Diebert wrote:Back then you replied "He has no understanding at all of what is really going on there". Do you, in hindsight, still see it like that?
Usually, when someone makes some statement, there will be elements of truth even if it is not fully correct. We arrive at platforms and perspectives and do our best to congeal them into communicable truths, no?
I think I would say that I come at the problem from a position of sympathy and not of hard criticism. The reason is, as I am sure you could guess and have divined, that I see myself and by extension all of us as being extruded out the end of long, determined, historical processes. In many senses these processes have not been kind to us. In relation to that I would speak of *fragmentation* and *soul loss* (a term from shamanism).
Specifically, I would zero in on the Postwar Era but, as you know, the causal chain extends farther back in time. You also know that though I have been critical of our Dear Founders -- and since this forum was founded by them we are enmeshed in a causal chain begun by them -- I am not unsympathetic to their effort, or perhaps I should say to the spirit of it. Recovery, self-empowerment, gaining a foothold within the world through sound metaphysics: how could any of this be described as unimportant?
My view on the struggle around Dorothy Kim is that with such call for political commitment, she voluntary entered the modern hyper-political super-charged realm including all the commentaries, reaction and primal crowd responses. Pushing for ideological divisions, choosing positions and "protest" based on the idea that "doing nothing is choosing a side" seems rather deluded to me. At that stage you get exactly what you ask for. Now I don't think people should or deserve that hatred but when seen from another vantage point, like a symbolic universe where any action can become symbolic violence, resulting in equally violent counter actions, there is not much surprise that it keeps happening like this, again and again.
I have been spending my time on various Blogs where American current events are discussed from a moral/ethical framework. Hard to classify, but many who participate seem to be 'Conservatives', American Conservatives obviously (though there are some Europeans and Australians). I have been especially learning the degree to which Conservatism is really a branch of Liberalism.
I am uncertain where you hang these days, yet you often have good insights into the American mind-set and, as it happens, everyone always seems to talk about America. As an example, the entire Solway/Rowden/Quinn thread which seemed to indicate a philosophical rupture, revolved nearly entirely around America, the Dread Republic.
Dorthy Kim is giving voice to a necessary PC Utterance that is completely common within the American discourse right now. She is a late exponent of Postwar Americanism and can only speak from within 'the tenets of the American civil religion'. It is a
Weltanschauung that is rigid and in a sense final. By having that position, though, I think it indicates that she and they cannot be trusted intellectually. They will likely *revise* history to conform to their presently determined views.
Yet I assume that you also would mention that the New Right or the Reactionary Nationalist Right (if one term could suffice) is *performing* a similar manoeuvre. Well, yes. But I see this as an act of
desperation. And you will remember, I hope, that I have used that term in specific ways to refer to something we all do . . . in a present that removes the foundations from under us and *seeks to have its way with us*. The Victims of the Present must then resort to *strategies* to hold on to Self. Some part of that will always be through false or invented means. But by saying that I indirectly propose that there is a *real*. Well, so did our friends of GF. They did attempt to *recover* and to *utilize* a specific grasp of metaphysics. Is metaphysics the right term? I think it is.
Dorothy Kim is, let's say it directly, 'a person of color'. I guess she is Asian? It matters to the degree that she is American and wrapped up in America's multicultural project. That is a big part of the Postwar construct. And the construction of it involves business, government and intelligence. As such, it is opposed by the Anti-Liberal faction. Jonathan Bowden for example. Alain de Benoist comes at it from another angle. But these men are obviously reactionaries! And in this sense 'victims', as we all are, of the processes I speak of.
You described a circling of wagons. Yes, the idealistic response from the typical academic, spending life slightly removed from the world of social passion, now in shock when certain words or critiques incite so much heated responses. And of course it results in action to protect their own or their ommunity's identity. But one can hope that internally they discuss the point of going political.
Some say that American Cultural Marxism is nearly 100% an enterprise of the American Academy. It originated there, it grew there, it gained its power there, and from there it spread everywhere within the American System. What do you think of that statement?
I suggest that, with certain caveats, that Cultural Marxism, and definitely American Cultural Marxism as America's export-via-warplane must be confronted. If there is anything *real* in this world, it is a real ideological power that is there, doing things. 'Circling the Wagons' for them, for *it* (the neo-empire) is a very serious act. The New American Right, according to me anyway, is working with radically threatening ideas. These ideas -- the mere mention of them -- has caused shuddering throughout the entire system. The New Right insofar as it is ideologically and intellectually sound must be destroyed. Circling the Wagons is just a superficial (but not irrelevant) motion. Underneath it is a will-to-destroy. We are speaking, naturally, about the Postwar Liberal Order and all that must be
preserved.
It might seem that way to you but in reality we define it a bit different. And from that point on all differentiation in vision arises.
Go on . . .
My own response is that it's not very interesting philosophically.
Curious statement. What is philosophy, then, for you? As you can guess, as you should have guessed, and as I often say, I am interested in Recovery of Self. And then some level of engagement in this world. Otherwise, what is *philosophy* for? Sometimes, I get the impression that philosophy is not that for you. It is almost an intellectual aestheticism you are involved in.
Just found
this [on Dorothy Kim].