— What with their being Biblethumping mouthbreathers whose idea of a deep thought routinely ends with “you might be a redneck”…?
I don’t know. You tell me.
(thanks to Lazarus Long)
Search
Archive Calendar
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |
Archives
Categories
- A Government That Can Force You to Buy Health Insurance Can Make You Do Anything (3)
- a protein wisdom philosophy primer (3)
- academics (25)
- armadillo (8)
- Friday Fiction 100 Word Challenge (51)
- from the protein wisdom conceptual series (136)
- identity politics (33)
- If Republicans Win the Senate in 2014 (1)
- in which celebraties comment on current events (67)
- language / intentionalism (88)
- legal (6)
- My brief conversations with inanimate objects (130)
- NSA / FISA (46)
- One Term to Serve, the 2012 Revival (6)
- Overheard in a Fallujah bunker (27)
- Poems from 196x, Revised by the Ghost of Richard Brauti (27)
- protein wisdom's DNC coverage (30)
- protein wisdom's RNC coverage (29)
- protein wisdom: the movie Lists (20)
- Provocateurism (16)
- real-time empirical observations (51)
- red pills found behind the sofa cushions (42)
- Scenes from my driveway (61)
- Talking back to 80s music (41)
- The Martha Stewart Chronicles (58)
- The protein wisdom interviews (10)
- The protein wisdom original poems (142)
- Uncategorized (20,046)
- Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, abridged (34)
Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
- In The Mailbox: 12.23.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- In The Mailbox: 07.18.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
I have a Gadsden flag, therefore I am?
Of course. As Santayana once told Ortega y Gasset, “get-r-done!”
RomeAmerica is burning.How’s that?
Thus the meaning of the “progress” in “progressive” and why the end always and forever will justify the means.
If you figure that burning a stack o’ Qurans on 9/11 is a good idea, even after Petreaus asks you nicely not to, you just might be a redneck.
Carvalho? He speaks corrupted Spanish. Can’t trust ‘im.
Evil brings men together.
That might explain the turn out for Beck’s thing (no Beck is not evil).
It isn’t correct to say a non-happening, that is not an event like any other event?
It happens that in the twentieth century, there was a communist scholar, György Lukács, a Hungarian philosopher, who, upon examining Dostoevsky’s work, establishes a series of interpretations that turn Dostoevsky’s universe into a critical analysis of the capitalism of his time.
Now there’s a shocker. /sarc
Perhaps un-happening as it is when “happening” ends.
But I’s just a redneck hillbilly so this is above my paygrade, no?
“There are also other movements that bear the name of revolutionary, but that are not revolutionary at all. The most characteristic of them is the American Revolution. The American Revolution is not a revolutionary movement in any way.”
That’s some purty talk. Reckon ah’m a gonna put that thar on the back of ma F-150.
Git-er-done!
Amazing, isn’t it? We can even read without moving our lips…
#8 If it is viewed as the culmination of all events it is not only a happening it is the happening. The kingdom of forever would perhaps be more rightly viewed as the non-happening; being perfected there could be no change and how else to measure time but through change?
I’m wondering if I should change my name to Lost My Balzac.
Marx can kiss my Balzac.
Please note this well: what the revolutionary movement does is essentially to try to change common sense. That state of mind which is shared by revolutionaries is transmitted to society through cultural means.
Might this explain the statists’ response to the TEA parties and such? They see that their efforts to impose a new common sense are being rejected wholesale by the populace.
Does anyone else think he has Common Sense mixed up with Conventional Wisdom?
It is easy to build a philosophy–it doesn’t have to run.
–Charles F. Kettering
Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.
–Bertrand Russell
“A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problems than by its solution of them.”
–Suzanne K. Langer
What is the first business of philosophy? To part with self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn what he thinks that he already knows. ~Epictetus
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
–Ambrose Bierce
Philosophy triumphs over past and future evils, but present evils triumph over it.
— La Rochefoucauld
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I’m confused though ThomasD. All the events I’m aware of and capable of comprehending as events, or happenings, are like the past present future time construct de Carvalho posits as our common perception of time stuff. We don’t grasp either the origin on the one hand, nor, it seems to me, the end on the other, in the way we do any other event (I don’t think we grasp them at all, really, since on the one hand there’s no before and on the other no after) so that they — origin, end — are unlike any event or happening, so are non-happenings or non-events as I understand happenings or events.
“But I’s just a redneck hillbilly so this is above my paygrade, no?”
It’s not an altogether easy question to answer definitively, I think. We’re gonna have to look close to what it means to be a conservative and then just as close to what it means to do philosophy, neither of which examinations are nominally simple on the face of the business.
I coalesce the vapors of human experience into a viable and meaningful comprehension.
42
#19 – Perhaps the key lies in you ‘any other event’ formulation. No we cannot understand the totality of ‘event’ based upon, what will always be for us, an incomplete summary of component events. This is not a limitation of event, it is a limitation of us.
Consider the totality of time as the single event that precedes that which follows – the ‘forever’ (utopia, Nirvana, etc.)
Short answer: No.
Slightly longer answer: Not as currently defined.
Regards,
Ric
So revolutionary movements are similar to apocalyptic movements, or are apocalyptic movements revolutionary by virtue of being movements? And I’ll be back later because I have to make a movement of my own (too much coffee).
Thanks, Jeff!
So where does this leave us who exist and cope within the present moment, undistracted by the abstract?
“This is not a limitation of event, it is a limitation of us.”
I’m still at a loss ThomasD. An event as we, or perhaps I should narrow this to as I, understand an event has both a before state and and after state to go along with the occurrence of the event itself. So our understanding of an event is necessarily limited to what we can understand. How not? If we posit an indeterminacy of any sort, aren’t we simply saying we don’t and can’t understand the thing in respect of the indeterminacy?
. However, in the revolutionary perspective, the truth is not in the world of experience because the meaning of experience is mutable at each moment. That which has just happened may acquire a new and completely different meaning as the revolutionary movement develops the next day.
Communism hasn’t proved a failure, we’ve just failed to achieve true communism…
I’m about a third of the way through skimming the essay, and I already see a problem: translation, made worse by idiomatic particularity. The Portuguese verb acontecer “to happen” is normal usage, but a literal translation makes it all sound hippy-dippy in English.
Mentally replace the word “happening” with “occurrence” and it’s easier to see what he’s driving at. He’s not quite totally full of s*t, about a quart low by my estimate, but he’s following a line of thought that isn’t at all remarkable; cf. John Donne.
Regards,
Ric
My philosophy: Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put tomatoes into fruit salad.
“. . . the truth is not in the world of experience because the meaning of experience is mutable at each moment.”
Looks more like a disguised way of saying there is no truth, including its own self-assertion, the ultimate auto-rug-pulling pratfall.
I’m kinda surprised you would make a claim to have a philosophy TSI, given what you’ve quoted. That is, to make such a claim sounds as though it is something discreditable or shameful even.
Great Ghu on a galloping goat, what a load of verbiage this guy needs because he doesn’t have the concept of “entropy” (or, at least, doesn’t expect his audience to).
Regards,
Roc
#28 – I’m not sure I have more to offer. At some point it is simply definitional. “[T]he absorption of the whole of happening into the eternal structure” is the point at which all change ceases and perfection remains. But it cannot be a non-event, because a non-event would mean no change occurred, and therefore perfection had already been achieved.
Yup.
It seems to me that both the origin and the end must be non-events, to the extent that neither of them are identical with all other events as such, and not even identical with one another to the extent that they resemble mirror images, so each is unique to itself.
geoff,
So that’s what Nietzche sounds like sans syphilis?
“…still less can you have your decrepitude before your childhood, adolescence, maturity, etc., unless you are Lula (the president of Brazil).”
I like this guy.
Regards,
Ric
Finished. Thoughts:
1) No matter how hard this guy tries to separate himself from the history of ideas the people who make that their business will persist in placing him there.
2) How much is this of a piece with Jonah Goldberg’s previous works on ‘immanentizing the eschaton’?
3) How much of the revolutionaries efforts to change notions of common sense have instead led to societies backsliding into previous systems of government (e.g. those defined by Cicero)?
4) His understanding of the American revolution as more of a war for independence is fair, but ignores the ‘revolutionary’ notions of universality contained within. (I disagree that it was not a revolution, but do agree that it was quite different from all the rest.)
5) How much of our success is related to the Deists’ rejection of all forms of revelation or scriptural authority?
“…still less can you have your decrepitude before your childhood, adolescence, maturity, etc., “
The hell you say.
Still reading myself, but I can answer question 2 for you Thomas.
It’s of the same piece to the extent that they’re both drawing on Eric Voegelin.
Gotta go, back later.
ThomasD, it’s a matter of definition.
The Founders and Framers did not have a perfected end state in mind and did not attempt to define such an end state — there is no Dictatorship of the Proletariat or City of God in the Constitution; it is an integral part of Time, acknowledged by themselves as being imperfect (compromises over slavery, e.g.) and capable of being amended. It is an incremental advance, albeit a large increment, rather than a culmination, and thus misses Sr. de Carvalho’s definition of “revolutionary” quite completely.
After the Revolution, the Apocalypse, or the Immamentization of the Eschaton, events will continue to occur one after the other, but nothing changes — which was the point of my earlier comment: in physics terms, entropy ceases to increase. The Founders had no such vision. They saw their work as an improvement upon that which had gone before, not an endpoint of Perfection. I find Sr. de Carvalho’s arguments quite correct in that respect.
Regards,
Ric
– What with their being Biblethumping mouthbreathers whose idea of a deep thought routinely ends with “you might be a redneck”…?
No, it’s, “You might-could be a redneck”, you jackass. I call epistemic closure !
“Thus, the past is irreversible and the future is contingent….To a revolutionary, on the contrary, that which is certain is the future, and this certainty is what drives him. Now, the meaning of everything that has happened, and of everything that is happening, comes to depend on that future….
No one can expect to produce a Utopian society by caressing one’s enemies and forgiving them for their sins….Thus it is necessary to punish them, and to do that, it is necessary to kill them….The idea of bringing about the future good through a deep immersion in evil that, carried to the extreme, will transfigure the situation and transform it into good in the future is also an idea inherent in the structure of the revolutionary movement.”
If this guy really posits that the future is uncertain, and that “good” ends don’t justify evil means (where “good” is whatever brings about the inevitable future), then I don’t think there’s any way you can call him a proper philosopher.
Remember: if wishes were horses, then we’d need a Wishing Czar to make sure that nobody wished bigger than their neighbors.
does he say anything about nascar?
If you think Jacques Derrida is a salty snack crisp found in an athletic supporter…
For what it’s worth, my education was in Physics, and I didn’t smoke pot in college, so the most philosophy I learned was related to the metaphysics that were often used to fill in the gaps where our theories fell down. As such, I kind of enjoyed reading the linked lecture, even if it was a bit Greenwaldian (or Den Bestean, if you prefer) in its length and signal-to-noise ratio.
Having never given the matter much thought, I’m finding it rather eye-opening to think of a mindset whereby the future is fixed and the past is changeable. I mean, we talk about it all the time in terms of individual actions or arguments, but I’ve never considered the mindset as part of an identifiable movement.
It’s always neat when my neurons get exercised in a new way.
Somewhere or other, and I can’t recall where exactly, I heard an account that said the ancients took a stance that held we humans move into the future walking backward with our eyes firmly fixed on the past (since it alone is fixed and as such, knowable), whereas the moderns, by contrast, have reversed field, putting their backs to the past with their eyes firmly fixed on the future. It’s an interesting if incomplete spatial metaphor, I’ve thought, but that may be the limit of its use.
This means that the revolutionary mentality is this structure of perception, and not the content, because the content may vary indefinitely. The same political movement changes its talk each week. There is no ideological stability. For instance, until the First World War, the communist movement was internationalist and the radical enemy of all nationalism.
Later on, it becomes the greatest promoter of nationalisms in the Third World because they will be used as weapons against the colonial powers. In Brazil, all of our nationalism is tinged with leftist doctrine, and all of this came with Stalin, because he commanded that this nationalism be created. Even nowadays there are many people who think they are right-wingers and subscribe to a kind of nationalist speech which was inoculated in Brazil via the Komintern. But how can a movement be nationalist and anti-nationalist at the same time? The revolutionary movement can, because the content of the discourse is changeable. Now, there are some people who stand against the revolutionary movement such as they see it at a certain moment. Thus they combat its appearance, its ideological discourse at the moment. But these same people may be collaborating with the revolutionary movement on another plane, in another sense, without being aware of this when, in order to achieve their supposedly opposed goals, contrary to those of the revolutionary movement, they are basing themselves on the same structure of perception, the same structure of thought.
Dunno Squid. I’ve found DenBeste’s works readable. Unlike the linked literature.
Imagine an OPORD written like that pile of text.
Gosh Mister de Carvalho, you use your tongue prettier’n a twenty dollar whore.
Killing is wrong.
After that, it gets pretty hazy. But that one I’m sure of.
I seem to recall this being discussed somewhere, probably some 8th rate blog no doubt.
Mark,
Don’t get me wrong — USS Clueless was one of my favorite haunts back in the day. I quite enjoyed Den Beste’s essays, but one must admit that he too often spent more time defining his terms or answering potential rebuttals than making his core arguments. I believe he himself blamed it on his Aspie tendencies, which shows a level of humility and self-awareness that the Gleens couldn’t hope to possess.
you stole my line
OK. I started to read it, but I fell asleep.
Is it too late to drop the class?
I don’t know how you all found that boring or un-readable.
I’m freaking glued to it.
“If you think the Copenhagen Interpretation has something to do with chewing tobacco…”
There are also other movements that bear the name of revolutionary, but that are not revolutionary at all. The most characteristic of them is the American Revolution. The American Revolution is not a revolutionary movement in any way. Firstly, the first revolutionaries, the Founding Fathers, had the idea of a better society, but at no time did they think that in the name of this better society they could act contrarily to the values that this society would represent. On the contrary, they always thought they had to set the best example of those civic virtues which in the future should be spread throughout the population. Secondly, the better society that they created was not a society opposed to the past. They did not invent a new society that would represent a mutation of time, but rather the contrary. I have here one of the most important works on American history, “A Constitutional History of the United States” by Andrew McLaughlin. This is a classic book, published in 1936. In the very opening pages, he says the following: “To find a beginning of the American constitutional history is a difficult or almost impossible task. Certain important principles of constitutional government already were in existence long before the United States was founded; some of these principles are commonly, though rather loosely, to have had their origin in Magna Charta. This means only that, to know fully the forces and ideas which are embodied in our constitutional system, it is necessary to know the main course of English constitutional history.”
This guy is Portugese?!? Brazillian?
I didn’t exactly get glued to it, Entropy, but once I got past the first few paragraphs where he was trying to explain, well, you to an audience that didn’t have a clue, I thought he had some damn good points.
Regards,
Ric
–it is a bit wordy, but that’s part of the requirement for a Philosopher. You don’t get your raincoat and subscription to Philosopher’s News until you can order a hamburger using three paragraphs, at least one containing a sentence with three subordinate clauses.
Regards,
Ric
i read À la recherche du temps perdu in english once. since then i’ve stuck to shorter sentences.
link
Let’s analyze this:
– lying all the time – check
– you said you was high class (but that was just a lie) – check
– you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine – check
conclusion: you ain’t nothing but a hound dog
Imbibo ergo sum
Somewhere in Europe during the 14th century somebody took a look around and said “If it ain’t PERFECT… it will not be tolerated”.
And today we have birkenstock clad pirates ramming whaling boats in the North Pacific.
The Islamists are easy to understand. Suicidal westerners not so much.
I know exactly what you’re talking about and I can’t find it either. And it’s totally wrecked my evening because I know it’s here in the stacks somewhere.
Ernst,
Perhaps in this publication? “The Past in the Future: History and the Politics of Identity” by Jonathan Friedman
He may not have been the first to express the idea, but Marshall McLuhan said, “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”
The Medium is the Massage (Bantam Books, 1967)
Well you made me think of Dante and fortunetellers.
That’s very good. My favorite parts are the discussions on inversion of reality necessary to revolutionist. I’ve been noticing quite a lot of that lately, regarding money, production, incentive, victimization, marriage, prejudice, hate, language, etc.
#
Comment by Entropy on 9/7 @ 4:32 pm #
I don’t know how you all found that boring or un-readable.
I’m freaking glued to it.
Dibs on the seat next to yours.
Blake, TaiChiWawa,
Not there, alas. It had to do with the notion sdferr mentioned; about how the ancients differed from us in that they were retrospective instead of prospective –owing to the fact that time was cyclical, the future unknowable, and generally that the “Golden Age” was already past (no matter how good the present was), which in turn meant that things were probably going to get worse instead of better.
The closest I’ve been able to come to it is John Lewis Gaddis in his essay on history and historical method The Landscape of History: “We [historians] advance bravely into the future with our eyes fixed firmly on the past: the image we present to the world is, to put it bluntly, that of a rear end.”
This Canadian redneck had better things to do than wade through that pile of flapdoodle. My poor head might ‘splode. Now where’s my beer?
Makes sense to me, I liked it.
Best explanation I’ve heard for why proggs act like retards