A society of sexually frustrated Pinocchios

We live in a strange world. Check out just the recent news: putative European “democrats” support Nazis and don’t seem to notice that the latter are using weapons of war, including chemical munitions, multiple-rocket launchers and ballistic missiles, against cities. We live in a world were it is apparently quite normal for the IMF/ECB/etc. to continue to send money to a bankrupt country in the midst of the civil war it total violation of their own statutes, but where an EU/NATO member like Greece cannot even get a few days worth of credit extension. In the USA homosexuals will now be “playing marriage” and continue to adopt children to pretend to be viable couples. In the Middle-East the Israelis are happily continuing to commit acts of piracy on the high seas while Canada wants to pass a law making criticizing Israel a punishable form of “hate speech”. Besides being revolting, is all this not just plain crazy?!

“Democratic” countries are ruled by the 1% but “authoritarian regimes” like Russia, Iran or Syria all undeniably have the support of the masses (and the eternal hatred of the local wannabe 1%ers!).

And it is not just politics – this insanity reaches much deeper into our society. Man are not supposed to be manly any more, while women are now told that femininity is being stupid and submissive. Honor is now passé, as is obedience, kindness, faithfulness and humility.

We are supposed to be sexually free, yet there is a huge multi-billion dollar industry fully dedicated to cater to sexually dysfunctional people (sexually happy people need neither porn nor Viagra!). We are supposed to be politically free, but somehow the policies of our rulers seem to never change. We are supposed to be intellectually free (freedom of speech!!) and yet with each new generation the already disgraceful level of crass ignorance of the average citizen is getting worse and worse.

But that’s no big deal as long as we maintain the illusion that the fake substitute is, in reality, the real thing. From top to bottom our entire society is based on a charade, a fraud, a pretense of reality, but none of it is real.

But when did this all start?

I know that many will disagree with me, but I see a direct cause and effect relationship between the denial of moral reality and the denial of physical reality. I can’t prove that, of course, but here is my thesis:

Almost from day one, the early western civilization began by, shall we say, take liberties with the truth, which it could bend, adapt, massage and repackage to serve the ideological agenda of the day. It was not quite the full-blown and unapologetic relativism of the 19th century yet, but it was an important first step. With “principles” such as the end justifies the means and the wholesale violation of the Ten Commandants all “for the greater glory of God” the western civilization got cozy with the idea that there was no real, objective truth, only the subjective perception or even representation each person might have thereof. Fast forward another 10 centuries or so and we end up with the modern “Gayropa” (as Europe is now often referred to in Russia): not only has God been declared ‘dead’ and all notions of right and wrong dismissed as “cultural”, but even objective reality has now been rendered contingent upon political expediency and ideological imperatives.

Here is how Orwell defined “doublethink” in his book 1984:

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it (…) To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality“

The necessary corollary from this state of mind is that only appearances matter, no reality. This is how you end up with a society of sexually frustrated Pinocchios desperately trying to look respectable and relevant.

If I had to pick the perfect symbol for our modern western society it would be Michael Jackson: neither White nor Black, neither young, nor old, neither a man nor a woman, at the same time both asexual and pedophile. And, most importantly, Jackson was the artificial creation of hundreds of hours of surgery and marketing.

In the political real the nearest equivalent to Jackson would be Obama. Obama has all the qualities of a car salesman: superficially charming, not too bright, but clever enough to learn sales techniques. And a world-class liar, of course. In many ways, both Clinton and Reagan had the same skills set. These are the man that sold the world ideas like the liberation of Grenada as a great triumph for the US military, the bombing of Serbia as a great triumph for human rights or the destruction of Libya as a great triumph for democracy. Characteristically, these statements are both factually and morally wrong. Thus we see the wonderful “marriage” of immorality and delusion – they always go hand in hand.

And as long as Europe was lead by “great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies” (to use the wonderful words of Boris Johnson) and the sub-pathetic Eltsin was drinking himself to death in the Kremlin, this system could more or less function. But when Putin came onto the scene this house of card came tumbling down. When faced with a real man and an officer with a iron will and an excellent understanding of how the western political system works, the likes of Obama, Cameron and Merkel found themselves completely outmaneuvered.

And now they are stuck. They would like to lie their way out of this predicament, but it is already too late for that. So they are doing what the French called “la fuite en avant“: the situation in which you run forward even faster in the hope that this will mitigate the consequences of having chosen the wrong course of action.

But immorality and delusion only “work” as long as there is nobody willing to denounce them for the fraud they are. But, as the expression goes “when you head is in the sand, your ass is in the air“, and reality inevitably comes back, with a vengeance, making these sexually frustrated Pinnochios completely unable to resort to one of their habitual tricks. Not that any of that will stop them – they will continue, of course, it’s all they can do, but at least their lies will have less and less effect.

The Saker

Purple Library Guy on July 02, 2015 · at 8:28 pm EST/EDT

I agree about much of what we’re against (well, except gays) but I must say I’m troubled by a good deal of what The Saker is for. The thinking here strikes me as confused, guilty of some of the same errors as we find in what he’s objecting to and likely to lead to the same results in the end.

I’ll just note my position in brief: I’m not religious but also not a moral relativist. I think that, while religion can be OK and some religion endorses some moral and ethical truths, any “morality” that can only point to religion rather than real reasons as a basis is no morality at all. Politically, I am very far to the left, but also far to the small “l” libertarian (not big “L”, gah), leading to ideas of egalitarian, participatory governance somewhere in the “social anarchy” area. So if you think that makes me by definition an idiot you can by all means stop reading.

Hokay, so to The Saker’s article. I think he’s wrong on a couple of points. One is raising a bogeyman (“moral relativism”) as somehow the basis of what’s wrong, rather than dealing with real things like the nature of economic systems, historical events, technologies and so forth. Moral relativism is something that worries religious people, but it doesn’t have any real explanatory power, it’s had quite different sources at different times, and The Saker is dragging it in all over the place where it isn’t even involved. So for instance, hypocrisy is not moral relativism. To the contrary, hypocrisy can only exist where moral absolutes are endorsed but people are trying to evade them, often for reasons of greed or other sorts of self-serving, sometimes for reasons of survival. Hypocrisy is most important when there are agreed moral absolutes which are, in certain contexts, inconvenient to an elite group. In order to get what they want, they pay lip service to the absolute while ignoring it in reality. Sometimes it’s even a moral absolute which the elite itself endorses and spreads because it’s useful to them if other people obey it. This kind of thing is ancient; what makes it work differently nowadays is capitalism and modern media technologies, not “moral relativism”.
And the problems The Saker points to are not caused by moral relativism. Rather, the same things that cause those problems, sometimes also cause moral relativism. Moral relativism in the Western academy is largely IMO a product of the same pressures that drive runaway consumerism and what Saker calls “Libertinage” (which itself is a few different things, some perfectly OK and driven by the quest for freedom, some basically an extension of consumerism, the quest for glitzy short-term fixes to distract from how we’re held down). That is, there are a lot of things that capitalism wants/needs us to do (like buy things and work hard) and a lot that it wants/needs us not to do (notably think about certain things or act on those thoughts). So we have this whole system of advertising and media and pressure from hierarchies and so on, which also exists in universities. In universities, it discourages serious study of society that takes seriously notions such as justice or are very critical of the 1% and the systems they run. But you can’t stop academics from thinking AT ALL. What you can do is distract them with intellectual toys, things which will allow them to think very cleverly but in an irrelevant way. “Postmodernism”, morally relativist ideas, “neutral” sociology which aims to be purely descriptive but never judgmental, none of these are dangerous so they haven’t been suppressed; people who might have been systemic critics get steered into this kind of stuff where they’ll do no harm–much the way ordinary people who might wonder why their meaningless alienated job brings them no satisfaction or even security, are fobbed off with consumer toys, glitzy celebs, and porn.

Perhaps as a result, The Saker’s prescription seems to me rather lacking–basically, a Strong Man on a white horse. Plus maybe a religious revival. Oh, like that’s ever worked before. We’ll deal with a whole system of elitist oppression by trusting an elite of one. And proclaiming Morality! while assuming that unlike pretty much every other religious revival in history, it won’t be hijacked–or indeed, led in the first place–by the same old hypocrites. None of this tackles the driving forces behind the problems in the first place. If anything it strengthens them.

As to what is and is not fundamentally moral: Saker’s basic problem here is his resistance to one of the most bedrock principles.
All people are created equal.
Some of them turn into SOBs later. But everyone is fundamentally a moral agent, a protagonist with their own feelings and interests, the main character of their own novel. Whether black, white, or magenta, whether male, female, or intersex, whether straight, gay, or whatever, whether rich or poor. So they all should get the same rights, the same opportunities.
One thing that flows from this is that two people should be able to marry if and only if: They both have made an informed, uncoerced decision that they want to. That’s it. Any other arrangement is deeply immoral, and any religion that says otherwise is promoting immorality and needs to change. Another that should have been uncontroversial by now is women get to be equal. Full bloody stop, the end. If individual women are girly or not girly or individual men are macho or not macho, that’s their business. And I don’t, frankly, care about your culture in this, whether it’s US redneck or “Islam” or Russian or whatever. Look at the Kurds. Kurds are Muslim last I checked, but the ones having the most successes against bloody ISIS are the ones that went totally non-racist, non-sexist, non-anti-gay, deep democratic. They have brigades of women fighting, and they’re damn well effective. They’re not trying to say women should be second class because Mohamed or whatever.
The best resistance to elites is opposition to elitism. To stop the 1%, the only real solution is the deep democracy. But you can’t do that if you divide the opponents of tyranny, say “OK, we’re in the club, but you other guys, or girls, you’re NOT in the club”. The elites have always played divide and rule, and the elites telling you to step on gays are the same as the elites telling American rednecks that blacks (not billionaires) are what’s holding them down. No. We are all in this together, and that includes the gays, and the women, and the blacks and the browns, the Orthodox and the Zoroastrians. And we can all take leadership roles, and we can all marry and work and cook and study physics and fight and whatever. Only categorical embrace of this fundamental moral truth can ultimately allow both the taking, and holding, of victory against the forces oppressing us.

64 Comments

Klaatu on July 01, 2015 · at 3:29 pm EST/EDT

You are “on target” with one exception–as one gets older (it will hit you some day!), Viagra can be a benefit to even sexually happy people!!
Grieved on July 01, 2015 · at 3:31 pm EST/EDT

We live in an age when George Orwell and D.H. Lawrence could combine in one superb meld of commentary. A brave attempt, friend Saker, to combine them both in your own superb thesis. I applaud, and thank you.

That’s exactly the problem with the Karl Rove regime of, “We create our own reality now,” namely that the result is not a substitute for reality at all.

I like your mention of Putin as a real man. I have a similar view of Russia itself. We in the west didn’t know, or had given up hope, that alternatives to superficiality were possible. And eternal qualities such as sincerity and authenticity are striking many of us to the bone with their impact. And this is a glad thing.

I think the whole world is impacted. This is why I’ve said for a long time that Russia actually is winning the information war, but at the source headwaters, by changing paradigms themselves – and largely by demonstration alone, simply by conducting itself according to its values.
Zuzim on July 01, 2015 · at 3:36 pm EST/EDT

““Democratic” countries are ruled by the 1% but “authoritarian regimes” like Russia, Iran or Syria all undeniably have the support of the masses (and the eternal hatred of the local wannabe 1%ers!).”

Are there any sources for how big support the Iranian and Syrian regimes have among their peoples? Thanks
- Uncle Bob 1 on July 01, 2015 · at 5:45 pm EST/EDT
  
  The fact that they hold power seems a lot of proof to start with.In Iran there are elections (deemed fair ) with at least more democracy than any of their neighbors.And in Syria the civil war brought to them by the West makes it hard to judge clearly.But that so many Syrians have rallied to the government.And under the most horrible of Western assaults, still hangs on and advances, says a lot about peoples support though. Its a fallacy to think that some governments not “democratic”,in the Western sense, don’t have popular support.Ukraine as an example. You have a “democratic” coup brought to them from those Western “so-called democracies” that has destroyed the very meaning of “democracy” in that nation.Not only is it far “less” of a “democracy” than it was under Yanukovich.But instead, as one Ukrainian stated “we traded a government of thieves,for a government of (thieves and) murderers”.
  
  When you have no moral foundation how can you function as a decent society ? I see the West’s phony screaming for “freedom and democracy” only used by scoundrels as a way for them to gain and keep power.The West “talks the talk” but doesn’t “walk the walk” in their own societies.The West is the perfect example of the the story where the child (Russia and China) hollers out, “the Emperor has no clothes on”. We should ask ourselves, since 1991 which nations have improved the lives of their people,under the Western NWO? Do we have a more peaceful World since then? Have the human rights of the Worlds citizens gotten better?The quick answers are ,”none,no and no”.The economies of the “Eastern bloc” collapsed (and haven’t recovered to their previous levels).While the West has one collapse after the other.In no area of Europe and North America (at least) could people truthfully say their well being is better.Now I’m not talking about wealth for the upper classes and those benefiting from them.Certainly they have improved.But for at least 80% of the Worlds population.They aren’t better off,and at best the same.But in most cases worse off under the Empire’s NWO.
  - Zuzim on July 01, 2015 · at 7:29 pm EST/EDT
    
    “Its a fallacy to think that some governments not “democratic”,in the Western sense, don’t have popular support.”
    
    I agree completely. And Saker’s analysis does hold true, at least comparing Russia to Western countries generally. The Chinese government under Xi also seems to have fairly high popular support. However, I am still wondering about Syria and Iran specifically… There must have been some real discontent in Syria from the start considering that the civil war has been going on for several years now, no? Even considering the foreign meddling. As for Iran, it is really difficult in the West to get an idea of how popular the Islamic Republic really is, all I know is that there are plenty of dissidents, people who don’t like having the death penalty for adultery and so on… Still, the Saker seems to speak with confidence when he says – on more than one occassion – that the Iranian and Syrian regimes have the broad backing of their peoples. I’m just not sure how he knows this. I can try to google it and come up with things like this:
    http://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2015/mar/06/poll-rouhani-approval-ratings-down
    If that poll is correct, then Rouhani is somewhere in the middle, way below Putin but also way above Western presidents like Obama, Hollande etc… Although whether they approve of the regime is perhaps another matter…
    - Uncle Bob 1 on July 01, 2015 · at 10:29 pm EST/EDT
      
      In Iran’s case its not that Rouhani’s approval ratings are down for being too harsh.Its because of being too weak.Many don’t understand that the upper class pro-Western liberals (and some brainwashed among the elite youth) are a small minority among Iranians.They are the ones we hear about on the MSM,but they don’t represent the vast majority of Iranians.Certainly many don’t approve of some things in their society (though Iran is actually more moderate than most of the Empire’s allies in the region).One point that Christianity used to share with Islam.But over the years “modern” Christian states have ditched.Is the believe in governments being God’s will.If a government falls its not because they were bad (or good),its because they lost God’s favor.As for Syria the majority of people are Sunni (as are the hardline extremist anti-Assad people).While Assad is from a sect of Shia.And most of his support comes from Shia,Christians,and the moderate among the Sunni.The spread of Wahhabism among many extremist Sunni has become a plague in the Middle East.So far there are enough moderate and secular Sunni (allied with the Shia and Christians) to support the government.Remember too that many of the terrorists in Syria are non-Syrians.Brought in by the West because they couldn’t find enough Syrians to fight their war.
- T2015 on July 02, 2015 · at 7:28 am EST/EDT
  
  There is no such thing as “democracy” in Iran, it is a clerical-fascist regime. The presidential candidates are pre-chosen by the ayatollahs, thus you can’t even talk about real elections in any proper sense.
  
  The people do support the government mostly, but only because it’s the “least possible evil” in their current situation. That country used to be free and quite modern under Mossadegh, but the brits supported a coup that brought the shah in order to destroy he “socialist danger”. Then after the Shah wanted to nationalize the oil industry, they did yet another coup that brought us the current theocracy there. Ever since, this western-made regime is just playing the bad cop for the west, while playing along on most issues (see Afghanistan as a good example, see their recent support for the moslem brotherhood in Egypt etc.).
  
  Needless to say, the WMD-scare and “bomb iran” nonsense in the media as well as “bomb Israel” nonsense from the other side has been going on unchanged since about three decades at least. Good cop, bad cop games. Just google for the news from 10 or 20 years ago, it was exactly identlical to what we see today. Charade.
  - Uncle Bob 1 on July 02, 2015 · at 2:53 pm EST/EDT
    
    There is no such thing as “democracy” either in the West.What is the true differences between what you said about Iran.And in the West political big-shots and their wealthy patrons deciding who the candidates will be.Even when a “non-approved” gets to run they are demonized,starved of media coverage,and funds for a campaign.I don’t see the difference.At least in Iran the picked are people that believe in “something” and not prostitutes selling themselves to the highest bidder.
    - T2015 on July 02, 2015 · at 4:13 pm EST/EDT
      
      Well I have to agree, but at least in theory we have democracy, on paper. Our democracy would in itself be just fine if there was no corruption and no party- or lobby-controlled judiciary. Our problem is corruption and lack of truly independent judiciary, not the system as such.
      
      As opposed to that, Iran is indeed a clerical-fascist regime in every technical sense of the word, as per definition. They can choose between the candidate of the mullahs, or the candidate of the mullahs, or the candidate of the mullahs. Of course they do believe, they believe in their system just like any theocracy ever.
      
      Also I know first-hand that they supplied and trained the jihadists in my country and thus literally killed my people (including the non-extremist muslims) and helped create the divided country we have now. Also they readily joined their “enemy” Qatar in staunchly supporting the Morsi’s MI6-made fascist bunch in Egypt in one choir with Obama and co., which should have raised red flags everywhere in the blog community on its own.
    - T2015 on July 02, 2015 · at 4:19 pm EST/EDT
      
      Oh and one more thing: I am of course referring to the regime only and not the people there. They already showed they can do better back then under Mossadegh, but both the Shah as well as the islamo-fascists threw it back a century, each.
      
      Back then Iran was on it’s way to become a progressive state and truly reform Islam as well, so that of course had to be stopped by our dear Empire.
      
      All you need to know:
      
      “…and in the West he is most famous as the architect of the failed nationalization of the Iranian oil industry.”
      
      http://www.writersviews.com/article-dr-mossadegh.php
      - JK on July 03, 2015 · at 12:25 am EST/EDT
        
        It appears to me that you are making sweeping statements without backing them up with evidence and It looks like propaganda.
        If Iran is a clerical-fascist regime, whats the US? A satanic-fascist regime?
        After all, its the US government that is involved in relentless wars against the Global Terror, mobilising its public on an unprecedented scale in recent times.
        Iranians do have democracy in theory and on paper too. American democracy is perhaps superior than Iranian one I agree, as shown by its export to Iraq and Libya.
        Would you enlighten us with your country of origin so that we can put your comment in perspective?
        You use the words, Free and Modern. Does LGBT culture comes under that category? Is that the best export product of the West for Iranians?
        I apologise for asking too many questions but I am unable to properly understand your assertions
      - blue on July 03, 2015 · at 1:49 am EST/EDT
        
        One might note that Mossadegh was done in by the those you tout as ‘theoretical democracies’ of the US & UK who installed the shah in the process of the coup, and which eventually resulted in the current Iranian regime.
  - petkov on July 03, 2015 · at 6:24 am EST/EDT
    
    there s no such thing as a democracy in USA either A recent study from Prinsten university proved people in USA have zero say when it comes to influencing th government. Look it up. Everyone in USA with 2 working brain cells know lobbists run the governmnent.
    Therefore for USa to claim that is has democracy is a double lie because it just wants to present itsself as better than the other guy be it Iran or Russia or Syria. In Iran for example during rhe last eledctions haad more parties than USA and UK and so called democratic countries. Iran never claims to be a democracy but USA does while it is fairly obvious to anyone who studies USA that USA is a Corporitism. Besides, USA has always ben a republic and never democracy. Democracy is just a word that sounds great but doesnt mean anything in reality.
    So stop trying to creat arguments and start educating yourself while you still have the chance.
  - Philip Toal on March 16, 2018 · at 6:21 am EST/EDT
    
    Syria for one … (see Eva Bartlett, Youtube)
  - Philip Toal on March 16, 2018 · at 6:24 am EST/EDT
    
    “Then after the Shah wanted to nationalize the oil industry”. — Beg pardon?
- Philip Toal on March 16, 2018 · at 6:03 am EST/EDT
  
  Syria for one … (see Eva Bartlett, Youtube)
Gerard Jeannesson on July 01, 2015 · at 3:42 pm EST/EDT

Very clever portraying indeed. Thanks for such a good read.
Anonymous on July 01, 2015 · at 3:58 pm EST/EDT

Great comment, Saker!
Anonymous on July 01, 2015 · at 3:59 pm EST/EDT

Capitalism is Sales.

Sales is lies.

Moral relativism expands sales.

Morality is bad for profits.

Sin = profits.

Virtue is bad for profits. The destruction of morality is a key goal of capitalism.
Your post reminded me of this attempt to stifle truth and discussion on July 01, 2015 · at 4:01 pm EST/EDT

http://news.antiwar.com/2015/06/30/us-trade-bill-demands-europe-end-efforts-to-boycott-or-sanction-israel/

US Trade Bill Demands Europe End Efforts to Boycott or Sanction Israel
Sponsor: US Trade Bill ‘A Tool to Fight Against Israel’s Enemies’

President Obama has signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade bill today, bringing into law a piece of legislation which includes overt attempts to extend America’s own ban on boycotting Israel abroad, and demands Europe end all “non-tariff barriers” on Israel.
Alexandre on July 01, 2015 · at 5:00 pm EST/EDT

Just as a fun reminder: it’s amazing how those books written to satirize the future of socialism – as in 1984, Animal Farm, today fall into a perfect description of what became the USA …
- The Saker on July 01, 2015 · at 5:31 pm EST/EDT
  
  very scary and very true!
  - Angelo on July 02, 2015 · at 1:08 am EST/EDT
    
    Orwell was an insider by birth, he was privy to the plans of the elite, therefore his writings were not satirical at all, they were warnings to all who would listen. I have never viewed Orwell’s writings as satire, to even suggest as much to me is alarming, since even if he were not privy to inside information, I think the suggestion that his writings were satirical would be highly depressing to Orwell who was a visionary thinker.
    
    Saker mentioned Michael Jackson as the epitome of the new normal being projected by what I would call the Luciferic elite , and I would agree for the most part, however something that should be understood is the level of mind control and sexual perversion inflicted on Michael Jackson as a child, which ultimately made him the way he was. Yet despite the level of sexual and mental abuse, Michael Jackson was still able to recognize very important truths about who his handlers were, and how they sought to destroy him when he sought freedom from them. The topic is actually something I’ve researched a great deal, Michael Jackson was a great spirit, bent into contortion by very nefarious powers.
    - Ann on July 02, 2015 · at 5:38 am EST/EDT
      
      Hi Angelo…well, I did feel very sorry and shocked when he died…he really was a revolutionary dancer…kids are still trying to do his style.
      
      And he was a drug addict. That has such a detrimental effect on the whole system. But he wasn’t ‘an immortal’ as far as anything IMO…he was just another Tiger Woods…these guys fit into the marketing strategy and become victims of a different kind I guess. But they could get out if they were strong enough…so … they are weak ….
      - Angelo on July 02, 2015 · at 2:35 pm EST/EDT
        
        What!? I’m not sure what you mean when you say immortal…..I’m simply pointing out the fact that he was severely abused as a child, both sexually and mentally, to the point that he was a mind controlled entertainment slave. There are many children in the entertainment business that are sold into slavery by their parents, there is a well organized underground network of pedophilia that runs through the nerve centers of power, it is well documented, but hidden from the masses nonetheless.
- Jonathan Revusky on July 02, 2015 · at 7:08 am EST/EDT
  
  1984 has been cast as a satire of the Soviet Union and had elements clearly taken from that, for example, the Emmanuel Goldstein character is Trotsky and Big Brother is presumably Stalin.
  
  However, it was explicitly set in London, not Moscow. Orwell used to work at the BBC, had an office or cubbyhole there, and the Ministry of Truth that Winston Smith worked at was, apparently based on main BBC building in London, right down to the detail of the cafeteria in the basement that served rather vile food.
  
  Right-wingers portray 1984 purely as a critique of communism, rather than a warning about where western countries were heading. Orwell, however, got some things wrong. He envisioned a dystopia of sexual repression, where what we have now is sexual libertinage. Also, the ideology of Oceania is explicitly left-wing (Ingsoc=English Socialism) which is not what we have.
  
  BUT he got the whole political correctness idea right (Newspeak) and the 1% (the inner party) and the fabricated state of permanent war. There is a clear allusion to false flag terrorism, the suspicion (expressed by Winston’s lover Julia) that the bombs that exploded in London now and then were not from the enemy.
  
  AND the “two minutes hate” against the enemy du jour is ABSOLUTELY UNCANNY. I reckon that for a book written over 60 years ago, he really got most of it right.
  - T2015 on July 02, 2015 · at 7:32 am EST/EDT
    
    Placing it in London might have been a hint that the communism of Lenin and co. was a british invention (because it actually was).
    - mind and soul on July 02, 2015 · at 3:42 pm EST/EDT
      
      T2015 you are getting quite a lot of things right, in my most humble opinion. I’ve been skeptical of your arguments with Penelope on economic and banking matters but all that tells me is that you both have more specialized knowledge of banking than I have, and I need to drill down on that subject more deeply. Then it becomes a matter of time, i.e. which veins of inquiry are the most fruitful, which would blunt my inquiry by fruitless effort and cause me to abandon the effort and return to more familiar, terrain I am more confident about. You started to convince me to pay more attention to your posts in the late June thread on the Glazyev interview. I tried to reply. I will check to see if the thread was closed or still open.
      
      Thanks to all for the stimulating arguments and passion and HEAT thereof. Sometimes, the hotter the kitchen, the more I like it. Special thanks to SAKER for providing the kitchen, allowing it to get plenty hot enough to move brain molecules around, melt some stupid, superficial falsities and keep the dialogue progressing without degenerating into a food fight or a battle with harder objects than conceptual and objective proofs.
      - T2015 on July 02, 2015 · at 5:10 pm EST/EDT
        
        I’m honoured and happy if I helped make you doubt some “usual” and thus mostly under-researched things, even if you may disagree with me in the aftermath. Don’t just “believe” me anything either, I hope you will seriously doubt and track every source and never get taken away by emotions or wishful thinking, or dulled by habit – these are the usual culprits for all of us. Keep your eyes open.
    - plamen petkov on July 03, 2015 · at 6:33 am EST/EDT
      
      i lived under communism. so dont be telling me about communism. under communism we had no homeless people, no beggers on the street, medical treatments were free, school was free, food was cheap and plentiful and we had almost zero crime. as kids we were not afraid to be outside and my mother wasnt afraid to walk alone at night. so communism was good.
      now my country bulgaria is the poorest country in europe, we have homeless and beggers and evrryone is leaving. the crime rate is sky high and old women are getting killed by gypsies. so much for the EU and capitalism. .
SunLion on July 01, 2015 · at 6:31 pm EST/EDT

Thank you Saker for your analysis. As usual you are both timely and relevant.

I was looking for an opportunity to express my views on the question on anti-Semitism. I understand that anti-Semitism as increased 38% in Canada recently. And now, Canada wants to pass a law making criticizing Israel a punishable form of “hate speech”. To me this is an invitation to increase my criticism of this apartheid criminal organization.

One of the problems with being a jew is that the Zionists are blackmailing all jews by associating any criticism of their repugnant actions and crimes (and it keeps increasing) with a rejection of the entire Jewish community. “Hate speech” is just another form of the same strategy.

It takes a good deal of efforts to escape the effect of the hate propaganda carried out by my country – this is exactly what Canada as a pawn of Israel and a puppet of the USA is doing. And turning against Jews is an easy solution for the ignorant.

By acting as the water boy of Israel (in addition to openly and actively supporting Fascists and nazis), Canada has become the promotor of the hate speech that it claims to fight.
- The Saker on July 02, 2015 · at 12:09 am EST/EDT
  
  By acting as the water boy of Israel (in addition to openly and actively supporting Fascists and nazis), Canada has become the promotor of the hate speech that it claims to fight.
  
  This is absolutely correct. This is why we must do BOTH: 1) denounce the Zionist ideology (without fearing to be called anti-Semites) AND 2) denounce the conflation of Jews and Zionists (without fearing to be called Mossad collaborators). It is a very tough task since both the Ziocrazies and the Nazicrazies seem to have an unlimited supply of energy to spew their nonsense. Still, this is the correct course and the only one possible.
  Cheers!
  - Angelo on July 02, 2015 · at 4:10 pm EST/EDT
    
    It would be helpful if more Jews spoke out against Zionism, that would make the task that much easier, unfortunately the number of Jews who denounce Zionism make up only a very small portion.
- Philip Toal on March 16, 2018 · at 6:48 am EST/EDT
  
  Than you. Excellent.
Nussiminen on July 01, 2015 · at 6:55 pm EST/EDT

Well, I suppose this is key to the proverbial “discreet charm of the bourgoisie”. On a more serious note, I feel disposed to believe the Soviets were right, after all. Bourgeois ideology should merit mental hospitalization, George Orwell be damned.
- Eimar CLark on July 01, 2015 · at 9:48 pm EST/EDT
  
  @Nuss
  
  I’ve always found that charm so ‘discreet’ as to be undetectable.;)
blue on July 01, 2015 · at 6:57 pm EST/EDT

I have time for only a brief comment, but at the core of much of this is misunderstanding of post modernism, moral relativity, and constructivism, (and also some problems with the concept of ‘god’, and of religios dogma).

Morality IS constructed, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t based on reality — at least human and social reality (as opposed to ‘morality’ for other species) — but there is also differences in ‘morality’ for various cultures.

Constructivism is saying that we do construct our own reality because of the limits of our senses and minds, but that does not mean an objective reality does not exist — just that we can’t directly contact it. It’s an epistemological problem, and much the same problem exists in trying to extend the ideas of post modernism into politics and over-broad social judgements, thinking that if different cultures and people think or believe about reality differently that necessarily changes the reality — which may be true if social feedback and reflexivity is operative, but one needs to understand the limits of this.

For instance, people believing that there will be a bumper crop can drive down the price of the commodity, regardless of what the harvest turns out to be, and people thinking that a stock is going to soar will increase demand, and thus the price, creating a bubble, but bubbles burst when reality hits the fan. In social and financial spheres a ‘reality’ of sorts can be constructed (see the six hours of Umpleby’s lectures for his take on this), but it’s an abstract reality (a contradiction of terms, really), not a tangible one, except for some of its effects as when people go bankrupt or run off with a tone of money from speculating.

‘Bad’ morality, is when it doesn’t work for the benefit of the social system. Non-social creatures such as reptiles don’t worry about that because the only social interaction they have is laying some eggs in the right place, and the rest of the time it’s about individual survival. People will have a hard time understanding this as long as they think they are not simply another instantiation of the biosphere (or life) as part of the manifestation of universal cosmic consciousness. Biblical religions really mess people up in understanding the nature of reality when their stories get taken to seriously, or as a part of cosmology instead of a particular set of social structures. Religion depends on wearing a number of blinders and emotional biases which cuts people off from dealing more directly with cosmic reality, but even then is badly understood by most practitioners, who are enmeshed in ancient philosophies formed at a time when people didn’t even understand what chemistry, physics, or even modern math is — which was only brought out within the last century or so, and is being developed and revised constantly, moving towards ‘post-science’ or ‘super-science’, as new paradigms are formulated in a never-ending process. Humans are still living in a very primitive culture, and think they actually know and understand things (much like the ancients who thought lightning bolts were hurled by the gods).

Hope to muddle through — it’s still the best we can do.
EB on July 01, 2015 · at 10:08 pm EST/EDT

Saker

I read this poem years ago. It’s about people and their choices.

It is one of those that you remember your whole life. Every time you have to make an important choice.

You will see that it is connected to what you you wrote here.

“Che Fece …. Il Gran Rifiuto”*
by C. P. Cavafy

For some among us there comes up a day
when either the great Yea or the great Nay
must needs be spoken. He who has the Yea

ready within him, straightway stands revealed
and, giving it utterance, passes to his field
of self-expression. He who did not yield

assent, never repents. If Nay or Yea
were asked again, he would repeat his Nay,
though that right word afflicts him night and day.

Translated by John Cavafy
(Poems by C. P. Cavafy. Translated, from the Greek, by J. C. Cavafy. Ikaros, 2003)
Christian on July 01, 2015 · at 10:53 pm EST/EDT

The Saker said: “our entire society is based on a charade, a fraud”.

I think I can pinpoint more precisely where the original sin lies: with the fraudulent use of the word “democracy”. This was originally a neologism introduced by the end of 6th century B.C. in Athens, to refer to a technical discovery which solved the problem of designating a small group of people to which public matters were to be trusted for a given period. Before that, the designation had been made through election, in a regime called “aristocracy” meaning “government by the best”. But the Athenians soon realised that, in practice, this always brought domination by a 1% minority (just as today). Their ingenuity devised then the more advanced political system ever known to humans (we are clearly less advanced today, in this and in other respects, than ancient Athenians) in the form of a machine called “kleroterion”, used to sort out the members of the “Council of the 500”. On an aside, we can consider sortition a technological indicator of the degree of development of a society, like the use of fire, the methalurgy of iron or the internal combustion engine. Well, when the 1% percent came back to power after two centuries of self-government by the 99% (sure, they had slaves, I know, I know…), they were so pissed off that they made sure that we never again resort to democracy. And indeed we completely forgot, until today, what real democracy is. It was simply erased from our collective memory.

Fast forward to the early 19th century. The young Republics in France and the US, whose founding fathers had conciously rejected democracy and chosen instead elections (that is, aristocracy), were evolving into more and more complex electoral contests. In this situation, where the 1%ers had to trick the masses into voting for them, the use of the word “democracy” meaning “government by the people” proved to be the ultimate weapon. And those who had hated true democracy the most, if they had only known what it was really about, ended up being the first ones to call themselves democrats.

As the Saker said: “our entire society is based on a charade, a fraud”. We are supposed to live in a democracy and we actually live in its exact opposite. “Democratic elections” is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Elections always give the power to the 1%; only sortition treats people as equals, giving to all of them the same chance to hold a share of power once in their lifetime.

This is the fraud our society is based on. Every other lie stems from there.
- T2015 on July 02, 2015 · at 7:39 am EST/EDT
  
  Greeks were right, pure democracy is always the dictatorship of the dumb mob and the lowest common denominator. Also always usurped by the 1% very fast.
  
  That is also why the USA was designed as a republic and explicitly NOT as a democracy.
  
  You should get the terms right, look for a good dictionary.
  - Nussiminen on July 02, 2015 · at 11:21 am EST/EDT
    
    Lots of deluded, idealistic Western drivel on display here. The US was designed as an Anglo-Saxon Settler Reich. The superstitious reverence for “The Founding Fathers” is, ultimately, a tribute to their “egalitarian” orgy of land-grabbing and murder, thus giving birth to Exceptionals and Indispensables now threatening to finish off our supposedly less indispensable planet.
    - T2015 on July 02, 2015 · at 4:41 pm EST/EDT
      
      I grew up in communism and mixed ethnic/religious society, but with latent tensions between two christian groups and then muslims and then Albanian nazis to top it off. I lived to see that system turn into nazism/fascism within just a few years, suffered that a few years, moved to a capitalist country and have been “there” for over two decades – is that enough? I am not talking from theory but from rich real experience. And also regarding (sane) theoretical side, I am very well versed in that and know both the practical and theoretical pros and contras of each of them.
      
      Simply said, any system could work if the people were not corrupt or corruptible. People would fix the flaws along the way and all would be fine, it wouldn’t matter if it was called communism, capitalism or whateverism, it would adapt itself to the needs of the people. But unfortunately that ain’t possible as of today.
      
      As for democracy, I really recommend you to read Plato’s “Republic” and from a totally different POV Ghadafi’s “The Green Book” where he expains Democracy. They both nailed it.
  - Christian on July 02, 2015 · at 12:58 pm EST/EDT
    
    What T2015 calls “dumb mob” we call people. What he fears and hates we love and admire.
    What he calls “the lowest common denominator” produced in only one city and in just one century (5th B.C.) double the amount of intelligence and beauty that shitty country of his will produce in all its history — which I hope won’t last much longer.
    Nowadays, a true, sortition-based democracy doesn’t exist anywhere. The electoral regime you live under, usurped as it is by the 1%, should be rightly called aristocracy or “goverment by the best ones” (if only that were true!). Now, if you fancy to call it a republic, which is a concept that has nothing to do within the framework of this discussion, you can of course call it as you like…
    - T2015 on July 02, 2015 · at 5:02 pm EST/EDT
      
      No, I am not referring to “people”, but thanks for putting words into my mouth. There is no “people”, we’re a sum of individuals. Most of them uninformed, inexperienced , led by instinct and easy to deceive – unfortunately, due to our (deliberately) abysmal education almost world-wide. And as always, in a “democratic” group there will never be an ideal set of checks and balances, thus all of them get easily corrupted by the psychos and oligarchs and that real fast.
      
      They’re always all quickly corrupted and none of them could so far produce real independence and the needed degree of checks and balances. Not even Switzerland with its not-so-direct democracy, not even Libya with its citizen committees. The weakness and deficiences of the minority among us unfortunately prevailed in all the known experiments. Even in the most promising one, the USA.
      
      That being said, of all the systems so far, I can’t really recommend any of the alternatives either, it’s not like I knew anything better. There were good experiments idea in Libya with the people’s committees was actually great and logical to me, but obviously it was also not quite perfect.
      
      I also found the system in pre-90’s Germany and scandinavian countries quite good until it all got “liberalized” and corrupted from late 80’s on and then transferred into another copy of the US fascist sweatshop. It only has the more reddish-socialist version of that flavour. But socialist are all equally destructive for the society, be it red, brown or green.
  - Purple Library Guy on July 02, 2015 · at 7:32 pm EST/EDT
    
    It’s not the mob that’s dumb, it’s everybody. There’s always this notion that somehow if we let the “right people”, such as the rich, be in charge then OK, people won’t be free, but at least things will be run better. But the rich are just as dumb and so are other elite groups that have been tried. Even the medieval Chinese scholar-elite tended to only know the stuff relating to the exams, which had little to do with anything that benefited the people of China. The difference with elite groups is they have their own interests which are very often opposed to everyone else’s.
    
    Meanwhile the mob themselves aren’t so much dumb in an absolute sense, as they are dumbed. Strenuous efforts have always been made to keep them that way, and they’re probably more strenuous now than they’ve ever been. Why, for instance, have I even heard of anyone named Kardashian? There are millions of people who can make complicated arguments about the arcane minutiae of baseball statistics but are “too dumb” to understand anything about taxation or budgets.
    - Philip Toal on March 16, 2018 · at 7:09 am EST/EDT
      
      Factually correct.— however, ” But the rich are just as dumb and so are other elite groups … no, not quite, which I suppose it being an uphill battle for everyone else, renders your statement questionable, methinks.
Patricia on July 01, 2015 · at 11:31 pm EST/EDT

Oh Lord. Saker and Grieved, thank you for what you have said here. I needed to hear what you have said. You are both God’s hands working in this world.
Charles Fasola on July 02, 2015 · at 12:42 pm EST/EDT

A couple of comments, if I may:

1. I both amazes and perturbs me that a group consisting of less than 1% of the population is able to hold such sway over government policies and society as a whole. The forces of the west have deliberately, I can only think of the word abolished, honor, integrity and morality within their respective societies. Accomplished by the propaganda spewed forth by the controlled major mass media and the so-called entertainment industry. Think of what groups dominate those willfully evil institutions? The military-industrial complex and the zionists.

2. I’ve actually had dealings with car salesmen who were quite honest. To compare the epitome of evil, o’bama, to all of them is a generalization undeserved. Since the liar-in-chief is as close to the anti-Christ that exists in the world today. He and his neo-con disciples and capitalist minions exist solely as a force against good.

So, the message has to be and must be that there is actually a battle taking place on this earth between the forces of the good and righteous and those of pure and unadulterated evil. A battle between the human and anti-human.

As for the gay issue, it is merely another distraction from what humanity should be focused upon. The evil core, in reality, hates them as well and could care what becomes of them.
Praying Prophet on July 02, 2015 · at 2:23 pm EST/EDT

Nicely spoken! Bravo!! Once again Saker you have been right on time! Blessings!
Anonymous on July 02, 2015 · at 2:43 pm EST/EDT

Michael Jackson is a very good example because what you get is millions and millions of people who want to BE him, all over the world. Millions who wish to deny their own reality, just like he did. With modern day capitalism it is hard to stay in reality because it is so awful. work all your life in a job you hate that pays nothing so you have to get into massive debt just to keep a roof over you head let alone get a semi decent education? whatever the Eurasians are going to do with capitalism they need to offer something better than this, otherwise (as I think Russia has already tasted a little after the end of USSR) you will merely continue in the Wests footsteps, 7 billion debt slaves living in their minds all ultimately going insane. Glad I’m not going to be around for that, its bad enough as it is already.
Anonymous on July 02, 2015 · at 2:53 pm EST/EDT

All world is upside down even Nobel prize jury

http://news.yahoo.com/nobel-peace-prize-jury-under-investigation-152500580.html
Saker is right
Purple Library Guy on July 02, 2015 · at 8:28 pm EST/EDT

I agree about much of what we’re against (well, except gays) but I must say I’m troubled by a good deal of what The Saker is for. The thinking here strikes me as confused, guilty of some of the same errors as we find in what he’s objecting to and likely to lead to the same results in the end.

I’ll just note my position in brief: I’m not religious but also not a moral relativist. I think that, while religion can be OK and some religion endorses some moral and ethical truths, any “morality” that can only point to religion rather than real reasons as a basis is no morality at all. Politically, I am very far to the left, but also far to the small “l” libertarian (not big “L”, gah), leading to ideas of egalitarian, participatory governance somewhere in the “social anarchy” area. So if you think that makes me by definition an idiot you can by all means stop reading.

Hokay, so to The Saker’s article. I think he’s wrong on a couple of points. One is raising a bogeyman (“moral relativism”) as somehow the basis of what’s wrong, rather than dealing with real things like the nature of economic systems, historical events, technologies and so forth. Moral relativism is something that worries religious people, but it doesn’t have any real explanatory power, it’s had quite different sources at different times, and The Saker is dragging it in all over the place where it isn’t even involved. So for instance, hypocrisy is not moral relativism. To the contrary, hypocrisy can only exist where moral absolutes are endorsed but people are trying to evade them, often for reasons of greed or other sorts of self-serving, sometimes for reasons of survival. Hypocrisy is most important when there are agreed moral absolutes which are, in certain contexts, inconvenient to an elite group. In order to get what they want, they pay lip service to the absolute while ignoring it in reality. Sometimes it’s even a moral absolute which the elite itself endorses and spreads because it’s useful to them if other people obey it. This kind of thing is ancient; what makes it work differently nowadays is capitalism and modern media technologies, not “moral relativism”.
And the problems The Saker points to are not caused by moral relativism. Rather, the same things that cause those problems, sometimes also cause moral relativism. Moral relativism in the Western academy is largely IMO a product of the same pressures that drive runaway consumerism and what Saker calls “Libertinage” (which itself is a few different things, some perfectly OK and driven by the quest for freedom, some basically an extension of consumerism, the quest for glitzy short-term fixes to distract from how we’re held down). That is, there are a lot of things that capitalism wants/needs us to do (like buy things and work hard) and a lot that it wants/needs us not to do (notably think about certain things or act on those thoughts). So we have this whole system of advertising and media and pressure from hierarchies and so on, which also exists in universities. In universities, it discourages serious study of society that takes seriously notions such as justice or are very critical of the 1% and the systems they run. But you can’t stop academics from thinking AT ALL. What you can do is distract them with intellectual toys, things which will allow them to think very cleverly but in an irrelevant way. “Postmodernism”, morally relativist ideas, “neutral” sociology which aims to be purely descriptive but never judgmental, none of these are dangerous so they haven’t been suppressed; people who might have been systemic critics get steered into this kind of stuff where they’ll do no harm–much the way ordinary people who might wonder why their meaningless alienated job brings them no satisfaction or even security, are fobbed off with consumer toys, glitzy celebs, and porn.

Perhaps as a result, The Saker’s prescription seems to me rather lacking–basically, a Strong Man on a white horse. Plus maybe a religious revival. Oh, like that’s ever worked before. We’ll deal with a whole system of elitist oppression by trusting an elite of one. And proclaiming Morality! while assuming that unlike pretty much every other religious revival in history, it won’t be hijacked–or indeed, led in the first place–by the same old hypocrites. None of this tackles the driving forces behind the problems in the first place. If anything it strengthens them.

As to what is and is not fundamentally moral: Saker’s basic problem here is his resistance to one of the most bedrock principles.
All people are created equal.
Some of them turn into SOBs later. But everyone is fundamentally a moral agent, a protagonist with their own feelings and interests, the main character of their own novel. Whether black, white, or magenta, whether male, female, or intersex, whether straight, gay, or whatever, whether rich or poor. So they all should get the same rights, the same opportunities.
One thing that flows from this is that two people should be able to marry if and only if: They both have made an informed, uncoerced decision that they want to. That’s it. Any other arrangement is deeply immoral, and any religion that says otherwise is promoting immorality and needs to change. Another that should have been uncontroversial by now is women get to be equal. Full bloody stop, the end. If individual women are girly or not girly or individual men are macho or not macho, that’s their business. And I don’t, frankly, care about your culture in this, whether it’s US redneck or “Islam” or Russian or whatever. Look at the Kurds. Kurds are Muslim last I checked, but the ones having the most successes against bloody ISIS are the ones that went totally non-racist, non-sexist, non-anti-gay, deep democratic. They have brigades of women fighting, and they’re damn well effective. They’re not trying to say women should be second class because Mohamed or whatever.
The best resistance to elites is opposition to elitism. To stop the 1%, the only real solution is the deep democracy. But you can’t do that if you divide the opponents of tyranny, say “OK, we’re in the club, but you other guys, or girls, you’re NOT in the club”. The elites have always played divide and rule, and the elites telling you to step on gays are the same as the elites telling American rednecks that blacks (not billionaires) are what’s holding them down. No. We are all in this together, and that includes the gays, and the women, and the blacks and the browns, the Orthodox and the Zoroastrians. And we can all take leadership roles, and we can all marry and work and cook and study physics and fight and whatever. Only categorical embrace of this fundamental moral truth can ultimately allow both the taking, and holding, of victory against the forces oppressing us.
- blue on July 02, 2015 · at 10:16 pm EST/EDT
  
  Yes.
  I’m currently thinking in terms of cybernetics, although other though systems can be used as well, so I’m now looking at morality as the desired goals of the various systems and subsystems to be accomplished by feedback loops. First order loops look at a particular subsystem, while second order looks at a higher level sytem (and there will be conflicts where a goal in the subsystem can be contrary to a goal in the encompassing system). As such, there are different levels of morality (or ethics).
  
  The highest level system is the universe, then the planet, the human species, and various subdivisions such as nations, cultures, tribes, clans, and individuals. We can also find areas where a system goal is contrary to a subsystem goal such that repressing the subsystem (such as an individual) ultimately destroys the system (as in tyranny, where lack of individuality will eventually destroy productivity, cooperation, and the system itself, or in a religion where the arbitrary and dogmatic morality results in repression and wars which can destroy virtually all life in a culture, nations, or on the whole planet).
  
  It’s important to understand the limits and incomplete borders of a system — which is, after all, an abstract construct, and generally flawed by the limited perceptions and intellect of those who construct it. The moral imperative of predatory fish in a pond is to reproduce and eat all other fish, but when they do then they will die of starvation. They can’t see the consequences over time or the limits of the pond. This holds even if their local authoritarian ‘fish god’ or ‘fish monarch’ tells them absolutely to eat and lay eggs.
  
  We need to understand the nature of abstract models and constructions, and the tendency of brains to overdo that stuff and get trapped in it.
  - Purple Library Guy on July 02, 2015 · at 11:12 pm EST/EDT
    
    Interesting. I remember hearing about a picture of Plato and Aristotle, showing Plato pointing UP! and Aristotle pointing DOWN. You seem to be somewhat a Platonist, deriving the particular from the universal, as it were. I’m more of an Aristotelian, wanting to build the universal up from the particular.
    
    So it seems to me that morals (I actually far prefer the word “ethics”) can only really apply to particular subjects of morality, such as people, or animals. There can be no injustice, for instance, if there is nobody to be unjust to, no dignity if there is nobody to be dignified. So I’m not clear what morality for a system or for the universe would be, at least independent of the experiences of some kind of subjective agents experiencing that system or living in that universe.
    Broad ethical truths to my mind come from adding up and abstracting from things we find that individual subjective experience have in common. Most of the rules you end up with are pretty simple, even apparently banal; maybe the single most core is the Golden Rule (as long as you’re intelligent in applying it; I like peanut brittle, but while I’d be happy to be given peanut brittle I wouldn’t give my friend’s son peanut brittle, he could die. A nice peanut-free dessert he liked, though, would be an equivalent action). Rules like the Golden Rule can result in different recommended actions depending on the breadth of the context you’re paying attention to, but they’re still the same rule and still have to apply to the welfare of actual people or at least beings capable of experiencing things like happiness and suffering.
    - blue on July 03, 2015 · at 2:24 am EST/EDT
      
      I’m an old programmer — did top-down, bottom-up, and work from the middle. Not much for Plato, Aristotle, or any of the old philosophers, really, but fairly eclectic and holistic. I’ve been known to even tighten or bang in a screw to start it with pliers — grab whatever tool is at hand that will work.
      
      First, you need a context — to define the system you are working with. Take survival, for instance — most morality has survival in there someplace, as well as lack of pain, and some sense of meaning. These are fairly universal values. So now, what is the context? You, your family, your nation, the world? (Could add the universe but it’s hard to make a case you morals or actions would matter with that.)
      
      In practice then, bottom-up, you can abstract principles such as the golden rule from individual to nations or to species. (Golden rule can be modified to platinum rule in case of peanut brittle). The point is that we can work in both directions as long as we remember the system, the assumptions and rules, and mechanisms were are employing, and we don’t have to work mechanically — but we can when it suits our purposes.
      
      https://www.evl.uic.edu/swami/geb2.gif is the front illustration of the book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which illustrate nicely a way of looking at reality from different perspectives. So does the Necker cube or other ambiguous images
      https://www.google.com/search?q=ambiguous+image&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&biw=1024&bih=596&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=_vCVVeORBcKWyASQ56HgDw&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ
      
      What we see — how the gestalt forms — is constructivist. Visually it takes a lot of practice and concentration to see ambiguous figure simultaneously, and it’s fleeting. Yet, knowing that all the gestalts are potentially there and it’s us who constructs the reality is useful, and lets us move from one to the other (like being multilingual I could guess, except I’m not but in computer languages). With some empathy, and maybe some mirror neurons, you can understand another’s world view and feelings, which seems to be the biological and social basis for things like the golden rule — and also can form a feedback loop (servomechanism) for social and individual morality, which holds society together.
      (Some interesting work in the field of collective and swarm intelligence among different species, even bacteria, is being done).
MB on July 05, 2015 · at 2:20 am EST/EDT

…western civilization got cozy with the idea that there was no real, objective truth, only the subjective perception or even representation each person might have thereof…

“…to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them…”

This “double perception” traces back to a Hermetic-Kabbalistic philosophical syncretism at the heart of the western Renaissance (of Greco-Roman paganism):

The coincidence of opposites that characterizes God, humanity and the world can be approximately understood by the simultaneous adoption of two points of view. …

The economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) also traces the development of capitalism back to double-entry bookkeeping. … Schumpeter says that capitalism adds a new edge to rationality by “exalting the monetary unit – not itself a creation of capitalism – into a unit of account. That is to say, capitalist practice turns the unit of account into a tool of rational cost-profit calculations, of which the towering monument is double-entry bookkeeping.” In his view, double entry’s “cost-profit calculus” drives capitalist enterprise – and then spreads throughout the whole culture: “And thus defined and quantified for the economic sector, this type of logic or attitude or method then starts upon its conqueror’s career subjugating – rationalizing – man’s tools and philosophies, his medical practice, his picture of the cosmos, his outlook on life, everything in fact including his concepts of beauty and justice and his spiritual ambitions.”

On Principal And Interest, Hermetic Magick, And The Lords Of Time
- ChristineG on July 05, 2015 · at 8:56 pm EST/EDT
  
  Thanks for the link to that brilliant article.
  
  A quote from it:
  
  “For Schumpeter, capitalism “generates a formal spirit of critique where the good, the true and the beautiful no longer are honoured; only the useful remains – and that is determined solely by the critical spirit of the accountant’s cost-benefit calculation”.15
luke on July 09, 2015 · at 5:20 pm EST/EDT

Thanks for the great article, you gave a perfect description of the psychopath – and for good reason: Most of those guys at the top ARE psychopaths, who created their own reality “in their image”.

I really recommend the books “Snakes in Suits”, “Sociopath next door” and most importantly “Political Ponerology”. I think to learn about the nature of psychopaths is a key to understand what’s going on in the world.
Panpsychist on July 10, 2015 · at 6:34 am EST/EDT

I know that many will disagree with me, but I see a direct cause and effect relationship between the denial of moral reality and the denial of physical reality.

I not only agree, I think it is worse than than that. It is a ‘scientific’ denial of our own existence, the exitence of life itself.

The default ‘scientific’ position is now, clearly and openly stated, in the words of Richard Dawkins, that living things, us, humans, are no more than “wet robots”, and that consciousness itself is “an illusion”.

The concept that good and evil are plastic, and changeable culture to culture, age to age, is being used to claim that good and evil therefore don’t exist at all! a syllogism. Like darwiniian theory being used to justify exterminating the ‘unfit’.

For a conscious human being to accept that they are not alive, just a machine, that their consciousness is an illusion to themselves (???! — how can a non-conscious being be under an illusion?) — this is beyond insane, and allows the holders of this insanity to do whatever they ‘will’ (sic). It is the death of care as in the ceremony of the illuminati-styled Bilderburg meetings. “We Don’t Care”.

Great article. Articulating the truth is one of the only weapons we have. Thanks.

Simon.
- blue on July 10, 2015 · at 7:27 am EST/EDT
  
  Not to say I am supporting this as correct, but to give the proper argument…
  
  Consciousness is an emergent property which is the result of nested feedback loops including a reflexive loop which monitors the second order process of self-modification of the system and allows learning algorithms to operate. This is an answer to the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, self-awareness, or qualia.
  
  This does not address the issues of morality, nor the ideas about post-modern relativism (which are highly distorted in common understanding), nor the nature of ‘physical’ reality, information systems, and other basic ontological or epistemological issues, but it does demonstrate that simply being perplexed by something such as “how can a non-conscious being be under an illusion” leads to valid conclusions but is just the logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’ — or appeal to the stone — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_lapidem , or similar.
  (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies )
  
  I find faults in some positions of such as Dawkins, Pinker, and Dennet, and also opponents such as Penrose & Hameroff, Alan Watts, et al, and various religious dogma — but it takes a bit of work to grapple with them properly.
  
  The idea that ‘consciousness’ is an illusion is ancient — the maya of the Hindus is thousands of years old. It is not formulated in the way that materialists do it, of course, with the physical world itself being considered an illusion, but ti certainly provides arguments that consciousness can be fooled even about itself.
  
  These are not trivial issues, easily dismissed towards one side or another.
tim lever on July 13, 2015 · at 9:23 pm EST/EDT

Very perceptive, but I don’t get your anti-gay stand. I’m not gay but I know homosexuality has always been around, why get hung up on it?
Sam on July 14, 2015 · at 4:01 am EST/EDT

Dear Saker:

Wonder if you’re aware of a chap named Alexander Boot? He’s Russian, got “the boot” from there in the 70’s and now lives in France and Britain. He wrote a book about this trend called Democracy as a Neocon Trick, well worth the read. Boot also has a blog, if you’re inclined to check it out

P.S. Please forgive the formatting. Not good with keyboard commands.

Sam
Philip Toal on March 16, 2018 · at 6:37 am EST/EDT

It appears the topic of “Dem./Undem. has taken preference in some the responses to the post, rendering the possibility of WW111 a non-starter occurance.
Niran on March 21, 2018 · at 11:12 pm EST/EDT

A superb article! For people who know things are wrong but cannot put it in words & perspective!