Oeaohoo

Sam openly confessed and made explicit what more or less everybody on the so-called “left” believes today. The truth is that we have long lived in post-democratic states, abiding by the pure law of Schmittian power politics: “Sovereign is he who decides the exception”. The true sovereign of our times - an agglomeration of mass media, so-called “intellectuals” of a mostly liberal and cosmopolitan class (the worshipper of Holy Logic and avowed “atheist” Sam Harris himself being a case in point), and of course, as is always necessary, financial support from congenial elites - decided that Trump was an exception, an "existential threat to democracy", using their sovereignty to declare a “state of emergency” in which the usual rules no longer apply. Of course, Trump also tried to declare an anti-democratic “state of emergency” in which the usual rules would no longer have applied. He failed, however, because he was never the true sovereign of the Global American Empire (GAE). In this way, post-democracy is not even a matter of the democratic electoral process being compromised. It no longer matters who is elected into office because the Prime Minister or President is no longer sovereign over the state that he is supposed to rule. Trump only had to be removed, as Sam openly confessed, because, given his unpredictably and rash egotism, he was enough of a threat to the real sovereign. The real sovereign today - that is, if Henry Miller was not quite right to describe society today as “a stone forest, the centre of which was Chaos” - is non-governmental, spearheaded by non-governmental elites having a mastery over mass manipulation and decentralised control that the governmental elites can no longer match. Perhaps the “state of emergency” brought on by the pandemic gave the new dominant class a taste of this power. The War in Ukraine and the extremely incompetent and malignant mismanagement of it by the GAE, resulting in a recession and ensuing supply deficits, is slowly creating a new "state of emergency". No doubt new "states of emergency" will emerge to justify the regime in its desperate and impotent clinging on to power. This, as even Aristotle had already noted, is the way that tyrants operate. In this way, a universal cynicism regarding the supposed modern Western values of liberalism and democracy encroaches: it is no longer possible not to know that the entire paradigm of liberal democracy is outdated and no longer adequate to deal with the problems of our time; as such, nobody with any intellectual capacity today really believes in it. The dividing line of our politics is those who openly disavow democracy and those who disavow it whilst pretending to support it; in the latter case, “democracy” becomes a mere synonym for the triumph of their own agenda. A note on liberalism. Liberalism can only ever be a transitional phase between an old and a new form of order. Liberty in our context simply referred to the liberation of the old structures of discipline as a preparation for the reintroduction of new structures of control. This is the weakness of so many arguments from the so-called “right” today: libertarianism, free speech, gun rights and so on. All of these "liberties" could only ever have been temporary phenomena emerging from the death throes of the old (in this case, European Christian) order. All that we are witnessing today in everything that I have described above is the filling of the void left by the death of this old order, if for no other reason than that “nature abhors a vacuum”, by a new order which is just as illiberal as the old one. In this way, we live not only post-democratic but also in post-liberal states.

Who’s a good girl!

These two ideas are perfectly harmonious. With time, mankind becomes increasingly separate from its origin as pure consciousness. As a result of this, the sanctity of this original state is forgotten. Therefore, wisdom is a remembrance of this sanctity and origin. As time goes on, this wisdom becomes an increasingly rare phenomenon… What has to be understood is that the pursuit of spiritual awakening is a going against the grain of decay and entropy. This is true on both a micro- and macrocosmic level. As each individual naturally loses connection with his origins, only regaining the sanctity of his primordial state through spiritual disciplines of various kinds, so the world itself loses this connection. That is why humanity has become more and more materialistic and disconnected from consciousness. Even so-called “spirituality” today is largely materialistic: physical yoga, drugs, “tantric sex” practices… Exactly. Plato overemphasises the Being (transcendent) aspect whereas modern philosophers emphasise the Becoming (imminent) aspect. The idea that oneness is a result of historical development is obviously absurd. How could you develop toward oneness? It already is what it is. Indeed, a very good question… The point of societal unfoldment is to provide a space and a time for people to awaken from the dream of space and time. The profundity and beauty of the original state of the world lures people into existence, whilst the decay and entropy which gradually set in force them to return to their original state. After all, when we are talking about history we are talking about a grand illusion.

Likewise!

Yet, only a few days ago, you were all too enthralled by the idea that: “All this demonization of the ego is so foolhardy!! The ego= your human life”…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism You’re probably right. Obviously, I’m being one-sided and hyperbolic. I am only doing so because, like Leo, a lot of people here seem to esteem him much too highly. Even if the things he talks about are of some interest and value, it strikes me that their real value is not practical but idealistic. There is never going to be any Game B society: like the user Devin has tried to show above, it is a total pipe-dream. To the extent that anyone believes that this is what is coming, they deserve a bit of mockery. However, perhaps it is like what Plato said when people were criticising his Republic for being too idealistic:

Whether or not he has some vague and woolly conception of everything being interconnected and part of one “meta-mind” (that would probably be his expression!), it is obvious that his proscriptions for society are essentially human-oriented.

I don’t see it as just frivolous nonsense. This parody gets to the heart of things that are deeply questionable about the leader of this forum’s teachings. Besides, someone who quotes RuPaul and thinks Justin Trudeau is a good leader has no right to tell anyone else to stop the nonsense! We’ve spoken plenty! Even if you and a few others maybe take me somewhat seriously, it is not much compared to Leo’s following. Given the obvious absurdity, which I have tried to demonstrate above, of a great deal of his mentality and what he preaches, a few of us poking holes in it from time to time seems warranted. Like most people today, however, he is such a narcissist that he can only interpret it as “toxic gaslighting”!

What difference does that make? I have such little influence within this society - if there even are societies to speak of today - that my prescription might as well be that everyone can exchange their old car for a unicorn and live on nutrition-enriched air alone! The same could be said for Schmachtenberger… Thinking on it, the main issue I have with him is that he seems to believe in the possibility of a “man-made” society. I don’t believe that a man-made society has ever existed or that it ever could: societies are created by God, preserved by God and ultimately destroyed by God. Of course, spokesmen for the cynical and truly nihilistic modern mentality will say: “Nonsense! Society is just human monkey business! There was no revelation or divine ordination and consecration in the past! That was all just a primitive superstitious fantasy which our modern, progressive and enlightened state has overcome”. So be it! Such people only say such things because the only business they are capable of is monkey business. It is so funny that people around here talk all the time about the “non-duality” of God, the “transcendent becoming imminent and the imminent becoming transcendent”, “emptiness being form and form being emptiness”, and all the other Greatest Hits of the New Age parrot choir. Yet the idea of Revelation or of a society being ordered by and around God is as absurd to them as Fascism or Jihad. Truly bizarre!

The difference is that nobody takes me seriously!

The perfect satire of Schmachtenberger and all of his kind:

How do people awaken? In all sorts of ways. Ideally, and ordinarily in prior times, through a mastery of some spiritual discipline. In most cases today, separation makes people miserable and they start looking for a way out of their misery. They grow in separation simply because time itself is a movement away from the original manifestation of the world out of consciousness. As time goes on, the memory of this origin becomes more distant. You don't have to take my word for it: what else did Plato mean when he said that all real understanding is remembering? The process that I have described is essentially that which every religion describes, albeit with certain variations and adaptations given the specific time and place. The end of time is the point at which the world is no longer serving any purpose. The salt has lost it's saltiness and so on... The world at this point is withdrawn back into pure consciousness and created anew. This process repeats itself indefinitely. When they finally wake up? Like you said, consciousness has realised itself and they collapse into Oneness!

This earth and this society. Organised degeneracy on a global scale. That is comparable to hell!

How on earth is that equivalent to nihilism?

In hell, Schmachtenberger chooses to analyse the flames; I choose to try to wake whoever I can up before getting the hell out of here!

Of course but these two phenomena really go together: a dumbed down mainstream culture and an overly "nuanced" crowd analysing it from the sidelines. Both of them "miss the boat"! Hell on earth. Mistaking itself for a new Heaven... Of course they don't! They are too "nuanced" for that... This is exactly what I mean. These people are such spineless effeminate molluscs that they lack the capacity to ever stand up for anything. Just a bunch of cosmopolitan intellectuals convincing themselves that they are saving the world simply by analysing its destruction!

I was just pointing out a way in which they are the same: mentally masturbating so as to avoid the obvious reality that confronts them. Obviously they are very different thinkers in other ways. Not obvious, to the spiritually blind... You know that Al-Dajjal, the Islamic Antichrist, is one-eyed? He only has an eye for the material dimension. Only a one-eyed man could fail to see contemporary civilisation for what it is! Probably not. Then again, even if he ultimately failed, Nietzsche was one of the last philosophers with the capacity for a holistic vision. The problem with people like Schmachtenberger is that they are so addicted to their compartmentalised and "nuanced" worldview that they fail to ever look upon reality with a complete and unwavering gaze. You yourself have described his work as "analysis". Do you think that mere analysis will cut it? At least Nietzsche understood the relevance of immanence and not just transcendence...

We were just playing around with rhyming phrases. Who knows, maybe Hegel had some deep experiences in his life. He probably did. Consciousness begins as itself; then it manifests a world of sentient beings who still remember and are connected with their divine origin; as time progresses, the distance between these creatures and their creator deepens and they forget who they really are; this process continues until, by the end of time, they have become completely lost in the dream of their separateness; at this point, consciousness realises itself once again and collapses everything back into Oneness. Those beings who had recognised their real nature within this cyclic process are liberated and do not return to limited and separate existence. The rest go round and round in this fashion until they finally wake up... This is the true vision of history. Anything else is "petty human bullshit"!

Things may be complex but what about the “one thing needful”? Have you noticed how all philosophers of the last hundred years or so use an extremely idiosyncratic, rarefied and abstruse vocabulary? Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan... One has to study their works for months to have the slightest idea what they are on about. Why do you think this is? I think it is because the appropriate analysis of contemporary civilisation is so obvious that one has to create an elaborate system of thought so as not to see it for what it is! The obvious truth is that there is no Game B. Degeneracy has triumphed everywhere. All the nuance in the world is not going to be able to put all of this evil back inside Pandora's box. And do you remember the one evil which remained in Pandora's box after all the others had been unleashed? Hope. That is all these people are providing you with: false promises that team "nuance" is going to triumph over Satan himself...

Never mind that. To quote a much more profound man than the one above, the Italian esotericist Julius Evola: ‘His enemies claimed that Seth [the Egyptian God of destruction, chaos and foreigners who murdered his “good” brother Osiris] had abandoned his people, that he had confused them. But they couldn’t see beyond their noses. The confusion was in their heads. No, Seth had clear vision: you have to be a mischief maker in a society of idiots, of democrats, of molluscs. They of course will repay you with hatred, or indifference. Exile you to the wilderness of anonymity, to the desert of insignificance. They don’t realise they do you a favour. It is good being away from the riffraff! Seth had got it right. I could never have been a priest, not a priest of any monotheistic religion - my caste is warriors - but, a priest of Seth, perhaps…’ Thanks, sister. I think what bothers me most about these “intellectuals” is how neutered they are. They don’t call it neutered; they call it “nuance”! Isn’t it interesting that nuance is etymologically derived from the Latin word nubes, that is to say “a cloud, mist, vapor”? As what remains of our world slowly evaporates into the clouds of a tepid and bland universalism, it is only natural that an “intellectual” class would emerge who represent this trend; and that those who mistake this evaporation for “progress” would proceed to follow them… What really is “nuance”? The failure to have the courage of ones convictions; a retreat into the abstract realm of ideas, the peace and renewal that come from this being mistaken for “love” and “acceptance”; a tacit acquiescence to whatever are the current “terms of the debate”, and the vague sense of belonging that may come of this; exploring the endless ramifications of a certain set of logical axioms, and even being willing to play with other sets in the same way. What does any of this have to do with truth? Therefore, for those who would happily sing along to the French proverb “Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner!” (To understand all is to forgive all!) I would repeat this passage of Nietzsche’s Antichrist:

Why thank you… Stop or you’ll make me blush!

Stage Beige. If only because it’s the only one that rhymes!

This guy is so lame. I’d never before seen anyone who has a head shoved so far up their ass that they have their head in the clouds! What are “Rebel Wisdom” rebelling against? The meta-attempt to destroy the foundations of sense-making in the neo-feudal exponential tech space? What a lot of rubbish.

Sam Harris: “It was a left-wing conspiracy to deny the presidency to Donald Trump. Absolutely, it was - but I think it was warranted.” (37 minutes) Steady on, Sam… Don’t give the game away so easily!