Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

[Pam Seeback]

Gustav: I say that 'strong idea must become self-law'. Meaning, we have to arrive at a strong definition which is then the basis for an ethic, and the primary focus of the ethic is toward the self. Seems as clear as day.

Very interesting that you interpret the worldview of the posters here as living in an abstract realm of Idealism (the need to conquer with ideas) when this is how I interpret your worldview of "strong ideas as self-law."

You propose, against an 'idea of self', something that I would not know how to name. An idea of non-self? A non-idea of self? No idea at all? No self-idea? Dissolution of self?

The very start of wisdom is the realization that 'self', the maker of ideas, is itself naught but an idea. Did you think you were a 'self' before your parents told you you were a self?

Once you start down this rabbit hole you wind up (I assert) in a labyrinth of meaninglessness. Meanings dissolve because the possibility of man in a real realtionship to what is real dissolves. What is left one after that? How would you describe it?

The only 'real' I can infer in your world of relationship is the world of ideas. We're back to idealism which by definition is not real. As for what is left when self-made idealism is abandoned, wait to read the final paragraph.

But dissolution of self is tied to a project of dissolution: a dangerous enterprise. What acid best dissolves self, I ask?

The acid that best dissolves the idea of self is the truth that the infinite causality that is God is all there is. The experience of danger is fear of this truth. When truth is acknowledged, danger leaves. This is why Jesus said he came with a sword: truth hurts.

Like it or not you are going to have to deal with both 'Hitler' and 'Churchill'. I find this all quite interesting because I think that what we are and what actually (if invisibly) moves us is our post-war condition. You may have no place for these considerations in your system (of checking out of reality) yet they are quite high on my list. We have to underdtand the last war and what was/is at stake to be able to understand 'who we are'. There is no 'spiritual manoeuvre' around this.

There is no checking out of reality, God is everything, remember? Including dealing with 'Hitler' and 'Churchill.' The difference between us is that where your dealing encompasses the idea of self, who you believe we are (interesting you put 'who we are' in quotes as if it isn't truth or real) my dealing dissolves this very same idea to include the wisdom of what we really are: the causality (of God).

Spirituality thus has to do with now, this reality, ourselves in a real world - in the world - and it has to do with 'strong idea'.

Again with the quotes.

Also, there is a great deal that hinges on your understanding that the self is a 'shitpile', that we are shitpiles, that it is a shitpile. That is of course a foundational tenet of your metaphysical definition.

The idea of self is a shitpile because it usurps the reality of God.

I suggest again that we are dealing with 'chaos', that one of the main issues or questions has to do with 'surrender' (the surrender of self I guess one would put it), and once again the question and the outcome of 'subversion'. When these become subjects or elements on the table of discussion, and when one then turns to address your tenets, it all becomes more interesting and various paths open up from it. If one continues in your defined path, one disappears into meaninglessness and impotency.

Does God, the cause of the All produce chaos or is it God's idea of self as the center of it All that produces the idea of chaos? As for your assumption of disappearance into meaninglessness and impotency upon death of the idea of self, again, my final paragraph deals with this delusion.

A forum devoted to meaninglessness and impotency requires a King. Need I mention what King rules this realm? ;-)

Usurper. :-)

You asked what is 'left' when self is dissolved. Not an easy task since the idea of self is strong in you, but here goes. It requires that you intuit logically the wisdom concepts of conditioned and unconditioned.

Releasing the stress of the conditioned self is to find and enjoy glimpses of heaven (the unconditioned causality) on earth (Word). It is to trade mortality for immortality, the perishable for the imperishable. It is not an easy trade, acid is a good metaphor. However, with the coming of the acid comes the fruit of the spirit, the fruit of "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."

Meaningless and impotency? That's the job of the idea of self, not the job of God that is too busy causing all things to consider such silly matters. :-)

[jupiviv]

"we are 'men among the ruins".

What exactly is the loss from your perspective. Which reasons you have to worry?

@Alex, I would like to know your answers to these questions as well, if you even have them. Seriously.

You are certainly obsessed with the idea of something great lost, something pure violated and so on. But you never really tell us what it is that has been lost and when it was that it *wasn't* lost. I for one think that human beings are more intellectually and morally bankrupt than they were 100 years ago, but then there are so many more of them! The high arts are a joke, and especially music, but then popular music was always a joke. I also think the extant human race is about to enter a very, very dark period in its existence and that my generation will be the greatest sufferer; but it's not like other generations will have suffered less. These things have more to do with *lack* than with loss.

[Pam Seeback]

Gustav: I post this for Pam as it concretises even more a certain existential stance which I had expressed as 'Strong ideas must become 'self-law'.

Julius Evola in 'The Path of Cinnabar' wrote:
Another formula I used was to define ideas as potential realities, and realities as actual ideas. This was a bold and dangerous theory, for it was one that led to action. Paradoxically, one could here envision a gradual process whereby the power of an 'I' expands from being the power of thought to that of magical imagination and self-persuasion: to that of persuading others and, ultimately, of persuading and altering reality itself.

The hubris of the Prince of the world, the one who thinks he is God, idea of self as persuader and alterer of reality, when in truth, all that is being persuaded and altered in the idea of self. The Father loves the Son of Man even as It tries to reverse the righteous order of things. After all, It was caused to do so.

[Pam Seeback]

"we are 'men among the ruins".

What exactly is the loss from your perspective. Which reasons you have to worry?

@Alex, I would like to know your answers to these questions as well, if you even have them. Seriously.

You are certainly obsessed with the idea of something great lost, something pure violated and so on. But you never really tell us what it is that has been lost and when it was that it *wasn't* lost. I for one think that human beings are more intellectually and morally bankrupt than they were 100 years ago, but then there are so many more of them! The high arts are a joke, and especially music, but then popular music was always a joke. I also think the extant human race is about to enter a very, very dark period in its existence and that my generation will be the greatest sufferer; but it's not like other generations will have suffered less. These things have more to do with *lack* than with loss.

And what does the current condition of self worship more now than it did a mere 100 years ago? Idea as reality.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It's interesting to realize things are changing and that the future might not be necessarily something we would like or desire right now. But how to determine if it's worse on a more grand scale? Lets imagine a further breakdown of social cohesion, nation-states and current, fleeting traditions. Lets imagine a "technocratation" of our lives where technology and artificial chemistry would replace or facilitate current addictions to faith, entertainment, war, sex and various sentimental moods. What exactly is the loss from your perspective. Which reasons you have to worry? A decline in happiness, economy, thought or even art? But that's a cry we've heard since people started writing their complaints down, before Christ already. In the mean time through various standards of measurement, the world seems to know less war, more eduction and less disease than ever. And indications are that it's looking to improve despite all "decline" and ruin (although it can feel differently and I do know your "pain").

What exactly is the loss from your perspective. Which reasons you have to worry?

You miss what I would consider the more important point of the philosophical-metaphysical endeavour of Evola and people like him: It is not to lament a world gone-by in the way you interpret it, but to discover and enunciate a solid metaphysical platform (if I will be permitted to speak in such a way) upon which to construct a relationship with Reality. To find oneself 'among the ruins' is, in my understanding, to find oneself in the aftermath of the destruction of a defined metaphysic, or the collapse of a metaphysic, or the decadence of a metaphysic. True, the 'ruins' may be discovered and noted in physical culture, in certain behaviours, in social chaos and other manifestations, but the real loss is the loss of an ability to define oneself, one's relationship to reality, to existence, in a more profound sense. I'd also say that Evola's objective (which is his and not mine necessarily) is to countervail nihilism. If this is so, then what he endeavours is a creative and a necessary response. Now, my impression of the motive of our Glorious Founders is to be discovered in very much the same zone of endeavour: To rediscover, revisualise, redescribe and reanimate a 'connection' with solid and 'real' currents within existence, and to define a project for man (for each of them, and for people: for 'men').

Similarly then, if my impression is correct, they too wake up in a world that has collapsed in 'ruins', though I do not think they describe it in those terms. Yet it is a fallen world. I think each one reading here does not have to have it spelled out. They sought to realign themselves with 'true' and also with 'absolute' truth-definitions and to establish the living of life on that platform.

Well, this is, to speak generally, the 'object of religion' since religion precedes philosophy. A religious platform, with a metaphysical definition, is more central to man, more original let us say, and so-called philosophy is a later turn. Yet the essence of the question(s) is/are essentially religious.

You are certainly obsessed with the idea of something great lost, something pure violated and so on. But you never really tell us what it is that has been lost and when it was that it *wasn't* lost. I for one think that human beings are more intellectually and morally bankrupt than they were 100 years ago, but then there are so many more of them! The high arts are a joke, and especially music, but then popular music was always a joke. I also think the extant human race is about to enter a very, very dark period in its existence and that my generation will be the greatest sufferer; but it's not like other generations will have suffered less. These things have more to do with *lack* than with loss.

You have misread. I don't express an obsession with something lost nor a pure thing violated. What I do say though is multifold:

One is that modern man is a problem, sort of like a genii let out of a bottle. But - and like Ortega y Gassett who wrote extensively on the topic - no one can say ultimately if it is a good or an evil that 'mass man' has come to dominate the scene. I have the sense that when you say 'intellectually and morally bankrupt' that you are speaking to a similar effect. It is very much at the top of my list to *fight* or to counter the influence and the power of the mass-man, both internally, and also externally. True, I could simply abandon all concern and move through this world in a detached mode. And in some sense I do this insofar as we all do this. But I am constantly called back to the idea of defining 'strong idea' and, too, I am concerned for the people in my life and I watch them respond and thrive around strong ideas.

The second is that 'we' are losing connection to good and valuable things because we lose a connection with the solidities (of theology, of metaphysical definition, of moral definitions even) because we are in a descending, decadent cycle. It seems to me, personally, inevitable (unavoidable) that this occur, and who can say *ultimately* what the effect will be, but I am of the opinion that, in one way or another, and in different ways, people that are attracted to this platform (this forum) are seeking to locate strong idea, and this is in my view equivalent to 'seeking a solid metaphysical foundation' in which, within which and out of which one can live.

One must note - if Evola as a thinker is being considered - that in addition to noticing how it has come about that man stands 'in the ruins' (it requires all sorts of additional definitions), he also proposes how a differently-oriented man can and should get along (in such a world). So, his philosophy is creative/protective. But overall I think one would have to say it is not dissolute. I always supposed that this was one of QRS's strongest critiques of the present: that it is dissolute. It is what is meant when one speaks of 'flowey feminine culture' and general unconsciousness that leads to giving oneself over to the contingent. In my view, what counters this is 'strong idea'. And also in essence the idea of 'getting bloody' means entering the fray in a creative, direct and also masculine way to have effect in this world. I think these are the positive aspects of the QRS program. So, in this way I have used QRS as a way to explain some of the valuations of traditionalists, insofar as I understand them.

Diebert asks: "Lets imagine a "technocratation" of our lives where technology and artificial chemistry would replace or facilitate current addictions to faith, entertainment, war, sex and various sentimental moods. What exactly is the loss from your perspective?"

Well, let me put it this way: I have a household. I have young people who will either be exposed to dissolute idea or to strong-idea that tends to strengthen and define and empower. I suggest that it is far better to avoid dissolution and to focus on strong-idea and its realisation, even though life is futile and anyway it ends in death. So in that household there is no TV allowed. TV is banned. And what replaces TV are books and readings and conversations. Activities are plotted out on a calendar and each month an accounting is made so that these kids can see what they have done, and understand the use of time to achieve defined goals.

I live in a world in which 'faith' as you put it has not (entirely) disappeared. I notice that my GF for example is a person of what you would call, derisively no doubt (though you are a direct product of a similar, though Protestant, faith-environment), a 'faith' position or perspective. I notice that her 'faith' is in a decadent phase. Meaning that she is really more a post-Catholic than a 'practicing Catholic'. But what happens when a person loses their faith but does not have 'strong-idea' to replace it? This is where mass-man and mass-culture can be spoken of. Mass Culture overtakes and possesses mass-man. I suggest that this can be avoided, or conditioned perhaps is a better word. The 'loss' from my perspective would occur when a person who had constructed themselves around a faith (that is, an understanding of self in relation to God), saw that relationship destroyed and had no means to construct another form of metaphysical relationship, capable of sustaining being, authenticity, a living and vital health in being and living and acting. It is imperative therefor to discover and to articulate a 'sold' metaphysical platform. Not merely as a private exercise but as an endeavour of benefit to people in one's environment. This is 'duty' and duty is an ethic that extends from metaphysical principles. I guess you could cal this 'upholding dharma' if you were so inclined.

This largely encapsulates the area of my focus, or 'concern'.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Evola wrote: "Another formula I used was to define ideas as potential realities, and realities as actual ideas. This was a bold and dangerous theory, for it was one that led to action. Paradoxically, one could here envision a gradual process whereby the power of an 'I' expands from being the power of thought to that of magical imagination and self-persuasion: to that of persuading others and, ultimately, of persuading and altering reality itself."

Movingalways wrote: "The hubris of the Prince of the world, the one who thinks he is God, idea of self as persuader and alterer of reality, when in truth, all that is being persuaded and altered in the idea of self. The Father loves the Son of Man even as It tries to reverse the righteous order of things. After all, It was caused to do so."

It makes sense that you would see *it* that way. It follows from your metaphysical tenets. If you understood more of Evola's philosophy I think you would appreciate more his 'higher' perspective.

Additionally, and once again, it is not God that deals with this world but man.

Pam the Crypto-Christian! (Yet your concerns are real: knowledge is indeed dangerous, as is choice).

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

What I notice in you, Diebert, is that you too (since such a critique is brought against me of repetition!) more or less repeat one, basic position:

• "In some ways we are but it's a perception one can find in all ages. The law of change would demand that we're always residing on the remains of what went before. This can become an emotional issue, a mourning, a missing, perhaps a longing back to something which never really was, at least not in the way it's looked at it in hindsight."

This is, I have gathered, the base of your philosophy, if it is possible (and fair) to suggest such a reduction. Seduction then for you certainly rises up as important because out of missing and mourning and longing (emotional/sentimental) arises the Trap.

But instead of debating or considering whether this statement is 'true' or 'untrue', I think one has to examine its intent and also what the effect of application of this idea will be. Now, my impression of your use of this idea is to nullify the possibility of real action in this world. Instead of understanding that as a 'real possibility' - as a possibility for you - you have opted to recoil away from 'the world' into a ideationally moderated 'world'. You become 'impotent' in my terminology.

What is also funny (you Dutch sweetheart) is that you think you can provide advice to me and use such terms as 'The problem with you Gustav ...'

Diebert: I am not at all interested in your cheap opinions. (Edited from a stronger usage which was intended as such).

::: wink :::

I suggest to you that you do not understand where I am coming from nor what I am attempting. You cannot really make any statements about what I have read, or not read enough of. One of your tactics has been and still is to assume a position superior to every other, to any other. You do this because you assume you are in a non-seduced position and that you speak from a special wisdom that is more wise than any other. This is the essence of your bullshit position. I suggest - for your own sake really - that you bring this approach to a close.

It's interesting to realize things are changing and that the future might not be necessarily something we would like or desire right now. But how to determine if it's worse on a more grand scale? Lets imagine a further breakdown of social cohesion, nation-states and current, fleeting traditions. Lets imagine a "technocratation" of our lives where technology and artificial chemistry would replace or facilitate current addictions to faith, entertainment, war, sex and various sentimental moods. What exactly is the loss from your perspective. Which reasons you have to worry? A decline in happiness, economy, thought or even art? But that's a cry we've heard since people started writing their complaints down, before Christ already. In the mean time through various standards of measurement, the world seems to know less war, more eduction and less disease than ever. And indications are that it's looking to improve despite all "decline" and ruin (although it can feel differently and I do know your "pain").

I commented on this in a post just above.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

You miss what I would consider the more important point of the philosophical-metaphysical endeavour of Evola and people like him: It is not to lament a world gone-by in the way you interpret it, but to discover and enunciate a solid metaphysical platform

No you missed the deeper layers of my analysis on Evola and people like him altogether. Their attempts to "discover and enunciate a solid metaphysical platform" is exactly explained by looking at their view of the past, their talk of a "reconstitution of the primordial" and generally their completely slanted, random interpretation of history itself to fuel their sentiment.

There are many good things still to find in Evola's work but one should not be blind for the many errors either.

True, the 'ruins' may be discovered and noted in physical culture, in certain behaviours, in social chaos and other manifestations, but the real loss is the loss of an ability to define oneself, one's relationship to reality, to existence, in a more profound sense.

When you speak about "loss", an image is invoked that this was earlier not the case at all. Please examine that position carefully! You might be surprised what you'll find.

To rediscover, revisualise, redescribe and reanimate a 'connection' with solid and 'real' currents within existence, and to define a project for man (for each of them, and for people: for 'men').

It's really a matter of discarding everything which is blocking that natural, spontaneous connection. But we cannot discard it either, those avenues are doomed to fail. It's pure grace that it all might unwind one day.

Yet it is a fallen world. I think each one reading here does not have to have it spelled out.

Oh yes, we do! This is where it all might fall apart, the whole line of thought! And you don't think it needs "spelling out".

Well, this is, to speak generally, the 'object of religion' since religion precedes philosophy. A religious platform, with a metaphysical definition, is more central to man, more original let us say, and so-called philosophy is a later turn. Yet the essence of the question(s) is/are essentially religious.

Religion could be seen as some iconified version of the philosophical and existential relationship. It's all (even proverbial) icons and statues, solid heavy books, which need a platform and a base. Religion is as worldly as society, government and economy is. They are part of cause and effect, playing their part in managing our co-existence as a complex group with social passions brewing. But it's a surface dwelling creature, by design.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I don't think you really have much background in Evola's processes or ideas since, based on what I know of him, you have significantly mistated him. But there are indeed 'traditionalists' who take the historical view that you describe.

So, I am not convinced that I missed the deeper layers of your analysis, insofar as it pertains to Evola. Might it be that you are not qualified to speak about Evola specifically?

I would also say that I take a jaundiced view of what you assess as 'errors'. You would have to explain more but directly in relation to some quotes of Evola's. The more that I read him (reading his autobiography which is his introduction to his overall work, which he critiques rather boldly) I respect his positions.

Reconstitution of the primordial, at least from where I stand in relation to Evola's ideas, is not what you take it to mean. He was a Dadaist for some time, and also a Futurist. He left these behind for intuited positions after exhausting philosophically discoursed positions.

My studies of the Medieval and pre-Medieval era have led me to an understanding that a vast metaphysic indeed 'operated'. It is the metaphysic of which the Shakespearean vision is a late version (excuse the cheesy alliteration). That 'vision' was total and it was enormous and people 'inhabited' it. To speak of 'loss' is an accurate description of a death-process that has been on-going for some hundreds of years, with various levels of intensity of death, and also new local rebirths of a smallish order. When I use the word 'loss', Diebert, you mistake it for something else. The loss though of a metaphysical definition as was that of 'The Great Chain of Being' was and is indeed a loss. It is experienced as a loss of grounding and much else.

Although I understand what you mean by 'discarding everything which is blocking that natural, spontaneous connection', I am leary of your conclusiveness, both the tone of it as foregone conclusion, and also because I see you as stuck within limiting definitions. The sentence from which I pulled the above is a complex and knotty one, filled to the brim with 'metaphysics'.

I would not at all describe religion as 'iconified versions of philosophical relationship', since philosophy is entirely a later development. I would describe ancient religious relationship as an elaborate symbol-system which mediated something inexpressible outside of complex and compact symbols. The levels of explanation seemed to all have come later.

I read, with some interest, your final sentence, yet I don't quite buy it as a glossary statement. I think that we use the term 'religion' differently. I think your grasp is inflected with Marxian notions while mine is anterior to that sort of definition. In any case, there is very little that is not 'wordly' about ... everything ... since it occurs in a world.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Your intended meaning is not clear to me. You could mean that from your perspective (what I would call your 'spiritual' or 'existential' or 'perceptual' position, you have little need or use of 'philosophy'. Arising out of that stance, logically, you make the statement that philosophy is imbued with 'creation': making, doing, undertaking, etc. Creation is then (if I read you right) something that you avoid as illusionary. 'Creation' as you use the term might be synonymous with 'samsara'. You imply - and yet you do not state directly - that you know of another way or means, and perhaps that is no way or means at all but rather 'being' (but I begin to put words in your mouth as I interpret what you have written).

That's off-track from what I meant,I never came close to implying I have little or no use for philosophy. I said I have little to no questions to ask in regard to philosophy, and I was thinking of metaphysics and the nature of reality when I wrote it. I did not say philosophy is imbued with 'creation', but that those who create questions 'out of thin air' are. Obviously this statement cannot be applied in all circumstances, but it occurs very often. I would say that this endless question-creation, in regard to metaphysics, is child's play, 'beginners' stuff.

Do you suppose that you could encapsulate it into a short concise paragraph?

Attempting to explain oneself is usually futile, especially if done so in a short paragraph.

I think I would first ask for more information re: 'varying topics'.

I note that you have used the term 'for oneself'. Myself, I tend to want to think less in terms of 'myself' and more in terms of 'we'. But this can be gone into as we proceed.

Benefiting "we" usually has the same effect, and is thus usually the same thing.

I'm not going to list various topics at this moment.

[jupiviv]

'we' are losing connection to good and valuable things because we lose a connection with the solidities (of theology, of metaphysical definition, of moral definitions even) because we are in a descending, decadent cycle.

What I (and Diebert as well it seems) really want to know is - what are your definitions of words like "good", "valuable" and "the solidities"? You have already answered this question partially when you said that it involves a "strong idea". But what is a "strong idea"? If you mean something that merely gives us strength, purpose and a reason to live, then I would disagree that such ideas have disappeared. If anything they have multiplied roughly in proportion with the population. The most insipid and mediocre people I know are under the sway of one strong idea or another.

The 'loss' from my perspective would occur when a person who had constructed themselves around a faith (that is, an understanding of self in relation to God), saw that relationship destroyed and had no means to construct another form of metaphysical relationship, capable of sustaining being, authenticity, a living and vital health in being and living and acting.

How does the metaphysical relationship replacing faith in God differ from the same?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

To gain a basic sense of what I mean by the use of those qualifiers, you would only have to have read what I have written and glean it out of that. The question about 'value' - what one values and why - is a good one.

The observation that you make appears sound: there is such a thing as strong motivating idea that would not be equal to 'strong idea' in the sense that I mean.

When you say that 'human beings are more intellectually and morally bankrupt than 100 years ago' you'd have to be making this statement from some sort of definition-platform. What is that definition platform and how do you arrive at it? When you say that 'high art' and notably music has descended from, shall we say, a 'former glory', how would you define what is 'high' in it? How would you describe the difference between what is 'high' and what is a 'joke' in popular music? By answering these question - obviously - I believe you will have applied value-definitions. I am not deliberately being coy with you. Engage yourself with these definitions and assessments and you will participate in arriving at notions of 'strong idea'.

You say that the race is about to enter a 'very, very dark period' but that your generation will be a great sufferer. This means that within the next 40 years or so (a specific time frame), and also implies certain reasons (for deterioration). How would you describe this deterioration? If strong motivators (similar but not the same as 'strong ideas') result in this, would you describe this as 'good'?

You say, or you imply, that these conditions arise from a 'lack' but not a 'loss'. What is the lack? How would you describe it? Also, if there is a lack and you recognise it, is it immutable? Or can the lack be replaced or conditioned by its opposite? And if so, what is that opposite?

It seems to me, based on these statements of yours, that you have ideas about 'chaos, surrender, and subversion'. Would you describe them as such? or use different words?

How does the metaphysical relationship replacing faith in God differ from the same?

Are you asking me to offer an opinion how a strong metaphysical definition, arrived at for a post-Christian person, might or will function for that person? For example in the case of Mrs Bjornstrand who has a 'faith' (in the traditional sense) but whose idea-platform has shifted to a position more likely definable as post-Catholic? I am supposing that you might assume 'metaphysic' to have replaced a theistic notion of God?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Gustav: I say that 'strong idea must become self-law'. Meaning, we have to arrive at a strong definition which is then the basis for an ethic, and the primary focus of the ethic is toward the self. Seems as clear as day.

Pam: Very interesting that you interpret the worldview of the posters here as living in an abstract realm of Idealism (the need to conquer with ideas) when this is how I interpret your worldview of "strong ideas as self-law."

I would not put it that way, and clarifying what I mean is not easy. The reason is that, through polemic, I appear to be taking a stance against something. Perhaps I am. What I would say, and I'd speak to you, is that your religious philosophy appears to me (to a reader) as disjointed or disconnected from 'the world'. Surely that is a complex term: 'the world'. Yet I base this on things that you have said, or things that I *heard* in things that you said. Essentially, I understand you as geared toward transcendence and I term this as 'checking-out'. A religious or spiritual philosophy can indeed go in that direction. Many do. This is not 'invalid'. But a bona-fide and encompassing religious idealism, in my view, has to theorize the exact opposite path. Meaning, it has to take everything into consideration. What you might no understand - enough in my view - is that 'our' Occidental system, and I am speaking of a 1000 year civilisational period - constructed an entire society around its metaphysical assumptions and understandings. I am not defending a return to this, as Dutch (or 'Butch' as I now call him) seems to fear, but rather am noticing that the totality of a worldview, a metaphysic, simply has to translate into theory and activity at all levels and on all levels. I have referred to 'the great chain of being' as a metaphysical system through which the Occidental world established itself. Understanding of that points, I think, to the *fact* that now, or soon, or at some point or other, a similar coalescence of disparate idea will converge into a 'new metaphysic'. Possibly, at least intellectually, this might describe what interests me the most: the death of one metaphysic and the organisation of another.

Yet too, and on a personal level, and in a world that in many senses is in 'metaphysical ruin', which could be stated as 'deep personal confusion', I think that we all must recognise that we are all linked to a degeneracy and, in one way or another, are seeking to remediate it. Your processes of remediation are interesting, not because I agree with them or desire to follow them, but because you are doing it. What I mean by that is that when one attempts to articulate spiritual life (for want of a better term) one is forced to arrive at and make 'solid definitions'. Out of solid definitions come solid ideas and also strong ideas.

I might even choose to operate within some of your language categories and suppose that all handling of power, and all decisiveness, all choice, all creation, construction and building, is a form of applied demonism. To function exclusively at mental levels, and speculative levels, and in a sense to have been deprived of avenues on a 'material' level, is to operate 'intellectually' but exclusively so. 'Intellectus' as, in Medieval notions, the realm of angels.

A tantric relationship to onseself and self in this reality supposes a sort of unity of 'the world'. This means, I think, that in one way or another, either in large or in small, one's 'spiritual ideals' have to be translated into concrete activities. One will have to decide everything. Just as Churchill and Hitler or Roosevelt (you have to include the American pole there because it has dominated, and is moulding and remoulding the entire world in fantastic - I mean this literally - ways). You cannot (in my view) avoid your own complicity in this. You have to decide as I say. True, you can 'check-out' and all your activity can become abstract and theoretical, and this is part of the game, but it is not all of the game.

The idea of self is a shitpile because it usurps the reality of God.

I think that this statement is 'categorically false'. But it is not that I do not understand what you mean, nor that I have not also been exposed to the definitions that you here place into motion. I cannot use the lingo that you do, not exactly, but one can say that the self becomes self, and capable of 'strong idea' in the sense that I mean, when the self becomes self-aware. When the self has a revelation of divinity or the divinity in things. Depending then on how one relates to that revelation, is how one functions within idealism. Idealism is of course the imposition of ideas into the world.

PS: I use inverted commas a little oddly, I admit. I think Leyla - where is Leyla these days Butch? on vacation? - pointed it out. Inverted commas generally mean 'as most people understand it' or also, and simply, as emphasis.

[Pam Seeback]

Evola wrote: "Another formula I used was to define ideas as potential realities, and realities as actual ideas. This was a bold and dangerous theory, for it was one that led to action. Paradoxically, one could here envision a gradual process whereby the power of an 'I' expands from being the power of thought to that of magical imagination and self-persuasion: to that of persuading others and, ultimately, of persuading and altering reality itself."

Movingalways wrote: "The hubris of the Prince of the world, the one who thinks he is God, idea of self as persuader and alterer of reality, when in truth, all that is being persuaded and altered in the idea of self. The Father loves the Son of Man even as It tries to reverse the righteous order of things. After all, It was caused to do so."

It makes sense that you would see *it* that way. It follows from your metaphysical tenets. If you understood more of Evola's philosophy I think you would appreciate more his 'higher' perspective.

Additionally, and once again, it is not God that deals with this world but man.

Pam the Crypto-Christian! (Yet your concerns are real: knowledge is indeed dangerous, as is choice).

I notice you ignored the detailed post I posted prior to this one that explained the context of my statement above.

Crypto-Christian indeed because I am not a Christian, as was Jesus not a Christian. A Christian believes in Jesus, that he was the one and only Son of God, and through belief in Jesus as the only Son of God is he saved from the fires of hell, whereas I follow the wisdom of Jesus who taught men how to be transformed from being the Son of Man into the Son of God. I am more than happy to enter into a scriptural experience with you that reveals that Jesus came into the world to show the way to the Father for all men, this very Father you say that has no dealings with this world.

Let's look at your view that God has nothing to do with the world from the perspective of this thought you directed at Diebert:

To rediscover, revisualise, redescribe and reanimate a 'connection' with solid and 'real' currents within existence, and to define a project for man (for each of them, and for people: for 'men')

How, if God is separate from the world of man has man any chance of rediscovering his connection with solid and real currents within existence? Are not these real currents the spirit or energy of God? If not, then what?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It is man who pays the utility bill, who educates his children, builds his house. I have no ways to speak of a God who is (as you imply) an active actor in our world except to note that it is man who mediates God. It is Revelation in man that illuminates an idea of God.

Also, it is not that I ignored your post or any post of yours, it is that I don't know how to respond. Our categories are very different.

I don't dislike your idea about Jesus as the teacher of those things. I approach Jesus, if I can put it like this, through a Johannine perspective. Jesus is idea and also metaphysical principle. In order to define Jesus (again, if I can put it like this) one has to define the metaphysic that stands behind Jesus. The metaphysic is, in many senses, more relevant (and necessary) than the figure.

However, you would also need to understand (to understand my perspectives) that I would necessarily de-Christianize Jesus and paganify him, at least right now. This is related to the Johannine manoeuvre: Christ seen through a Tantric lens. (Which requires all sorts of additional explanation!)

[Pam Seeback]

You are in the process of de-Christianizing Jesus and you have to do this in your own way, but may I suggest that rather than taking the long road of diluting your attachment to the Jesus of Christianity via attaching yourself to another (or many) other religions that you consider that Jesus came with wisdom, not religion, and that the template of this wisdom is revealed in its completeness in the New Testament. All that is required is that one devote their reasoning faculty entirely to catching Jesus' vision of his template of his relationship to the Father.

While reading many books serves to help one break away from old patterns of thinking, it can also serve to keep one from reasoning for themselves, the truth of what is real and what is not. I speak from experience. :-)

[jupiviv]

To gain a basic sense of what I mean by the use of those qualifiers, you would only have to have read what I have written and glean it out of that.

Sorry, I can't be bothered to glean anything from your Megatherian output.

When you say that 'human beings are more intellectually and morally bankrupt than 100 years ago' you'd have to be making this statement from some sort of definition-platform. What is that definition platform and how do you arrive at it?

I meant that people in general have lost respect for truth, and therefore morality.

When you say that 'high art' and notably music has descended from, shall we say, a 'former glory', how would you define what is 'high' in it?

"High art" is a blanket term for literature, music and the visual arts (as opposed to all/most of the decorative and performing arts). I used the example of music because I know quite a bit about music, and because the decline in the quality of music is most evident. Great art is evinced by a respect for form and beauty as opposed to mere pleasure or impact.

I am not deliberately being coy with you. Engage yourself with these definitions and assessments and you will participate in arriving at notions of 'strong idea'.

I won't try to guess what your ideas are because you can describe them to me. Unlike you, I don't enjoy coffeehouse conversations, at least not when it comes to matters of wisdom and truth.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Since you can't be bothered, nor can I be bothered to respond to your enquiry.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I thought this might be of interest to you Pam:

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I don't think you really have much background in Evola's processes or ideas since, based on what I know of him, you have significantly mistated him.

But you're not exactly known for understanding what anyone else writes, at this forum, other fora and most names and books you've brought to the table. You cling to a phrase here and a passage there and seem to wield books in some fetishist way, even to the extend of actually bombarding people with actual scans and notes as if the actual print or scribble would have some power which a strong independent summary and mastery of the gist could not have. Here your own superficiality is revealed painfully. It's also fascinating though because I think people indeed have "lost" something, or are losing something increasingly: this ability to be taken in by appearance. We're losing trust in the object, the reason, the "material" connection. It's in that environment, paradoxically, materialism is at its all time high (such increase serves always to hide the lack, in this case of actual matter). And yet it might become the most fertile period after all. There's no benefit in dwelling over all the horrors. Life itself always brought horrors to the table, each age in its own particular way . So we might just as well celebrate "decadent decline". Hang on to it with our dear dear lives! Hahahah!

When I use the word 'loss', Diebert, you mistake it for something else. The loss though of a metaphysical definition as was that of 'The Great Chain of Being' was and is indeed a loss. It is experienced as a loss of grounding and much else.

To speak of "loss" one first has to establish in how far something was a gain earlier. You're not making a case because it's something you assume. You're not asking the hard questions yet here.

The sentence from which I pulled the above is a complex and knotty one, filled to the brim with 'metaphysics'.

Everything is like that. You're saying nothing there! Try to speak about something void of metaphysics, you "simpleton"!

In any case, there is very little that is not 'worldly' about ... everything ... since it occurs in a world.

That's a rather childish response. The word "worldly" does not mean just "occurring in a world". Anyway I was using it in the context of "religion" where it has a precise, well known meaning.

On top of that you didn't even get my drift which was exactly this issue: that religions, despite the attempts by many of them to promote concerns with spiritual existence rather than material values or ordinary life, that they end up building social and political structures, glued together by ritual and icon, which is not different from how for example the modern consumer society works in all its glorious decadence. One just reflects the other.

That you misinterpreted even this simple paragraph shows how your intellectual "bend" only serves to hide that you're nothing of the kind. You are not really much of an intellectual or a traditionalist, just as you're not a Jew or anything else you try on as experiment as "fiction project" inside these conversations. Neither do you really seem have a family (nobody ever would talk about their family like you did) as that particular fiction you already admitted to here on the forum but you might have forgotten you did. It's not a secret that you're using the forum as creative writing project, to try on different poses, to create identity and philosophy (a "being") by opposing those who seem to reject the self and are too nice to eject you after five posts of the usual grandstanding and pretending to be something you're clearly not. Wouldn't it be interesting to admit to this, to try it on for a while and see where it will lead?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

What I wanted to say I said here. I think you mostly spoke on other topics, no?

For Heaven's sake calm down. Sometime later I may respond to a point or two you raised. But yours is a post to which it is unadvised to respond.
_________________________________

I think this expresses quite clearly - since Evola himself wrote it - what his position is. The title of this thread is Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion, and it was inspired by traditionalism. But by no means is that the limit of it. I mean, there is a large critique brought against 'the present' from many sides. There is a vast critique against the ideas of the Evolaian critique!

[jupiviv]

Since you can't be bothered, nor can I be bothered to respond to your enquiry.

I can't be bothered finding a description of an unknown idea in your post history, which is perfectly understandable. *You* can't be bothered responding to someone's enquiry (sic) because they have refused to do the above, which is just stiffnecked and mean.



The majority of those names are extreme left-wing sci-fi authors specialising in Heinlein ripoffs and interplanetary necrobestiality romances. What would their names be doing on an *emetically* sexist promotion poster?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The majority of those names are extreme left-wing sci-fi authors specialising in Heinlein ripoffs and interplanetary necrobestiality romances. What would their names be doing on an *emetically* sexist promotion poster?

I'm somewhat puzzled seeing Bradbury in that list. It's like the "Evola" name-dropping and cherry-picking trick!

Of course this thread is not going anywhere at all. It's not a discussion, it's someone's personal drama in search of a platform. All the few good bits appear at time as nuclear fall-out, as waste product, mostly because it forces counter weights to be even more penetrating and merciless. The "intellectual" drama on display [victimhood (lost), seducer (poisons) and liberation (power)] is a form of auto-eroticism with the usual narcissism, fetishism, and consumer culture all blending into one. In this case it's the curious case of a sales agent of modern consumer culture, not being able to fully accept his own fate and identity, using "traditional" fetish elements to perform the show, but still promoting the classic modern consumption (expressed as "family value") all the while playing with hints of a more powerful and vital type, not realizing how exactly that type would require a breakdown and poison to ever have room to develop any individual inner strength at all.

This is the frustrating thing of these type of discussions. High brow concepts are being introduced but not by someone who understands any deeper inner connection between them. They are introduced by someone fascinated by them, wielded like personal armour and power symbols.

This forum was meant as a place to reflect on ultimate realities and enlightenment but not on the specific illness of a current culture or any dysfunctional behaviour which came yesterday and will be gone tomorrow. There are many other, more rewarding places to discuss all that of course. And if one believes all the many issues with the modern mind first have to be solved before any deeper experience and reality can be accessed, then that seems like the perfect excuse to me. A never ending pool of broken things to get distracted by, yay!

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Again, Diebert, I find I am not moved much by your analysis. What I note in it is its 'totalizing' quality, and a desire (which is emotionalism in action I think) to carry out thorough devastation of another's position, stance or approach. I think you should be informed that in nearly all circumstances this should be understood as a pathological endeavour. But, I think too that this encapsulates and expresses succinnctly your *basic position* within the field of these enquiries (heh heh). As I have said a few times, it is my personal view that you are 'stuck' here. Yet I do not claim to be any of the things you think I claim to be; either 'an intellectual' (whatever that is), or someone with an 'answer', nor even someone who is not struggling to understand the present and my own place in it. To make declarations about having things fully understood seems to me an error. It seems to me a more honest position to say (and it is true) all ideation on these themes are experimental. Because that really is my posture.

Interiorly, and I mean in my own spiritual life, I believe that I understood long ago what I needed to understand about 'ultimate realities and enlightenment' (though I would not describe it in this way, I do grasp what you mean and what is meant). But for me, and if it is 'in my case alone' I have no problem inhabiting that position, it is necessary intellectually to understand an entire sweep and movement from the Medieval world up into the present.

(I say this knowing that you yourself have become *toxic*, as they say, not only to me (Alex Jacob on the brain will do that) but to any connotation or suggestion from me. You have begun to cross bounds in your moderation that indicate a tendency toward control: control essentially over the way someone thinks and views things. This is dangerous and you would do well to get a handle on it. GF as a personal 'spiritual' fiefdom would amount I think to a tragic outcome. It is unfortunate that you choose to make personal differences or conflicts so public. One is forced to respond, at least up to a point. But this is the limit for me, either on-forum, in email or in PM. If you don't like what I write, or what I think about, and if it becomes such an issue for you, I'd suggest stepping away. I note that your mission seems to have become to thwart me. The references even to other forums seems a wee bit over the top. Do you patrol cyberspace? How shall one look at that?)

I note the hyperstrong inclusion of what is precisely a Baudrillardian analysis and am thankful that it came intelligibly overall - I have noted completely unintelligible performances of this 'speak' rehearsed with a recently deposed Queen of it - but again I am not particularly moved by it. You could use your own descriptions, above, to describe your own description. Once again, and this is unfortunately for you overall, you have allowed yourself to be caught in 'Alex Jacob on the brain' syndrome.

Jupi, 'enquiry' is an alternate spelling of 'inquiry'. You asked me a question a few posts up. You know and I know that you had no intention of actually, or honestly, pursuing the question or the answer. But I did offer a response: essentially a group of questions about your own statements in respect to valuations. Instead of taking me up there and with that post you felt inclined to make other, larger comments. What occurred was 'logical' and it is, I think, what you wanted: to see occur no exchange at all. If you wish a different outcome, start here.

Finally, the image I included in PDF was merely an attempt to riff off of the 'book fetish' jibe. I think it is safe to say that I do have a book fixation of sorts. I am not sure if it should be seen as 'erotic', nor exactly as 'fascination' (a complex word), but there is no doubt that the pull is strong (as it was in Borges who even when completely blind would go to his bookshelf and take up a book to 'feel' it and discuss his memory of it). TinyScan has dangerously enabled me to share not only paragraphs ... but who chapters. And then the pdf upload site.

Gentlemen, I leave you with this and look forward to many clever insults.
____________________________________

A wonderful little book gotten from a used bookstore in Japan, dated 1868. If I can't include Shakespeare in my *enlightenment* then I will decidedly stay down here in the sublunary realm munching on coal if need be. I hope to include a couple of selections later.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

This forum was meant as a place to reflect on ultimate realities and enlightenment but not on the specific illness of a current culture or any dysfunctional behaviour which came yesterday and will be gone tomorrow.

Gosh, this is a loaded declaration! The topic name I chose is Confronting chaos, surrender and subversion. The endeavour suggested then is one of confronting destructive trends, and if Evola is to be taken as one interested in identifying and confronting those trends, Evola would very much fit into the intentionality of the forum.

I find that his emphasis is different in certain ways, and this is obviously why I make reference to Evola and 'traditionalists'. What is that difference? It seems to be that between defining a path, or practice, or way of seeing the world and oneself in it as 1) abstracted from the world, having severed relationship (etc.) and 2) precisely the opposite: holding to a connection with the world while defining a counter-propositional perspective. It seems to me that both must function. One cannot surrender the field (the world) but one must also hold to one's inner world.

Who is qualified to make the ultimate statement about what is 'dysfunctional' and what is not? This is really what the question comes down to. The opposition I receive is primarily because I take a radical position to this assertiveness. It is as if I say 'OK, I hear what you say, I understand what you say, but I cannot be sure that I believe what you are saying'. The reason? This declarativeness, with its controlling and final notes, is counter-philosophical.

But even if one accepts that such declarations are not really philosophical declarations and are (and they are) religious declarations, based on metaphysical interpretations, there is disagreement about what is the 'correct' religious (metaphysical) perspective.

For good or for evil my endeavour is to explore these questions. That is a solid and not a 'dysfunctional' endeavour despite any spurious characterization. I suggest that the position taken by you, Diebert, is in fact dysfunctional (if this term are even valid in this context).