[october election] handwringing for the disillusioned

Gordon at Davos: ‘I know I promised to plunge the next two generations into crippling debt and I’ve only managed one so far. Don’t worry, it’ll be ready by the election.’

The essential problems with our electoral and parliamentary system include:

1. Westminster is a club to which men and women might come in idealism but which they’ll sell their souls to remain a member of. It tends inexorably to corrupt the soul – witness the MP’s expenses row - and it’s heavily under the financial influence of the shadowy Them and why shouldn’t it be?

Look at it from Their point of view. They have an agenda of forming a European bloc to play on the world stage, Britain has already been carved up and the regional assemblies are in place to officially take over, post-Lisbon, courtesy of Common Purpose [* see below].

All they need is the Irish Lisbon vote, which they’re now likely to get.

With the crippling of the Lords, playing on the people’s natural bent against elitism, Blair and Brown have made this a country of Prime Ministerial rule. The Queen is irrelevant, except in loyalist hearts.

The real political power in this country is in the hands of Them; they groomed Blair in 1993 and Brown in 1991 and if you doubt the influence – examine the key movers and shakers in Yorkshire Forward, examine the accounts and where the cash came from.

When a journalist charged Viscount Étienne Davignon, "all the recent presidents of the European Commission attended Bilderberg meetings before they were appointed," Davignon's response [was that] he and his colleagues were "excellent talent spotters."

Ditto in Britain. Everyone knows that Cameron is a clone of Blair, an opportunist out for power and shifting his political position to take advantage of the changing climate.

Where are the men and women of genuine conviction? They don’t get preselected, that’s all – they’re either bought or marginalized.

2. Anyone who knows the sytem knows that the final choice placed before the people is a sealed deal. All the real politicking is done at the preselection stage and that’s where the global power is at its most visible – within the party ranks.

Nobody wants idealists within the Club of Westminster – that’s what the whips are for, charged with ensuring the uniformity of opinion and pulling ‘rebel’ [read people of integrity] members into line.

3. This is one reason a hung parliament might be the best solution. With Westminster poised to become a regional cog within the EU nation, the last PM in the traditional sense, Brown, is doing his masters’ bidding to bring the country to its knees to make the transition smoother by 2012. If you doubt that, read through some of the work by Ian Parker-Joseph and others.

4. What of the little people, like me? What can we do? A dyed-in-the-wool Tory, not unlike David Davis, I see a corrupt leader with no backbone leading what could be an excellent into oblivion. Sympathies are very much with the Libertarian Party these days, perhaps the least corrupt of them all at this early stage and don’t forget the UKIP.

Is it better to vote for one of these?

Under first-past-the-post - hardly.

Under preferential voting, as in Australia – better.

Under proportional representation – best.

Proportional representation weakens the executive and legislature and leaves the country’s governance as a lame duck but it does bring the people’s voice back into the picture, something it risibly isn’t at this juncture.

I like Lord T’s idea of direct voting on major issues via one’s PC, an idea he’ll no doubt post on one day and his plan for the reduction of MPs’ terms is also good – I would add, on a staggered basis.

So here we are – an election in October and whom to vote for? My history says, ‘Vote Tory,’ I’m a paid-up Tory member as of now but to vote for my local member also ushers the corrupt Cameron straight into a Prime Ministerial EU regional dictatorship.

On the other hand, to vote for a minor party is to throw away one’s vote under first-past-the-post.

What to do?

* With its purposes now subsumed into Common Purpose, the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London was funded into existence in 1946 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

One of the Tavistock founders, Dr. John Rawlings Rees, who also became co-founder of the World Federation for Mental Health, talked of infiltrating all professions and areas of society:

‘Public life, politics and industry should all ... be within our sphere of influence ... If we are to infiltrate the professional and social activities of other people I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity!

We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life ... We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine.’

Common Purpose comes into its own in the post-democracy phase of the EU from 2012.

[wordless wednesday] captions please

[mini-blogfocus] to be added to

I'll add to these as the round of the blogs continues. Check these out:

Facebook hijacking

If a Facebook group loses all of its administrators, then any member of the group can promote themselves and take over the role. Should the new administrator radically change the published purpose of the group – i.e. Hijack it - then there is not much group members can do about it. Other than leave, of course.

Police cars

Is this the face of the new plod-car? Actually, difficult to select form these articles.

Lumens

When the changes take place bulbs will appear with the symbol Lm for Lumens instead of W for Watt. A 60W bulb, for example, will be given the label 800 Lm. (eh? yer wot??)

Men

Now where was I, oh yes.
Men, they do make life interesting. Snips, snails and puppy dog tails...

Speaking of puppy dog tails....

Sigh, I doubt if His Girl Friday will ever speak to me again after the earlier post.

Fencing off the internet

Michael Lynton, the CEO of Sony, attracted a certain amount of notoriety for saying that

"I'm a guy who sees nothing good having come from the Internet. Period."

[happiness] why women must look at themselves

The Adam Smith Institute recently published Tim Worstall who quotes Greg Mankiw who quotes an nber study:

By many objective measures, the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging -- one with higher subjective well-being for men.

No argument there. It is supported across the board, for example, Susan Etheridge for The New York Times reports:

American women are wealthier, healthier and better educated than they were 30 years ago. They’re more likely to work outside the home, and more likely to earn salaries comparable to men’s when they do. They can leave abusive marriages and sue sexist employers. They enjoy unprecedented control over their own fertility. On some fronts — graduation rates, life expectancy and even job security — men look increasingly like the second sex.

But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness. In the 1960s, when Betty Friedan diagnosed her fellow wives and daughters as the victims of “the problem with no name,” American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are happier than women. This is “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” the subject of a provocative paper from the economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers.

Susan Etheridge herself warns that, ‘All this ambiguity lends itself to broad-brush readings.’ That’s true and everyone will have his or her explanation, along the lines of his or her particular beef about society. Here are a few possible explanations which have been advanced:

1. Women aren’t fulfilling their biological function these days, a corollary of Tim Worstall’s ‘can’t do everything at once’ take:

There are always opportunity costs … with more choices comes a problem: there are more things that we cannot do. One cannot be both a childless career woman and a stay at home mother. One cannot be a career woman with children and simultaneously be a career woman without. As the number of possible paths increases so must the number of paths not taken. And as we all know, the true cost of something is what you give up to get it.

So, taking any one path means forsaking all those other paths, those number of paths which have in recent decades been rising in numbers. Thus the paradox of choice, that more such can make us subjectively less happy. But if you ask people whether having fewer choices would make them happier, no one ever actually says that yes, it would.

This comes out below where women’s thirst for perfection is commented on.

2. One female explanation is:

Again, maybe the happiness numbers are being tipped downward by a mounting female workload — the famous “second shift,” in which women continue to do the lion’s share of household chores even as they’re handed more and more workplace responsibility. It’s certainly possible — but as Wolfers and Stevenson point out, recent surveys actually show similar workload patterns for men and women over all.

3. The lady also posits:

Decline of the two-parent family, for instance, is almost certainly depressing life satisfaction for the women stuck raising kids alone.

4. Another of hers:

Maybe women prefer egalitarian, low-risk societies, and the cowboy capitalism of the Reagan era had an anxiety-inducing effect on the American female. But even in the warm, nurturing, egalitarian European Union, female happiness has fallen relative to men’s across the last three decades.

Warm, nurturing? The EU? Let’s move on.

5. Yet another:

They should also be able to agree that the steady advance of single motherhood threatens the interests and happiness of women.

That’s a whole topic in itself.

6. Meghan O'Rourke argues:

[The] drop in happiness is pegged to an anxiety caused by the plethora of choices available (Barry Schwarz's paradox of choice) and women's feeling that they have to perform well across more categories. This is not exactly the same as struggling to balance so-called work and life (i.e., children).

7. She quotes the study’s authors as saying:

Men's happiness has dropped, too, but not as much as women's. But … it's likely that women are measuring their happiness over time using a broader set of criteria. [It] may be, paradoxically, that the women's movement has decreased women's happiness at this moment in time, because "the increased opportunity to succeed in many dimensions may have led to an increased likelihood in believing that one's life is not measuring up."

8. I’d personally like to say that we shouldn’t forget that the recession, the age of materialism, avarice, crippling debt and disempowerment equally affect the genders and so, is a contributing factor.

Those are the explanations you’re likely to see in the media and yet there are others which many unsung writers and men themselves advance. These don’t see the light of day because those controlling the media don’t allow them to be published.

Having it all

It’s in the nature of a woman to seek perfection and an onwards and upwards path to improvement and better things, hence her attempts to change her man.

There’s the old joke about men being like computers – if she’d waited just a bit longer, she might have had a better model. If enough women feel this way, it becomes societally destabilizing.

Perhaps the modern western woman’s greatest source of unhappiness is her fear that she may be missing out on something, that she may have left some stone unturned, that if she follows Path A, Path B might have delivered her a better result.

The natural consequence of this is that she ends up in an anxious golden cage as she goes into her middle years and old age alone, even within a marriage, perhaps with her children as her comfort until they grow up and move out.

As Meghan O'Rourke said about this ‘having it all’ attitude of the western woman:

I've always hated the phrase "having it all" for its tyrannical insistence on impossible perfection. Does this mean it's finally time to put that phrase to rest in the cemetery of bad language?

The evidence is quite strong that it is a female thing – look at the divorce statistics and who instigates them. I've been round the web and the various figures range form 65-80%. If we settle on 70%, that seems a fairly accurate number.

Women in the 60s saw the chance of becoming equal, of striding the stage alongside men and while that’s a noble motive, it’s not without its cost, as Tim Worstall wrote above.

One lady warns:

Then I meet women in their 40s who are devastated because they spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and they missed out on having a family. Thanks to the feminist movement, they discounted their biological clocks. They’ve missed the opportunity and they’re bereft.

A mother comments

If you are a true feminist you seem to be driven by your career and proving that you can do anything a man can and should get equal pay and treatment, so why put kids in the middle of that?

Another consequence of this behaviour is that it casts men in the role of mere ancillary adjuncts to a woman’s life, not as an equal partner and men do see that.

Whether they like it or not, women’s attitudes to men have changed in proportion to the degree that the educational institutions, the law, the press and government interference in human relations has also reached an all time high.

As Patricia Sexton pointed out in "The Feminized Male" (1969):

In the last generation we have built a society that is severely inhospitable to men and boys. When one considers the four- to fivefold increase in youth crime, drug use, emotional illness, educational failure during the same period, it's clear whose interests have been served and whose injured.

It’s not just women themselves – it’s the combination of women, government and key positions in society, e.g. the family law courts which have caused this to be exacerbated. There were definite wrongs to be righted in the 50s and 60s but the agenda was hijacked in the second wave, by the so-called ‘leadership’ of the movement.

Misandry

Minette Marrin wrote:

…when I recently wanted to write a book called The Misandrist, my publisher told me the title would be incomprehensible. This is odd, because there is misandry all around us, even if it is a feeling that dares not speak its name.

There is a terrible danger that these attitudes are going to alienate men from women even more tragically than nature did in the first place ... Of course it is not difficult to understand misandry. But it would be a tragic mistake to be as unjust to men as they have traditionally been to us. Yet that is what women seem constantly tempted to do.

F.L. Morton & Rainer Knopff, in The Charter Revolution & The Court Party (p.75), state:

Contemporary (or second wave) feminism has aptly been described as "Marxism without economics", since feminists replace class with gender as the key social construct. Of course, what society constructs can be deconstructed.

This is the feminist project: to abolish gender difference by transforming its institutional source — the patriarchal family. Certain streams of the Gay Rights movement have taken this analysis one step further.

The problem is not just sexism but heterosexism, and the solution is to dismantle not just the patriarchal family but the heterosexual family as such.

Melissa Scowcroft asks the question - who is responsible for the breakdown of society?

So, who or what is culpable? Well, feminism, of course - specifically ideological feminists, who, with their "relentless hostility towards men as a class of enemy aliens," have brainwashed the populace into the belief that "the only good man is either a corpse or a woman." The result, Nathanson and Young contend, is a level of anti-male sentiment that justifies comparison to Jewish persecution.

Christina Hoff-Sommers argues, in Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women, that feminist misandry leads directly to misogyny by what she calls "establishment feminists" against (the majority of) women who love men.

Judith Levine, in My Enemy, My Love commented:

Man-hating is an emotional problem inasmuch as it creates pain and hostility between women and men. But it is not an individual neurosis à la 'Women Who Hate Men and the Men Who...' Man-hating is a collective, cultural problem — or to refrain from diagnosing it at all, a cultural phenomenon — and men, as the object of man-hating, are part of it too.

The essential problem for women is that they have been poisoned by the misandrists who appeared to be their champions but in fact led to their downfall, many of these champions as mad as hatters.

The mind of a feminist

Commenting on Virginia Woolf, Cassandra posted:

Theodore Dalrymple decries the icon of women's literature Three Guineas as the locus classicus of self-pity and victimhood and suggests an alternative title: "How to be Privileged and Yet Feel Extremely Aggrieved".

Current Postmoderns must have taken several leaves out of the Woolf book, as she is no doubt the uncrowned queen of the ludicrous equation and false analogy; of logic so bent it could put the kitchen plumbing to shame.

Unrestrained emotions and high strung aesthetics notwithstanding, Woolf leaves our contemporary Pomos far behind in the use of false analogies and the inability to distinguish metaphor from literal truth.

Dalrymple:

She ... collapse[s] all relevant moral distinctions, a technique vital to all schools of resentment ...

Here is another prime example of the feminist mindset and these people have not yet died out. A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare by Dympna Callaghan:

The question is not whether Shakespeare studies needs feminism, but whether feminism needs Shakespeare. This is the explicitly political approach taken by all-women team of contributors to A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare.

Choice magazine, who should have known better, called it a ‘classic of Feminist Shakespeare criticism’.

Separate lives

These attitudes have alienated men. Women can rail against this all they like but the simple truth is that there is not only deep anger at the way the government has ridden in on the feminists coat tails and stacked society against the man but it has created a deep and abiding mistrust between men and women.

Juliet Pain [whose blog is now stopped] wrote:

Relationships forged out of this obligatory and mutual distrust are so often going nowhere, right from the start.

Two prime culprits are the statutes which now legally prevent couples coming to an agreement on the distribution of property and the implementers of those statues - the warlock-hunting CSA [take your pick of links].

Prenuptials notwithstanding, gentleman and lady agreements notwithstanding, the state now says to the woman – whatever you and he agreed is of no consequence. If he was fool enough to offer you something, not only do you get that but we’ll also now look at the carving up of his remaining property and the CSA will help you maximize that.

Again, whether women agree that this is the state of affairs or not, that is inconsequential. The relevant thing is that MEN BELIEVE IT IS SO.

There was a local case in this area some time back where a man who ran a business employing a large number of staff separated from his wife, who then invoked the state to get some of the supposed ‘millions’ for herself. He sold off the entire business and tried to place his loyal staff in other positions, sold off all his assets and lived in a modest dwelling, retired from his working life, made her a one-off payment of a couple of hundred thousand, telling her to take it or leave it and after considerable litigation, he was shown to be on firm legal ground and that’s what she ended up with.

The consequence of the whole viperous and acrimonious atmosphere prevailing today is that men will not come near a western woman, knowing full well what is in store. Couple that with the new promiscuity where women sleep with anyone these days, [they call this ‘empowerment’ and ‘choice’], then what are the incentives for any young man to marry, to take his responsibilities?

He has the nooky on tap with any ‘enlightened’ female, the only thing he really wants, without any of the pesky downside. Young women are abetting this, giving it all away, getting pregnant and claiming benefits.

Thus we have a society of single people developing, especially single mothers. 51% of U.S. women live alone and I don't know for the UK. So there's something very, very wrong, isn't there?

Adding fuel to this is the ‘career woman’ mentioned above, in control of her destiny, living alone with her children and bringing a man in as and when necessary.

This does not lead to ultimate happiness, much as Gloria Steinem might mockingly say:

A woman without a man is a like a fish without a bicycle.

Women are now beginning to wake up that they can’t demand it all and then expect men to go along with that. Misandry leads to misogyny and indifferent to a man’s needs leads to misogyny as well. What do women really want – to have a society where there is no recognizable male-female connect beyond the act?

Sackerson wrote:

If you haven't experienced it yet, then you're missing the finest experience money can't buy - the ongoing [and that's the key] chemistry in a loving union between one man and one woman.

Contrast that with Alison Jagger, in Political Philosophies of Women's Liberation: Feminism and Philosophy (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co. 1977), who wrote:

"The end of the biological family will also eliminate the need for sexual repression. Male homosexuality, lesbianism, and extramarital sexual intercourse will no longer be viewed in the liberal way as alternative options... the very 'institution of sexual intercourse' where male and female each play a well-defined role will disappear. Humanity could finally revert to its natural polymorphously perverse sexuality".

Pity we can't get a photo of Alison - she's awfully shy about it.

Is that what women are striving for? Let me ask you girls - do you really want a SNAG or would you prefer a man? If you can't handle a man, perhaps you should ask yourself why.

Divorce

The system is set up now where there is a strong pressure on people not to marry, for fear of what will happen.

People will not commit. Full stop. Period.

If a man marries, she only has to claim ‘mental cruelty’ and she has a nice little nest egg to take with her to the next man or into her new single life with the kids.

It appears that some in the judiciary wish to address this matter but here’s how they go about it:

Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent for the Independent, wrote an article entitled: Divorce laws 'are destroying marriage'.

Also note the companion article: Making divorce humane. Humane, tolerant, all the things that the modern woman and progressive man would subscribe to, right?

So this is going to be all about protecting the insitution of marriage, right?

Not a bit of it. It’s about removing the ‘fault’ clause of what Verkaik calls ‘quicky divorces’. He quotes Lord Justice Wall, whom he calls ‘one of Britain's foremost family law judges’:

"I do believe strongly in the institution of marriage as the best way to bring up children and that's one of the reasons why I would like to end the quick and easy divorces based on the fault system.”

What this piece of duplicitous legerdemain fails to mention is that Wall is by no means concerned with ending ‘quick and easy divorces’ but with actually accelerating them by imposing NO criteria whatsoever.

Fathers groups know all about this man and his solutions, so how does Verkaik respond to their calling Wall out?

“Nicholas Wall's judgments often attract the unwanted attention of fathers' groups whose members have posted his name on the internet and sent him hate mail.”

Is that a reasoned, unbiased summation of what fathers groups are about? Fathers groups came about for precisely the same reason that feminism came about – there was a societal problem which needed addressing and as fathers are swimming against the tide now, just as the women were, in the late 50s, thus both pressure groups were formed.

You can’t have it both ways. There IS a problem in the way men are being treated in family matters. If there wasn’t, there would simply be no movement. Verkaik is no better nor worse than the rest of them but he is typical.

The western governments, with their mindless ‘positive discrimination’, have created a situation where a divorce where both parties once came to a mutual agreement about property and custody either by themselves or as the result of arbitration is now no longer possible. So if he agrees to let her have the second home and a certain amount of support if she’ll then get off his back and if they agree and go through with this, she can still invoke the law to demand the statutory rights on top of that.

The system is slanted towards the woman who usually retains custody. CSAs around the western world are at one in this highway robbery and whether you ladies reading this hotly dispute it or not, that’s irrelevant. - this is what divorced fathers believe, THIS IS WHAT DIVORCED FATHERS BELIEVE, other young men see it too and wouldn’t get caught in marriage with a western woman for anything.

For example, whom do pre-nups benefit?

Be honest.

If you say they are to ensure the fair and equitable distribution of property ‘when’ the marriage falters, then what the hell is the point of marrying? Nice way to go into it, isn’t it, planning the carve-up before you both start?

One woman notes:

The ease with which people can get divorced these days doesn’t take into account the toll on children. That’s all part of the unfinished business of feminism.

One lady commenter at Yahoo wrote:

More couples are getting divorced because women no longer see the importance of a dad/husband in the family's life. They think they can and should do it all on their own and no one should tell them otherwise. This leads to higher rates of sexual activity among teenage girls who do not have a father figure that is prominent in their lives.

James Higham

I have no personal axe to grind in this post. Our agreements were made before the government waded in and [so far] all parties are happy. Unless the government makes its legislation retrospective by some decades, then not a lot will change.

I’ve also had 12 years out of the country with women who were sane, women who preferred to concentrate on being women, allowing me to concentrate on trying to be a man for them. I have no complaints and judging from the correspondence back and forth, there don’t seem too many complaints from that direction.

I fully subscribe to Sackerson’s maxim above.

So this post is not personal. It is the result of watching and listening to people, with dismay, observing the unfolding scenario in the west [and sadly, now beginning in Russia] which human beings, male and female, seem incapable of influencing for the better.

What can be done?

Part 2 of 2 is here.

[north korea] how strong is obama

The North Korean tests:

Rhetoric aside, the US and its allies have no realistic means with which to punish North Korea. Military action is widely considered unthinkable. This is not merely because the US is militarily stretched in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor is it because the North could retaliate using its nuclear weapons. It is also because Pyongyang has massive conventional weaponry, including a 1.1 million-strong army (the world's fifth-largest), 180,000-strong special forces (the world's largest such force), and thousands of artillery pieces and short- and medium-range missiles capable of raining destruction on South Korea and Japan.

... plus the Obama factor. The wrong appeaser at the wrong time.

[complain complain] try these

Thomas Cook and the Association of British Travel Agents compiled a list of the bizarre complaints, including one where a holidaymaker said he felt inadequate after seeing an aroused elephant, which in turn ruined his honeymoon.

It seems many British travellers aren’t used to beaches, with a tourist complaining that “the beach was too sandy” and another upset when they discovered fish swimming in the sea.

"No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled," the tourist said.

It seems some travellers also have a lot to learn about nature.

"I was bitten by a mosquito – no-one said they could bite," a holidaymaker complained.

In another complaint a British guest at a Novotel hotel in Australia said his soup was too thick and strong, not realising he had been supping from the gravy boat.

In an even stranger twist, one traveller blamed a hotel for her pregnancy.

"My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant,” the guest said.

“This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

Other complaints included “there are too many Spanish people in Spain” and “too much curry served in restaurants in India”.

Asleep: Mum’s mid-air sex romp next to son

Talent: Lynda the singing flight attendant

Safe: Passengers lands plane after pilot dies

[philosophy] otherwise known as sophistry

Cicero, in De Divinatione, wrote:

There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.

Cruel but true. The essential problem of philosophy is:

1 That it seeks to explain that which is already explained; 2 It ignores the real causes of what is happening and why it is happening.

Sonus has written a series of articles [see my sidebar] which clearly explain what has happened to our society this time round. I could add to that my series of articles on the Morgans. There are quite a few writers who have pointed to what Hegel said in Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, 1830:

What experience and history teach is this – that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

… and which Marx added to in Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852:

Hegel says somewhere that all great events and personalities reappear in one fashion or another. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Morse said to Lewis, in Death of the Self, 1992:

When will you recognize the undertone, Lewis?

Philosophy, particularly in the form of logical positivism [a misnomer if ever there was one], refuses to recognize the undertone, the recurrent truth, even when it bites it on the bum; truth is not pure enough, not sophisticated enough, not intellectual enough, not fashionable enough, it doesn’t create the ‘oh wow’ factor; it is earthy and low-class, it is for the down and outs, it is weakness to recognize truth for what it is.

Man must philosophize because in his view of the world, given truths must never be given, on the grounds that they have been given. The baby is given a rattle but throws it away because it was given it. He wants to find it for himself and falls out of the cot doing so.

Worse than this, truth must not be recognized because it stems from multiple disciplines which recognize both the complexity of life’s manifestations and the need to contain one’s base instincts in order to remain human, the basis for a social contract personally internalized rather than imposed from without; it includes not only philosophy but elements of the metaphysical, the sociological and the historical. Philosophy detests the impurity of those disciplines.

Philosophy has three main justifications for feeling guilt:

1 It has historically supported the risibly called ‘rationalist’ or satanic side in the real, eternal war between good and evil, shown clearly in the Sonus articles, the presence, in other words of a sentient and malevolent force against the best interests of Man;

2 It has been deeply cynical in doing this; it is mischievous;

3 It follows shoddy logic, based on false opening premises.

Take Voltaire, in Épitres, 1769, who said:

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

Therefore he concedes, at a minimum, the possibility that He does exist. And Voltaire, deep inside, does know He exists, when he answers the priest who asks him to renounce the devil, 1778:

This is no time for making new enemies.

Philosophy is oft-times disingenuous and craftily ignores its own illogical use of its own logical syllogism by taking a false premise, i.e. that G-d does not exist and then immediately asks, ‘Well what is truth then, if G-d does not exist?’ without ever having established the first premise.

This is logic?

Coleridge, hardly a philosopher of note, wrote in Aids to Reflection, 1825:

He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth …

… thereby rendering his whole argument false before he even makes it, by means of simply beginning with an unestablished premise.

Even Lord T, no lover of Christianity or the principle of the existence of God, wrote in Is There a God, 2009:

I look at things logically and scientifically.

Oh what assumptions there are in that statement, m’lord. ☺ Yet he is forced to conclude:

They may even be right. I just don’t know.

Precisely.

The problem is not the existence of God but the anti-intellectualism of the idea, the lack of style in it, hence the attraction of Voltaire and others to the opposite idea. Dostoevsky touched on this in The Brothers Karamazov, 1880:

It’s not God I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I must respectfully return Him the ticket.

I argued in the articles on Christianity [accessible in my sidebar] that it is not a question of proof. It is a question of the ‘underlying tone’, the weight of where the evidence tends, a point also made by Agatha Christie.

Philosophy detests blacks and whites; they are gauche, not vibrant, not questioning, not subversive enough. Philosophy prefers grey on grey. As Hegel wrote, in Philosophy of Right, 1821:

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy’s grey on grey, it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.

From his own pen came the true disingenuousness of philosophy – the desire to obfuscate on the grounds of it being a jolly intellectual exercise and then to set it in concrete as a ‘truth’ but in so doing, causing immense damage in a world which confers on the ‘scientific’ and ‘logical’ the status of the new gods of society, when they are, in reality, nothing of the sort.

Wittgenstein wrote, in Philosophische Untersuchungen, 1953:

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language … [and] … what is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

… and then philosophy goes and does the diametric opposite of what it claims. It obfuscates when there is no need to obfuscate, except over a pipe and fine wine in a smoke-filled room with convivial company and an open fire.

Philosophy lends itself to sophistry.

Philosophy can’t bear the idea of there being two eternal verities, good and evil, each having its sentient focal point, as demonstrated over and over and over in history [see Hegel and Marx above] for if it once admits those, then all it’s Sunday afternoon society discussions become meaningless, except in the context of niceties surrounding the general truth.

Take Nietzsche’s ridiculous:

Morality is the herd instinct in the individual.

… in Die Froehliche Wissenschaft, 1882.

No, morality is the feeling embedded within the self, which defines the soul and is inscribed in scripture, which in turn is only reportage of the ground rules which would ensure an orderly society [defined here as meaning the collection of individuals and families within a certain geographical area, in the context of their relationships with one another and their interdependence], should they be followed.

Unfortunately, the illogicality of the assumption that such a good plan would be voluntarily followed by sufficient sections of society [realpolitik] is partly what the Dostoevsky comment above touches on. And yet the test of the existence of G-d has always been laid down, for example, in John 3:16:

First believe and then the proof will be given.

Philosophy tries to say:

Give us cast iron proof first, then we’ll believe.

And in their smug inertia, each of them sits on some tiny throne and superstition holders are expected to come and lay down proofs at their feet when they themselves feel no onus to provide proofs of their own. They simply assert, noises in hollow tin cans.

Cast iron proof is not belief; it is acceptance of a given truth. Belief, on the other hand, demands the active participation of the believer and is therefore a useful tool for the betterment of the self, just as exercise and good diet are also efficacious in promoting good health.

It’s a good exercise to believe at least six impossible things before breakfast each day.

Philosophers detest ‘belief’ as a philosophical criterion, hence the vehemence with which they try to tear down ‘superstition’. Just how ‘belief’ becomes ‘superstition’ in their minds is not adequately explained.

It is assumed.

And philosophy attempts to call itself rational! Voltaire wrote, in Dictionnaire philosophique, 1764:

Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.

Neat, easily remembered and based on outrageously false premises, the Goebbels principle.

There is the aim of philosophy in one – to ignore truth as evidenced in the history which societies themselves repeatedly ignore and instead to posit the diametric opposite as a new ‘truth’, resting on the reputation of the philosopher for authenticity and ignoring the sheer weight of other philosophers throughout the millennia who ‘recognized the underlying tone’ and wrote just as learned works on the matter.

The unestablished assumption is that the Christian message is a superstition. Yet it is one which has brought hope to millions, particularly those down and out. And what has Voltaire’s, Hegel’s, Nietzsche’s and Marx’s philosophy brought?

The extinguishing of the flames?

No, it has given weight to the crazed dreams of Adolph Hitler, Marx and their ilk who, in turn, were equally funded and abetted by the power of darkness in Europe and America [anyone dispute where the cash came from?], recognized by so very many researchers and visible, in part, in the Finance.

Churchill commented, in 1920, on one aspect of this:

"From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, to those of Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxembourg, and Emma Goldman, this world wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.

It played a definitely recognizable role in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the nineteenth century, and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads, and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."

This is but one example of the true crime of philosophy, throughout history, its political use against the common man, always acting as the running dog of oppression instead of nobly lifting Man above his station and freeing him from his chains.

In times of real trouble for citizens, does anyone recall Nietzschean soup kitchens or Hegelian help centres? On the other hand, does anyone recall the Salvation Army wherever and whenever there was a crisis brought on by Them?

And do Christians need to pay London Transport to daub signs on the sides of their buses proclaiming, ‘There is a G-d?’

The philosophers call it ‘humanism’ when it is anti-humanism, enlightenment when it is the sure road to darkness and rationalism when it is illogical irrationalism.

Why is it the sure road to darkness? Here’s why:

What experience and history teach is this – that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it. [Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, 1830]

There’s a good reason. Because there’ve always been forces preventing the learning of those lessons. It’s been in their interests for the lessons not to have been learnt. It’s been necessary for the advancement of their jaundiced concept of ‘progress’.

I’ll always remember the Thunderdragon’s statement that ‘we’ve moved on from that now’. Y-e-e-es. A bit like Molière’s Le Médecin malgré lui, 1667:

Géronte: It seems to me you are locating them wrongly: the heart is on the left and the liver is on the right.

Sganarelle: Yes, in the old days, that was so but we have changed all that.

Was it mere coincidence that The British Empire was forged when bound by one belief system – G-d, Queen and Country, Rule Britannia? And what is it now, in the days when to utter the word G-d is anathema? As Margaret Drabble wrote, in A Natural Curiosity, 1989:

England’s not a bad country; it’s just a mean, cold, ugly, divided, tired, clapped-out, post-imperial, post-industrial slag-heap, covered in polystyrene hamburger cartons.

[I didn’t say it – she did.]

Was it mere coincidence that America, which so fervently used to believe in itself, in the American dream, the constitution and the flag, before it was sold down the drain by the CFR financiers and the Obamaclintonsocialists, when it was bound by a calvinistic work ethic and a common belief system, went on to become the supernation of the world?

Was this mere coincidence?

Now it has lost that, with the godless, humanistic socialists driving the wedge into American society – observe the result, people.

Observe what 12 years of ‘rationalism’ has done in Britain. Try to set up a business in this country and see how far the taxation lets you get.

When will people learn the lessons of history?

[diary note] time marches on

It’s one year today since I flew out of Russia – doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?

Positives – meeting up with fellow bloggers and making friends, the place I live, a constant delight every morning and evening and … er … well, Britain itself really, with its hedgerows, dry-stone walls, neat gardens, inverted V roofs, paths and lanes. Plus its colours.

No one starves in Britain and in this part of it, it’s safe to walk around. It’s under the jackboot right now but there are still things which are done and not done. One can be surer over here and the beer’s still good.

Negatives – the absolute knackeredness of society. It’s a stiff, an ex-society, so thank you, Nu-Labour. Everything’s so tight, so constricted, so lacking in opportunity, so closed. Even to travel a short distance costs a fortune.

Nothing adds up. A society which must run up huge credit debt just to survive is a society in terminal decline. To apply for something and be asked your ethnicity and sexual orientation is just bizarre. To have to have an NVQ to sweep streets is even more bizarre.

Constants – the blogosphere and blog friendships, same here and in Russia.

[will you still need me] will you still feed me

Paul McCartney will be 67 on June 8th.

67!

The Problem with Linfield

Right, so the third story is up:

The Problem with Linfield

Set in an English stately house, it's a murder mystery ghost thriller and of the three, I like this the best. Moon over Sedna was my attempt at an SF romance, Turandot was the world of Italian opera but this one is a more classic tale.

I do challenge you to see if you can guess the villain before the end [chuckle].