blacks” as a noble ideal when ensconced in Japan.

For the fact that he lived in South Africa he shows an understanding of what it would have taken there - a separate nation - but he does not recognize the same need for Whites on the American continents.

Blacks must be looked upon as inordinately harmful to our way of life, our well being and our EGI, especially through the gate opening of blacks who are “nice.” If they are amidst and integrated with felicity into our social rule structure blacks cannot help but be harmful to us, even if inadvertently, whether they want to be or not.

Sunday, 7 June 2015

RACISM AND SEXISM VIEWED AS ARISTOTLEAN VIRTUES

by Colin Liddell

For Aristotle there were always two vices for every virtue. This was because of his belief in the “Golden Mean.” For example, the virtue Courage existed between a vice of deficiency (Cowardice) and a vice of excess (Rashness).

To emphasize the metapoint: Aristotle saw all vices as existing on a continuum with all virtues, with no wall between them. This is very different from the Manichean morality that later poisoned the West through Judaic theology. What happens, however, if we apply this Aristotelian analysis to the major “vices” of the modern day, namely “Racism” and “Sexism”?

Of course the liberal left, with its agenda of deconstructing all elements of identity above the atomistic individual, seeks to impose its totalitarian will through a variation on this Judaic Manichaeism called “political correctness.” The sins of “Racism” and “Sexism” are accordingly seen as evil essence that must be expunged from society and all intellectual discourse through a no-platform, knee-jerk, quarantine, point-and-sputter approach. Despite its crudity and lack of sophistication, this approach has been highly successful at imposing liberal extremism on the West. But it is clearly an approach that is at odds with an Aristotelian viewpoint, not to mention intellectualism and reason themselves.

Aristotle, were he alive today, could easily have slotted these supposed vices into his system. The only problem would be whether these supposed vices – or degrees of them – were vices of excess, vices of deficiency, or actually virtues.

One problem with the Judaic, Manichaeistic, all-or-nothing approach is it does away with gradations, degrees, balance, and context, which are at the heart of the Aristotelian system. But if “Racism” is seen as part of a continuum of vice-virtue-vice, then the question arises of how much of whatever Racism is is good?

Some idea could be derived from considering Aristotle’s other virtues – Courage, for example. It is clear that Aristotle is taking a functional view of these virtues and that Courage is preferred because it is more likely to achieve optimum results than either its paired vices, Rashness or Cowardice. On occasion, however, Rashness and Cowardice may in fact have higher functionality than courage. What was Thermopylae but a heroic act of Rashness that served to galvanize other Greeks, while Pericles’s wise policy of avoiding land battles with the Spartans and sticking to naval battles could be seem as an example of sensible Cowardice. Rather than the crude and primitive moral “essences” that the Left prefers, the Aristotelian approach to virtue requires constant analysis, contextualization, and validation through results. Aristotelian morality is rationalist morality.

Functionality is the defining aspect of these virtues. Courage exists because battles need to be won, enemies defeated, threats defied, oppression challenged, etc. This raises the question, then, of what is the functionality of the vice-virtue-vice continuums on which Racism and Sexism exist?

Sexism is the easiest to start with as it pertains to the relationship between men and women. We can easily conceive of what a healthy relationship between the sexes looks like, and while many of the details – such as who wears the apron – could be open to debate, the most unquestionable aspect would simply be healthy reproduction rates relative to environment.

Sexism that did not achieve this would obviously be vicious, while Sexism that treated the woman as a mere baby-factory-until-death, “fuck bucket,” possession, or working drudge would also be obviously vicious. Socio-economic and environmental factors could, of course, impact on this equation to a significant degree. In earlier societies women would have to be treated as drudges and baby factories to a certain extent, as that was the necessity of the times.

This picture so triggered a liberal that it had to put a cross over it.

This means that vice and virtue have historical aspects. But, from our modern Western point of view, with our women having less than replacement birthrates, we can unequivocally say that we are suffering from a marked deficiency of Sexism that we can label “Feminism,” and that what is required is clearly more Sexism, i.e. forcing or encouraging women to take up a more traditional role as mothers.

If this is taken too far, to the point where we treat our women the same way that they are treated in backward Muslim and African countries, then we would be involved in a vice of excess, that we could term “Hyper-Sexism.” This would be an ill fit with our ideal of a technologically and culturally advanced, high-nurturing society; although it may actually have a certain rationale in those backward Muslim and African countries, as well as in parts of the welfarized West.

The functionality of Racism is not too difficult to elucidate either. It could be defined as maintaining and protecting the security and identity of the racial or ethnic group in question, without provoking undue enmity. In this respect it becomes abundantly clear that the modern West has a major racism problem in that it does not have enough racism. In 1965, Whites were 90% of the US population. They are projected to become a minority within less than a hundred years from that date. Western Europe faces a similar threat.

These facts on their own imply a serious lack of Racism among Whites, although part of the problem is also a deficiency of Sexism. This vice of deficiency of Racism can best be called Anti-Racism (as Race Blindness is a psychological impossibility). There is some question of what the vice of excess would look like in this case, but perhaps this could be defined as an attitude that creates a general sense of opprobrium for the group concerned that threatens its power, position, and survival in the wider world.

Black Hyper-Racism feeding on past White Hyper-Racism and present White Anti-Racism.

Historically, given the way subsequent events turned out, 1930s Nazism and 1980s Apartheid South Africa could be seen as examples of the vice of excess Racism (Hyper-Racism). If Nazism had adopted a less confrontational and more gradualist approach to solving its Jewish problem and revanchist claims, it could have perhaps avoided the vice of Hyper-Racism and its historical consequences. In the case of 1980s South Africa, given the global moral climate at the time, a more acceptable form of White power would have been partition into racially discrete states. Apartheid actually pushed in this direction in a very limited form with the creation of token Bantustans, when what it should have been doing was defining a White homeland with defensible boundaries. That would have provided a much more virtuous form of Racism and a much smaller target for the enemies of the White race to attack.

While Whites in America constantly suffer from a lack of virtuous Racism, American Blacks on the other hand provide a good example of an excess. Nowadays Blacks have little to fear from Whites, unless directly confronting a police officer (who happens to be White), nevertheless, as a group, they blame Whites for everything that is wrong with their lives, with zero gratitude for the fact that most of their handouts are paid for by White taxpayers.

Full article at Alternative Right.

Posted by clarifying how praxis requires phronesis on Mon, 08 Jun 2015 10:39 | #

I’ve rewritten this part:

....theoretical mindset misapplied to praxis: the social world, requiring negotiation, correction and adjustment by and for its interactive reflexivity and complex human agency; a complexity negotiated by means of phronesis - viz., practical judgement requiring of its kind of necessity therefore, a negotiated surveying process.

...hopefully that is more clear. If not, I will stay at it.

Posted by Hardot on Phronesis and Praxis on Wed, 10 Jun 2015 03:09 | #

repeat

Posted by Hardot on Phronesis and Praxis on Wed, 10 Jun 2015 09:41 | #

Hardot on what was the Routine Practice of Prhonesis and Praxis

Philosophy as a Way of Life - Greg Johnson

This volume demonstrates why Hadot is increasingly recognized as one of the most important interpreters of ancient philosophy in the world today.

Hadot argues that most modern scholars misunderstand the nature of ancient philosophy from Socrates to the rise of Christianity. Since the collapse of classical civilization, our primary access to ancient philosophy has been the written word: either the writings of the philosophers themselves or the reports of others about their lives and teachings. This has led to a tendency to interpret ancient philosophies as primarily theoretical in aim. Ancient philosophers, like the great speculative philosophers of the middle ages and the modern period, were supposedly concerned to elaborate comprehensive and consistent “systems” of ideas. And, like them, the ancients supposedly wrote to communicate these systems of ideas to the larger “republic of letters.”

Hadot, by contrast, argues that ancient philosophy was primarily practical in its aims, not theoretical. Wisdom was not identified with knowledge of the whole, but with happiness or well-being, which was to be attained by bringing about the proper internal ordering of the soul. Any and all accounts of the cosmos were subordinated to this goal. One did not have to be an original theorist in order to be a philosopher. Nor did one have to be current on the opinions of various theorists. Instead, one had only to adopt a particular way of life: a life centered on the pursuit of wisdom. Thus, one can be an original theorist or an erudite scholar, but not a philosopher in the classical sense. Just as professors who teach novels do not thereby call themselves novelists, so professors who teach philosophy should not thereby call themselves philosophers. Being a philosopher was not a matter of education or vocation, but a new way of being in the world arising from an internal spiritual conversion.

Hadot also stresses that ancient philosophers did not address themselves to a broad “republic of letters.” Instead, they organized themselves into insular schools. The founders of these schools were much more interested in cultivating relationships with their present and future students than with their “colleagues” (i.e., the founders of other schools). The primary mode of instruction in the ancient schools was oral, not written. Written texts were so inessential to the ancient schools that their leaders, such as Epictetus, sometimes wrote nothing at all. When the founder of a school died, his teachings were primarily passed on through an oral tradition. When and if texts were produced, they were always interpreted in light of the oral tradition. When these oral traditions died out, posterity was merely bequeathed texts without contexts. This has proved a formidable barrier to understanding the texts. (Hadot’s point here brings to mind the Catholic critique of Protestant fundamentalism: that tradition has priority over written texts, i.e., the Bible cannot be the foundation of a church, for the Bible was created by the Church and its meaning can be understood only within the context of its oral and institutional tradition.)

He also argues, based upon his vast knowledge of ancient pagan philosophers as well as patristic and medieval Christian writers, that the ancient pagan schools were not merely concerned with instruction, whether oral or written. They were also concerned with philosophical “practices,” what Hadot calls “spiritual exercises.” The goal of these spiritual exercises was to put the precepts of the schools into practice, to attain the proper inner ordering of the soul that constituted wisdom, virtue, and happiness. Most of these ancient spiritual exercises have not survived, although Hadot suggests that some of them may have survived, suitably transformed, in the practices of Christian monastic orders.

The best-documented spiritual exercises are those of the Stoics. Two lists of Stoic spiritual exercises are reported by Philo of Alexandria. Furthermore, Hadot argues that the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are best understood as written spiritual exercises. These spiritual exercises include self-monitoring, particularly of one’s value judgments, meditations on the precepts of the school, praemeditatio malorum (anticipation of evils) and other techniques for detaching oneself, and reminding oneself when one resolves upon a goal that its fruition depends upon fortune as well as upon one’s own efforts.

Hadot suggests that we interpret ancient philosophical texts not as presentations of doctrinal systems, but exercises in psychagogy (the art of leading souls). He demonstrates this exegetical method in two magisterial works: Plotinus, or: The Simplicity of Vision, trans. Michael Chase (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) and The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

....

In sum, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. (I would, however, recommend that one skip the introduction until one has read the book.) Hadot has revolutionized my understanding of how and why to read ancient philosophy. He rescues the ancients from the embalming rooms of academia and breathes new life into them. His writing, moreover, is lucid, elegant, and above all accessible. Philosophy deserves such a good book, and such a good book deserves the widest possible audience.

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The full article is at Counter-Currents.

http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/06/philosophy-as-a-way-of-life/#more-55619
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