The Weekly Eudemon: Recent Episodes
Eric Scheske
Widely-published author, speaker, and lawyer, Eric Scheske, offers weekly commentary on a host of matters, ranging from current events to philosophy to religion.
Modernity is the left hemisphere gone wild. Gnosticism, with its dualistic approach and emphasis on knowledge that gives salvation and control, is a left-hemispheric political religion that thrived during the twentieth century and has today settled in as the dominant cultural disposition that drives public debate. Today’s powerful elites aren’t gnostics, but they ride their left hemispheres like cocaine-fueled jockeys on rabid horses. Because gnosticism and today’s powerful elites are dominated by the left hemisphere, they’re natural allies and they’re coming together in a final effort to do what modernity has been trying to do for centuries: eliminate altogether the Tao part of The Reality Spectrum. It can’t be done, short of eliminating humanity altogether, so the Tao continues to manifest itself in all sorts of ways.
Show notes here
Pick four traits. The last one must be "victim."
It's because we live in a gnostic culture that rails against the evil "structure." If there's a structure, there must be victims of the structure.
Show notes
Belief in a structure drives the gnostic. Without a structure to defeat, the gnostic has no purpose.Ancient Gnosticism Presupposed an Elaborate Cosmological Structure of EvilAncient gnosticism used the ancient cosmic system: The earth was in the center, surrounded by the air and spheres: sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and a ring of fixed stars that close it all off.
That was more-or-less accepted astronomical science around the time of Christ. It was nothing novel.
But the ancient gnostic took the cosmological system one step further: it taught that the cosmological system was a prison.
Every ancient gnostic sect taught this idea. Most sects said the cosmos was the creation of an evil god, the “Demiurge,” who created the cosmos as a structure of deception. The Demiurge then outfitted the structure with demons and archons who acted as prison guards to make sure no one got out of this cosmological prison.
Gnosticism offered liberation from the prison. The cosmological prison was the sine qua non of gnosticism: If existence wasn’t a prison, the gnostic’s product—knowledge, the map, the plan for escaping the prison—was worthless.
Gnosticism without a structural evil to overcome is like football, baseball, or basketball without a ball.
Show notes here
Did you take a sociology class in high school or college?
Did you know sociology’s founder, August Comte (1798-1857), was kind of a dick? The Encyclopedia Britannicasays he was “ungrateful,” “self-centered,” and “egocentric.” If those aren’t bad enough, other biographers say he was a megalomaniac, cruel, and downright nuts.
Comte, on the other hand, considered himself a relevant man, to put it modestly. He was born at the end of the Enlightenment and fully embraced its ideals,[1]which Isaiah Berlin summarized as:
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Every genuine question can be answered. If it can’t be answered, it’s not a genuine question.
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The answers to the questions can be discovered, learned, and taught.
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All the answers are compatible with one another.
Those ideals are captured perfectly by science. Science is the discipline of power: it answers questions and puts them into neat boxes. Physics is especially good at this.
Comte concluded that the principles of physics could be applied to society: “social physics” is what he initially called it before calling it “sociology.”
By applying scientific findings and mathematical truths to social interactions, the government and its intellectual advisers could greatly improve society.
He was positive it would work. He was so positive, in fact, that he popularized the term “Positivism” to describe his and other contemporary academics’ extremely positive expectations of science
Comte was hailed as an academic hero. The French erected statues and monuments in his honor and named streets after him. He had replaced the hidebound restrictions of tradition, king, and pope with the only thing that could be trusted: science, bolstered by math. No more religion, just facts.
SHOW NOTES HERE
This is a podcast episode from "Outside the Modern Limits," a whimsical newsletter that comes out every Saturday that is geared toward helping people understand and thrive in modernity. You can subscribe and find the show notes here.
“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” Rousseau
Rousseau’s passage from the beginning of The Social Contract contends for the most famous in philosophy.
Rousseau’s point was simple: Humans are good, but there’s a lot of suffering, so social institutions must be corrupting everything.
Significantly, Rousseau didn’t see any problems with himself. He was arguably the most self-centered philosopher of all time. He was so self-centered, biographers wonder if he was even capable of love. He said of his long-time mistress, a lowly laundress that he,
Never felt the lease glimmering of love for her . . . the sensual needs I satisfied with her were purely sexual.
When those sensual needs resulted in five children, he put them into orphanages, which, given the state of orphanages in the 18thcentury, was practically a sentence of torture and early death: only five percent of orphan children survived to adulthood, and most of the adult survivors became beggars and vagabonds.
Full show notes here
You can find my essay about the first gnostic trait here
A Diagnostic of the Gnostic
Eric Voegelin was to modern gnosticism what Knute Rockne was to Notre Dame football. Rockne didn’t start the ND football program and Voegelin didn’t discover modern gnosticism, but they took their subjects to much higher levels.
The Swiss theologian, Hans urs Von Balthasar was supposedly the first person to draw parallels between the ancient gnostic heresy and modern theories in Prometheus (1937), which examined modern German thought. Albert Camus did a similar thing with modern French thought in The Rebel (1951).[1]
But Voegelin took the strain of thought much further in The New Science of Politics (1952). The book became a Time cover story and, voila, gnosticism was in the limelight, a least among nerds.
Granted, later in life, Voegelin said he wasn’t sure “gnosticism” was the best term to use and thought perhaps it received too much attention, but he didn’t remotely conclude that the term didn’t work. Far from it. Later in life, at age 67, he published his most popular work, Science, Politics and Gnosticism (1968).
Show Note Here
Brains beat brawn. The Titan Prometheus knew that. He joined Zeus in his battle against the Titans.
Prometheus later befriended the race of men. He saved them when Zeus thought about extinguishing them. He taught them arts and science. He gave them tools. Zeus increasingly found Prometheus’ promotion of the human race tiresome and troublesome.
And then Prometheus gave humans the gift of fire, in direct violation of Zeus’ orders.
Zeus was livid. He ordered Prometheus bound: Kratos (Power) and Bia (Force) held him while Hephaestus fettered him to a chain on a crag hanging over the Black Sea. An eagle came every day and ate his liver, which regenerated every night.
Show notes here
For the fortunate few, that router is hard-wired with fiber optic. Most of us only get a wireless connection, and a wobbly one at that.
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If you want to understand how gnosticism flourishes in our modern world, you need to understand why it developed in the ancient world.
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Solon opened Athens to true order: the transformative order found through the Tao.
Show notes here.
Within 100 years, the Cartesians used impeccable logic derived from Descartes' I think there I am to reach two conclusions: there is no earthly agent of movement and there is no matter. There is only God and mind. Hume yanked God and mind out of these conclusions and the Cartesian Jenga tower came tumbling down.
Show notes here
Something really bizarre happened around the year 500 BC, all across Eurasia. We started to realize that we live in the metaxy: an area comprised of transcendence and immanence. These ten thinkers, from Italy to China, led the way.
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Voegelin was not charismatic. He was a “gentleman thinker.” He didn’t like small talk and valued his time. His personality didn’t attract a cult-like following. He didn’t establish a school or movement. But he’s important.
Show notes here
Before he published the Prince, Machiavelli published the seducer. Before he published a masterpiece of political philosophy, he published a comedy.
The Mandragola (The Mandrake) tells the story of Callimaco, a handsome young man and seducer of women. He hears about the Florentine beauty Lucrezia and begins a conspiracy to seduce her. The problem is, she’s married. She’s married to a wealthy old man who can’t get her pregnant and they need a son to maintain their political position.
Callimaco shows up, disguised as a doctor, and convinces her husband to give her a mandrake potion to increase her fertility. The problem is, Callimaco tells the old man, the first man who sleeps with her after she takes the potion will die. They decide to find an unwitting dupe to have sex with her. Callimaco, in different disguise, becomes the dupe, much to his delight. And Lucrezia’s. She at first was hesitant, but she relented and, convinced it was divine providence, takes Callimaco as her lover indefinitely.
Everything turns out well. The old man gets his male heir and Callimaco gets Lucrezia.
Show notes here
A 50-year-old man had ritual sex with a 12-year-old girl while adult women assisted.
And everyone was cool with it.
That’s just part of the bizarre story told in Netflix’s Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey and the exploits of its prophet, Warren Jeffs.
Keep Sweet’s Fascination
It’s the story of a renegade Mormon group that still practice polygamy. Vigorous polygamy, especially the type that lets old men bang young women and, occasionally, girls.
It’s the kind of thing that disgusts, but it also arouses, at least at some level. Sex sells for a reason. Keep Sweet did, its IMDB rating currently sitting at 7.3 with 11,000 reviews (Netflix’s Murder Mountain, which enjoyed the endorsement of Joe Rogan, sits at 6.8 with 3,200 reviews).
But I don’t think sex is the only reason Keep Sweetfascinates.
I think it fascinates because, although everyone understands the sex part, they can’t understand how an entire culture could allow such a thing to occur.
If It Doesn’t Fit, Put It on the Shelf
The docuseries tries to explain it, but every interview or explanation came down to the same thing: it’s how these people were raised. It was the only thing these people knew. They were raised in a polygamous culture that celebrated their prophet. If the prophet told girls to do something—or someone—they did it/him.
If something didn’t make sense, they were told to “put it on the shelf.”
And just as the lechery of old men resonates with all men at some level, this kind of rationality resonates too.
These girls who submitted to sex with old men, the parents who gave their consent the women who participated in the erotic ritual: they acted rationally.
It’s All Rational
That’s the real dirty secret in the docuseries and another reason why, besides the sex, it fascinates.
We’re all capable of such a thing.
Not because of our nethers.
But because of our brains.
Show notes here
You're soaked in modernity. You think like a modern. It's not good. Consider doing the opposite of whatever your rationality tells you to do.
Show note here
Your reason isn’t reasonable.
Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it.
And smoke it and smoke it and smoke it, until you smoke rationality out of your head, until a love for the absurd fills your lungs, and until you breathe the fresh air of freedom.
Let me explain.
“I Don’t See Why” When I look back over my adult life and wince at the unfortunate things I did, there’s a common theme: the inner dialogue that began and concluded with, “I don’t see why” or its negative shade, “I don’t see why not.” I didn’t see why, or see why not, so I did X, Y, or Z. And X, Y, or Z turned out awful for me or others.
Most of us carry the assumption that we can do whatever we want unless our reason tells us not to.
Unfortunately, this tends to be almost identical to the assumption that we can do whatever we want. As Pascal said, as Freud argued, as current studies about cognitive biases show: our minds aren’t nearly as reasonable as we think.
It’s one thing to spend long hours in study, contemplation, and dialogue with advisers and friends to form your conscience when it comes to a weighty matter. It’s another thing to do something merely because your reason doesn’t explain why you shouldn’t.
The former is a sign of wisdom. The latter is a sign that your mind suffers from Modernitis.
Definition “Modernitis”: A mental disease, rarely diagnosed, marked by intuitive confidence in one’s ideas and the findings of science.
It’s rarely diagnosed for the same reason a rational fish wouldn’t know it’s wet. A mental disease that afflicts everyone becomes a sign of mental health.
Descartes was the main philosopher that spread Modernitis. There were other causes and other philosophers contributed, sure, but he was the main culprit.
He died in 1650, a celebrity and conqueror. His ideas had spread; his ideas had won. Modernitis became a sign of mental health.
The effects were seen everywhere.
Show notes here
Descartes was a philosophical surgeon who lobotomized common sense from the modern mind without most people even noticing. It helped that western civilization was thoroughly prepped and anesthetized for the procedure.
Show notes here.
Descartes, by placing ultimate importance on one's ideas, gave credibility to the outrageous ideas that littered modernity.
Lycurgus put the “Spartan” into Sparta.
Before Lycurgus, Sparta was like other Greek cities. Its citizens sang, celebrated love and good food, wrote poetry, and crafted fine pottery.
After Lycurgus, Sparta became grim and tough, determined to keep its slave class under control despite the daunting slave-to-citizen ratio (10:1?).
Music, poetry, fine pottery, and good food vanished. Family and love remained, but in twisted forms.
Men were discouraged from marrying small wives. Men with vigorous wives were encouraged to lend them to vigorous men. Men who grew too old to service their young wives were expected to make her available to young men.
The newborn was brought before a state council of inspectors. If rejected, the baby was thrown from a cliff.
At age seven, boys were removed from their families and raised by the state in barracks. Martial training was everything and done in the nude. The teachers provoked quarrels among the boys so they’d fight. An annual ritual involved whipping several boys until their blood stained the ground. At age 12, each boy received only one garment to wear for the year. He was not allowed to bathe much and was required to sleep in the open, on a bed of rushes. He was taught to read and write, but barely. He was taught to forage and steal. Stealth was valued above all, and getting caught doing whatever—stealing, trying to bang one’s own wife—brought punishment (great shame, flogging, etc.). At age 30, if the boy survived all this, he was admitted to full citizenship.
Show notes here
A Cistercian monk in Austria writes eruditely about David Foster Wallace. He appears to embrace "The Bridge Option" when dealing with modernity: embracing postmodernity and premodernity . . . bypassing modernity.
Show notes here
He sat on his mother’s couch, smoking marijuana and watching the McCarthy hearings, cheering Tail Gunner Joe. He was 32 and it was 1954. In his 20s and the 1940s, he said he’d like to join his Russian comrades and fight against Fascism.
He coined the term “Beat Generation” which became the proto-countercultural movement of the 1960s. He detested the 1960s counterculture, noting that the Beatnik’s was a movement of enthusiasm and glee, not one of disgruntled whining.
He took Benzedrine, morphine, marijuana, hashish, LSD, and opium. He saw a statue of Mary turn its head.
He died at age 47 from hemorrhaging of the esophagus, the drunkard’s classic death. His corpse held a rosary and his funeral Mass was held at St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church.
Such was the short life of Jack Kerouac.
He was hip before it was hip, crisscrossing America in the late 1940s, from New York to Denver to San Francisco, with stops in Des Moines, Chicago, New Orleans, and points in-between, with a jaunt into Mexico City.
He wrote about it during a Benzedrine-fueled three-week writing session in 1951, typing onto rolls of paper that were taped together into a long scroll so he didn’t have to stop to change the paper. When Truman Capote heard that Kerouac had written the book in three weeks, he sneered, “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”
But youngsters disagreed. They lapped up the book when it was published in 1957 and took to the road, seeking to become Beats.
Show notes here
Montaigne was the godfather of modern skepticism. His was a “negative skepticism,” which disturbed Descartes enough to prompt him to come up with a positive response, which in turn gave us modernity, its fierce subjectivism, and the parade of “little gods” that have marred the last 200 years.
Show notes here
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The wise know they start each morning as beginners. Robin Daniels
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"In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention." Simone Weil
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"My experience is what I agree to attend to." William James
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"To enjoy the kind of experience you want rather than enduring the kind that you feel stuck with, you have to take charge of your attention." Winifred Gallagher, Rapt
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"Choice of attention--to pay attention to this and ignore that--is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be." W.H. Auden
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Your life is the sum of what you focus on. Winifred Gallagher
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"The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." William James
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"Attention is the withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others." William James
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The best response to distractions is no response. Robin Daniels
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"Energy flows where attention goes." Amishi Jha
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If you stay focused on the right things, your life will stop being a mere reaction to circumstances but rather a work of art. Winifred Gallagher
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Every saint's life is a work of art.
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Being focused is the next best thing to being happy. Winifred Gallagher
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Resign yourself to mere concentration, and you might get some happiness too.
Show notes here.
Bacon’s books proposed a new method of inquiry.
In technical language, he proposed that we rely on induction instead of deduction.
Put a little more simply: Instead of trying to deduce truth from a priori principles and making our observations match the principles, he said we should make our observations and reach a posteriori conclusions from the observations.
Put as simply as possible: Instead of using dogmas to tell us what the science says, let’s just see what the science says.
Bacon was very serious about the rejection of dogmas. He admonished readers to eliminate “Idols” that cloud scientific studies and conclusions. His was a complete rejection of metaphysics when it came to the realm of physics. Separation of church and science. He is properly considered the Father of Empiricism.
The fourteenth century was an era of singular richness in the history of Christian mysticism. Frank Tobin, Henry Suso, The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons.
The 1300s. Europe in the grips of economic depression, war, and natural catastrophes. Europe still experiencing the spiritual wake left by the lives of Saints Francis and Dominic. A deep concern with the interior life seized large numbers of people, both clergy and laity, and the pursuit of inwardness became an intense and exclusive goal of many.
The ones who made the most progress were like today’s American Idol contestants. They made it to the top and everyone wanted to listen to them.
- Richard Rolle (1300–1349) “Little wonder when a man is first made a true contemplative, and tastes the sweetness and then feels the warmth, that he almost dies through excess of love.”
Richard Rolle: ladies’ man. Women were a source of temptation in his youth, an object of tender concern as a spiritual father in his prime. Most of his written works are devotions for his female listeners. Our culture can’t imagine this, of course. Or rather, our culture can imagine this only too much, letting its imagination run to the lascivious. He lived 31 of his 49 years as a hermit. The only Englishman on this list. Never canonized, but inspired a flourishing cult in England, where his books were more widely read than Chaucer’s in the 1400s. Sometimes credited as the first master of English prose.
- Gerard Groote (1340–1384) All show notes here
Show notes here
Rene Descartes was kind of a dick.
His famous saying, “I think, therefore I am,” is nothing less than a wholesale rejection of all authority—even objective truth—in favor of a defecated rationality and fierce subjectivism that belittles anything outside one’s own mind.
The modern attitude created by Descartes does two things:
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It enshrines one’s own beliefs or preferences as the exclusive source of truth (fierce subjectivism).
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It elevates the logic that flows from that fierce subjectivism (defecated rationality) into a truth (my truth, your truth, his/her/its truth, etc.).
If you draw a thick cocaine line from Descartes to today’s Trans Wars, you’d be drawing coke lines better than Hunter Thompson.
Accused of being an atheist, Descartes claimed to be a “devout Catholic,”[i]but he left his Catholic France to live among the Calvinists and Jews in the Netherlands. He espouses odd (and bizarre) theories about the soul. He spent his final days as the court philosopher for the Lutheran Queen Christina of Sweden and died without Last Rites.
One academic thinks that Descartes was such a poor Catholic that a priest thought his example would prevent Queen Christina from converting to Catholicism, so the priest poisoned the father of modernity by lacing a host with arsenic. The story doesn’t ring true—a priest who cares enough about Catholicism wouldn’t desecrate the host like that—but hey, the Queen converted after Descartes’ death so maybe.
The Pope thought Descartes was kind of a dick. Urban VIII put Descartes’ writings on the Index of Forbidden Books about a dozen years after Descartes died.
Pascal Surpassed Descartes But most people thought Descartes was brilliant. He was the toast of Europe. But Descartes wasn’t the smartest guy in Europe. Heck, he wasn’t even the smartest guy in France.
A young upstart was his intellectual superior. Descartes knew it and resented it (did I mention Descartes was kind of a dick?).
When the 16-year-old Blaise Pascal published a mathematical paper on conic sections when Descartes was 43, Descartes knew he’d been eclipsed when he was at the height of his intellectual power and reputation. At first, he refused to believe someone as young as Pascal could’ve written something so impressive, but when he learned that it was true, Descartes turned to belittling him. When Pascal invented the syringe and the hydraulic press, Descartes mocked him and said Pascal had “too much vacuum in his head.”
No, that isn’t a passage above the front door of Jeffrey Epstein’s residence on Little Saint James.
It’s a popular saying of a medieval sect known as the “Brethren of the Free Spirit,” which has long been regarded, according to historian Norman Cohn, as “one of the most perplexing and mysterious phenomena in medieval history.”
So perplexing, in fact, that Cohn himself conflated a genuine mystic, Henry Suso (1300-1366), with the Brethren. Suso, a disciple of Meister Eckhart, was one of the most Zen-like mystics in Christian history. Zen has Gnostic tendencies, but Suso was a legitimate mystic, as evidenced by his beatification in 1831.[1]
Suso lived in Cologne, Germany, which was the stronghold of the Brethren, but he was hardly like the Brethren of the Free Spirit.
Consider Suso's direct contemporary and fellow Colognian, John of Brunn, who lived at the Brethren’s House of Voluntary Poverty.
According to Brunn, since God is free, everything should be free: held in common. If anyone had more than he needed, it was merely so he could give them to the Brethren. If an adept ate at a tavern, he shouldn’t have to pay and, if the tavern keeper insisted on payment, he should be beaten. Cheating, theft, and violent robbery were all justified for Brethren adepts, according to John Brunn, who also testified in 1340 to lying, fornicating, orgies, incest, sodomy, and murder (including infanticide).
Show notes here
The Renaissance Believed in Magic Like Moderns Believe in Science In 1598, a huge renegade friar organized a revolt to liberate Calabria from Spain.
Tommaso Campanella started the revolt with astrology: he announced to his followers that the stars portended great changes and revolution. He then added numerology, noting that the numbers agreed with the stars: the year 1600 was approaching and 16 is numerologically significant.[i]
The new century, Campanella preached, would mark the dawn of a new age—an age with a better religious cult, better moral laws, and an excellent ruler (to wit, Campanella, who thought he was astrologically destined to bring the world into the new age).
In order to prepare for the new age, Campanella taught it was first necessary to overthrow Spanish rule, but he believed so strongly in his personal magical powers and the magical signs that he scarcely prepared for Spain’s inevitable response. His “revolution” was quickly crushed and Campanella was imprisoned for 27 years.
During his imprisonment, he channeled his Utopian-magical desires into writing. In Citta del Sole (The City of the Sun), he drafted a blueprint for his ideal city, a mountain city ruled by a priest named Hoh. Hoh and his bureaucratic aides would rule over sex relations, which would be organized to bring about the best humans. There would be no mental or physical disabilities. All things would be held in common, including the women, and children would be raised by the community. Both sexes would be trained to fight. Everyone would work, but only four hours per day. Everyone would practice perfect virtue, and there would be no crime.[ii]
The City's structure would be dictated by astrology. It would be divided into seven divisions named after the seven planets (Neptune and Pluto hadn’t been discovered yet). The walls which divided each division would be covered with astrological depictions. In the middle of the City, there would be a vast temple with an altar containing a great "mappamondo" on which all the heavens would be depicted. The dome would contain the greatest stars with a listing of the powers each has over the earth. In short, Campanella's City was "a complete reflection of the world as governed by the laws of natural magic in dependence on the stars” and was "saturated through and through with astrology."[iii]
The Magical Renaissance Remaining show notes here
He first articulated the western mystical tradition. We don’t even know who he was. But he pointed to the Tao.
Show notes here.
Thomas Aquinas was an existentialist, in his own way. His existentialism was forgotten . . . to western civilization's detriment.
Show notes here.
My daughter sent this Existential Comic to me. It shows three ancient philosophers competing in the Philosophy event at the Greek Olympics: Thales, who declares everything is water. Zeno, who declares motion is impossible. Socrates, who declares they’re full of bulls***.
Socrates won.
But of course, he didn’t really win: he refuted nothing.
His refutation was even worse than Samuel Johnson’s stone-kicking “refutation” of George Berkeley.
It’s a well-worn anecdote: Samuel Johnson and his companion, James Boswell, stood outside church in 1763, talking about George Berkeley’s startling philosophical conclusion that matter doesn’t exist.
Here’s how it works: We only perceive matter’s characteristics. That green thing has four legs, a flat surface, and a horizontal surface. Our mind then combines those things to declare “chair.” But we don’t perceive chair. We only perceive the things that comprise the chair and, therefore, the chair itself doesn’t really exist. Since all things are mere combinations of other things that we perceive in their relation to other things, nothing really exists. Everything is just our ideas. All is mind. There is no matter.
Boswell said, though it can’t be true, it’s impossible to refute.
“Johnson,” Boswell wrote in his famous biography, “answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone . . . ‘I refute it thus.’”
That ended the discussion, but Boswell concluded the story by noting that he would’ve loved to have seen a genius like Johnson contend with Berkeley since Berkeley’s ideas could not be “answered by pure reasoning.” David Hume reached a similar conclusion about Berkeley’s ideas: “they admit of no answer and produce no conviction.”
They cannot be answered by pure reasoning
Zeno: There is no motion. Berkeley: There is no matter. We could add a few other philosophers into this tradition: Parmenides: There is no change. Derrida: There is no reality.
None of them could be refuted but none of them convinced anyone with a shred of ingenuousness or common sense. They probably didn’t even believe their own conclusions, and I can guaran-freakin’-tee to you that they didn’t live by their own conclusions.
But they couldn’t be refuted.
Why?
I think that lecher (and tosspot) Boswell hit on the answer: they could not “be answered by pure reasoning.”
There is something about reality that transcends reason: something not subject to reason, something that can’t be defined, something that defies capture by words.
Enter the realm beyond language and reason
This piece is a follow-up of sorts to last week’s post: “Are You Engaged in the Act of Existence? Then You’re a Man of the Tao.”
The “Act of Existence,” I pointed out last week, is prior to all else. The Act of Existence is prior to essence and attributes, which are prior to existence itself. Because the Act of Existence is prior to all else, it informs all else.
Importantly, all else doesn’t inform it. The part doesn’t capture the whole, the son doesn’t define the father.
So the world of essence and existence isn’t going to define the Act of Existence.
Words and reason are the tools of the world of essence. Essence is prior to existence, so essence’s tools paint existence as well.
But the Act of Existence is prior to it all.
That’s how Berkeley and Zeno and Derrida can be 100% logical and 100% wrong at the same time.
Ah, a paradox! Now we’re getting someplace
It’s a paradox.
Get used to it.
Everything informed by reality (the “Reality Spectrum,” I called it last week) is a paradox. I remember listening to an interview with Ian McGilchrist last year. He was describing a roundtable discussion with other heavyweight intellectuals that hit upon two contradictory statements that were both true. One of the participants lit up and said, “Ah, a paradox! Now we’re getting someplace.”
Exactly.
The Reality Spectrum is someplace. It’s everyplace. If you deny it, you’ll never get anyplace. You’ll reach conclusions: but nothing will be concluded. You’ll be right: but you’ll be wrong.
If you deny the Reality Spectrum, you’re playing poker without the face cards. You might draw a straight flush, 6 through 10, and reach for the pot, then the other guy will lay down four kings. You’ll see that you lost, but you won’t understand why. The full deck of the Reality Spectrum transcends your partial deck of essence/existence only. The partial deck can win hands, but in the long game, the full deck will win.
Maniacs are commonly great reasoners
In Chapter II of his classic book, Orthodoxy, G.K Chesterton describes “the maniac.”
“Maniacs,” GKC observed, “are commonly great reasoners.”
But they’re still maniacs because they reason within a very closed circle.
The maniac’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory.
If the maniac says six guys have a conspiracy against him, then you tell him, “I spoke to each one of them. They assure me they don’t,” the maniac says, “That’s what conspirators would say.”
And he’d be right.
The argument itself can’t be broken. In order to get anywhere with the maniac, you have to break open his little world.
For the maniac who relies solely on reason, you have to break open his reality of essence à existence only. You have to get him to see the Act of Existence: the Tao. You need to get him on the Reality Spectrum.
But you can’t use reason to do it.
Something else is needed.
It’s sometimes humor. When you juxtapose something next to the maniac’s stilted reality that he didn’t expect, he might laugh and inadvertently let in more reality.
But sometimes something harsher is needed. A jolt of sorts. Maybe a near-death experience. Maybe the birth of a child.
Or maybe someone wise just telling him he’s full of bulls*** and kicking a rock at him.
My daughter runs.
She runs in the morning, she runs at night. Runs, runs, runs.
People around town see her and go, “Look at that girl! She’s a runner.”
But I know she’s more than that.
My daughter breathes. She breathes in the morning, she breathes at night. Breathes, breathes, breathes. She’s a breather.
And you know what else?
She exists. She exists in the morning, she exists at night. Exists, exists, exists. She’s an exister . . . a being.
It’s All Absurdly Axiomatic
It’s all common sense, right? Almost so obvious that it borders on stupidity?
“Scheske, we get it: Your daughter engages in the act of running, so we know she’s a runner. She engages in the act of breathing, so we know she’s a breather. She engages in the act of existing, so we know she’s a being. It’s axiomatic to the point of absurd common sense.”
Perhaps.
But just grant me this: There’s something different between “engaging in the act of running/breathing/existing” and “being a runner/breather/being.”
I don’t even want you to explain what the difference is. Just concede the point: they’re different somehow.
And then focus on the “being” part.
Let Me Hurt Your Brain a Little
Each person is engaged in the act of existence. Therefore, each person exists. We know a person exists by seeing her (and the traits that distinguish her from other things), so in that sense, her distinguishing traits are prior to her existence (we know the traits before we know the being), but even before the traits can be seen, she is engaged in the act of existence. If she weren’t, there would be nothing for the traits to latch onto.
Now let me give you a simple formula:
Act of existence–>essence–>being.
I call it the “Reality Spectrum.” It’s the full spectrum, in three points of reference, of our reality. We are engaged in the act of existence, which allows essences (attributes, traits, characteristics, “accidents”) to attach, which then makes our being accessible to the rest of the world.
A lot of philosophers have rejected it. They reject the “act of existence” altogether, either saying that it’s synonymous with “being” and therefore isn’t even a thing, or saying that it’s axiomatic to the point of absurd common sense.
But they’re obviously wrong. We know my daughter is a runner because she engages in the act of running. They’re different things.
It’s Not Even Worth Talking About
Well, the axiomaticians aren’t really wrong. They have a point. It is axiomatic (one thing necessarily leading to the other).
In fact, the axiomaticians might be the most correct. The whole thing is so axiomatic, there’s nothing left to be said about the “act of existence.”
“Okay, Scheske. We know your daughter is a runner because she’s engaged in the act of running. Everything else about the condition—her personal best, her preferred running shoes, her form, how it makes her feel, how it affects her other life activities—all focus on the attributes of running or her. To explore her running, we don’t ever have to revisit the premise that ‘she’s engaged in the act of running.’ So drop it. We don’t give a s* about the act of running.”
And they’d be right. The Running Reality Spectrum for purposes of everything we know (for purposes of observation, discussion, debate, data, experimentation, records, the Olympics, TV, a varsity letter, etc.) looks like this: Attributes of Running–>Runner.
No “Act of Running.” It’s there, yes, but it’s not even worth talking about, so it can be properly (efficiently) discarded from our mental view.
When it comes to the Act of Existence, we tend to do the same thing. The Reality Spectrum is just Attributes of Existing–>Being. Everything we can see, hear, talk about, and measure pertains to one of those two things. The Act of Existence is prior to all that, of course, but so what? It’s not worth talking about.
But I’d take the axiomaticians one step further:
It’s not that it’s not worth talking about.
It’s that we can’t talk about it.
Enter the Tao
The first line of Lao Tzu’s Tao Teh Ching tells us that “The Tao that can be put into words is not the real Tao.”
The Zen master, Wen-yu, when asked for the First Principle of Zen, echoed Lao Tzu: “If words could tell you, it would become the Second Principle.”
The Tao. The First Principle of Zen. There’s nothing to be said about them. In fact, if you try, you eliminate them. You can’t talk about them any more than you can catch your shadow. The mere attempt to catch it is a failure to appreciate what a shadow is. The same with the Tao and the First Principle of Zen: The mere attempt to talk about them (to catch them) is a failure to appreciate what they are.
The Tao. The First Principle of Zen. They are labels for the Act of Existence.
The Tao, the First Principle of Zen, and the Act of Existence can’t be defined because they are prior to the world of essence and being. Language defines subjects and objects. The Tao comes first, before language, before subject-object. The mere attempt to talk about it is a failure to appreciate what the Tao is.
But that doesn’t mean the Tao is irrelevant.
Far from it. It’s the most important thing, even if we can’t articulate how and must try to obtain glimpses of it in ways that don’t use the world of subject-object and language.
I’ll write more about those ways in future pieces.
In one of his last works before his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.
The Dream
In this story, the narrator goes to another solar system and lands on a planet where the inhabitants are people just like us, but untainted by the Fall in the Garden of Eden. They live, the narrator tells us:
“In the same paradise as that in which . . . our parents lived before they sinned.”
But the narrator, being a fallen man, corrupts the inhabitants:
“Like the germ of a plague infecting whole kingdoms, I corrupted them all.”
They then begin to act like us on earth. In the words of Russian literature professor Arthur Trace:
“They invent morality because now there was immorality; they make a virtue of shame, whereas before they had no need for shame; they invent the concept of honor because now there is such a thing as dishonor; they invent justice because now there is injustice; and they invent brotherhood and friendship because there is hatred.”
Arthur Trace, Furnace of Doubt (1988), 24.
In short, on the unfallen planet, there was no virtue or morality because there was no vice or immorality in contrast. There was no distinction between bad and good.
I went to Las Vegas last week, spending four nights at the iconic Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas. I spent Tuesday evening walking from the Nugget to the Strat, where I surveyed Vegas from 100 stories high for two hours.
The next morning, I covered five miles of downtown Las Vegas on foot, covering huge swaths of area.
On Thursday, I walked the length of the Strip, clocking in over 32,000 steps.
I took a two-hour bus tour and talked with the guide. I talked with Uber drivers. I chatted with all sorts of workers, from a farmers market vendor a half-mile north of Fremont Street to bartenders who make those frozen concoctions along the Strip.
I made notes. I came home and surfed the web. I bounced observations off my traveling companion (wife).
I then put all this into a giant blender and poured out these observations.
Gardening literature is unusual. It, in the words of literature professor M.E. Bradford, mixes “practical agricultural advice and moral reflection.”
In western culture, it goes back over 2,500 years, at least to Hesiod’s The Works and Days in the 8th century BCE. Later Greeks followed suit, as did the Romans (Cato the Elder’s De Agri Cultura, Virgil’s Georgics). Agricultural literature was firmly ensconced in the classical world.
It’s no surprise that America followed suit. The early Americans loved ancient Rome, including its agrarian literature: “Roman poets, such as Horace and Virgil, praised an agrarian lifestyle, and their work struck a chord with the self-sufficient, hardy farmers of early America.” Paul Meany
Colonial Americans wrote about gardening and agriculture in general. Thomas Jefferson, for instance (not surprising, given his agri-politics) and Washington in a few of his letters.
Before creation, nothing existed. There was no matter, no energy, no desires, no images. God then created everything. As a result, everything that is, is from Him, and things have existence only in so far as they partake in the Creator, the source of all being. But when Adam sinned, he detached the world from God. He, in other words, detached the world from being. Through Adam, man lunged away from Being itself and plunged towards its opposite: Nothingness.
Joseph Epstein is the best essayist alive. He’s urbane, funny, self-deprecating. He’s a fine stylist, and he’s remarkably well-read.
I remember William F. Buckley marveling at Epstein’s erudition and wondering how Epstein could have so many anecdotes and references at his disposal. Coming from a guy of Buckley’s learning, that’s high praise.
So it was with great interest that I turned to his essay, “Joseph Epstein’s Lifetime Reading Plan” (found in this book) and his attempt to respond to a recent college graduate’s question: “What books should I read?” This question, Epstein said, was nothing less than asking, “How do I become an educated person?”
Epstein used the question to launch his essay, but he didn’t provide a list of books. He suggested that a person always have a classic going: Cervantes, Tocqueville, Montaigne, Homer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Plato. That’s thumpingly good advice, especially for someone like Epstein (and me), who always has two or more books going at once. It keeps one’s reading life varied.
But what about a list? Epstein said there is no dispositive list, and he’s right. The canon of Western civilization alone is neither settled nor static, there isn’t enough time to read everything in one lifetime, and everyone’s situation is different.
One list won’t fit all.
Still, I think a list is possible.
Mine is below.
The Occult Establishment looked at occult activity in the 20th century. It was a follow-up to Webb’s The Occult Underground, which examined the rise of the occult in the 19th century.
The occult, Webb said, rose in the 1800s in opposition to the Enlightenment and rationalism. It then grew and, in the 1900s, became organized.
And political.
Webb documents in The Occult Establishment that, as the occult grew stronger in the 20th century, it started to take political positions. The entire book paints pictures of those political movements, from Nazism to the Haight-Ashbury and Jerry Rubin’s “Be-In.” He calls them the “Progressive Underground” (as opposed to the 19th-century’s “Occult Underground”).
It’s a compelling and fascinating book, but is it relevant today?
The Progressive Underground has disappeared, hasn’t it?
The world today is all about business and technology and aggressive politics. Tarot card readers are derisible oddities and no one is dropping acid as a political statement (Joe Rogan’s efforts to normalize psychedelics notwithstanding). There seems to be an increased interest in UFOs, but it’s based on logical deductions made from increasing video footage.
Go back and look at that Norman Cohn quote above. He said Webb’s book “offers the most vivid portrayal yet given of that hydra, irrationalism; and leaves one waiting, with curiosity if not with trepidation, to see what the next head will look like.”
I don’t know if Cohn knew it, but that hydra’s head was already sprouting in 1977.
It was sprouting under the name of “postmodernism.” The theories of Jacque Derrida and Michel Foucault were a celebration of the irrational. They were an explicit denunciation of the Enlightenment and the rationalism that defined all of modernity. Hence, the name “postmodernism.”
In that sense, the postmodernists were kind of like the 19th-century occultists: a revolt against rationalism, but isolated and not effectively political.
One of the accusations against Derrida, after all, was that his theories merely tore down modernity but didn’t offer any political options, which made him irrelevant. Mikics, Who Was Jacques Derrida? 217.
Thaddeus Russell strenuously argues that Foucault’s theories aren’t political (though Foucault himself was; he, for instance, manned barricades and threw rocks at police during the 1969 “battle of Vincennes.” Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault, 178). If anything, Russell appears to argue, the upshots of Foucault’s theories are libertarian (which, among political theories, is the most “a-political” . . . it’s the politics of being left alone).
Derrida’s and Foucault’s theories, in other words, were attacks on the Enlightenment and rationality, but they weren’t political.
“Let me tell you about COVID, the COVID vaccine, and Bitcoin.”
If any person starts telling me about those things, I write them off.
All three of those things are new and huge. As a result, they occupy a weird spot in the world of opinion: Everyone needs to have a stance on them and nobody’s stance is worth anything.
It’s difficult to reconcile such a paradox, but here’s one way: Take your stance, be prepared to shift it, and keep it to yourself.
Beliefs and practices, yes. Dogmas and preaching, no.
Episode website.
Stoicism is, at bottom, all about silencing the mind. Dispassion in the face of things that otherwise arouse passion. Resignation in the face of things that disappoint. Indifference in the face of things that raise emotions.
Mental silence. It’s a good trait, but human development didn’t stop with the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD, and neither did the development of Stoicism.
Stoicism, you see, had a child.
And her name was “Hesychasm.”
Whereas Stoicism is all about quieting the mind, Hesychasm is, at bottom, all about quieting the heart.
Chuang-Tzu was not a Zen practitioner. He lived about 750 years before Bodhidharma and was the second greatest philosopher of the Tao (after Lao-Tzu).
He was playful in his approach to the Tao, and it’s that playfulness that mixed with the seriousness of Buddhist metaphysics to create the Zen phenomenon.
Chuang-Tzu was one of the greatest proponents of the Chinese concept of wu-wei: non-doing, non-action. His was a wu-wei born of a profound humility that seeks nothing for oneself, not even self-improvement.
Chuang-Tzu’s profound humility emanates from his perception of the Tao, which is a mysterious “force” that surpasses all understanding . . . especially the “understanding” born of discursive reasoning, categories, and rules.
Chuang-Tzu rejected all such things because they exist outside oneself. The problem with things outside oneself is, because they exist outside, a person needs to strive to attain them, but the mere act of striving, Chuang-Tzu taught, is defeat.
It’s important to emphasize that even striving for goodness or virtue is defeat. The mere act of striving, no matter for what, is defeat because it’s steeped in self-aggrandizement. The person who seeks to improve himself is discontented with himself, which necessarily means he thinks he should be more than he really is.
It is, in other words, pride.
It runs counter to the deep humility Chuang-Tzu was trying to explain. Man, he taught, out to be content with his natural state: simplicity, obscurity, unimportance, littleness.
Chuang-Tzu’s teaching provides a response to the paradox that has dogged Christian spirituality for 2,000 years: the mere desire to be selfless is selfish. Chuang-Tzu said don’t be selfish; practice profound humility; accept yourself as you are in your simplicity, obscurity, unimportance, and littleness.
Everything was obvious to Wall Street investors:
Brick-and-mortar businesses are failing. GameStop sells a product that is cheaper and better to buy online. GameStop is going to fail. Let’s short the crap out of its stock so we make a killing when GameStop files bankruptcy.
There were supposedly more short shares than actual shares.
Enter r/Wallstreetbets (queue Seven Nation Army), armed with a lot of free time and stimulus checks.
They decided they like GameStop . . . or wanted to stick it to the hedge fund managers . . . or wanted to make a ton of money by sending the stock soaring and forcing the hedge fund managers to cover, thereby sending the stock yet higher.
Or maybe all three.
Regardless, they won. A bunch of ordinary kids with small amounts of money beat the living hell out of the hedge funds.
The carnage was great. Heck, the carnage is still taking place. No one knows what’s going to happen when the NASDAQ sounds the trading bell Monday morning.
It’s been a fascinating and fun ride.
It’s been an unprecedented ride.
And I think it was a Black Swan event, as defined by Nassim Taleb in his 2007 bestsller.
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t much bugged by Twitter deplatforming President Trump. I didn’t think it was cool, and it bothered me that a company displays such brazen arrogance, but I agree with the ACLU’s ultra-liberal Ira Glasser, who said a President always has plenty of speaking outlets.
I was uber-bugged—outraged, in fact—when Amazon killed Parler’s access to the Internet altogether and, if antitrust laws mean anything, Amazon should be facing severe scrutiny in this regard.
But Twitter? I was just annoyed and, of course, I’ve long been frustrated by Twitter’s ongoing and disingenuous Leftist agenda: “We’re just neutral content hosts. We don’t favor either side, but we do enforce a certain narrative because that narrative is true, so we block other narratives because they’re false.” (Nevermind that in the philosophical field of “narratives,” the premise is that none of them are true.)
But overall? I wasn’t outraged by Twitter’s decision.
What We Know about Dorsey
Jack Dorsey is to blame, of course, but let’s acknowledge a few things about Dorsey:
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He founded Twitter 14 years ago. It now has 4,600 employees and 321 million users. That’s shocking growth. Dorsey can’t entirely control that company as a practical matter, and he can’t control it as a legal matter since he’s a minority stockholder.
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He is presumably surrounded by Leftists, many of them far Left.
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He himself was raised Catholic and his uncle is a priest.
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He supported Tulsi Gabbard (my favorite candidate) in 2020.
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He also supported Andrew Yang (my second favorite candidate, but far behind Tulsi because of his troublesome trademark (the universal income)). Based on Wikipedia, those are the only two he supported in the primaries.
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He is a huge Bitcoin fan.
I think it all points to a guy who is a libertarian who leans left, not an unhinged SJW leftist.
Sure, I could be wrong, but let’s look at that series of Tweets he sent out a few days ago that rankled so many people. Here’s a link to the string.
In it, he says he felt it was necessary to ban Trump because of real public danger. I tend to disagree with him, but I don’t think it’s right to call him a “liar.” If Twitter hadn’t been so dishonest in its censorship for the past few years, I think most of us would’ve accepted his explanation at face value (that was an ugly display at the Capitol building).
But after defending their decision, Dorsey tweeted something very interesting: He said that he has long maintained that, if people don’t like Twitter’s rules, they could go elsewhere, but that Amazon’s decision to kill Parler “challenged” this concept.
Let that sink in.
In the fourth century, the Roman Emperor Diocletian faced a serious problem: lack of food. One of the reasons: farmers were abandoning agriculture and moving to the cities. The farmers were abandoning the farms because economic prospects in the city were far better and, in many cases, farming couldn’t sustain them and their families.
Diocletian’s solution? Serfdom. Require the farmers, and their kids, and their kids’ kids, and their kids’ kids’ kids, and so on for a millennium to stay on that specific parcel of land and farm it. If you abandon the farm for something better, you die.
The government had a goal (better food production) so it overrode a natural human trait (seeking economic improvement).
Diocletian’s solution, combined with a lot of other reforms, worked, incidentally. It saved the Empire at a time when contemporaries thought the whole thing was falling apart.
Do you applaud Diocletian’s establishment of the institution of serfdom (which, most people agree, was merely a better form of slavery, but still slavery)?
If so, then you can probably assume you have the totalitarian impulse. You, in other words, flunk the “Diocletian Test.”
Shift to COVID . . .
The First Disposition: Love
Love is rule one. It’s the thing that ought to inform your life.
I think most everyone agrees with the wealthy Stoic philosopher, Seneca, who wrote, “There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.”
Five minutes of Internet surfing would yield a hundred other aphorisms about the supreme importance of love that most would agree with.
But what exactly is it?
It’s simply this: attraction to other.
That’s it.
But it’s crucial. By attracting yourself to other, you are pulling yourself out of yourself, as it were. It’s why love is so irrational and magical, yet so manifestly powerful that even logic and philosophy can’t deny its importance.
Love is what happens when you put yourself second . . . .behind the object loved. Love, then, walks hand-in-hand with humility. Humility is nothing more than self-forgetfulness. It’s not self-deprecation or declarations of your worthlessness. It’s a disposition that isn’t focused on yourself at all.
Once you’re not focused on yourself, the problems that arise from self-centeredness — the grasping greed, inflamed lust, ego-centered ambition — decrease.
You are then better positioned to love . . . and to develop the other dispositions discussed below.
“In front of love, passionlessness marches.”
Evagrius, The Praktikos
Temporal Disposition: The Now
The present moment is the only thing you can control. The past is gone, the future might not even arrive, and if it does arrive, it won’t be in the form you anticipate.
To live in the present moment is the most common-sensical thing in the world, but it also seems to be the hardest thing in the world, especially in the modern world where everyone seems to be afraid: running from, rushing to, or bracing for . . . something to come.
Just stop it. Be in the present moment, softly writing off regrets, calmly refusing to entertain worries about the future. Just addressing the task at hand.
If you need to plan responsibly for the future, that’s fine. Just try to think about the future only to the extent it depends on the present moment.
Yes, it’ll take practice, but I’m convinced this very difficult disposition is worth all the wisdom in the world if it can be acquired.
And if you want a simple disposition hack, try this: cultivate a spirit of thankfulness. The mere mental act of being thankful contents your mind with something else, taking it off you, past regrets, and future schemes. It’s remarkably effective.
Also: Cultivate the ability to focus. It’s a key to living in the present moment.
It’s also the third disposition.
“Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.” Ludwig Wittgenstein
Disposition During Active Life: Concentration
Most people associate “active life” with work: life on the job.
But here I mean the active part of life in general . . . pretty much anything that isn’t sleeping, meditation, or abject sloth. Work, yes, but also play, whether it’s gardening, golfing, socializing, exercising, reading, etc.
Whatever you do, focus on it and only it.
I realize that’s pretty routine advice that’s hard for many people to follow, but here are three tips that might help:
(1) Tie your focus to humility. Why do you get distracted? Maybe it’s because your ego tells you something else might please you more than the task or person in front of you now. Tell yourself that all you deserve is the current task.
(2) Understand the “flow.” There are two types of mental effort: “concentration on the task and the deliberate control of attention.” Daniel Kahneman. When you’re in the flow, the deliberate control of attention occurs without trying, with the result that your mental energy isn’t divided: all of your mental efforts can be spent on the task. Merely by understanding what the flow is and appreciating what’s going on when trying to concentrate will make you better at it.
(3) Try to imbue everything, even office life, with a spirit of play. Play, the Jungian analyst Robin Daniels points out, occupies that “transitional space” between subject-object: you’re focused on an object that you enjoy. The object takes you out of yourself, but you are still having fun. If you cultivate the spirit of play in everything, especially your work, focus follows naturally.
“In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.” Simone Weil
The flow is a state of “effortless concentration so deep that [the persons in the flow] lose their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems.” Daniel Kahneman
“Blur the distinction between work and play.” Winifred Gallager
Disposition of Movement: Slowness
Why, exactly, do we rush?
There can be specific reasons, of course. If a kid is drowning, I hope your pace quickens.
But in general, why do we rush?
I think the answer is pretty clear: it’s because we’re self-centered. We rush because we’re trying (often only semi-consciously) to satisfy something we want.
If we slow down, we may not reach our aim. The rushing, in turn, feeds our self-centeredness, “enabling” it, as it were. Our ego inflates even more, feeding a growing frenzy of ambitions, schemes, and plans that we must rush to meet, creating in us a disposition of hurriedness.
We need to flip that disposition. We need to slow down drastically and develop the disposition of slowness.
It’ll let air out of your ego. As your ego deflates, you become calmer. As you become calmer, you start to think more clearly.
If you doubt this, try a simple experiment: After a hectic day, drink wine, relax, and observe. The depressant in a moderate amount of alcohol takes you out of yourself by slowing you down, mentally and physically. It calms you, letting you think and see more clearly, and when it does, you normally start to see the goodness of existence.
Moving with deliberate slowness is, in my experience, a dry version of drinking wine.
“To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.” Nassim Taleb
“Rushing is a form of aggression.” Robin Daniels
Disposition Toward Noise: Silence
This one is tricky. Noise, after all, isn’t something you control, right? That’s why your neighbor with the leaf blower sucks. You can simply divert your eyes from an unpleasant sight, but you can’t simply divert your ears from an unpleasant noise.
Moreover, in the modern world, noise is ubiquitous. Over 50 years ago, Max Picard, a philosopher who detested noise, said the modern world is historically unique because noise was everywhere, as exemplified by the radio:
“Radio has occupied the whole space of silence. There is no silence any longer. Even when the radio is turned off, the radio-noise is so amorphous that it seems to have no beginning and no end; it is limitless.”
Things have only gotten worse since then.
Fortunately, there are two types of noise: inner and outer. You have a lot of control over the inner. You can turn down the volume of the passions that inflame your mind, slow down the parade of thoughts, dull the drumbeats of ambitions that keep you in a state of steady agitation.
But you’ll have to practice. The noise in our modern world makes it more difficult to practice, but it can be done: by closing the door, using noise-canceling headphones, meditating.
Once the volume of inner noise is turned down and you’ve cultivated the disposition of silence, you will find yourself closer to a state of stillness, which, as Ryan Holiday points out in his recent bestseller, Stillness if the Key, is crucial to a good existence.
“Silence is not just the absence of noise any more than peace is the absence of war. It is rather a positive and difficult accomplishment, a state of justice in the soul in which according to the classical formulation stretching back to Plato, each part receives its due in the performance of its proper function.”
John Senior, The Restoration of Christian Culture
We left off Episode 76 with the Civil War, which the Roundheads, mostly Puritans, won decisively. There was a huge equality movement, you might say. Folks known as the “levellers” were ascendant, and they wanted all class distinctions abolished. There would, obviously, be no monarchy. There wouldn’t be the House of Lords in Parliament. Everything would be governed by a remnant of Parliament known as the “Rump Parliament,” which executed Charles I in 1649.
But, of course, a leader always emerges, and here it was the leader of the Roundheads military, Oliver Cromwell. A brilliant general and a good statesman. Brilliant victories over Holland and Spain . . . Even got Jamaica and ganja for the British. And he was a fanatical Puritan. By 1653, it was pretty obvious that he was governing England as a military dictatorship and was doing a pretty good job, actually, as long as you weren’t Catholic. Anglicans didn’t do well under him either. He was given the title “Lord Protector” and ruled as dictator until his death in 1658. This is what the term “The Protectorate” means (just view “Cromwell” and “Protectorate” as largely synonymous and you won’t be too wrong). His son took over his title, was incompetent, and abdicated. The monarchy was then restored in 1660. Charles II.
And we might as well finish up British history here quickly.
Charles II was a Catholic sympathizer. He wanted to be Catholic, but couldn’t without, well, probably getting lynched. He converted on his deathbed, but during his life, he did what he could to promote Catholicism, primarily through religious liberty measures.
When he died in 1685, his brother, James II, took the throne, and he was unabashedly Catholic and didn’t care who knew. He more or less tried to turn England back into a Catholic country and exert royal prerogatives, neither of which sat well with the gentry, who then solicited William of Orange. He was prince of a small feudal state in southern France known as “Orange.” “King of England” would be a major step up, and William was fiercely Protestant. He assembled a force of about 11,000 men and invaded England at the invitation of Parliament. Protestants started defecting left and right, and James II gave up almost immediately. Virtually no blood.
This is known as “The Glorious Revolution.” It happened in 1688. So, if you’re trying to fix your English history in your mind: English Civil War ends in 1649. Oliver Cromwell rules in the 1950s. The Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. The Glorious Revolution in 1688. Those four terms are repeatedly used and any decently educated person is deemed to know what they are: English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell/the Protectorate, the Restoration, and the Glorious Revolution.
A fascinating thing happened during The Protectorate. I already mentioned that there was a radical political movement known as “leveling, an attempt to abolish all forms of economic and political inequality.
But there were also radical religious movements, like the Diggers, who tied into the Levelers’ political theory and said, citing the book of Acts and the early Christians holding things in common, they could plant their vegetables anywhere, so they started digging on areas belonging to nobility and areas they thought should be “common areas.”
And there were the Ranters. These were the latest in a long line of sects in the pneumatic antinomian strain. “Pneumatic” of or relating to the spirit. “Antinomian”: no bound by moral law. Put together, it means, “We are so spiritual, the earthly world doesn’t affect us. Because all morality pertains to conduct in earthly affairs, no morality applies to us.”
The Ranters took the position that earthly things are not illegitimate, but they are subordinate to the Ranters, who are God. They deemed themselves filled with God, so God themselves, so anything they said, did, or wanted was divine.
And they meant it. Sex. Lots of it. Formerly decent women unleashed into, basically, the communal bang thing. Free love. Nudity. You name it. Nothing was unclean to them.
Especially swearing. They swore all the time. I guess they were the most disgusting verbalists of all time, making the most frenetic Tourette sufferer sound demure.
And sex Lots of it. Formerly decent women unleashed into, basically, the communal bang thing. Free love. Nudity. Sodomy. You name it. Nothing was unclean to them.
And theft. Nothing was unclean to them. Nothing was forbidden them. Therefore, they had a right to everything. If God, after all, wants apples from your orchard, who are you to say “no”?
Yeah, most English weren’t impressed. The Rump Parliament quickly passed the Blasphemy Act and the Adultery Act, the latter of which made adultery punishable by death. The persecutions started shortly later.
A quick overview of what we’ve covered in English history:
First, Rome’s conquest of southern Britain, and the withdrawal of its soldiers in 410, leaving its Roman citizens there and the native Britons to fend for themselves. During the 400s, St. Patrick went to Ireland and converted it to Christianity.
Second, the invasions and/or migration of the Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who were probably hired by the Romano-Britons to fight the Picts and other Celtic barbarians.
Third, the conquest of much of England by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. The resistance and King Arthur (500ish). Christianity pretty much squashed.
Fourth, Irish missionaries come to England, reconverting it to Christianity. Angles-Saxons gradually merged with the Britons.
Fifth, Vikings start invading, establishing permanent settlements. Alfred the Great breaks them, brings them to treaty, dividing England between Angles-Saxons and the Vikings, which gradually merge under one king.
Sixth, the Battle of Hastings. 1066. England becomes a French vassal state, technically. Intertwining of France and England.
Seventh, the Hundred Years War. England whipping France. Joan of Arc. Treaty in 1453.
And that’s where we are picking it up: Middle of the 1400s.
In order to finance the Hundred Years War, the English kings had to go to Parliament for money . . . Repeatedly. In exchange, Parliament kept getting more and more concessions from the kings, giving rise to the most powerful representative government in Europe. The kings’ power was greatly limited by Parliament. The kings obviously didn’t like this, but there wasn’t much they could do about it, but it would drive much of English internal disputes for the next 200 years, until 1688.
Henry VIII grabbed a lot of power in the English Reformation. In fact, a strong argument can be made that his break with Rome was triggered as much by his penis as by his greed. Huge monastic estates and other church holdings were forfeited to the new Church of England, Henry himself, or his allied nobleman. Hilaire Belloc points out in his absolute classic, The Servile State, that the alarmingly wealthy English noble families in the 20th century were formed in this era, when Henry literally gave them massive amounts of wealth after stealing it from the church. When you hear names like, Howards, Cecils, Cavendishes, and Russells, think, “Stinkin’ descendants of thieves.” Belloc says there were more than 50 such families that profited to an alarming degree from the rape of the Church.
After Henry VIII, his son, Edward VI, took over. Under Henry VIII, the Anglican Church still felt and smelled Catholic. Under Edward VI, this started to change. It became far more Protestant, but he died after a short reign, then Mary took over. She was fiercely Catholic and took revenge on the apostates. After she died, her half-sister Elizabeth the First, Good Queen Bess, took over. She aggressively, at times violently, reversed Mary’s efforts and established the Anglican Church as firmly Protestant, but she also kept much of the Catholic flavor.
This didn’t sit well with the Puritans, who were heavily influenced by John Calvin’s teachings, but there wasn’t a whole lot they could do about. Elizabeth was moderate, judicious, and universally loved. She ruled for almost 50 years, until 1603. She never married, leading to a succession crisis and nearly 100 years of internal feuding in England as the Parliament tried to wrest more control from the kings and the kings tried to reassert the rights commonly associated with kingship.
First, there was James I, which started the Stuart dynasty of English kings.
Then there was his son, Charles I, who really went to battle with Parliament. Literally. The English Civil Wars. Roundheads v. Cavaliers. The Catholic-sympathizer Charles I was opposed by the strongly Protestant, with a lot of Puritanism, Parliament and lost. Twice. He lost to the Protestantizing Parliament, which led to a discussion among Parliament about what to do next, with the Puritans suggested some rather extreme measures. Some members of Parliament and their followers joined the king and the civil war recommenced, but Parliament, this time consisting heavily of Puritans, won. Charles I was executed in 1649.
This brings us the English commonwealth, no king, and Oliver Cromwell.
This interview took place on April 21st and originally uploaded on April 22nd. For some reason, it has since disappeared from the RSS feed. I am re-posting it now. InspireWord is still going strong. FOCUS’ Curtis Martin is tonight’s guest.
Some Protestant sects were freakish, whether the Anabaptists in Munster or those iconoclastic peasants who took craps in holy water fonts, the Reformation brought more freaks to the open than a hurricane brings starfish to the beach.
As a preliminary matter, let’s take a general look at the various sects, freakish and non-freakish.
First, you can argue that all Protestant denominations besides the Adventists and Pentecostals (it has always cracked me up that the Pentecostals started in LA in the early 1900s, but man, talk about explosive growth) can be traced to the four early branches of the Reformation: Lutheran, Reformed/Calvinist, Baptist/Anabaptist/Radical, or Anglican.
Lutheranism obviously started with Martin Luther. Although we commonly refer to 1517 as the year the Reformation started, you can’t say there was a separate Lutheran church until 1519, possibly 1520. At that point, Luther was excommunicated and people were still following him and going to his church services.
The Reformed branch of Protestantism started in Zurich, Switzerland, by Huldrych Zwingli at about the same time. By 1522, the priest Zwingli was in open revolt against the Catholic Church and banging a wife (a common theme among reformers . . . “It’s all about doctrine and the Bible and, uh, and . . . Damn, she’s hot”). Zwingli, it must be noted, came to his doctrines quite apart from Luther. It was never like he was a follower of Luther and then branched off. They started separately. John Calvin would later pick up the Reformed banner in the 1530s. From this school comes today’s Dutch Reformed, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Church of Christ. You can even pin the insufferable Puritans on the Reformed/Calvinist branch.
Years later, the English Reformation started with Henry VIII when he saw Anne Boleyn and said, “Damn, she’s hot, maybe as hot as her sister Mary who I’ve been banging for years.” He asked the Pope for an annulment of his marriage from Catherine of Aragon, was denied, and decided to establish his own church, with its own Pope/leader in the form of the Bishop of Canterbury, who annulled his marriage to Catherine, paving the way for legalized banging of Anne Boleyn. From this you have today’s Anglicans and Episcopalians. The Methodists and Wesleyans are offshoots, but so different, you can’t even call them part of the Anglican tradition.
And then you had the Radical Reformation. The Anabaptists. They were among the earliest and most enthusiastic reformers, eagerly listening to Luther and plowing forward. Depending who you ask, they actually pre-date Zwingli and the Reform branch of Protestantism. From this branch, you have today’s Mennonites and Amish.
Included within the Radical Reformation “label” are the Radical Spiritualists and the Evangelical Rationalists. These are the proto-modern-day liberals: socio-economically higher class, often well-educated.
The Evangelical Rationalists were basically proto-Enlightenment thinkers, in the vein of Voltaire and other rationalist snobs. Their big things were denial of the Trinity, Bible only, and use of human reason. I’m not even sure it’s properly called a religious movement and I’m not going to discuss it here.
The Radical Spiritualists, on the other hand, were definitely religious. It’s odd that the Radical Spiritualists, and even the Anabaptists, were often excluded from discussions about the Reformation up until the 1960s, when historians started to appreciate their importance.
Extremely radical. They reject almost every aspect of religion that might be external: that is, anything that is not part of the individual soul. All religious institutions . . . every church . . . Catholic, Lutheran, whatever. All ceremony and ritual. All clergy. No authority figures. No sacraments, rejecting even the Reformed position that sacraments are useful symbols; they deemed the sacraments as distractions. They even reject the Bible. They only believe in “the inner light.” Or the “inner spirit.” The direct revelation of God to the individual soul. Direct divine revelation.
The earliest examples of this are the Prophets of Zwickau, who taught this about themselves in 1522. The Radical Spiritualists said many believers, not just the Zwickau prophets or other handful of selects, have this “direct indwelling of the spirit,” basically, that God lives in the soul, making each person divine. If you have the inner spirit, you’re saved. If you don’t, you aren’t saved. How do you get it? Historians aren’t sure what the Radical Spiritualists taught. I guess it would make sense. Any sort of articulation of this would be external to the soul, so they didn’t bother to develop doctrine or theology. The Radical Spiritualists basically said the inner light is like rhythm. You either got it or you don’t, and if you got it, you know it. It was very cocky.
Caspar Schwenckfeld. Catholic. Followed Luther until 1525, then he broke. Rejected baptism, all formal church structures. Wandered throughout Germany, preaching, leaving behind followers. Sebastian Franck: Catholic priest, humanist, Lutheran, religion of the inner spirit: 1528. Wandering preacher. Thomas Munster: Catholic priest, Lutheran, broke in 1521 to become an adherent of the religion of the inner light. Big political activist. Organized the pheasant revolt in 1525 and was killed.
What we’re seeing is the Reformation was immediately getting more and more subjective. Catholic: The Bible, the Pope, theologians, councils, etc. And then Luther and Zwingli: Bible only, as interpreted by each individual. And now the inner light is the sole standard of religious authority. The trend would continue into the modern era in the fiercely subjectivist philosophy from Descartes and into post-modernism with Derrida’s deconstructionism (words have no truth in them and, because we communicate by words, we can’t communicate truth, and therefore, anything anyone knows strictly wells up in himself . . . A material version of the “inner spirit” I suppose) and Foucault’s radical cultural histories (every culture’s “truths” are mere societal constructs).
Music for Lighting Segments: Beach Closed by Blue Wave Theory. Used pursuant to the Attribution Share-Alike License 4.0.
Theme song: Skinnin’ Lynyrd by Greg Scheske, a bespoke expert. Email him here: eidolonaudio@gmail.com.
- A threefer:
Muslims tossed out of Spain
Columbus
Alexander VI starts pontificate
Okay, first the conquest of Grenada. This had been a Muslim stronghold for years, the southern part of Spain. Since 1300, the Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese had controlled the entire Iberian Peninsula . . . Except Granada. Ferdinand and Isabella decided it was time to finish this thing off, even though it meant an enormous effort. The Moors were ensconced down there. They launched this “crusade” in 1486. A little over five years later, in January 1492, the last of the Moors were killed or gone.
This then left Isabella free to honor her commitment to Columbus. She told him she would finance his expedition to reach China from Europe once she got the Moors out of Grenada.
So, Columbus. Hero or genocidal madman? Both? Needless to say, we aren’t going to resolve this here, but a few general comments.
First, I think the unequivocal praise of Columbus over the years helped cause the huge politically-correct backlash that we’ve seen over the past 30 years. Columbus did a lot of bad things. When you consider the times and the relative moral conditions that existed then, they’re a bit more understandable, but they were still bad by any standard. The unequivocal praise heaped on him for hundreds of years was a bit disturbing, but let’s face it, that’s not the real reason he has become the whipping boy of the postmodern left.
The real reason goes back to the structuralist arguments of de Saussure and Claude Levi-Strauss, who believe language creates culture, including a culture’s morality and ethics, and there is no set of moral norms, that all cultures, therefore, are equally arbitrary and, therefore, of equal merit. The problem with this theory is, Christianity was embraced by native populations, who immediately recognized it as a superior intellectual and moral development over their wicked gods who demanded human sacrifice. The problem with this theory is, people in the new worlds embraced market systems, preferring them to working as slaves for the king and ruling classes. The problem with this theory is, the new worlds liked European culture, recognizing the greatness of, say, Shakespeare. The problem with this theory is, the Europeans developed science and technology, and that development was made possible by modes of thought and systems put in place by the Judeo-Greek-Catholic culture.. There’s a reason Hindus, who looked at wading into the Ganges to be eaten by crocodiles as among the highest modes of consciousness, didn’t. The same goes for every other quote system unquote out there, whether it was Shogun Japan, aborigines in Australia, or the American Indian.
In short, the problem with this theory is, the theory is one big problem. European culture was better and was dominant, and the evidence is overwhelming. The way to get around it? Shout down Columbus and other explorers by trumpeting the atrocities. They can shout all they want, however. The fact remains: western culture was simply better. Perfect? Frick no. Did the conquered cultures have no merit? Frick no. But it’s undeniable that western culture was better in almost every way, and because that is an inconvenient fact for the leftist thought, it devotes alarming amounts of energy to denying it, and Columbus is at the forefront of it.
The final thing from 1492 that I want to mention is Rodrigo Borgia. He became pope in 1492 and took the name “Alexander VI.” You might call this “peak Renaissance Popes,” which means “Peak shame for the Catholic Church.” When he was elected, joyfully cried, “I am Pope! I am Pope!” People knew there was a huge problem. Ferdinand and Isabella were genuinely shaken when they heard he had been elected.
I mean, this was a bad man. He kept a 19-year-old mistress openly. I guess she was smokin’ hot, and her husband sometimes objected to the Pope banging her. At one point, the husband was going to put an end to it, and Alexander VI threatened to excommunicate her if she wouldn’t keep banging him. He was in his early sixties, by the way. She was 19.
He had other mistresses as well, and illegitimate children, one of whom he appointed as a cardinal and others he favored with other benefits of the Papacy,
Those are all facts. You can assume even the most pro-Catholic historian would have to blush and admit them. On top of those, there were the political machinations and duplicity that were common to the day (this was also “Peak Machiavelli” time), plus allegations of incest and murder (neither of which are true . . . probably).
Okay, so what do you do with Alexander VI? Well, admit that he was one of probably six or so downright bad popes, in the sense that they’re bad on anyone’s moral compass. The Church has had plenty of other “bad” popes , in the sense that they were ineffective, more lax in their morals than you’d like, or unseemly political (I’m looking at you, Pope Francis), but probably only six downright BAD men as Popes. Out of 266. That’s like batting .978. The major league record is held by Hugh Duffy at .440. Christ batted .910 . . . Going 11 for 12 in his picks.
You also have to admit it’s a problem with the Catholic worldview. If such a bad man can become Pope, how can we claim, one, that the selection process if guided by the Holy Spirit, and, two, that grace flows through the Catholic Church to the rest of the world?
I can’t fully respond to either, but with respect to the first, we can’t question the Holy Spirit there was a reason and, as Job learned, it’s not up to the part to understand the whole.
Yeah, well, I have my doubts there, but that’ll have to wait.
Maybe a better explanation would be to prove Matthew 16:18. Christ said he would establish his church on the Rock of Peter, who became the first Pope, and the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. Alexander VI brought the gates of hell to the gates of Rome and Rome didn’t fall.
With respect to the second concern, well, suffice it to say, Alexander VI didn’t change an iota of dogma. He didn’t even try. He was too busy with political, military, and sexual intrigue to bother with dogma. He didn’t much care about it. The same goes with all the bad popes. No matter how bad in their personal lives, they never changed an ounce of Church dogma, and metaphysically speaking they can’t. That’s why they’re Pope. A Pope could no more make a mistake on dogma than a Chevrolet could be a Honda. If the Pope can make dogmatic mistakes, then the Catholic Church’s entire ecclesiology collapses and we all need to become Greek Orthodox. That’s one reason Catholics started freaking out when Pope Francis started his pontificate by touting the virtues of gay sex and divorce. I wasn’t freaking out. Annoyed and occasionally angry, yes, but not freaked out. I knew he couldn’t cross that line and he didn’t I have no doubt that Francis, easily the most liberal pope ever and the most political pope since the Renaissance, I have no doubt that Francis the MAN wanted to, but Francis the Pope simply couldn’t. It was no more possible to cross that line that it is for 2+2 to equal 8.
We are at the 1400s. We are going to take this segment all the way to 1491. It is the penultimate segment of this historical survey.
The Renaissance is in full swing. If you want to cement easy poles in your brain, think: 1300s: Black Death and War. 1400s: The Renaissance.
This is the age of Machiavelli. All the Italian city-states battling each other. The Medici family.
No one knows why the Renaissance took hold so strongly in Italy and, in particular, Florence, but many scholars think it was the result of a depression, partly caused by the Black Death and falling prices. Perhaps also caused when Edward III defaulted on his loans from Florentine bankers. He had obtained the loans to finance the 100 Years War. When he defaulted on them, there wasn’t a whole lot the Florentine bankers could do (stab him with their quill pens?). They were ruined, thereby driving Florence into a serious depression. It’s like, things already weren’t good, but now they got a whole lot worse. Florentines no longer trusted conventional investments, so they looked to other things, especially art, thereby attracting artists whose work was valued.
Perhaps the biggest event in the 1400s was the fall of Constantinople. 1453.
1453: Constantinople fell. Should’ve happened sooner. By 1400, the Byzantine Empire (which was, remember, still the Roman Empire and only known as the Roman Empire . . . Use of the term “Byzantine Empire” didn’t start until way after it had fallen). But by 1400, the Byzantine Empire was just Constantinople, an outpost in a sea of Turks, who were Muslim. The Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire wasn’t yet the great empire it would become, but it was in control of pretty much all of the Balkans and all of Asia Minor: Which means it controlled everything to the east and west of Constantinople (to the north and south was mostly water; what land there was: controlled by the Ottomans).
But something always seemed to save Constantinople from final collapse. I mean, it’s great position and mammoth fortifications were huge, but such things were becoming less resilient with the advent of gunpowder and cannons.
The most recent had been a resurgent Mongol force under Tamerlane, the last of the great Steppe invaders who had started with the Huns back in the last days of the Roman Empire in the west. In about 1400, the Ottoman Empire was preparing an assault to take Constantinople, but Tamerlane invaded with a huge force, and pretty much throttled the Ottomans. It would take them years to recuperate, but when they did, they put their sites back on Constantinople and mounted a huge siege. 53 days later, Constantinople fell.
The Ottoman Turks immediately made it their capital, though the name didn’t change to “Istanbul” until the 20th century.
Everything wasn’t bleak for Christendom, though. Yes, the Ottomans were in the Balkans and Constantinople had fallen, but Spanish forces had been dominating on the Iberian peninsula. We’ll talk more about this next week, but by 1300, Europeans had taken back the vast bulk of the Iberian peninsula (today’s Spain and Portugal), with only Grenada being a Muslim stronghold, but that was going to fall shortly after Christian forces under Isabella of Spain (who was born in 1451).
And the last historical marker I want to put in your head today: 1480. That was the year Moscow overthrew the Mongols. Russia started to become a real power. As mentioned in Episode 59, this made Moscow deem themselves “the third Rome.” They saw the fall of the second Rome and the rise of Moscow too much to be a mere coincidence.
First Segment: We continue our historical review. In this second-to-last episode, we look at the 1400s.
Second Segment: Florence and the invention of the Bill of Exchange.
Third Segment: Money, currency, gold, stimulus.
Fourth Segment: Is every person in the medical field a hero?
Fifth Segment: The Left is claiming states rights. It's a topsy-turvy time.
First, you need to know the Crusades were over The Crusader kingdoms last for about 200 years, which is pretty impressive when you realize the sheer demographic tides they were fighting against, but by 1300, they were completely thrown out of the middle east. The forces that routed them and ruthlessly made sure every last crusader was gone: The Mamelukes. These are warrior slaves, who about this time seized the sultanate, establishing their own Muslim kingdom that was very powerful. Even the Mongols didn’t like to mess with them.
First Segment: The 1300s. The rise of the Ottomans, The Avignon Papacy, the Great Papal Schism, the 100 Years War, the Black Death, the Renaissance.
Second Segment: How medieval wars were like NFL games.
Third Segment: Lightning Segments.
And then came the third crusade, in 1190. This was a massive crusade of the three kings: Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Empire. There was also Phillip II, the Capetian king of France, who wasn’t worth much on the Crusade, but he went back to France and established the Capetians as the first great monarchy family in France. And Richard I, the Lion Heart, King of England, who so impressed that fourth great king of this crusade: Saladin, the great and noble Muslim leader who retook Jerusalem in 1187, prompting the third crusade.
First Segment: We cover the years 1000 to 1200. Ish. Revival of the Byzantine Empire, Saints Francis and Dominic, the Sunni Seljuk Turks, launching the Crusades.
Second Segment: Lightning Segments.
Third Segment: My Dad during the Korean War. He was kept stateside and didn't like it. He didn't like it because bored officers imposed all sorts of petty rules. Welcome to life in the United States today. Will it get worse after Corona?
This period is the Dark Ages, and it’s fascinating.
Partly fascinating because of the lack of historical evidence, so much so that there is a cadre of thinkers who assert that a few hundred of these years never existed at all, that we are, today, in the year, say, 1720, not 2020. This is called “The Phantom Time Hypothesis,” It holds that the years 614-911 never occurred. In other words, it holds that much of the stuff we discuss today never happened. Yes, it’s a bizarre and stupid theory, but it does illustrate just how catastrophic these years were: they left very little by way of records, written or archeological, to the extent that a theory like this actually gained a small foothold. It even has a Wikipedia entry.
But this era is also fascinating because of what we do know. These were the Dark Ages, truly. They were the Iron Age. They sucked.
We’re at the years 313 to 622. These are probably my favorite. The meteoric rise of Christianity. The dissolution of the Roman Empire in the west. Church Councils and monks fighting in the streets over Church doctrine. St. Patrick and Druids. Goths and Huns.
Start at Year 313: The year Constantine declared religious toleration, thereby ending persecution of Christians,
It also brought in the Pax Romana, which is why I pick 27 BC as a year to remember in order to develop an historical perspective. The Pax Romana would last for over 200 years and transform the turbulent Mediterranean world into a peaceful and prosperous one.
Coronavirus Ramblings. Do you like the social distancing? Then maybe you're an introvert. What you can (can't) do to protect yourself.
The years 27 BC to 313 AD. Octavius becomes emperor. Stoicism. The Roman Peace begins. . . Christianity begins.
Part Three in our attempt to develop an historical sense: 399 BC to 27 BC. The Death of Socrates to the First Roman Emperor. Other topics touched upon: Alexander the Great and beautiful Persian women, Pyrrhic victories, Carthage.
Plus Lightning Segments: Scrivener and Hallow Apps, The Storm Before the Storm, contemporary situations that disrupt the post-modern binary-obsessed worldview.
My family moved to a new house today. The future looks bright (cue Timbuk 3), but right now, things are a bit crazy. I muse here about moving, coffee, the "F" words, and other matters. Short episode. Regular episodes resume next week.
Gnosticism matters because it has heated up lately. Heck, that’s an understatement. It was simmering in the 18th-19th centuries. It boiled in the 20th centuries. In the 21st century, it has boiled over. It’s everywhere.
You confused about how people could be embracing Socialism? Gnosticism might be your answer. You don’t understand how anyone could think Bruce Jenner is a chick? Gnosticism gives you a tool to figure it out. Hate Antifa? Join the early Christians like St. Irenaeus of Lyon, who hated the Gnostics.
We’ve all heard the saying: Life’s hard. And it’s not just a saying. It’s a fact. We must constantly struggle. Pain is frequent. And when we have no pain and no struggle, we have the constant threat that both are coming any moment now.
And on top of that, we have death waiting for us. And during life, we face all sorts of “little deaths,” screw ups, sins, things we regret.
You might say, existence is hard. Not just life. But the very fact that we exist is hard. To be is hard.
This is where Gnosticism comes in.
I’m afraid I’ve been a bit coy when introducing or talking about Gnosticism. I think I hit it kind of hard in Episode 61 by saying Gnosticism is Christianity’s evil twin, but in case it still wasn’t quite clear, let me be as blunt as possible:
Gnosticism is a fake religion. “Ersatz religion” is how one mega-thinker described it.
You can divide religions into two types: Compact and Differentiated. “Compact,” roughly speaking, is “primitive.” It’s a world full of gods: god and earth, together. Zeus banging your wife. The totem pole, tree worship.
Read rest here
1300 BC: Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt. We don’t even know if Moses existed. We sure as heck don’t know the exact date. Last week, I said “1200,” which was the consensus fifty years ago, but it appears 1300 is closer to the consensus now. From this date, you have the establishment of Israel, which leads pretty much to the entire Old Testament, including Samson, David, Solomon, the prophets, and all those crazy cats. If you know 1300 BC, you have a fix on Egypt at its greatness, albeit on the verge of decline; you have a solid reference point toward the beginning of the Old Testament.
586 BC. The fall of Judah to the Babylonians. The Babylonian Captivity. The Israel born of Moses was finished. In Episode 61, I talked about the Age of Ecumenical Empires and its importance: it changed western civilization’s entire mental landscape. It brought us Stoicism, Gnosticism, Christianity. I date the start of Ecumenical Empires to 586, even though the first truly ecumenical empire was the Persian Empire that dethroned the Babylonians and let the Israelites return to Jerusalem in 539. If you know 586, you have a fix on the termination point of the independent nation of Israel (or Judah); you have a fix on the rise of the Persian Empire, which is the one that would shortly invade Greece and bring us the Battle of Marathon and the movie, 300.
399 BC. Death of Socrates. The greatest city-state killed its greatest man. But what’s important here is that it fixes us at the end of the golden age of Greece, when Athens reigned supreme, and brings us to the verge of the destruction of classical Greece: Socrates taught Plato, who taught Aristotle, who taught Alexander the Great . . . who would end the Greek city-states.
27 BC. When Octavius became the first emperor of Rome, the Pax Romana started. Rome’s civil wars were over for now, the Mediterranean was calm and peaceful. Trade and commerce. If you know 27 BC, you have a fix on many things: the end of the Roman Republic and start of the Roman Empire, Rome nearing its zenith, the world on the eve of Christianity.
313 AD. Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, ending Christian persecution. Although I can’t say 313 gives you a great fix on anything before it (more Roman history, though not peaceful), it gives you a fix on the rise of Christianity as the societal norm. If you know 313, you know end of paganism and rise of Catholic institutions, whether it’s the Papacy as a civilizational force or monasteries.
622 AD. Mohammed’s flight to Medina. The Hejira. This is the official rise of Islam. Islam then “ran the table” extremely quickly, routing everything before it. Huge swaths of the middle east and northern Africa were Muslim within * years. It’s unbelievable. People at the time couldn’t even believe it. They didn’t know there was anything in Arabia. One historian once said that, if a huge force of Eskimos emerged out of the Arctic and conquered all of Canada and portions of the northern United States, we’d have a feeling for how surprised western civilization was. By knowing 622, you have a fix on the rise of Islam and you have a fix on the start of the Dark Ages.
Because here’s the thing: the Dark Ages didn’t start in 476, with the bogus “fall” of the Roman Empire. It started in the seventh century, when the trade over the Mediterranean encouraged by the Pax Romana completely collapsed in the wake of the Muslims learning naval warfare and shutting down the Sea. I believe this position is fairly well-accepted these days, though a more conventional position would hold that Europe was sliding heavily into the Dark Ages after 476 and 622 merely slammed the door shut.
1000: Stephen crowned king of Hungary. That was pretty much the last domino to fall: All of Europe except a few areas of the far European east was now Christian. Two of the three great forces that menaced Europe and made the Dark Ages especially dark—the Vikings and the Magyars (the Muslims were the third; they didn’t convert)—were converted and now part of Catholic Europe. By knowing 1000, you have a fix on the end of the Dark Ages and the rise of what is properly considered the Middle Ages. It’s nifty because 1000 is easy to remember. The relative peace also gave rise to prosperity, which would culminate in the Age of Discovery and the domination of Europe over the rest of the world (colonization).
1274: I pick this year because of the synthesis he came up with prior to his death. It was the flowering of medieval philosophy, reflecting the flowering of medieval life in general. It was the high point of the middle ages. After him, Europe started its long decline that, today, is symbolized by the absurdity that is the European Union.
1453: The fall of Constantinope. Technically, this is the end of the Roman Empire. It is what Edward Gibbon means by the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. By knowing 1453, you get a fix on the beginning of complete Islamic hegemony over the Middle East and the rise of Russia as the Third Rome. It also mark the end of 2,000 years of Roman history (the Roman Republic started in 509 BC; the Roman Kingdom, though details are shrouded in legend, existed for at least 100 years before that), which is astounding.
1492: Columbus. 1492 gives you a fix on the coming of the new world, the Reformation, and the meteoric rise of Europe as the greatest force on earth. It also marks the end of even the most expansive definition of the “Middle Ages” and the dawn of the modern age.
Did you know all reformers were born after the year 1480?
I’m talking about the Reformation of 1517, when Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door, challenging the Catholic Church’s abuse of indulgences. It was the birth of Protestantism. Within five years, the floodgates had opened and there were a lot of reformers: men who were breaking off from the Catholic Church, forming their own religions.
But all those men were relatively young. Under age 40.
No one knows why but a common explanation is 1492. Columbus. The new world. Now, people weren’t shocked that the world wasn’t flat. That’s a myth propagated by Catholic haters in the eighteenth and nineteenth century who never lost an opportunity, no matter how bogus, to discredit the Catholic Church, like Washington Irving. If you’re interested in this, get Jeffrey Burton Russell’s Inventing the Flat Earth. I’ve never read it, but I’ve read large swaths from Russell’s four volume history of the devil and will vouch for his work in general. . . .
More
Segment One: Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions describes two conflicting visions: constrained and unconstrained. William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet fall in the unconstrained. The Catholic Church and Postmodernism fall in the constrained?
Segment Two: Lightning Segments: Jane Austen's lost books, other.
Segment Three: St. Francis de Sales and "weave a little nosegay." Spray a lot of Axe. No matter how you do it, just keep out the smelly thoughts.
Another saint of the desert: St. Macarius.
Why all the saint days in January? It's cold. The desert is hot.
But January is a lot like the desert. Desolate. Forbidding . . . Silent.
Russia has a long history of hermits. "Mystics of the Northern Forests."
Russia has a long, weird religious history in general. I flush it out here in summary form.
Lightning Segments
Music for Lighting Segments: Sky Hawk Beach by Blue Wave Theory. Used pursuant to the Attribution Share-Alike License 4.0.
Theme song: Skinnin’ Lynyrd by Greg Scheske, a bespoke expert. Email him here: eidolonaudio@gmail.com
Segment One: Feast Day of St. Anthony is coming up. Everything you need to know about the desert monastic movement of the 4th century.
Segment Two: Some quotes from St. Anthony and their application to today's world.
Segment Three: Lightning Segments.
Segment Four: Logic and reason tell us God and the World don't exist. What do you do with that information?
Discussion about how a libertarian can support a porn ban. . . and the real reason why a libertarian may not support a porn ban.
Lightning Segments; The existential threat hangover, the Symbolic World's interview with Sevilla King, Game of Thrones.
Philosophy 101: Logic and reason always fall short. There is an act of faith at the beginning of every logical endeavor . . . and it’s an act of faith that can’t be reasoned to. It’s why Zen is wrapped in absurdity and possibly why Thomas Aquinas grew silent at the of his life.
Lightning Segments: Southwest Michigan, Time Restricted Eating, Gavin McInnes
I lived near Hillsdale for 50 years but never stepped foot on its campus. Now that I have, I'm kicking myself for not doing so much sooner.
I back off my philosophy advice from the previous episode. If you're going to pursue philosophy, you need to believe there's truth. If you don't believe that, don't bother. Unfortunately, I suspect most colleges and universities have philosophy departments filled with PhDs who don't believe in truth.
Lightning Segments: Rogan with Matt Taibbi, winter weight gain, other.
Existentialism v. Essence-ism. Two aborted books . . . one living insight. I being to flush it out here.
Advice for a college freshman who is interested in philosophy.
Lightning Segments: Chambermaids, smiling, health care.
Wasting time and existence.
Nothing but Lightning Segments.
Unusual episode today. Discussion topics veer all over the place: vodka-tonics; Portland, Maine; cobblestone streets; Starblush Ale; comedy nights; Nassim Taleb; Newport, Rhode Island.
All of it (after the introduction) in the Lightning Segment format.
Nothing but Lightning Segments.
Unusual episode today. Discussion topics veer all over the place: vodka-tonics; Portland, Maine; cobblestone streets; Starblush Ale; comedy nights; Nassim Taleb; Newport, Rhode Island.
All of it (after the introduction) in the Lightning Segment format.
Kim Kardashian was recently baptized into the Armenian Oriental Church. So, she's a Copt. Actually, no. But she's in full communion with the Copts. I flush it out--Copts, Chalcedon, Kardashians, Kanye.
Extended Lightning Segments. Boston, Evander Holyfield's mama, Cure de Ars, more.
Kim Kardashian was recently baptized into the Armenian Oriental Church. So, she's a Copt. Actually, no. But she's in full communion with the Copts. I flush it out--Copts, Chalcedon, Kardashians, Kanye.
Extended Lightning Segments. Boston, Evander Holyfield's mama, Cure de Ars, more.
Why do I celebrate Halloween? Because it celebrates evil, and we need more evil in this post-modern society. I explain.
Monsters from the Id and zombies.
Lightning Segments.
Shapeshifting: A metaphysical intuition that change is not good?
Why do I celebrate Halloween? Because it celebrates evil, and we need more evil in this post-modern society. I explain.
Monsters from the Id and zombies.
Lightning Segments.
Shapeshifting: A metaphysical intuition that change is not good?
What does the western tradition mean when it refers to "nature"? A lot of current thinkers are ignorant on the subject.
Nature and Post-Modern Leftism.
Lightning Segments.
Nature and “The Death of Stalin”
What does the western tradition mean when it refers to "nature"? A lot of current thinkers are ignorant on the subject.
Nature and Post-Modern Leftism.
Lightning Segments.
Nature and the Death of Stalin.
Stillness is the Key, Ryan Holiday. Leisure, The Basis of Culture, Joseph Pieper.
Why stillness? More precisely: Why can’t we pursue stillness with a goal in mind?
Lightning Segments: pink gin, hangover thoughts, Einstein the womanizer, People Magazine.
Stillness is the Key, Ryan Holiday. Leisure, The Basis of Culture, Joseph Pieper.
Why stillness? More precisely: Why can’t we pursue stillness with a goal in mind?
Lightning Segments: pink gin, hangover thoughts, Einstein the womanizer, People Magazine.
G.K. Chesterton says true religion makes abstraction tangible. I flush it out here.
Lightning Segments: Flannery O'Connor, Autumn and Sports, Blank dot Org, Medallion Bailout, Thomas Hoover
Michael Pollan "How to Change Your Mind." Beyond Science: LSD, Physics, and the Eucharist
G.K. Chesterton says true religion makes abstraction tangible. I flush it out here.
Lightning Segments: Flannery O'Connor, Autumn and Sports, Blank dot Org, Medallion Bailout, Thomas Hoover
Michael Pollan "How to Change Your Mind." Beyond Science: LSD, Physics, and the Eucharist
I missed last week due to my mother's unexpected death. I discuss here a bit of her life, but not for sentimental reasons. It's a snapshot of a slice of American history.
LSD and Zen: I explore a bit more the limits of rationality and its relationship to Zen and LSD.
LSD and Mind Control: I discuss a fascinating topic that is the subject of a new book: Poisoner in Chief.
Lightning Segments: The "One Thing" file.
I missed last week due to my mother's unexpected death. I discuss here a bit of her life, but not for sentimental reasons. It's a snapshot of a slice of American history.
LSD and Zen: I explore a bit more the limits of rationality and its relationship to Zen and LSD.
LSD and Mind Control: I discuss a fascinating topic that is the subject of a new book: Poisoner in Chief.
Lightning Segments: The "One Thing" file.
Dan Aykroyd was on The Joe Rogan Show.
Vodka, aliens, spiritualism.
John Senior from the University of Kansas was ahead of his time, as seen in the podcast universe today.
Lightning Segments.
Rogan on LSD. Me on thankfulness.
Dan Aykroyd was on The Joe Rogan Show.
Vodka, aliens, spiritualism.
John Senior from the University of Kansas was ahead of his time, as seen in the podcast universe today.
Lightning Segments.
Rogan on LSD. Me on thankfulness.
Nietzsche and Slave Morality
Nietzsche and Detachment
Nietzsche and Zen
Lightning Segments
White Privilege II
Nietzsche and Slave Morality
Nietzsche and Detachment
Nietzsche and Zen
Lightning Segments
White Privilege II
Proponents of the concept of “white privilege” are exhausting. I explore the reasons.
Lightning Segments: Bill Kauffman, chamber maids, Skittles, other.
Marxism: Thanos wannabes . . . and other problems with its rejuvenation among today’s youth.
Proponents of the concept of “white privilege” are exhausting. I explore the reasons.
Lightning Segments: Bill Kauffman, chamber maids, Skittles, other.
Marxism: Thanos wannabes . . . and other problems with its rejuvenation among today’s youth.
Just two segments this week:
The importance of being authentic without trying to be authentic . . . and the unfortunate fraud in young people.
Lightning Segments: Mackinac Island, rum, weddings, and the genital clamp.
Just two segments this week:
The importance of being authentic without trying to be authentic . . . and the unfortunate fraud in young people.
Lightning Segments: Mackinac Island, rum, weddings, and the genital clamp.
Do you have to live in NYC or LA to make it? Nope, not any more. And it's a good idea to be rooted.
Lightning Segments: Epstein, more GKC, Prison Unions, Business Insider says the Catholic Church is Right about Contraception.
Francis Bacon: Jacque Derrida and Francis Bacon and the Catholic Church.
Do you have to live in NYC or LA to make it? Nope, not any more. And it's a good idea to be rooted.
Lightning Segments: Epstein, more GKC, Prison Unions, Business Insider says the Catholic Church is Right about Contraception
Francis Bacon: Jacque Derrida and Francis Bacon and the Catholic Church
G.K. Chesterton: His cause of canonization has been rejected. I understand why, but the charge of anti-semitism is ridiculous. And unnecessary to raise. Maybe the bishop was virtue signalling.
Lighting Segments: The notecard, beer markets, Europe’s death wish, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Total Work: Work 24/7 and you’ll never work another day in your life. Well, maybe. I flush it out here.
Music for Lighting Segments: Sky Hawk Beach by Blue Wave Theory. Used pursuant to the Attribution Share-Alike License 4.0.
Theme song: Skinnin’ Lynyrd by Greg Scheske, a bespoke expert. Email him here: eidolonaudio@gmail.com
G.K. Chesterton: His cause of canonization has been rejected. I understand why, but the charge of anti-semitism is ridiculous. And unnecessary to raise. Maybe the bishop was virtue signalling.
Lighting Segments: The notecard, beer markets, Europe’s death wish, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Total Work: Work 24/7 and you’ll never work another day in your life. Well, maybe. I flush it out here.
Music for Lighting Segments: Sky Hawk Beach by Blue Wave Theory. Used pursuant to the Attribution Share-Alike License 4.0.
Theme song: Skinnin’ Lynyrd by Greg Scheske, a bespoke expert. Email him here: eidolonaudio@gmail.com
Trump and Baltimore.
CBGBs. A horrible movie that’s worth watching.
The Hour. One hour in the morning. Focused purposelessness. Highly recommended. Tips.
Segments:
Trump and Baltimore.
CBGBs.
Lightning Segments.
The Hour. One hour of “prayer” (term used loosely) in the morning. It really works, and you’ll have plenty of time.
Music for Lighting Segments: Sky Hawk Beach by Blue Wave Theory. Used pursuant to the Attribution Share-Alike License 4.0.
Poverty, chastity, obedience: three facets of detachment. Its connection to Zen. How play let's us live an active life in the detached mode.
Detachment: The first rule of the spiritual life.
Poverty, chastity, obedience: three facets of detachment. Its connection to Zen. How play let's us live an active life in the detached mode.
Memorial Day Weekend: A tradition has come to a close: I’m not bacheloring it this holiday weekend. Please indulge this autobiographical note, with commentary on foreign intervention.
Lightning Segments. My oldest sons have been getting drunk in Mexico. I can (and in this segment do) relate.
The Crock Pot Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is like a crock pot: it can hold putrid gruel or cuisine, but it always holds its form.
Mental Exercising: Everyone seems to agree: It’s crucial we exercise mentally, normally in the form of meditation. Meditation, even the most secular, focuses on taking yourself out of time and space. Why? Time and space are the realm of the bodily. By practicing meditation, by trying to escape time and space, is there an admission that there is, indeed, a spiritual?
Predictive Genetics: The genetics revolution is here. It’s scary, scary stuff, and the Chinese don’t find it scary at all. The curse of Communism (which compelled Mao to wipe out thousands of years of Chinese tradition and norms) might be preparing to bring its worse harvest of all.
Lightning Segments: Dieting and efficient drinking, Three Dog Night’s Chuck Negron at the Rose Bowl, gay Mexicans, more.
Education News: Senior hook-up software program at the Ivies, Detroit Diocese bans Sunday athletics, the farce of a bachelor’s degree.
Music attribution
Theme song: Skinnin’ Lynyrd by Greg Scheske, a bespoke expert. Email him here: eidolonaudio@gmail.com
Background music for Lightning Segments is courtesy of Audionautix.
Mental Exercising: Everyone seems to agree: It’s crucial we exercise mentally, normally in the form of meditation. Meditation, even the most secular, focuses on taking yourself out of time and space. Why? Time and space are the realm of the bodily. By practicing meditation, by trying to escape time and space, is there an admission that there is, indeed, a spiritual?
Predictive Genetics: The genetics revolution is here. It’s scary, scary stuff, and the Chinese don’t find it scary at all. The curse of Communism (which compelled Mao to wipe out thousands of years of Chinese tradition and norms) might be preparing to bring its worse harvest of all.
Lightning Segments: Dieting and efficient drinking, Three Dog Night’s Chuck Negron at the Rose Bowl, gay Mexicans, more.
Education News: Senior hook-up software program at the Ivies, Detroit Diocese bans Sunday athletics, the farce of a bachelor’s degree.
Brian Sims: Yup, he’s a hateful nut. Yup, the Right has hateful nuts too. The thing is, the Right doesn’t have them in positions of influence or power. Moreover, the postmodernist Left is, from its core beliefs, extremist and hateful.
Fleeing California: Dot com millionaires are fleeing California right before they realize their taxable income from their start-ups. Pretty funny . . . and a snapshot why beautiful California will wreck itself.
Lightning Segments: Toilet wine, transgender sports leagues, two Spotify recommendations, how to drink like an adult, Michigan in May, and Copts.
E.F. Schumacher: A Guide for the Perplexed is a great book, but it’s wrapped in the self-focused northern school of Zen instead of the southern school that rejects subject-object. The western spiritual tradition is wrapped in the northern school, but its two greatest spiritual writers, St. John of the Cross and St. Therese Lisieux, weren’t.
Music attribution
Theme song: Skinnin’ Lynyrd by Greg Scheske, a bespoke expert. Email him here: eidolonaudio@gmail.com
Background music for Lightning Segments is courtesy of Audionautix.
Brian Sims: Yup, he’s a hateful nut. Yup, the Right has hateful nuts too. The thing is, the Right doesn’t have them in positions of influence or power. Moreover, the postmodernist Left is, from its core beliefs, extremist and hateful.
Fleeing California: Dot com millionaires are fleeing California right before they realize their taxable income from their start-ups. Pretty funny . . . and a snapshot why beautiful California will wreck itself.
Lightning Segments: Toilet wine, transgender sports leagues, two Spotify recommendations, how to drink like an adult, Michigan in May, and Copts.
E.F. Schumacher: A Guide for the Perplexed is a great book, but it’s wrapped in the self-focused northern school of Zen instead of the southern school that rejects subject-object. The western spiritual tradition is wrapped in the northern school, but its two greatest spiritual writers, St. John of the Cross and St. Therese Lisieux, weren’t.
Noise. Our culture is too tolerant when it comes to noise. I explore it.
Noise Part II: Silence and Russell Kirk, Max Picard, and Cardinal Sarah. The Eighth Capital Sin.
Lightning Segments: I address some listener feedback, treating hangovers, movie critic John Senior.
The New Pantagruel: My article, The Eighth Capital Sin, appeared in the defunct magazine New Pantagruel with Caleb Stegall. I discuss it here.
LGBT at Work: The Supreme Court has taken three LGBT discrimination cases. It’s evidence that Derrida has won: text with no context can be twisted however you want.
Easter: The Resurrection is an historical fact. Shocking claim? Hear me out. Also: Discussion about the Shroud of Turin.
Lightning Segments: Low calorie gin and tonics, Game of Porns, Staring at a Naked Woman, Staring down NOW at the Masters (Note: I don’t say “hundreds of thousands” when referring to the men’s counter-protest at the Masters . . . I say “hundreds or thousands”).
Loan Forgiveness: Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to eliminate student debt is a moral outrage. Her plan to throw even more money at the schools further compounds the problem.
Tiger Woods: Congratulations to Tiger and congratulations to golf.
Tiger and the Press: Tiger the Philanderer . . . covered up by the press. A small example of a much bigger problem: the press can’t be trusted.
Insurance Rates: Your credit history has nothing to do with your driving habits? Highly unlikely, the assertion of the leftist Arab congresswoman from Detroit’s assertion to the contrary.
Twitter’s Post-Modernist Narrative: Twitter has a narrative. If your narrative disagrees with theirs, you get banned. But they assure us: they’re objective and only look at context.
A Thought Experiment: What if Google et al have been taken over by the government? There’s evidence that they’re influenced heavily by government, but what if they’re actually controlled by the government? And they’re stomping on free speech, controlling the search engine results, etc. There’s evidence that they’re beholden to government (tax breaks, etc.) and, therefore, influenced by government, but not quite controlled. But if they were . . .?
The Grand Narrative: Post-modernism loves to overthrow grand narratives. It’s a related branch of revisionist history. Some of it is is a good thing, but when they want to shift the narrative from “America is great” to “America sucks and needs to be remade,” they’re ridiculous and evil.
Dumplin’ Take 2: I revisit that horrible Netflix movie, Dumplin’. It turns out, the movie is, indeed, an attack on healthism and a celebration of fatness. It’s an attempt to invert the binary. Joe Rogan helps explain it.
Time: Why is everyone so stressed for time? It’s because we’re so wealthy, there’s a ton of cool stuff to do.
Lightning Segments: Spotify music recommendations, big player on Rodeo Drive, moronic sports bars, gay admissions at the University of Michigan.
Music attribution
Theme song: Skinnin’ Lynyrd by Greg Scheske, a bespoke expert. Email him here: eidolonaudio@gmail.com
Background music for Lightning Segments is “Sky Hawk Beach,” by Blue Wave Theory, pursuant to the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 License.
thism and a celebration of fatness. It’s an attempt to invert the binary. Joe Rogan helps explain it.
Time: Why is everyone so stressed for time? It’s because we’re so wealthy, there’s a ton of cool stuff to do.
Lightning Segments: Spotify music recommendations, big player on Rodeo Drive, moronic sports bars, gay admissions at the University of Michigan.
LA, Santa Monica, Malibu, Ventura, San Simeon, Monterey, Santa Cruz, Soledad, Altadena, Pasadena, Beverly Hills, Venice Beach, Anaheim: The entire podcast episode is dedicated to California. Well, the entire podcast, minus a few detours.
LA, Santa Monica, Malibu, Ventura, San Simeon, Monterey, Santa Cruz, Soledad, Altadena, Pasadena, Beverly Hills, Venice Beach, Anaheim: The entire podcast episode is dedicated to California. Well, the entire podcast, minus a few detours.
Thanks a Thousand: A.J. Jacob's’ new book about tracking down the people who make his cup of morning coffee.
Boris at the Grocery Store: A Houston grocery store blew Boris Yeltsin away. I can relate.
Lightning Segments: New drinking terms, starting mindfulness now, draining interactions.
The Freakin’ Poor: Why do we treat the poor like they have no moral agency?
Dogs: Strict liability for dog owners? I think so, even though I know it’s a quixotic crusade.
Thanks a Thousand: A.J. Jacob's’ new book about tracking down the people who make his cup of morning coffee.
Boris at the Grocery Store: A Houston grocery store blew Boris Yeltsin away. I can relate.
Lightning Segments: New drinking terms, starting mindfulness now, draining interactions.
The Freakin’ Poor: Why do we treat the poor like they have no moral agency?
Dogs: Strict liability for dog owners? I think so, even though I know it’s a quixotic crusade.
Postmodernism: That’s a pretty big umbrella of thought. Please excuse my broad—sloppy—use of the term.
Standpoint Epistemology: You know why whites can’t think like blacks, and men like women, or cis like queers? Because a Soviet philosopher told them it’s so.
Act = Brahman: Think hard about the verb “act.” It might be a word that Derrida himself couldn’t deconstruct. I’m not sure it’s defined by reference to something else. It might stand on its own, like the Hindu/Buddhist Brahman. I flush it out here.
Praxeology: That Brahman stuff is my attempt to slip some von Misesian thought into the postmoderns.
Lightning Segments: Mindfulness, drinking cities, essential oils, more.
The Stylites: Living on pillars in the late Roman Empire.
Postmodernism: That’s a pretty big umbrella of thought. Please excuse my broad—sloppy—use of the term.
Standpoint Epistemology: You know why whites can’t think like blacks, and men like women, or cis like queers? Because a Soviet philosopher told them it’s so.
Act = Brahman: Think hard about the verb “act.” It might be a word that Derrida himself couldn’t deconstruct. I’m not sure it’s defined by reference to something else. It might stand on its own, like the Hindu/Buddhist Brahman. I flush it out here.
Praxeology: That Brahman stuff is my attempt to slip some von Misesian thought into the postmoderns.
Lightning Segments: Mindfulness, drinking cities, essential oils, more.
The Stylites: Living on pillars in the late Roman Empire.
Music attribution
Theme song: Skinnin’ Lynyrd by Greg Scheske, a bespoke expert. Email him here: eidolonaudio@gmail.com
Background music for Lightning Segments is courtesy of Audionautix.
Artificial Intelligence: What it is. How it is a threat . . . or how it might be a threat.
Famine and Tyranny: Courtesy of the State. Free markets merely avoid them.
Lightning Segments: Bill Burr, Going for the Snatch, Other
Cool Dudes: Cool dudes in high school stay cool, I think.
Music attribution
Theme song: Skinnin’ Lynyrd by Greg Scheske, a bespoke expert. Email him here: eidolonaudio@gmail.com
Background music for Lightning Segments is courtesy of Audionautix.
Artificial Intelligence: What it is. How it is a threat . . . or how it might be a threat.
Famine and Tyranny: Courtesy of the State. Free markets merely avoid them.
Lightning Segments: Bill Burr, Going for the Snatch, Other
Cool Dudes: Cool dudes in high school stay cool, I think.
Drinking and Lent: Why would I give up booze for Lent? It’s practically a sacramental.
Zen Lent: Do you hope to make spiritual progress during Lent? Then you won’t. Your focus is wrong because you have a focus.
Tariffs: They’re a bad thing. It’s Econ 101. I explain why here.
Lightning Segments: Two funny stories, Bill Burr and the Catholic Church, Joe Rogen and the Catholic Church
David Foster Wallace: My introduction to this brilliant essayist
The Imitation of Christ. What do I think of his classic? It’s a, you know, classic. I think it hits the psychology of devotion well . . . at least as far as 15th century standards go. It was, however, the product of 200 years of bad philosophy known as “nominalism.” I flush it out here.
Miami. I went to the Capitol of Latin America for a bachelor party. I was blown away. The bulk of the podcast explains why.
Dumplin’. Wow, leftwing political tripe dressed up as a movie. This movie from Netflix is shameless with its political agenda.
Denver and the Bowel. Denver has decriminalized crapping in public. The mind boggles.
Wicked Me. Some people’s generosity with their time floors me. I can’t say I’m impressed because the way they’re spending it seems so banal, but maybe I ought to be impressed. It’s time spent for others. I puzzle it out in this segment.
Lightning Segments. Another good gin and tonic recipe, Hayek praising Belloc, changing the name of unfortunate circumstances . . . and changing the name of minority groups . . . an insult?
Steve Martin and Seinfeld. Comedy seemed to take a pretty wild turn with the advent of Steve Martin. Did screens affect our comedic tastes? i think so. I flush it out here.
The Old Testament. I summarize the OT in about eight minutes. The segment is closer to 11, but I throw in a couple of decidedly un-OT anecdotes.
Words. A short look at a few unusual words.
Lightning Segments. The ideal gin and tonic, The Adventures of Beer Man, Ira Gershwin, More.
Radical Derrida? I know Derrida was radical, but I’m not sure three of his main conclusions—words don’t carry ultimate meaning, no text outside the text, and condemnation of binaries—are all that startling. I explain why, pulling from my personal experience, the Warren Court, and Lao Tzu.
Sex in the Stall. A couple allegedly has sex in the bathroom stall at a NFL games. That’s unbelievably gross. Deconstructionism is partly to blame. The fact that these people are absolute pigs doesn’t help, but deconstructionism feeds them. I explain how.
Communist Gnosticism. Marx, Lenin, and hatred for religion = shuttering of Greek Orthodox Churches in the early USSR. Homosexuality, deconstructionism, and hatred for truth = shuttering of Roman Catholic Churches in contemporary USA?
Deconstructionism. Summarized succinctly. Words carry no meaning. Therefore, anything anybody purports to know is merely what they derive from individual experience: subjectivism. No truth . . . only “truth claims.”
Lightning Segments. Hip and renegades: shaping American culture. More McLuhan.
What TWE is Trying to Do. It started as “messages to my adult children,” but quickly grew. What am I trying to do? Nothing more nor less than imitating the essays of Joseph Epstein and honoring Samuel Johnson’s axion: The only end of writing is to allow the reader to better enjoy life.
Fulton Sheen. Bishop, Emmy award winner, adviser to the rich and famous, and making serious inroads to canonization thanks to a stunning 2010 miracle (well, they’re all stunning, but this one particularly so). And then there’s his namesake, Charlie Sheen.
Modernity: Modernity is Gnosticism. John Locke and Materialism, Newton and Empiricism, Mill and Utilitarianism, the politics of Progressivism.
Lightning Segments: Martin Sheen and Dorothy Day and Dostoyevsky; Lesbian remark apologia, using Pineapple Express; E. Michael Jones.
Introverts. An introvert is not a shy person. It’s someone who draws energy from quiet. He has a finite supply of energy for interaction . . . it drains him. A huge revelation for this podcaster. Hat tip to The Matt Walsh Show.
Deconstructionists. Derrida’s attack on binaries was an overreaction to Descartes’ erroneous dualism that denied the sacramental nature of reality. That, anyway, is my theory.
Gnostic Gays: Deconstructionism + Gnosticism = LGBTQ movement.
Touching During Mass. Enough already. Enough with shaking hands, too, at least during the cold and flu season. That custom has ran its course.
Today’s Pride and Prejudice Parlor Scenes. Family members lounging around the living room, each with individual screens in their hands. The end of the family? Or a return of the family to 1800 leisurely norms?
Marshall McLuhan. This Catholic convert would probably take major issue with my conclusions in the previous segment. I introduce the thought of this man who used to be a household name and the meaning of his signature line, “The medium is the message.”
Lighting Segments. Augustine didn’t say “He who sings prays twice,” plus it seems kind of self-laudatory. School of Rock, the musical . . . excellent. Andrew Lloyd Weber . . . rich and conservative. More.
Gnosticism. Introducing the thought of Eric Voegelin, one of the twentieth centuries greatest, yet unheralded, thinkers.
Touching During Mass. Enough already. Enough with shaking hands, too, at least during the cold and flu season. That custom has ran its course.
Today’s Pride and Prejudice Parlor Scenes. Family members lounging around the living room, each with individual screens in their hands. The end of the family? Or a return of the family to 1800 leisurely norms?
Marshall McLuhan. This Catholic convert would probably take major issue with my conclusions in the previous segment. I introduce the thought of this man who used to be a household name and the meaning of his signature line, “The medium is the message.”
Lighting Segments. Augustine didn’t say “He who sings prays twice,” plus it seems kind of self-laudatory. School of Rock, the musical . . . excellent. Andrew Lloyd Weber . . . rich and conservative. More.
Gnosticism. Introducing the thought of Eric Voegelin, one of the twentieth centuries greatest, yet unheralded, thinkers.
The Mind and Art of Albert Jay Nock. Great book/introduction into the life and thought of the godfather of American libertarianism. The fact that Crunden wrote this as an undergrad? Blows me away.
Deconstructionism and the Family. Why are leftists pro-environment and pro-gay marriage? There’s a connection, though it’s murky and a bit confusing. I try to flush it out here.
Lightning Segments. Dieting, Smear the Queer, More.
Mindfulness. Breaking the mind in two. Proof of the soul? One piece of handy practical advice (identify the emotion and it goes away).
Punctuation. Basic punctuation shows regard for the other.
Haters at Mass. Pope Francis’ suggestion that hateful Catholics stay away from Mass makes sense, but there are three potential problems with it: When is a person good enough to go to Mass? Hasn’t he been a bit, ahem, spiteful in his attacks on his political foes? Maybe Mass is keeping the hateful from becoming the murderous.
Structuralism. The foundations of post-modernism. My first podcast segment on this topic. Structuralists: words form the society; the society tells you how to think; thoughts don’t come from inside of us. Deconstructionists: Okay, but you guys, the structuralists, aren’t thinking for yourselves either. There is no truth period, in any form or fashion whatsoever. Leads to sexual libertinism.
Buddhist Emptiness. The Buddhist doctrine of Emptiness appears to reflect the basic insight of semiology, the science of signs, which was the foundation of the structuralists’ insights. Both led to sexual libertinism: Tantric Buddhism on the one hand, free love of the 1960s on the other (and today’s celebration of preference today).
Lightning Segments. Hangovers, exploding real estate prices in Detroit, TWE’s improving Facebook page.
Nestorian Christians. Mongols respected Christians . . . of the Nestorian stripe. Who were they? In sum, Christians who denied Christ’s full divinity. They were active in the far east and managed to convert an important Mongol tribe.
Odds and ends from the past nine days. Topics include Detroit, nutty people, the Rosary, the Breviary.
Next Week: I plan on producing a podcast next week, over the holidays, but it’ll probably be unusual fare.
Sol Invictus. No, Christmas predates Sol Invictus, but the question of pagan practices’ influence on Christian practices is interesting. I don’t look at the history much, but rather, focus on the premonition of truth that I think was at work.
The Jesus Prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Just twelve words. The path to praying without ceasing (Thessalonians 5)?
Econtalk and Secular Groping. The more we advance, the more we go backwards: As we get away from modernism, we start to rediscover ancient truths. It’s a phenomenon that has long fascinated me. I delve into it here.
Post-Modernism Studies Have Begun: I bought Thaddeus Russell’s course, “What is Post-Modernism.” I like it, but I think I’ve caught three pretty bad errors in the first 20 minutes or so: Margaret Mead’s findings were terribly flawed, Copernicus didn’t suffer severe persecution, Galileo wasn’t persecuted because he was correct.
Christians and Post-Modernism: Joseph Bottum corroborates my hunch: Post-modernism is attacking traditional Christianity’s enemy, modernism, so we have a lot of common ground.
Galileo: What very few people know: Galileo was wrong. His conclusions were right, but his rationale was wrong. He couldn’t prove what he was saying, but rather, expected everyone to accept his conclusions based on the strength of his (supposed) superiority to everyone else. He ended a broken man . . . pride goeth before the fall.
Arthur Koestler: A #metoo villain from the mid-twentieth century. No doubt a creep, but probably a genius, intellectually honest, and interesting.
Midget Wrestling: It was a great time. Twisted? Naw, just fun. Don’t deprive midgets of their agency, and you can’t judge someone else’s sense of humor as long as it’s not unkind.
Detroit: Its rise from the ashes continues, but it’s still a gritty place and rings “authentic.” Contrast that with downtown Chicago.
Lightning Segments: All about The Manly Handbook, an absurd little book from the early 1980s that cracks me up to this day.
FOCUS: The Fellowship of Catholic University Students is doing marvelous work, as evidenced by my first-hand experience with the organization. :
Post-Modernism: Is this the smoke of Satan that Pope Paul VI talked about? I guess I need to figure it out.
Self-Abuse: The Atlantic ran a long essay about the “sex recession”: kids are having less sex these days. Why? One answer: masturbation.
Sex Jokes: Is ribaldry dialogue okay for Catholics? Maybe, maybe not. You decide.
Lightning Segments: El Cortez in Las Vegas, Elvis drummer, the Horn Effect, more.
The Seventh Century: The Dark Ages have begun, but what exactly do things look like? Khazars, Pepin, Franks, Etc.
Taoist Anarchism: Taoists are anarchists. For good reason: Wu-wei; non-action.
Black Friday and the Gorillas: Are Black Friday shoppers near descendants of the gorillas? Albert Jay Nock would seem to think so. A sense of superiority is an unsettling trait of many libertarians.
Puritanizing Marijuana: The marijuana industry is booming, but there is a conscious effort to imbue it with the Puritan work ethic and otherwise mainstream it. Thaddeus Russell wouldn’t approve.
Lightning Segments: Eight Mile, a list of Great Men, other snippets.
Poustinia: My experience with the solitary Russian retreat.
Fools for Christ: A very unusual religious calling, but a compelling one in its own way.
I spent the week in Las Vegas, attending the annual Marijuana Business Conference (“MJ Biz Con”). Consequently, I didn’t have any time to put together a normal podcast, but I accumulated a lot of interesting discussion subject matter. This episode breaks down, from a Catholic perspective, Vegas and the blooming marijuana industry.
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650: So, if the Roman Empire didn’t fall in 476, when did it? Nobody really knows, but it’s probably safe to say that, by 650, Rome was gone and the Dark Ages had begun.
Thanksgiving: November has a lot to recommend it, but perhaps nothing as much as this: it’s the month for giving thanks. With the attitude of giving thanks, comes many blessings.
Lightning Segments: Hot Scandinavian women, a king’s life, who can you trust, and Oscar Levant.
The Tao: What is the Tao? I don’t know. But you can start to find it if you start to play.
Taoism: The laid back outlook of Lao-Tse and Chuang-Tzu. Lisieux-like. A very short introduction.
Bogus Historical Atlas: A run-down of a bogus map of Europe circa 486. I wish I could find my copy of that book. It might have been a Rand McNally historical atlas. No matter. None of those “kingdoms” considered themselves kingdoms in 486. Burgundy, Franks, Visigoths: They were all controlled by barbarian generals who considered themselves part of the Roman Empire.
Lightning Segments: Henri Pirenne (introductory lecture), a lost weekend, funny old man stories. (Note: I reference Charles Jackson’s Lost Weekend. but I referred to Charles “Bukowski” by accident. Bukowski was a great drinker, so my mistake is understandable, but a mistake nonetheless.)
The F-Word: Okay to use? No. Part of our culture? Yes. So it will sneak into otherwise polite, even urbane, conversation.
Russell Kirk: I talked with the great man once. I spent a weekend at his house once. I recount the incidents in this segment.
Halloween: Okay to celebrate? Of course. Without appreciating evil, you can’t appreciate good.
Short History of Zen: Shakyamuni through the Bodhidharma to Hui-Neng: We sketch its earliest history to the seventh century, where it first noticeably took on its mature form. Mahayana Buddhism + Taoism = Zen.
Lightning Segments: Two Russian jokes, Jeff Riggenbach, Albert Jay Nock
Does the Fall Matter? The Fall of the Roman Empire isn’t just interesting for nerds. It tells us something about today’s political issues. If it weren’t for the way the Empire collapsed, we wouldn’t have the Black Lives Matter movement today.
Zen: Ego: the biggest, baddest gorilla in the zoo of subject-object. Is spirituality selfish?
The Fall of Rome: It didn’t occur in 476 . . . just ask Hilaire Belloc. Archeology vindicates “Old Thunder” (Belloc’s nickname). Are you a continuist or catastrophist?
Drinking in Communist Countries: There’s a lot of it. Why? Maybe because State action destroy society?
Small Talk: A small art or a rude imposition? You decide.
Leisure, The Basis of Culture. A look at the mid-20th century Thomistic philosopher, Joseph Pieper, and his most famous book.
This episode looks again at my concept of “primary obligations,” pointing out that it’s a reference point, not a stick to beat others with. We also look briefly at Tolstoy’s “family narcissism” and that hard question: is it harder to deal with toddlers or teenagers, on a day-to-day basis.
I then introduce Zen. Due to a lot of interest among listeners, this will become a recurring topic of the podcast. I look at the fundamental approach of Zen, which is to smash through the “subject-object” way of viewing things, to approach life with the eyes of a little child. I also touch briefly on the thought of Australian philosopher, Samuel Alexander, who influenced C.S. Lewis (reference Surprised by Joy).
For a great introduction to Zen, I highly recommend the lead essay in Thomas Merton’s Mystics and Zen Masters. (Skip the first five pages or so.)
I then introduce a second topic that I hope will be recurring: The Middle Ages. I look briefly at the “fall” of Rome, then break down every century from 800 to 1500 . . . in a 10,000-foot look in eight minutes.
Finally, I talk about this week’s saints, with focus on St. Theresa Avila and St. Ignatius of Antioch, with focus on Theresa’s influence on Edith Stein and Ignatius’ legendary role in Matthew Chapter 18.
Music this week is by The Crevulators. They’re a real good retro rock bands. Good stuff. Used pursuant to the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported LIcense.
Primary Obligations: The emptiness of the 24/7 argument.
Does modern libertarianism conflict with the Catechism?
Early Rise of the Centralized State.
A’Kempis and a Mild Critique of Libertarianism.
St. Symeon the New Theologian.
Drunks on Screen.
The 24-Hours-in-a-Day Fallacy and Primary Obligations. Is "Catholic Libertarian" an oxymoron? Early Rise of the Centralized State. Symeon the New Theologian. Drunks on Screen. Show Notes http://thedailyeudemon.com/?p=47192
David Hume and the Problem of Induction. What it means for religion.
Totalitarianism in Modern Democracies
Saint Month
Segments on medievalist Rachel Fulton Brown, spectrum of libertarianism, Burning Man, and the homosexual subculture at the Catholic Church