Lucius Gives Good Thread

THE RED ELVISES: LOVE PIPE

Birth pangs of the Messiah.

In his commentary on the mysticism of Abraham Abulafia, Gershom Scholem notes that, taken to it's logical extreme, mysticism can lead to the conclusion that one can be, or is, one's own messiah. If Messiah is the bridge between man and God, the one who eliminates the abyss that, since the breaking of the vessels, has stood between us, then the mystic who in his own person can experience the unmediated presence of the One outside of the boundedness of History is, for that moment of the presence, "messiah" albeit in a deeply personal sense.

The idea that each of us can become our own messiah, however, denies to God His role, and also denies the role of History in the plan of salvation. We ourselves become the agents of our own salvation and therefore do not need God.

It is this hubris, the belief that ourselves, without need for the Divine, can accomplish that perfection, that drives impatience with the imperfections of the World, of Creation, and, thence, of the Creator Himself. And as impatience grows, so does anger, resentment, and a sense of enmity with God. Why does He hide his face? Why does he withhold His ultimate gifts? Why must we wait?

These questions were asked a long time ago, time before time. They led to the war in heaven, which has since become the war on earth.

Islamism, Communism, Fascism, Scientism -- all of these are the modern manifestations of the old mysticism.

~ lucius septimius



One aspect of eugenics, the ape-man hybrid, and myriad other forms of social and biological engineer intended to produce a perfect class of "drudge workers" is that they are founded upon an ancient and deeply ingrained misreading of Aristotle.

In the Politics, Aristotle discusses the notion of "natural slavery." He suggests that there might be people who, because of various mental infirmities, be naturally best suited to serve as slaves since they were incapable of taking care of themselves on their own. A careful reading of his discussion, however, reveals that here, as in many places, Aristotle is being deliberately deceptive.

If "natural slavery" were to be morally acceptable, than it would have to be the case that the slave would be unable to function without the direction of the master. And one could argue that, yes, there are people like that. But not many. And, frankly, those who fit his description wouldn't make very good slaves because they wouldn't have enough intelligence to make choices or carry out their duties without constant supervision. In other words, there might well be natural slaves, but they wouldn't be worth it because they would lack the comprehension and mental capacity to be effective workers.

This leads back to one of Aristotle's central principals -- nearly all political and social institution are based on convention. "Slavery" is a convention, and the vast majority, if not in truth all slaves are not "natural slaves" but are slaves "by convention," that is, because men made them slaves because they needed slaves, not because they deserved it. "Natural slavery" is, for Aristotle, a real condition, but is used almost exclusively as a rhetorical justification for the unnatural, and hence unjust imposition of servitude.

Servitude is a thus a social convention; it is for all practical purposes not a function of nature, but a creation of men, founded not on justice, but on expediency. The attempts to justify it have the veneer of respectability because they appear to be founded on science, that is, observations of nature. But the justifications are really hollow if you examine them closely.

It's like what Aristotle says about marriage -- in that same section there is a line about women being subject to men etc. etc., but if you look up the quote it's from a play, Ajax . The lines are spoken by Ajax's wife, reporting on her husband's rantings after he has gone totally mad. Again, the idea of the absolute subjugation of women is revealed to be a conventional idea, not one rooted in nature, and actually sort of stupid.

Aristotle was a lot sharper than people realize, and more than willing to use our own prejudices and ill-thought ideas against us. Unfortunately far too many over the centuries have failed to see the irony of what he writes.

~ lucius septimius




The consensus of which you speak is the Hegelain "general Will" -- a murky concept that is supposed to reflect the idea of a set of general beliefs that are shared in common by all men, but is also rooted in the submission of the individual will to the whole. "Individualism" is false consciousness, since it assumes that our identity is something fixed within us, while the Hegelian views consciousness as something which can only be achieved in confrontation with and communication with the "other," that is to say, people other than ourselves. If we view the other as the whole of the human race, then we can achieve true consciousness and participation in the general will.

Sound a lot like communism or fascism? But of course it does.

Ultimately it is a way of thinking built on the totally incoherent metaphysical bullshit of Hegel which educated people want to think is profound because, twisted the right way, it can support their fantasies of power.

As a dictum of political theory, it's something akin to unified field theory. Co-inky-dink?

Oops -- there I go again.

~ lucius septimius



Averroes, in his critique of Arab poetry, writes:

"most of their [the Arabs] poems are only about overwhelming desire and yearning. That is to say, the kind they call nasib encourages depravity. Thus the young ought to avoid it and should be educated in those poems of theirs that encourage valor and generosity. Now these are the only two virtues encouraged by the Arabs in their poems, even though they speak about them not in order to encourage them but only in order to boast ...

"For the most part, however, the Greeks [unlike the Arabs] did not recite any poems other than those that either were directed toward encouraging virtue or discouraging vice or that provided something of good manners or knowledge" [Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics, 2.10-11]

He later cites an example of the sort of pointless sensual excess he sees in Arab writing:

Upon my life, watchful eyes have perceived
a fire's light burning on the rise;
Blazing for two col men seeking its warmth,
Generosity and al-Muhalliq night-long at the fire;
Having sucked milk from the brreast of a single mother, they swore
by her dark nipple never to become sundered.

A poem that is supposed to be about generosity descends into a discussion of boobs. Hence, Averroes says, the moral meaning is lost in the sensual.

~ lucius septimius